Mark Andrews on Saturday: Floggings, fleeing France, and a dog's breakfast

My heart bleeds. Not as much as his backside, obviously. But I feel his pain.

Well actually I don’t. As a former pupil of the £41,000-a-year Westminster School – whose alumni includes Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sir Nick Clegg and Helena Bonham-Carter – Ye Ming Yuen was born into a life of privilege most can only dream of. The world was at his feet, the future ahead of him.

But instead of making the most of those opportunities, the 31-year-old thought it would be easier to make a fast buck spreading misery to others.

Not just once, but having been granted bail the first time he was caught, he went out and committed the same offence again.

Drugs are one of the great, well, scourges of modern society.

Spend a day at our criminal courts and you will see how they are at the root of so much serious crime.

Or attend a few inquests, and see how many young lives are cut short by this wicked trade.

Singapore is one of the safest countries in the world.

People who live there are 200 times less likely to become a victim of crime than in the UK, and most of the offences that do take place are for cyber crime.

In addition to his naked thrashing, Ye Ming Yuen has also been sentenced to 20 years in prison, and something tells me he won’t be selling drugs again.

The British High Commission in Singapore responded to the sentence by loftily declaring: “The UK strongly opposes corporal punishment in all circumstances and condemns its use in this case.”

I’m not sure you speak for the whole of the UK, me ode mucker.

I bet if you asked most people around the Black Country, they would say it’s a flipping good idea, and we should give it a try here.

* * *

The Mayor of Calais says sending the Royal Navy to stop illegal migrants crossing the English Channel would be ‘an act of maritime war’.

A bit over the top, non? Maybe he would do better asking himself why people go to such lengths to escape his city.

* * *

A teenager protesting against the exam debacle called for the resignation of Education Secretary Gavin Williamson by holding up a placard bearing the words “Gavins got to go.”

We all know the Government has made a dog’s breakfast of the whole thing, and I sympathise with youngsters who don’t know whether they are coming or going. It really has been an incredibly unsettling period for everyone involved.

But if you want to convince people you have been been robbed of the exam grades your intellect deserves, might it not be a good idea to learn how to use an apostrophe?

* * *

Meanwhile, at the end of a week of repeated farce, the Government says all A-level students will get a place at their preferred university if they get the required grades – and by whatever methodology is being used this week.

It also says there will be no cap on the number allowed to study medicine.

What could possibly go wrong?