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I think a bereaved mother has enough to deal with.
I agree that the punishment should fit the crime and devising a proportionate response to serious crime is not easy.
But harsh punishment is not necessarily Justice: remember that we had centuries of draconian punishments and our crime rate soared sufficiently for us to end up transporting people in sufficient numbers to populate a continent – not viable in the 21st century. Some of those transported went for crimes like stealing table linen, stealing food as the most serious crimes were punishable by death. Horrific crimes still took place so there was scant deterrent to that type of criminal.
If it’s true that Sutcliffe et al are having prison guards make trips to the sweet shop for them, then I would complain loudly that this is wrong.
The test of a ‘justice’ rather than a ‘punishment’ system is what it provides for society as a whole.
The HRA allows us as citizens to hold the Government to account in a British court if it deprives us of basic rights. That’s why both Cameron and Blair are against it.
Let those who rail against Human Rights write a letter to the Government promising not to complain if the State unjustly deprives them of their lifes, their private life, their family life, their liberty etc all without a fair trial or any possibility of appeal if they are wrongly convicted; that even if they do, they will bypass the British justice system and embroil themselves in the process of taking their case to Strasbourg or wherever the European Court sits these days. That’s what people had to do before the HRA.
The same for the term “political correctness”: don’t just moan about it, declare to the world that you are happy to forego any courtesies or consideration for your feelings and will not strop, sulk, get into arguments or complain about the rudeness of society ever again.
Or course criminals and more likely their lawyers are over-familiar with ways to abuse the Human Rights Act like they do any other measure for their own ends. However, don’t sign away your own rights because you share them with someone you detest.
@jen_jen wrote:
Mr (or Mrs/Miss) Coathanger, of course I have heard of Chairman Mao, and of course I recognised the spoof of “Chairman Mewwy”, please do not assume that this passed me by.
I admit I was uncertain on whether you were Merry or someone pretending to be him, perhaps because it was such a good impression; you are obviously a regular in the room. But are you sure that everyone who thought it was funny “got it” and knew that you weren’t Merry?
Personally I prefer to ignore the rubbish that was spouted here when it is spouted in the room and wouldn’t have given it a higher profile and more air-time here. You cannot change those that have such misguided entrenched views so better to not give it any more attention than it deserves, which is none at all in my book.
So Coathanger, now you have called attention to one regular chatter, who will you turn your attention to next amongst those that appear good natured and well liked but are either homophobic, racist, sexist etc.? Maybe some of the good chatters of f3 who were amused by this should be feeling slightly nervous right now :wink:
Nervous? Moi? Non!
I’m not completely comfortable talking about someone when they’re not around, but Merry claims to hate political correctness and accuses anyone who calls his comments racist of playing the racist card, so I can’t see he has grounds to mind.
I am more bothered that I might be losing my position as the political correctness champion of the room (in my own mind).
Beware! I shall fight for it!
Well it was funny enough to make me really chuckle, and anyone who knows me will know that I’m a real po-faced git when it comes to ethnic stereotyping . Well done coathanger.
Not rubber but wax
end of his sizeable
said, “That’s for you!”
in his golden limousine
Lilli Von Shtupp
It could go either way. If Terror really does focus on Bin Laden, then this could leave a lot of his former associates and admirers feeling too vulnerable to make themselves targets, knowing that 10-odd years down the line they could still be taken out.
There might be some disenchantment that despite all those videotapes sent from caves in the desert and encouragement of martyrdom, Osama Bin Laden wasn’t actually sharing the hardship of the millions, but living in relative luxury (no real surprise there!).
American culture – which means not all Americans – tends to encourage a straightforward, almost fairytale, simplistic “good vs evil” approach. So the partying outside the White House come as little surprise. However that we (and I dare say a lot of other Americans) can find it distasteful is to our credit.
It is important to live in hope even when we think we know enough to make us cynical.
