MPs Wife Sentenced Over Kitten Theft

An MP's wife has been given a nine-month suspended jail sentence for snatching a kitten from the home of her husband's mistress.

According to the Independent on Friday, Christine Hemming, 53, from Moseley, Birmingham, was convicted of burglary by a jury at the city's Crown Court last month.

She was captured on CCTV stealing a four-month-old tabby from the home of Emily Cox, the long-term lover of Liberal Democrat John Hemming.

Unusually, Mr Hemming's web log on Thursday contained a reference to the case of Jeremy Clarkson, who lifted an injunction this week on his ex-wife, banning her from publishing details about an alleged.

Mr Hemming made a cryptic reference to the currently in force version of Magna Carta article 29 which says:

"NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor [X1condemn him,] but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right."

Mr Hemming wrote: "We should not 'sell ... justice'. This is relevant to the Clarkson injunction."

In August, Mr Hemming faced calls for his resignation after a judge denounced a woman the MP defended in the Commons using parliamentary privilege as "a liar".

Labour MP John Mann said that a court decision on Monday showed that Hemming had been "foolhardy and irresponsible", and that he was not fit to serve as an MP because he had abused parliamentary privilege.

(DW)