Over the years I've never made a secret of the fact that I call it like I see it.
My no nonsense approach has meet with criticism many a time and I'm OK with that.
Your opinion is just as valid as mine, I just happen to be lucky enough to have a very public forum with which to express my views.
Many may not appreciate my sense of humour, use of language, cynicism or sarcasm but what may surprise you, however, is just how much I tone things down for publication.
On a good day I'm giving you 70 per cent, my average is probably closer to 50 per cent so just to keep things interesting I feel it is time to give 100 per cent.
I'm sick with the flu, feel like crap and so wish the paper had the ability to add sound bleeps in all the appropriate places so I could give my asterix button a well deserved break.
PHOTO/STUART MUNRO
I've been seething all day, having read of the burglary and damage at the Hospice Shop.
Disgusted doesn't even come close to expressing how I feel and not just because we are talking about the charitable organisation that nursed my mum in her dying days. I'd feel the same for any charity shop.
How effing low these animals will go shouldn't really surprise me, I'm not a big fan of the human race we have become, especially in recent years. Selfish, needy, greedy, approval seeking, entitled, shallow, vain and sheep like in our mindless following.
And we wonder why the world is so effed up.
I get that times are tough out there. I live it every day. I can even understand people turning to crime to make ends meet but there's a line you just don't cross. Like the unspoken rule of a paedophilic being deemed worse than a murderer. Burglary is one thing but to rip off and cause intentional damage to a charity shop is beyond the lowest of lows. It's scum in its purest form.
At the risk of angering every shrink and counsellor, these people, if you can call them that, if caught, should be publicly shamed and exposed.
Enough of this PC restorative justice, sitting around, mouthing fake apologies.
The only bloody thing most of them are truly sorry for is getting caught. It all comes down to politics. Just another airy-fairy way of cooking the books to say we've put less people in prison..Aren't we bloody wonderful.
Don't get me wrong, rehabilitation has its place but it's just not realistic to expect it of every criminal, even the statistics support me in that argument.
We are kidding ourselves if we think we can set every crim on the straight and narrow. That's the sort of dream that comes straight out of a meth pipe and you're living in La La Land if you believe it.
I get that people want to see the good in others but the truth is many of us are not good people.
Then we need some judges with balls as big as their salaries to get creative and dish out some real justice.
Continuing to channel much needed resources to the no-hopers brigade is proving futile, instead they might want to assign some extra funds to the often forgotten victims.
With the soft sentencing of today how much longer will we be able to say.. Crime Doesn't Pay? I'm off to knock up an electric chair, catch you next week. ■ Kate Stewart is a politically incorrect reluctant mother of three, a staunch advocate of common sense and three-ply toilet tissue - feedback to investik8@gmail.com
