The following is a guest post by the Rev Dr Peter Mullen, Hon. Chaplain of The Freedom Association.

How low can we sink? What’s the worst thing we can do? How deep are the depths of depravity? Let me offer a definition of the vilest depravity: it is when we deliberately choose to invert all our values, despise goodness and say, “Evil, be thou my good!” I’ve made all this sound so very abstract, but this week we have a practical, real-life example…

I was pleased to read this morning that finally the shrine to dead career criminal Henry Vincent has been officially removed. But instead of the Metropolitan Police removing it, they left the job to Lewisham Council. This highlights the Met's priorities in this case. It would rather pander to a criminal traveller family than do the job it's tasked to do. 

Mr. and Mrs. Osborn-Brooks can't return to their home in Hither Green. It is too dangerous for them. They are instead being protected in a safe house. Now Vincent's family are going to splash out £100,000 on his funeral, including £50,000 on flowers. Who said that crime doesn't pay? It pays very well for these scumbags. 

The following is a guest post by the Rev Dr Peter Mullen, Hon. Chaplain of The Freedom Association. 

Is British criminal justice truly just? If it were, it would operate impartially without fear or favour and its only bias being in favour of the facts. But this is not what happens. Frequently the innocent are punished and the guilty go free.

This should not happen. The matter of the fair operation of the judicial process was sorted out centuries before the birth of Christ in the opening chapters of Plato’s Republic. Here, in an argument with Polymarchus, Glaucon and Thrasymachus, Socrates describes what true justice is and how it should operate: “for the maintenance of harmony in the city.” Harmony is not served where virtue is penalised and vice rewarded, where the innocent are punished and the guilty set free.