And then you see articles like this and you wonder where we are heading in this country.

BRITISH justice was branded a disgrace last night after a respected village councillor was prosecuted for standing up to the yobs who plague our streets.

Retired postmistress Alma Harding was landed with a criminal record for clipping the foul-mouthed thug round the head with her rolled-up committee papers.

She has also been handed a £3,000 legal bill for tackling the vandal and his friends who shouted a stream of four-letter abuse at her.

The 63-year-old choir member, pictured above, confronted the 13-year-old as he was playing football near prize-winning flowerbeds on the village green.

But after she asked him politely to move to the nearby playing fields, the teenager snarled back, calling her a "f****** fat b******".

Ann Widdecombe said the case should have been thrown out

Astonishingly, because the frightened "little old lady" stood her ground she was the one who was hauled before the courts and convicted of battery because she had technically struck the youngster.

Mrs Harding was offered a caution which would have kept the case out of court but would have been recorded as a criminal conviction on her impeccable past.

It made my blood boil to be offered this caution. I would rather go to prison. It's a point of principle

She said she would rather go to jail than accept a caution which would be a "stain on her character".

She added: "It made my blood boil to be offered this caution. I would rather go to prison. It's a point of principle."

Mrs Harding sobbed in the dock during the two-day case and said: "It is a black day in the community when the police find it fit to persecute a little old lady for defending herself and her property as well as public and church property from the vandalism of youths in the village, by hitting one with a few pieces of rolled up paper."