Party Vibe

these are UK sentences and TBH very similar; although one was handed down by courts in London and the other in NI; given our history it is not surprising NI sentencing is slightly stricter (there is still the chance that Mahoney may have been funding paramilitaries on either side of the ongoing conflict even if he didn’t intend to do so).

Also a partially sighted young man isn’t going to be able to buy flash motor cars unless he can also employ someone to drive them – and there is a limit to what AV equipment he can enjoy using if he can’t see particularly well!

TBH both offenders (who have not directly used any violence in their crimes) are likely to get early release around the same time if the parole boards do not consider them to be an ongoing risk.

I know of people who have chosen to sit out the remaining few months of a sentence even when they have been given early release as being sent down has disrupted their life to such an extent at least prison gives them some stability).

the govt / legal system in NI is always less tolerant than mainland UK as its essentially the last remaining colony of the UK; they suspect all criminals of being linked to funding “terrorism”.

Pretty much every person I’ve spoken to from NI over the last 30 years (from all religious/cultural backgrounds) has said the same thing and its often why they had chosen to move to England in the first place. its starting to kick off there again like 100 years ago as well…

if the lad had committed the same offence in London he’d most likely get the exact same penalty as the chap who defrauded the bank. Crown Court judges usually have to work with sentencing guidelines but these vary across the various countries of the UK.

In both cases they are have got way less prison time than being caught for selling drugs and making a tenth of the profits from doing do without ripping anyone off.

these days the UK cops often claim any crime above a certain level is “linked to terrorism” or “money laundering” – folk round my way who are English and nothing to do with any political groups who got nicked for a larger amount of LSD initially had a terrorist charge put on their sheet as the cops claimed they could have put the LSD into the water supply of a small village (in spite of them not intending to do anything of the sort).

What the charge sheets start off with and what is actually put up before Court (the Press can quite rightlly only report on the charges heard at Court) are often very different although the judges do take into account stuff like “character” / “background’ ( as you would expect white kids who went to public school are often treated slightly more leniently) and seemingly unrelated previous convictions; even if they claim otherwise. (The acid dealers did not get pulled up for terrorism got a 5 year sentence for dealing class A of which about 2.5 years was served in prison).

I’ve seen friends of mine get prison for offences that don’t even warrant it simply because they were on state beneifts when if they had had jobs they would have been let off with probation.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the other lad in London actually got 6 months extra for having a name/background which is a “bit foreign” as other fraudsters for the same amounts in the same areas have got lesser sentences.

BTW I didn’t realise at first the offender in London was a lot older – that is actually a relatively harsh sentence for a man of that age group given he had 20 years of honest trading with the same bank; didn’t crash any of the cars or drive badly/without the correct license whilst full of cocaine.

In both cases (especially if cops and judges genuinely want to discourage others from doing the same things) it would make more sense for the offenders to receive mental health treatment aimed at rehabilitation as part of their sentence to try and work out why they decided to commit these crimes and put them back on the right path as neither of them appear to have started out as hardened criminals.