Our justice system has apparently decriminalised murder for Nottingham killer Valdo Calocane
HOW many lives did Valdo Calocane destroy when he embarked on his cold, calculated killing spree?
There are the two beautiful, brilliant students he killed — Grace O’Malley-Kumar and her friend Barnaby Webber, both 19 — and a beloved grandfather on the eve of retirement, Ian Coates, 65.
But Calocane shattered many other lives that night.
There were the three pedestrians who suffered life-changing injuries when he mowed them down in the van he stole from Ian.
And there are the families of the victims who will never be the same again.
Their grief is unimaginable.
And these heartbroken souls who mourn their lost loved ones had the right to expect justice for everything that has been stolen from them. But they have not received justice.
“True justice has not been served today,” said Emma Webber, Barnaby’s mother.
“We, as a devastated family, have been let down by multiple agency failings.”
Useless policing let them down. Calocane had a warrant out for his arrest, having failed to turn up for a court hearing after assaulting a police officer.
Yet there is nothing to suggest police were making any attempt to find him.
Calocane was reported to the police for violently attacking two work colleagues just six weeks before his multiple killings — but again the clueless Keystone Cops did not arrest him.
And the worthless Crown Prosecution Service totally betrayed the families of the victims.
When the CPS sprang the news they were not going to press murder charges against Calocane — going for the softer option of manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility — the families felt “rushed, hastened and railroaded”.
And the families were finally failed by the court that accepted the CPS plea not to try Calocane for murder.
This monster will instead serve his sentence playing snooker, and possibly mastering a musical instrument, at the taxpayers’ expense in a maximum security psychiatric hospital.
And that is not justice. That is a farce.
Nobody questions the fact Calocane has severe mental problems.
How can anyone kill multiple strangers and NOT have severe mental problems?
“We have never questioned this man’s diagnosis,” said Grace’s GP father, Dr Sanjoy Kumar.
But Calocane knew exactly what he was doing. The paranoid schizophrenic had enough control of his senses to calmly phone his family after killing Grace and Barnaby and advise them to get out of the country.
After the killings, he attempted to break into a hostel and was sane enough to walk away when someone punched him in the face.
And he also faced three attempted murder charges — not manslaughter charges — for deliberately driving into three pedestrians with the van that he stole from Ian Coates after stabbing him 15 times.
History of extreme violence
Calocane, who admitted the three manslaughter and three attempted murder charges against him, claimed he heard voices that were ordering him to kill.
Yet the Yorkshire Ripper made exactly the same claim in the hope of a softer sentence — and was forced to face a jury and found guilty of 13 counts of murder.
The killings in Nottingham have appalled the nation.
But they are part of a wider pattern of wanton lawlessness that makes the police and politicians and CPS and courts seem not fit for purpose.
After 14 years of rule by the Conservatives, the party of law and order, there is an epidemic of UNPUNISHED crime.
The cases of TWO MILLION offences were closed last year without a suspect being found.
Rape cases are at the highest level ever, but also at an all-time high are the number of rape victims withdrawing from prosecutions.
Many women are giving up hope of justice after waiting years, literally years, for a court to hear their case.
There were 402,000 shoplifting cases in 12 months, and fewer than four per cent of burglaries result in prosecution.
With Calocane’s manslaughter conviction, our justice system has now apparently started to decriminalise murder.
He is a brute with a history of extreme violence that reached its terrible climax the night Grace, Barnaby and Ian were unlucky enough to cross his path.
Their devastated families have been given a life sentence of anguish.
Calocane gets a lifetime of taxpayer-funded snooker.
TIME TO HAIL OUR HEROES
SHEKU Kanneh-Mason, the brilliant young cellist best known for playing at Harry and Meghan’s wedding, says the singing of Rule Britannia at the Last Night of the Proms makes him feel uneasy.
“I think maybe some people don’t realise how uncomfortable a song like that can make people feel,” he told Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.
Fair enough. Sheku is entitled to his opinion and he certainly does not deserve the abuse he has suffered online since criticising the old anthem.
