Everyone and their dog has piled on to the predictable handful of critics of the 55-year jail term handed down to gang-rapist X. I just want to make one more observation on this. The people who have protested about the ‘disproportionate’ nature of the sentence are precisely those who in normal circumstances (that is, community outrage over a light sentence) would be stressing the importance of the judge’s discretion to take account of all the circumstances in a particular case, rather than following some sort of mechanical rule of proportionality. For example, I don’t remember any of them protesting about the disproportionately light sentences (later doubled on appeal) that were handed down in the first of the trials. These guys appear to have no consistent legal philosophy, unless you call always siding with criminals a philosophy.