Guilt and fascination were the immediate responses to “Child Genius”. ((Channel Four, 8th February 2007)).

As one nine-year old boy, Dante, said, he did not want the TV crew to know too much about him. That was a case where the assertion of a right of privacy was fully warranted. ((Unlike here)) The children, after all, are not capable of giving full (any, actually) consent to the programme.

His clear thinking was impressive, sometimes in the face of difficulties, including parents struggling, by and large, to do the best for their children.

Not so, the thinking of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The Director has a problem; he is worried that if the judges do not produce some kind of “tariff book of punishment” that the Oireachtas will do it for them. He says he is worried that the Oireachtas scheme will not be a pretty sight; that the judges would do a better job. Oddly, he seems to forget the existence of the Court of Criminal Appeal, a court with two High Court judges and a Supreme Court judge sitting on it, and its obvious role as a mechanism for setting parameters for punishments.

The Oireachtas scheme of things, apparently, would establish mandatory sentences for offences, without regard to the particular circumstances of the offender or even, possibly also, the offence.

The judge-made scheme, he implies, would be different; it would introduce uniformity.

Mandatory, bad; uniformity, good.

Oddly, again, he cites the example of the USA, to show the evils of the very thing he is encouraging the judges to do; applying mandatory (sorry; uniform) sentencing of offenders.

Perhaps the judges are aware of the opinion of a lawyer from Antiquity, “The strictest law often causes the most serious wrong.â€? ((Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC))

To be or not to be? Is that the question?

Remind me- exactly what was rotten in the State of Denmark?