to think deporting Trenton Oldfield is just mean

[sashh]

Trenton Oldfield is the man who disrupted the boat race a couple of years ago.

He is an Australian married to a Briton with a baby daughter. He has lived in the UK for 12 years.

He has applied for a spousal visa and it has been rejected.

He did a stupid thing, for which he has paid with a prison sentence and a criminal record, why punish him more?

Exactly what good will it do to deport him?

Exactly how much harm will it do?

I have not put a link, there are loads of newspaper articles, web pages etc outlining the case.

Mean in what way? Presumably he was aware that break the law might be a breach of his visa.His wife and child can join him in Australia. No sympathy.

Surely courts do consider what might have happened. It's relevant to the state of mind and degree of culpability of the criminal. Throwing a Molotov cocktail in an empty park: bad. Throwing a Molotov cocktail in a crowded park: worse. Even if on both occasions no one was actually hurt. The potential for harming someone is much greater in the second example. The perpetrator is taken to have recognised that and punished more harshly as a result.

I think talk of the Establishment closing ranks to punish this twit is overstating it rather a lot. Equally the main risk to life and limb was that of injury to Twatty Oldfield himself, and the supposed danger to others appears exaggerated. But actually, people generally get quite stiff sentences for public order offences, ^pour encourager les autres' and before he started his 'protest' (self-aggrandising public posturing, if you ask me) Twatty should have genned up on that.

Try driving down the M6 after drinking half a bottle of scotch and see if "but I didn't hit anyone" get you your license back. Try driving down the M6 at 150mph and see if you avoid an instant jail sentence, irrespective of how well you did it.

That's it though, isn't it? We are charged with what we did, and what the Crown Prosecution Service think is most likely to secure a conviction, not the consequences of our actions.

So you could be pissed or driving like an F1 driver on a motorway and kill someone, the most you'll be charged with is causing death by dangerous driving, if that.

You'll still face the penalty which will be loss of licence and possible imprisonment, and you would deserve that.

But though many people would want you to be, you cannot be charged with murder, because that wasn't your intention and therefore you would be acquitted.

I understand the anger of people who've lost loved ones to idiot drivers. But I also see why they're charged with what they've done, rather than what might have been.

I don't feel any particular sorrow for this person. But I do see his case as similar to those convictions for benefit fraud, relatively rare and a populist drop in the ocean.

He doesnt seem to like our rules.

Surely courts do consider what might have happened.

Yes they do. It's like the young man jailed for dropping a fire extinguisher off the roof of Millbank Tower into a crowd during the student riots a couple of years ago.

He was charged with violent disorder and got two and a bit years. The charge was appropriate. I don't know what the range of sentencing is within it. But dropping a fire extinguisher from height into a crowd is worse than dropping it into a swimming pool with no people around, and I guess the judge took that into account.

I do know that if he'd have been charged with attempted murder, as many people demanded, he'd have probably have walked free, because his intention was not to murder.

We needn't worry about Trayton. He must be loaded if he was studying as an overseas student at LSE. Rich and privileged I imagine.

He must be loaded if he was studying as an overseas student at LSE.

He claims to have had a scholarship. Some might call that quite a privilege.

HEC - I think a better comparasion would be between someone being drunk in charge of a car and someone being drunk in charge of a bike (also illegal to ride a bicycle when drunk). Thta has a maximum fine of £1k (I think!). You could argue that both are drunk in charge of a form of transportation so it's unfair the driver would get a stiffer sentance, but the fact is, drunk driving you could quite easily hurt/kill someone, on a bike, you're highly unlikely to kill anyone (other than yourself). Therefore the crimes have sentances to that reflect the possibility of hurting someone else.

If he'd intrupted a football match, there would be no possibility of someone being hurt, or him killing himself. By interupting the boat race there was a risk of him or others being hurt. That he didn't is why the sentence wasn't higher, but the risk he took with other's lives should be taken into consideration.

Plus he's obviously a cock and quite frankly, we've got enough of our own thanks, don't need to be putting up with Aussie ones as well.

The consequences do seem harsh and out of proportion to what he did.

I do have sympathy for him and his family, but I have more for people who are being sent back to their country of birth simply because their visas have expired. He chose to risk his by deliberately breaking the law to make a point.

OK IABU.

I'm not a fan of his, it just seems wrong to possibly split up a family like that. But I'll go with the majority.

He's a selfish, thoughtless bellend who time and again has shown utter disregard for the consequences of his actions for other people.

