The Vale of Tralee. posted by Richard Seymour

In a short story included in a collection by Irish authors, boys living under the tutelage of the Christian Brothers are beaten, deprived, abused and raped. The final sentence, as one boy bends over to reveal his brown rosette to a waiting bugger, belongs to the buggeree, who simply says: "The Vale of Tralee".

Well, these days the Vale of Tralee is open to internet tourists, and particularly judges. A 70 year old Crown Court judge has been caught with 75 photos of boys, aged between eight and 14 years old , on his laptop. The judge presiding over the case might have sent him down for a few years, but instead he gave him a twelve month community rehabilitation order and £55 costs. The judge's reasoning is curious to say the least:

He said by the standards of many of these cases, the 75 images the former judge held was not a "substantial" number but they had, however, been downloaded on a number of occasions over six weeks.

Mr Workman considered the number of photographs "not insignificant" but was satisfied the material Selwood downloaded was solely for his own use.

Provided one exploits children for one's own use, then, it is nothing to go to jail over. That is the kind of thinking I would expect from the courts today, since the judiciary are the most singularly perverted, criminal class in the country. I am not suggesting that Mr Workman has any personal interest in seeing off tough sentences for judges who violate the integrity of underage boys, but in general I think there is more corruption under those saucy wigs than in any other UK institution, even the Metropolitan Police. It reminds me somewhat of the collusion between cynicism and innocence , in which nescience is the very form that jaded dyspepsia takes. The good judge is "satisfied that" the photos were strictly for the other good judge's masturbatory purposes - and who but a rancorous 'cynic' would have cause to doubt it?