Man brutally assaults daughter but escapes jail. Defence pleads "cultural differences."

So a man is driving along through Blanchardstown one day when he sees his 17-year old daughter walking to college with a (presumably male) friend. He immediately starts screaming “Whore!” at her (as you do), threatens to kill her, forces her into the car and beats her severely, over and over again, variously using a screwdriver and a knife. The Independent reports:

Didani ordered his daughter into the vehicle, then began hitting her in the face as he drove home.

The court heard that he stopped the car in a bus lane and started hitting her with the handle of the screwdriver.

"If I get you to a forest right now, I'll kill you," he told her.

Didani also beat her as soon as they returned home.

He kicked and hit her while she lay on the ground before emptying the contents of her handbag on the floor.

Didani then walked into the kitchen and returned with a kitchen knife.

He put the knife to her face and said: "I'm going to kill you."

So, did he go to prison for assault? After all, apart from credibly threatening to kill his daughter, he caused her considerable physical and psychological harm. Well, no. Instead he got a meaningless two and a half-year suspended sentence. And why? Well, here’s a clue:

Gda Mention agreed with Vincent Heneghan, defending, that there were "cultural differences" which were key to this case.

Well, there you have it. If your culture says it’s okay to viciously assault and threaten a 17-year old girl for some imagined indiscretion, then the Irish justice system will simply have to get used to that.

Who could possibly have foreseen this?

The Irish Independent reports:

THE eminent UK obstetrician chairing the inquiry into the death of Savita Halappanavar co-authored a report which called on countries with restrictive abortion laws to look at more liberal regimes.

Professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, head of obstetrics at St George's Hospital London, co-authored a report in 2009 which he said would "encourage societies and countries with restrictive abortion laws to look at the evidence in four of liberal abortion laws".

Well, I’m glad we can look forward to a completely fair, impartial investigation then.

On the opinion pages, the Independent states, apparently without a hint of irony: "Head of inquiry is perfect choice to uncover truth of this tragedy.” Eilish O’Regan’s article is one long sigh of liberal relief.

In other news, David McWilliams comes remarkably close to stating that Ireland might leave the EU if Britain does. He doesn’t quite say that, of course, our membership of the EU being one of those unquestionable givens of Irish political and media life. But I think it’s fair to say that he implies it. Here he indicates what an EU sans le Royaume-Uni would have in store for this country:

For Ireland, it would mean being part of an enterprise where of the two other countries we joined with in 1973, one isn't in the euro (Denmark) and one isn't in the EU (Britain). Far more importantly, it would mean our two major trading partners, the US and the UK, would not be in the same orbit politically and we would be tied to a project which we would be entirely unsuited to economically. Ireland would be a total outlier in terms of economic integration, while culturally we would be in a club with which we share practically nothing.

Disheartening though the support of IBEC and “business community” types for the EU is, at least we have the comfort of knowing that they only support the project out of unscruplous greed. The moment there is a clear, unanswerable economic argument against EU membership, they will jump ship. In that sense, they are different from the real euro-fanatics, the politicians, bureaucrats and Monet professors who have nailed their colours so firmly to the euro-mast that they will let it drag them down to the icy deep, where no one will miss them.

David Quinn States The Obvious

He makes two sensible (and, one would have thought, self-evident) points: first, that it has not been established that ending Savita Halappanavar’s pregnancy when she was admitted to hospital would have saved her life. And second, that the doctors treating her could have legally ended her pregnancy by inducing labour if they had thought it necessary, but did not do so.

I suspect that the investigation, when it is happens, will conclude that Mrs Halappanavar in fact did not die because her child was not aborted the moment she was admitted to hospital. But by then the story will be old news. The pro-abortionists will have milked maximum publicity out of the affair, and the media will have moved on to other things.

As in the case of Ermyas M in Germany back in 2006, the political and media class will find, to their relief, that people have short memories.