First the rowers who had dedicated years of sweat and toil to training for the boat race, secondly to his wife and finally to his daughter who was evidently conceived after he was prosecuted and presumably aware of the implications this would have for his right to remain in the UK.

Knobjockey. Sorry but I have very little sympathy for him.

His wife and child can join him in Australia.

Well, they can't, because as an Australian citizen with a criminal record he's entitled to live in Australia, but unlikely to be able to sponsor a spouse. She could apply in her own right, but a single mother who writes papers on intersectionality may not be a resource of which Australia feels a need for more. She'd also be subject to whatever the Australian equivalent of "no recourse to public funds" is.

All these being things that a graduate of the LSE might have thought of first, of course.

Does anyone understand what it was that he was protesting about?

People having to take responsibility for the consequence of their own actions (regardless of how disproportionate they perceive the consequence to be) would have a huge positive impact on this country.

it just seems wrong to possibly split up a family like that

It will be him who split the family up.

Does anyone understand what it was that he was protesting about?

No. He seems a twat. I'm sure that if I met him I'd want to crown him in under five minutes.

However the consequences for being a twat are harsh. Therefore I can find some sympathy for his twattishness in my black and stinking heart. Can you?

He is a Marxist agitator,educated privately and lse protesting about entitled elite
Kettle.pot.black

He was protesting about inequality I society I think. That was why I suggested upthread that he moves with his family to North Korea or China. He can see how accommodating they are when he protests but presumably he will like the social equality there.

Hipster twat. Will be no loss to the uk.

It doesn't really matter. Perhaps he doesn't even care about his partner and child and they'll stay in the UK while he goes to Australia and they won't care either.

Maybe they'll be eligible for benefits.

It's just the idea that so many on this thread think he has his just deserts that amuses me.

This article provides some insight into his motivations. It's rather interesting.
As I understand it, plenty of far more serious criminals have been able to remain in the UK on the basis of their "right to a family life."
TS seems sincere to me, others clearly disagree. However, I do feel that any deportation from the UK should be contingent upon an agreement with the Australian government that his wife and child are able to join him there. Splitting up the family would be cruel in the extreme. His wife played no part in his actions at the Boat Race (in fact she disagreed with the stunt), so she and her daughter should not be punished.

However the consequences for being a twat are harsh. Therefore I can find some sympathy for his twattishness in my black and stinking heart.

He appears to have no insight. Both he and his wife are giving it the "oh, society is so dreadful, what I did was right, it's all the establishment's fault, me, me, me". She, if anything, is worse than him.

If he'd said "yes, what I did was twattish, and I regret it deeply, I accept that I could be administratively removed, but I would ask for some consideration for my child who was conveniently conceived after the event so as to complicate my deportation, not that I was planning ahead or anything and my child's mother" then I might be inclined to think differently.

But as they're both still banging on about how dreadful this country is, and how we don't understand, and how we should realise that he's special and different, they can fuck off.

The words he's looking for are "sorry, I won't do it again". The words she's looking for as "he's a bit of an arse, but if he stays in this country, I'll try to make sure he's less of an arse in future" (after all, his only right of abode would stem from being her husband). But what they appear to want is a round of applause and a pat on the back.

friday says it much better than I can, he doesn't even seem to like living here FFS.

How come he can be deported but some rapists can't? What a topsy turvy world we live in.

'the fuck is his website on about??

How come he can be deported but some rapists can't?

He's got a passport for a safe country. There's no serious risk that the Australian government is going to shoot him on the tarmac as soon as his plane lands, nor that they are going to refuse him admission or strip him of his citizenship.

Most of the cases the Daily Mail froths about reports centre around asylum seekers, often those that have been granted asylum, who then commit crimes. If they were deported, they could well be subject to whatever it was that was the reason they were granted asylum in the first place, always assuming that the country they left would have them back anyway.

Now you might argue that they should have thought of that before committing the crime, and I may well agree with you, but the UN Refugee Convention (amongst other things) doesn't see it that way. If the country they originally came from refuses them entry, who else is going to take them? And if the country they originally came from accepts them, and the promptly shoots them, where does that leave us? It would be nice if there were simple black and white answers, as the Mail thinks there should be, but unfortunately real life's a lot more complex than that.

Not every child who arrived on the Kindertransport grew up to be a moral paragon, and I presume that some proportion of them ended up on the wrong side of the law. We still did the right thing in not deporting them back, you know.