Shocking story of bus assaults
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BRITAIN becomes more like the Wild West every day and I foresee the time when guards on buses will ride shotgun. Assaults on public.transport staff recall the days of the Wells Fargo stage coach and over 400 victims a year are sufficiently injured to merit awards of £150 or more from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.
"In some towns and cities . . staff on buses expose themselves to the risk of violence whenever they insist on being paid by a passenger," says the board. "This is particularly so at night... , Usually the cowardly pack of criminals who have assaulted the conductor decamp before the police can reach the scene."
The thugs know that nobody is likely to go to the conductor's aid.
The board's call for "immediate custodial sentences" unfortunately comes at a time when prisons are bursting at the seams and birching is held to be an affront to the dignity of bullies. If they are so anxious to travel free, the punishment could be made to fit the crime by transporting them at the public expense to an uninhabited island where they could kick each other to death.