From Around the world... in yesterday's Edinburgh Evening News:

[Joe Chi Minh]

"£180,000 speeding fine for driver.

A SWISS court has set a world record by slapping a £180,000 speeding fine on a millionnaire Ferrari driver. The court levied the fine on a man identified in the Swiss media only as 'Roland S'. Judges in St Galen called him a 'traffic thug'. More European countries are issuing fines linked to income as a way to punish rich drivers."

I'm not saying anything...

[T Wolf]

1. I think many more things should be linked to income (or wealth). If the true meaning of

equal punishment is to be preserved, there is no sense for having set fines, etc.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Not just Europe

fines in Mexico are prorated to the minimum wage, have been for years, and income.

Oh and it makes sense.

A five hundred dollar fine to me is a LOT OF MONEY, but for somebody who's income (annual) is in the millions that is pissing in the wind.

And I am not talking of net worth, but INCOME.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. Good to hear. Particularly of Mexico, as a lot of bad things seem to have happened to innocent

people. Though I also seem to remember more recently something good. I think it was what you posted.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. It is a schizofrenic place

there are, like anywhere else, good things and bad things, and it does suffer from a case of the grass is greener on the other side, in this case of the river...

Now that said, I would be the last to deny that corruption is part of the culture (like us). The difference is everybody knows this and admits it, unlike us.

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. At least as important (incredible as that sounds) is that judges should sentence

those convicted on the degree of malice his action or actions represent.

Of course, malice cannot be measured in a laboratory, but we all have a pretty fair idea of what kind of acts would be defined by the term, 'extreme malice'. Human law can never be perfect, but we must make it as true as possible. That should not, however, permit of a paralysis borne of a fear that every single loose end has been dentified and tied up.

Today, it is reported in UK newspapers that a rowdy 16-year old lad threw bleach in the face of a 46-year old mother with her two children in a cinema, because she asked him to keep the noise down.

His sentence? 12 months, of which he will serve only half. The judge said his mother died when he was very young, that he had been the subject of violence from his father, and had been left with issues to resolve. The same, I believe, could be said of Manson. Almost certainly worse had befallen him.