This week's news story about the twenty-two year old care worker beaten senseless by a drunken gang of Somalian women would have sent chills down the spine of anyone who defends the rule of law as applicable to all. They were spared a jail sentence after their defence lawyer claimed that as Muslims they were unused to drinking.

In a society where we’ve recently railed against our representatives and corporate types for "corruption", "greed" and for appearing to believe that "the rules don’t apply to them" – we’re apparently still making excuses for our citizens based on gratuitous or farcical claims to "extenuating circumstances", especially where some of those circumstances can be fitted inside a politically correct agenda. The rules still apply.

One instance that springs to our minds is that of Edward Woollard, the eighteen year old who hurled a fire-extinguisher from a seventh-floor window as "students" ransacked 30 Millbank Tower in London in November 2010.

Instead of charging him with attempted murder, he was convicted of violent disorder and will likely serve a little over half of his thirty-two month sentence. It’s also unsurprising to note that Trade Union Congress supporters and the Socialist Worker Online are supporting Woollard, the latter referring to him as a "political prisoner" and insisting you send him a Christmas card.

Follow @commentatorintl

Another instance where we let ourselves down was in our response to this past summer’s rioting.

While harsher than usual sentences were doled out, following the initial shock and outrage thieves, looters and arsonists weren’t effectively condemned or shamed by society. Instead, we’ve been preposterously seeking out their rationale or intimating that "we are all to blame"– as one recent BBC Newsnight guest argued.

The parents won’t take the blame and the Guardian and LSE insist that somehow it is anyone’s fault but the rioters. So what message does this send to wider society?

Got a problem? Find an excuse.

And this is precisely what happened in the afore mentioned court case of Ambaro, Ayan and Hibo Maxamed and their cousin Ifrah Nur.

Not content with calling care worker Rhea Page a "white bitch", the Somalian women set upon her, leaving her "black and blue" and subsequently ushering her into unemployment due to the substantial mental trauma she suffered. Miss Page commented: "I honestly think they attacked me just because I was white. I can't think of any other reason."

But seventeen months later, Judge Robert Brown dismissed such claims and the women were not charged with racial aggravation. Judge Brown said, “I’m going to suspend the sentence” and that he accepted the attackers’ claims that they felt Miss Page’s partner used unreasonable force to defend her. In our estimation, from the video below, he was more restrained than we might have been.

Gary Short, who defended the attackers said: “They’re Somalian Muslims and alcohol or drugs isn’t something they’re used to.”

This is what qualifies as a legal defence in twenty-first century Britain. No need to worry about the law. No need to be concerned with the consequences of your actions. If you can find an excuse, especially if it is in a minority religion, then you’ll be free to go.

The attackers’ actions look no different to many other racial hate crimes that go on across the Western world, sadly on an almost daily basis. But you can bet that if white girls set upon a Somalian woman in the street, calling her a "brown bitch" they’d have the book thrown at them (and rightly so).

Racial violence and drunk and disorderly behavior have no place in our society – that’s why those things are illegal.

To suspend such notions on the basis of race, religion or circumstances other than clinical insanity is a sure fire way to hammer home what seems to be the nation’s new, nihilistic motto: “Britain – do whatever”.

Editor's note: Interestingly, Matthew Parris cites an instance of double standards in The Times yesterday (£) when he argues that when Jeremy Clarkson says that public sector strikers should be shot, albeit in a jocular fashion, he is viewed with mass opprobrium, whereas if someone went on a BBC show and said ‘bankers should be shot’ (or maybe if an MP says he would have assassinated Margaret Thatcher)… well… you get the picture.

Follow The Commentator on Twitter