Vicky Price

It has been implied for a while she is in a relationship with MacShane.

Dennis Mc Shane should be in prison too!.

Maybe he could share a cell with Huhne. Perhaps there could be a new channel 4 peep show like Big Brother.

Perhaps it could be called '2 MP's, One Woman in I'm a Celebrity Prisoner, Get Me Out Of Here'

I read the article in the Sunday Times written by the journalist she first went to, who had quite a lot of sympathy for her and felt that she really loved CH and would take him back even after all this. It seems to have taken her quite a long time to blurt this to the DM, which she did after a lot of discussions with the ST journalist and completely behind her back. An intelligent woman like her imo was being very manipulative. There was no mention of the coercion until the case came to court with makes me think it was the idea of her lawyer.

I think our views will be clouded by our own experience. If we have been married to a controlling man we will have sympathy with her but if not maybe we will see her as a woman who was determined to get her revenge at whatever cost to herself and her family.

She is also reported to now be in a relationship with Dennis MacShane. That should add a chapter or two.

Maybe she'll write a book. Maybe he will too. God help us!

It was reported that she first tried to say that one of his constituency aides took the points. That story fell apart when it emerged that the aide did not have a driving licence at the time. Later she was forced to admit that she had taken them herself.
I think it all started pretty soon after he left her, which was, of course, pretty soon after the coalition had gone into power and he had become a Minister.

Yes - I was just responding to nanaej's post, gillybob. You're probably right, something just snapped.

Something obviously pushed her over the edge Ana .

A woman scorned sums it up she was determined to ruin his career but it backfired!

But it wasn't as though she leaked the information immediately after he'd left her, was it? It wasn't a spur of the moment action.

People do crazy things when they are in despair and maybe she did love CH and was distraught when he announced his affair. Did she 'lose it' for a bit causing her to act irrationally and expose the point swap? Once she had exposed that she was on a hiding to nothing!

If I had been a member of "that" jury I would have wondered what she had to gain from the whole thing. I suspect the answer would be nothing. Therefore I would ask myself why a woman of her intelligence would do it. I think the answer is most definitely that she was coerced (bullied even) into saving his skin.

No I am sure that is true Jess. I did grow up with a father whose mental and physical health had been destroyed by the war and that was pretty tough, but I have not lived with it as an adult.
I just find it very hard to believe that someone could hold down that succession of high-powered jobs and earn those huge salaries whilst suffering from damaged self-esteem. Surely as a senior economic adviser working with the last government you would need to be very tough?
It wasn't as if she was financially dependent. I don't really want to speculate, but it seems as if she was distraught when he left and that was when she blurted.

No mamie but it is hard to understand I think, if you have not had an abusive partner. And he might have been. Bullying at home and in work are both horrible and damage a person's self esteem while it lasts, and for a while afterwards. I can imagine that bit easily.
It's the blurting I feel more mystified about. After I left my abusive first H i decided that I would not say anything to anyone that would harm his career and therefore indirectly harm the children. But we are all different and ultimately I was the one who left, rather than being dumped.

The truth is that none of us knows what happened. The jury did not believe the defence of marital coercion and from everything I have read I find it hard to believe too, but I wasn't there and I don't know. There was an interesting article today saying broadly that we are so fed up with our politicians that we seize on this sort of event to attack them, because we don't have any other way of expressing our displeasure. I think there is probably a lot of truth in that.
For what it's worth being bullied at work made me a lot tougher. I can't speak for anyone else.

Yes at work (but not hit).
Do you have evidence that that was the case?

mamie have you ever been bullied, hit or intimidated by a man?

And that would have applied when the original offence was committed, as well!

I think it probably doesn't matter if he loses his licence, he can easily afford to pay someone to drive him!

I really do not see how a woman who had such a brilliant career in the highest levels of government and business is likely to have been afraid of any alpha male.
Only three of the children are theirs, apart from those very sad texts we don't know what the other children (they are all adults) thought. We also have only one side of the circumstances of the marriage break up. I really think we should not judge unless we know the whole story and I very much hope for all their sakes that it now stays private.
I imagine they got the same sentence because they committed the same crime; attempting to pervert the course of justice by giving a false statement about who had been driving. He lost his licence soon afterwards because of another driving offence, but I thought the judge said that he was not considering that as part of the case.
It all seems clear to me and in addition when has done a good job of explaining it from her considerable experience. Is there anything else to be said?

I think it is significant that their five children have all sided with her. I thought the judge was a misogynist, given his reported comments about her. He obviously did not understand how a controlling and dominant alpha male can grind down his partner and that is what I think happened in this case. I would have found her not guilty.

Perhaps he didn't want people accusing him of being biased in favour of one over the other....

gillybob his ban will be for about a year and he'll be out in a few weeks, so he'll still be unable to drive for quite a long time.

It's unlikely they'll impose a very long ban given that he doesn't appear to have accrued any more points in the intervening years.

I think it seems very likely!

She claimed marital coercion but it was not accepted as a defence and she was found guilty of perverting the course of justice, so that defence had no relevance when it came to sentencing.

It seems unlikely that the judge just cavalierly decided "Let's give both the buggers the same sentence".

Just seems strange that both cases were judged to require exactly the same length of time in prison. Would be interesting to know how much thought went into it at the end, on the judge's part.