But I hope he is aware that it was not just unmitigated imperial wickedness back when Britannia ruled the waves.
This country abolished slavery some 50 years before the US.
Between 1807 and 1867, the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave vessels and freed more than 150,000 souls destined for lives as slaves.
Also, 1,587 sailors of the West Africa Squadron lost their lives enforcing British anti-slavery laws. They are this country’s unsung heroes.
Nobody is obliged to sing along with those patriotic old anthems.
But we should all be aware that some incredibly brave, noble things happened when Britannia ruled the waves.
IT’S RISHI OR BUST
ARE you desperate for the fourth Tory Prime Minister in 16 months?
Possibly not.
The Tories are on course for a historic kicking because they are losing support on two sides – to Keir Starmer’s Labour on the left and Reform UK on the right.
Vote Labour – get Labour. Vote Reform – get Labour too.
But that double-headed iceberg will never be avoided by ditching Rishi.
The Tories must win or lose with Sunak at the helm.
Tory MPs should stop bitching, bickering and gazing at their navels and start fixing the country.
But if the Tories ditch Sunak before the next General Election, they will not be voted out of power.
They will be laughed out.
BORIS Johnson gloats that the “global wokerati” are trembling with fear that Donald Trump looks like he will triumph in November’s US presidential elections.
But you don’t need to be a member of the “global wokerati” or “the western liberal intelligentsia” to not feel like dusting off that Make America Great Again baseball cap.
In a dangerous rejection of democracy, Trump refused to accept he lost the last presidential election and whipped up the mindless mob who marched on the White House.
Donald has made warm, cooing noises about Putin. He has said disgusting things about women.
Why would anyone jump for joy to see this anti-democratic narcissist back in the White House?
Apart from one thing. Half-dead Joe Biden would be an even worse bet to have as leader of the free world.
At least Trump does not hate the British.
Cat’s out the bag – lucky Chip is just chipper
CLAUDIA Schiffer is furiously criticised for taking her cat Chip to a film premiere in a bubble pet carrier.
The beaming German beauty was photographed with Chip staring out haughtily from his carrier.
Charity Cats Protection reckon Chip’s night out possibly caused him “stress, fear and anxiety”.
To me Chip looked happy to be out on the town with Claudia.
And let’s face it, there are worse fates in this world than being Claudia Schiffer’s cat.
Come to think of it, I can’t think of anything better.
OSCAR RILED
NO Oscar nominations for Saltburn, British director and screenwriter Emerald Fennell’s blackest of black comedies.
I loved Oppenheimer (13 nominations) but enjoyed Saltburn more.
I laughed at Barbie (up for Best Picture) but Saltburn is much funnier.
Emerald Fennell deserved, at the very least, a nomination for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture, while Saltburn’s leading man Barry Keoghan should have had a nomination for his portrayal of a young nerd that recalled Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.
But the real travesty is overlooking Rosamund Pike, who plays the aristocratic matriarch of Saltburn, the former-model mother of the charismatic young toff who Keoghan’s nerd falls in love with.
Pike is just astonishing.
In a career-defining performance, she is by turns cold, warm, haughty, flirty and fabulously funny.
Was Saltburn too British for Hollywood’s elite? Possibly.
Was it too overtly sexual? Definitely.
I can think of no American film where someone gets fruity with a bath plughole.
Saltburn is just much too much for staid old Hollywood. That is why it is so brilliant.
NICOLE SKIRTS ISSUES
AMAZON’S new series Expats, about a group of foreigners living their privileged lives in Hong Kong in happier times, has not had the smoothest journey to the screen.
The star, Nicole Kidman, caused controversy as she was somehow exempted from Hong Kong’s 21-day quarantine when she flew in by private jet for filming in the summer of 2021 – in the middle of Covid.
There was talk of “creative differences” between the star and director.
And Expats is criticised because it is set in a vanished Hong Kong that predates the tough National Security Law imposed by Beijing.
Yet somehow all that was forgotten when Nicole rocked up at the New York premiere of Expats in a little black dress.
Amazing what the right frock can achieve.