Ellee Seymour

It’s a shameful day when a weak-willed Government has to pay 198 convicted criminals compensation for stopping them taking drugs while in jail. Why couldn’t the Home Office stand up to them instead of caving in?

I’m all for human rights, but not when it is self-motivated and greedy and comes before common sense and justice. These addicts are set to get thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money for suffering “cold turkey,” which they claim amounted to torture, money they will no doubt spend to further fuel their addiction, most likely commiting more crimes, and it could even cost them their lives.

These cases could just be the tip of the iceberg, other druggies behind bars will soon wise up and make the same cash demands. I thought prison was meant to be rehabilitative, so it makes sense to get addicts off drugs, not condone them, which is what this payment in effect does.

Does this mean that our addicted prisoners will now expect to be able to continue taking illegal hard drugs while serving time? They claim that the prison system had no right to make them stop, or to put them through detox programmes using a heroin substitute, so what is their plan now? Or are there ample supplies available inside to keep them going anyway?

Could it be that John Reid is mindful of the fact that under European human rights, prisoners will be able to vote, and he is counting on their support?

Would sexist football manager Mike Newell have complained about women referees if his side had won their match?

Would he have been praising Amy Newell’s Rayner brilliant on-line decision making skills, the off-side rule and all that, had Luton been triumphant?

An ungracious Newell had great difficulty accepting Amy’s decision as linesman when she refused to give Luton a penalty, and they lost 3-2 to Queen’s Park Rangers.

He makes no bones about being a chauvinist, saying:

“She should not be here. I know that sounds sexist but I am sexist. We have a problem in this country with political correctness and bringing women into the game is not the way to improve refereeing and officialdom.

“It is absolutely beyond belief. When do we reach a stage when all officials are women, because then we are in trouble?

“It is bad enough with the incapable referees and linesmen we have, but if you start bringing in women, you have big problems.

“This is Championship football. This is not park football, so what are women doing here? It is tokenism, for the politically-correct idiots.'’

I can’t see why Newell has difficulty with women being fair referees, they have to pass the same tests as men, I’m sure they work harder to prove themselves in this male domain. And plenty of women enjoy a game of footie too, though it doesn’t appeal to me, due to my lack of skills on the pitch.There are 10,000 FA affiliated women’s teams and 133,000 registered female players.

So Newell deserves all he gets and I hope he faces an FA’s disciplinary hearing. He needs reminding that their Code of Conduct does not condone this unprofessional behaviour, as these rules clearly demonstrate:

Newell has quite clearly fallen foul of these rules, I just hope his bigoted views do not elevate him to hero status by others who would prefer to see football pitches as a male-only enclave. Westminster was like that at one time, but then maybe Newell objects to women MPs too, or even women voting!