UKC

The last thread got archived for length before I had a chance to update everyone.

Court was running a couple of hours late which heightened the tension and allowed for some rumination  got some unrelated but worrying news earlier today which heightened my emotions ssomewhat I was definitely one of the best dressed in there today, though several were clearly wearing ttheir Sunday baseball caps and trainers.

I asked to see the prosecutor beforehand, but the jovial usher told me it was too busy unfortunately

Eventually I was ushered into the court and to the dock and was subsequently signed by the Clerk to take my hands out of my pockets.

Two magistrates were present, one clean cut gentleman who could hhave been a hHeadteacher in an independent school while the Chair was classic middle aged Tory totty.

The prosecutor stated the case against me. I then proceeded to go full Kyle Rittenhouse to my great surprise, I'll put this down to my heightened emotional sstart combined with a reliving of what was quite a traumatic ideal. Pulling myself swiftly together I made my case for mitigation with the help of some documentary evidence which included a signed statement from our community midwife summarising the medical aspects. I apologised for my actions but made clear it was a conscious decision in light of what I considered a medical emergency.

Upon the conclusion of my deposition, the prosecution moved swiftly to state that the prosecution of this case was not in the public interest and that they wished to drop it. The Clerk advised that that the circumstances would fulfill the four criteria for Special Reasons and it would likely have gone my way in a defence invoking such.

The Magistrates were in unanimous agreement and bid me freedom and thus I left the court with my head held high and a feeling that justice had indeed been served this very day.

Thanks for all the good wishes. I would now like to offer Mutt the floor to comment on the case from the press gallery...

whoop   great news - shame it couldn't have been sorted earlier without all the stress to you and the time and effort for all, but justice was done

The immediate mental image I had reading this was of a scruffy academic and an assault rifle…

Good work.  Its great that you can move on in the best possible way.

Good work. That's the outcome I'd expected and hoped for.

How silly that it had to go all the way to the court.  The fact that the prosecutor (and not the magistrates) dropped it as soon as they understood the circumstances rather justified your decision to ask for a hearing.

Great stuff, congratulations.  I hope the worries caused by the worrying news turn out to be unfounded.  Best of luck.

TFFT!

Excellent - that sounds like a good result, both for you and justice in general. My understanding of magistrates is that they're normally sensible, pragmatic and fair, and would have found in your favour given the circumstances, had the prosecution chosen to continue with the case.

Did you just refer to a magistrate as totty? have a look at yourself mate, its 2021 you'll be referring to women as a lovely bit of crumpet next. Keep it up and you'll be running the BMC.

Excellent verdict. Good to see common sense at play. 

Congratulations on the result (and again on the birth).

It's made my evening reading this. Congratulations.

Well done. It sounded like you had a decent case.

Great to see the system works. Have fun bringing up your infant.

Good to hear. 

Strikes me the prosecution could have saved everyone time money and hassle for everyone by speaking to you beforehand!

Good result. Very good prosecutor. 

Female for interest's sake, might have gone in my favour.

Justice done, and seen to be done.  Well done!

T.

You are being a bit hard on the prosecutor in court.

They will have been extremely busy probably saw the cases for the first time that morning, maybe the night before. The prosecution is playing permanent catch up and on the day of court really will have little time. Many will want to speak to them, most will not have anywhere near the mitigation in this case. 

The right decision was reached by a decent person doing their job very well. It is not everyone who will bin stuff so promptly, the safe way is to let the bench decide. 

Edited for brevity! 

Fantastic news!!

Fair enough.  I was meaning engaging earlier with the case rather than on the day.  I have no idea how these things work though, beyond various news articles about evidence not being shared when it should be causing cases to collapse wrongly.  This sounds a little like the reverse.

Spot-on. I'm pleased it went well. 

If I were you I'd now put it all behind me, especially the folk who were very negative about your case. Everyone has their own issues and there's nothing to gain there.

All the best.

Congratulations!

And looking at the up down votes, it appears that you’ve also won UKC 2021.

... dropping the case long before it got anywhere near court, having considered the submitted evidence.

