Injustice

So, the world’s greatest Paralympian and nocturnal gun use enthusiast Oscar Pistorius has finally been sentenced. Only five years for killing someone? The “I didn’t mean it” defence is clearly the way to shave time off a potentially lengthy sentence.

He’s set to miss the Olympics in 2016, but there are a load of other things he won’t see either:

1) The potential release of iPhones 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11. Some technology fans will probably spend almost the whole time he’s inside outside. Outside an Apple Store, that is. With no friends.

2) Five series of X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, Britain’s Got Talent and I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. Imagine that. How many of you want to swap places with him now? Being forcibly buggered whilst having a makeshift knife held to your throat has a slight edge over Cowell and co’s reality TV shitfest.

3) The birth of the new royal baby. Presumably he’ll hear about it, but I doubt he’ll have to put up with seeing Nicholas Witchell standing outside a hospital and excitedly speculating about what’s going on as he struggles to hide his erection.

4) Celebrity deaths. He won’t be subjected to the ridiculous tributes that appear throughout social media because “him that played the third henchman in that Bond film” died peacefully in his sleep and was tragically taken from us at the young age of 98.

5) His email account. Lack of internet access will make him a very busy man when he gets out in 2019. By that time there will be approximately 20,000,000 spam emails about PPI, penile enhancements and casino offers to delete. Actually there probably is internet in his prison and I can imagine him joining a dating website: “My name’s Oscar. I like to act fast and dislike closed bathroom doors”.

It doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom though. In between peeling potatoes, fearing for his own life in the showers and drawing bars and gates on his cell wall, there are loads of things he can do to pass the time:

1) Listen to music. Prisoners are generally allowed a radio. He’ll probably avoid Five Years by Björk though. Or Five Years by David Bowie. Or…you get the gist.

2) Read. Many prisoners study to pass the time. Perhaps he could choose history and learn all about Stalin’s Five Year Plan? Or he could do a law degree and find out that he wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if he appealed against his sentence.

3) Sing. Five years will pass by in no time if he were to sing a song such as 15,776,640 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. That’s assuming 10 seconds per verse, maths fans.

4) Exercise. He may be enticed into this by a muscular inmate inviting him to the gun show.

5) Write. It didn’t do Jeffrey Archer any harm, but perhaps memoirs aren’t his thing. He could always pen some fan fiction (think about it).

All joking aside, the sentence is a joke. Whether he intended to kill Reeva Steenkamp or not isn’t the issue. He still did it. The likelihood that he will only serve a fraction of this time in prison and the rest under house arrest is a huge slap in the face for common sense and justice. Anyone who feels sorry for him in any way needs to take a long, hard look at themselves.