The Court of Appeal has had to step in after Judge Anthony Thorpe gave a vicious, unprovoked attacker a trifling ten months for slashing a young man's neck with a knife while screaming "You ****ing black monkey."

That is obviously a racially aggravated assault.

Yet Judge Thorpe dismissed the outburst, putting it down to drink and seems to have been thinking perhaps of another case when he gave only ten months for serious assault with a blade.

Judge Thorpe is recorded as saying: "I think the world has gone PC (political correctness) mad".

The implication of this remark, in the context of this dreadful case (the victim fled from terror to come to the UK), is intensely worrying.

What does he mean? The public needs an explanation.

The Court of Appeal has had to remind him of what to most of us are basics - knife slashing is serious violence deserving a significant jail term and the words above are racial and plainly aggravate the offence.

The public needs to have faith in its judges. When one judge goes adrift it reflects badly on the others.

We need an explanation from Judge Thorpe for his bizarre approach to this case and what he means by political correctness.

-Paula Bailey, Colemans Hatch, East Sussex