More madness from the UK: "A public school teacher who had a lesbian affair with her teenage pupil was jailed today for 15 months. Helen Goddard, 26 – known as the Jazz Lady – who had admitted six charges of sexual activity with a child last month, wept as the sentence was handed down at Southwark Crown Court in London."

Is Britain going crazy? Such conduct is certainly "unbecoming" of a teacher but is this really worth a jail term? Especially since the story goes on to inform us that the 15-year-old girl in question admitted instigating the relationship and has vowed to continue to see "Miss" when she turns 16.

Once the state becomes too prurient then we go the way of Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg laws. In the end we start banning inter-racial sex and sundry other relationships. And who decides what is acceptable? Probably some judge who has more "perversions" than you and me combined.

I’m not condoning what happened between Goddard and the young girl. Obviously, teachers are in a position of trust and should resist the temptation to dally with their charge. It merits a rebuke but a jail term!? This case was a waste of the Crown Prosecution Service’s time and taxpayers’ money.

Britain’s criminal justice system needs to be seriously revamped. Last week it was also reported in the UK press that a poor tortured soul named Fiona Pilkington committed suicide along with her disabled daughter Francecca Hardwick after a sustained campaign of abuse by local youths that kept mother and daughter under siege in their home.

Where were the police and the authorities during this reign of terror? Wasting precious resources on showers in an egg-cup like this. As well as catching speeding motorists, of course. Sometimes you want to weep for the lack of common sense in today’s Britain.

Going back to egg-cups, I once read the ridiculous account of a prominent former newspaper editor who claimed to have been violated by a consensual affair with a female teacher when he was a boy. He felt haunted by "this potentially horrendous emotional legacy". Readers commented on the "bravery" of his admission and the writer wondered whether he should have confided the story of his "stormy past" to his wife.

Get a life, pal! Many young people enjoy their first sexual experience with an older person. People who reach adulthood and moan about such incidents usually come from gilded backgrounds and have to invent some past supposed "trauma" to qualify for membership of the misery memoir brigade.

Well, when I was a teenager I fancied my art mistress who was drop-dead gorgeous. Sadly, nothing happened. Now I’m off to write a detailed account of how this left me feeling neglected and unappreciated and contributed to my low self-esteem as a young man. 

RIP Fiona Pilkington and Francecca Hardwick. Britain failed you.