KENNETH Clarke, Justice Secretary, has got to be the finest example of an oxymoron!

The trouble with people like Mr Clarke is that they are divorced from the reality – cocooned in a cosy world of their own, protected from the criminal activity that the rest of us have to deal with.

I'm surprised that he hasn't closed all our prisons and accommodated the inmates in five-star hotels!

Justice in this country is a mockery – as is evidenced by the fact that judges increasingly find themselves having to apologise in court to the victims of crime for having to hand down inadequate sentences because their hands are tied by legislation drawn up by loony, lefty, liberals, who, like the Justice Minister himself, live in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Only this week, a teenage thug (name withheld by the court to protect him, of course), who hurled a brick through the window of a car, fracturing the skull of 17-year-old Samantha Sadler - leaving her scarred for life and severly traumatised, was punished with a 12-month referral order and a £200 fine - little more than a slap on the wrist.

The last government failed to live up to it's much-trumpeted mantra of getting tough on crime. Kenneth Clarke's mantra seems to be "Crime? Tough!"

ROBERT READMAN, Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth