‘You are a snob, your honour’: Village in uproar after judge’s ‘slur’ on its good name
It seems not everyone shares a chocolate box view of rural England. Just to prove there is some merit in the more racy storylines now controversially driving the “Archers” this story raises some interesting reflections about perceptions and the rural urban divide. It tells us:
Parish council leaders are demanding a formal apology from the MOJ after Judge Stuart Rafferty’s “derogatory” remark which appeared to suggest that the town was populated by thugs.
The judge, while sentencing 50-year-old Robert Chalmers for attacking another man with a golf club in Newhall, told Derby Crown Court: “You can take the boy out of Newhall but, it seems, you cannot take Newhall out of the boy”.
Councillor Sean Bambrick said he was “disgusted” by the judge’s comment which cast their whole community in a bad light.
“We have good schools, good amenities and the people who live here are very friendly,” he said.
“His remarks are, we feel, offensive and derogatory to the town and I plan to write to the Ministry of Justice asking him for an apology.”
Lying in the south of Derbyshire between Swadlincote and Burton upon Trent, the village is largely populated by commuters working in Derby, or in Nottingham and Birmingham.