The only sensible result has been achieved, at least. Good job.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the prosecutor at a magistrates court has a huge, snaking line of 'Freemen of the land’ wanting to spend 5 hours each spouting total bollocks they've seen on YouTube as to why the law doesn't exist in the first place, and people who are able to present a coherent argument are rarer than unicorn farts.

Great news, better outcome than expected!

The stress was all self imposed FFS!  Any normal, less self centered person, would have simply coughed up the small fine and moved on with their lives.  Talk about first world problems.  Still, he got lots of likes and a whole new set of fanboys, so job's a good-un.  Can't wait for the movie.

I saw one video of one who was spouting off the usual rubbish to the police and a court appointed balif about none payment of something who was claiming benefits. When the balif said if you don't pay it will be deducted from your benefits the guy changed tack and started explaining why he was entitled to them. 

At the end of the whole ordeal you now have the basis of an excellent anecdote for a future wedding speech of things go that way in the future.

Been looking forward to this all week! Pleased for you  

Got to admit I was pondering a situation where the prosecution had gone ahead and where the magistrate had overheard  herself being referred to as such by the defendant. ......

Can this not be moved to the pub so I can call an objectionable tit a tit again without it being deleted?

Hope you celebrated by doing a load of doughnuts in front of the court before disappearing down the road in a cloud of tyre smoke.  

This never gets old:

youtube.com/watch?v=MmCcghxgFI0&

They seem to have left the building.  I wonder if they took all their socks with them?

I will report back on my partner's improving PC language now the presidential term has finished. Makes a change from the accusations of the BMC being too woke I guess.

Glad the nonsense has ended Hardonicus.

Congrats, nice to know the system works and justice doesn't require you to spend loads of money on a lawyer!

I'm sure your detractors will be right in the long run though, only a matter of time now till the bodies start piling up at the road side as your madmax rampage has gone unpunished

Considering that the prosecution, the clerk, and the magistrates agreed with what was apparently the majority here and disagreed with you and mutt, should you perhaps consider that your assessment of the situation might be, you know, wrong?

I was just thinking some poor bugger has to live next door to that (I very much doubt anyone lives in even closer proximity).

There was a third poster in agreement with the other two, forgotten his name but the profile picture screamed "Aspirant Serial Killer"

You probably missed Wire Shark's (now deleted) companion piece to that post of his in the early hours this morning, which was a rather more direct & vitriolic attack on the OP than the post that's still here.  Suffice to say he definitely wasn't willing to consider that he might have been wrong when he wrote that. 

Also, it having been written at 2am ish on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, you could probably be forgiven for assuming he was a little over-refreshed at the time and that he's a mean drunk.

I'd give good odds that "Wire Shark" was also behind a couple of the new accounts that signed up to throw vitriol over the last few weeks.  I expect we're going to see some more soon.

Not taking that bet!  Sadly I think you're almost certainly right. 
(And this is why we can't have nice things.)

I absolutely refute that unfounded assumption. People are entirely capable of being mean minded, vinegary old sods without recourse to alcohol.

I was stone cold sober when writing my now deleted early hours reply to Snark, where I called him a Tit (I had just come off shift, though admittedly I had just mixed myself a large Negroni).

More just a sort of speculation than assumption, but if I had made that assumption you would probably forgive me for it right?

You're right of course. 
FWIW, I tend to believe in "in vino veritas", that mean drunks and happy drunks are often as not mean and happy people showing their true colours while their inhibitions are lowered.

Funnily enough I had just come in from work a bit after 3am this morning too and was also stone cold sober, but had a little glass of whisky in my hand.

When a post crosses the line as clearly as that one did it's probably better just to hit the 'report' button to let the mods know about it without bothering to reply.  They don't have time to read everything on here (especially at stupid o clock in the morning) so only know to zap something like that if somebody actually tells them about it.

Absolutely

Like a stopped clock

I'm a happy drunk (rare occasions, honest) but a right grumpy old git when hungry. Not quite sure what indicates about me but probably goes some way to explaining why my clothes are very gradually shrinking.

Cheers!

Aaah, I dunno. As the past couple of covid years have amply proven, UKC is pretty good at policing itself via retort rather than report.

Ah, nice one. Put a smile on my face this afternoon.

PS. Hands up who has had to speed to get to a speed awareness course on time? 

