Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse – The Sun advocating vigilante behaviour

From the Sun, 1st Dec 2007

IT’S high time someone taught PETE DOHERTY a lesson.

The courts have not bothered to punish him properly and he keeps leading people astray.

So I was delighted to hear that AMY WINEHOUSE’s old man has done what most of us have wanted to do for ages - and lamped the junkie singer.

Cab driver MITCH is sick of bad boys affecting Amy’s career.

And things came to a head at her gig in Brixton, South London, last week when Mitch clocked Pete backstage and hit him with a guitar.

An onlooker said: “He told him to leave Amy alone, saying that he was the last person she needs at moment.

“Pete was smirking until Mitch turned and whacked him.”

Her family want to take Amy away from London over Christmas and New Year to help her get over her demons.

And where better than sunny Florida.

But given the state of her yesterday when she was snapped in London’s Soho, I hope they avoid Disneyland. I wouldn’t want her to scare Mickey Mouse and the kids.

In the meantime, if I was Pete I’d look twice before crossing the road from now on.

You never know when a taxi might suddenly appear.

Do the moral guardians of the universe at The Scum have no understanding of addiction?

They wax lyrical about Judges not jailing Doherty, a self confessed addict. Perhaps there is a reason he hasn’t been jailed? The jails are better served keeping violent offenders off the street, than providing temporary accommodation for a drug addict, who will, without doubt, go straight back to drugs upon release.

Much better to actually treat him, than “lock him up”, as The Sun and it’s loyal followers seem to advocate. They scream injustice as British teacher Gillian Gibbons, languishes in a Sudanese prison, and they are quite right. It is an injustice. The supposed “crime” does not warrant a punishment.

They are, on the other hand, DELIGHTED, to hear that Pete Doherty has been assaulted, by the father of Amy Winehouse, and are may as well be nominating him for an OBE.

Presumably “Mitch”, since the paper is on first name terms with him, has failed to look at the problems on his own doorstep. His own daughter is hardly a beacon of honour and virtue, and is in exactly the same situation as Mr Doherty, however he isn’t battering her over the head with a guitar. Perhaps he feels he has been a shining example of parenthood, and his parenting skills have produced the fine, upstanding citizen that any father would be proud of. Except he hasn’t. He has produced a female Pete Doherty, another addict, who needs help, not locking up, and certainly not beating up.

What gives him the right to assault anyone, particularly someone who shares the same problems as his daughter. Perhaps The Sun should be calling for Amy to be languishing in jail, for her drug offences. Perhaps her clearly violent father should be languishing in a cell while we’re at it.

We live in a country where the law is guarded by the police, and justice served by the courts, not vigilantes who have problems on their own doorstep to attend to, who feel they have the right to meet out their own form of “rough justice” whenever they feel like it. “Mitch” claims to be sick of “bad boys affecting her career”? Umm.. I think you’ll find that shovelling that white powder up her nose is doing that, not Doherty.

Addiction is addiction, regardless of whether the substance in question is legal or not. One would not jail an alcoholic, or an habitual gambler, unless they were wilfully breaking the law to fund their habit.

The problems need tackling at ground level. Take out the dealers; the parasites who feed off the illnesses of people like Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse. Punish them, and while we are at it, punish those who believe they have the right to take the law into their own hands.