I feel your pain, buddy. 

Call me a snowflake or whatever if you want to, that's ok. Alternatively, my messages/email are open if you want a chat. (Genuine offer.)

All the best.

It's been a while but I'm neither - mostly a melancholy drunk I think.  And oh god yes, me too!  That hasn't changed since I was a grumpy young git.

True enough for mis/disinformation, thanks to those who have actually harnessed the power of relentless indefatigable UKC pedantry for good.  (Who would have thought that was possible just a  few short years ago!)

In the case of vicious trolls just looking for attention though, I think an angry reply telling them exactly what you think of them is probably exactly what they're looking for and a win from their point of view.

I think Tony Buckley nailed it in the other thread:
https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/magistrates_court_appearance-74...

One of the few advantages of the pandemic was being able to take a speed awareness course via “zoom”. 

I know someone who got booked on the way home from one.

Aw man I missed the post. Was it juicy?!

It was his typical handbag clutching vitriol, but with a bit of name calling chucked in.

However, my repost was magnificent. The pathos of a Hamlet soliloquy, the pithy humour of Dorothy Parker combined with the delivery of Les Dawson.

Alas, lost to history forever, crushed beneath the boot heals of the philistinism of The Mods🥲

I'll take your bet. I reckon you're wrong this time. It's a different style, and the username is relevant to the profile, rather than random. My bet, solely based on the slim evidence of the username and a couple of posts (and I saw the deleted one), is that Wire Shark is a genuine user, and he works in IT. I have to deal with these types, and I've seen the same attitude so many times whenever they get behind a keyboard. Arrogant and pompous and utterly convinced of their position, intelligent, but unable to accept anything that doesn't fit into their box and totally devoid of social skills. When I actually meet one face to face they can actually be reasonable to deal with, but back behind a keyboard they revert to type. (Pun intended!)

You mean like this guy...

"Yeah well I went down there the first day it opened right, and I did a couple of laps, I pulled over, the bloke that runs the thing comes over and said - Oi no professionals. I took my helmet off, I said I'm not a professional. He said - you're not a professional? I said - No, he said - well you should be, if I was you I'd take up Formula One, and if you drive like that you'd probably be the best in the country! I said - I'm not interested I'm making sh*t loads out of computers."

And there I was baking  a cake with a file in it. Congrats again on the new sprog and glad this irritation is out of the way for you.

Nice one.  The quote the Dead Kennedys: You fought the law and you won.

It's the guy who talked about himself 'travelling' rather than 'driving' I was thinking about, I can almost hear my Mum telling him to stop being so silly.

Well done. Glad they let you off

Congratulations. Reassuring to see the courts making the right decision.

Does this mean we need to stand down the crack team of climbers who were ready to scale the prison walls, armed only with hexes on rope?

I imagine that's not uncommon. 

At first I thought Sov Cits were a bit of a joke with their mantra which only a few of them could actually spout out but when you see the number of interactions between them and the police on You Tube , you start to realise why in the US they are considered by many to be a bigger threat to homeland security than radicalised Muslims.

The Clash?

It certainly was the Clash version going through my head on the drive over to the court!

When the Clash fought the law, the law won. When the Dead Kennedys fought, they won.

Fight the Power!!

Nice one.

It was the usual rubbish about you getting let off because of white privilege and wasting the time of the courts etc.

Good job it wasn't Tommy Gun?

Though the protagonist in the DK version was a murdering KKK cop, so maybe a tad different to Hardonicus. 

Don't forget the bit about not being a person because all birth certificates belong to the Queen, and because you don't consent to something it can't be a 'proper' law, so doesn't exist, and even if it did because you're not a person it couldn't apply anyway. Or some such bollocks.

Which begs the question, had Hardonicus written to the CPS beforehand? Rather inevitable that a court hearing would result if all of the mitigation was a closely guarded secret until the hearing. 

From the other thread:

"I declined to accept the fixed penalty and got a form from the magistrates court with 3 options: plead not guilty, guilty, or guilty with mitigation. I did the latter and supplied the circumstances (hoping it would finalised via paperwork only). I was thereafter summoned to court."

A pity that the whole episode could not have been live streamed for us all to appreciate!