What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Also not going to happen.
Backs to the wall, no EU, no ECHR, why not give capital sentences for nonces a whirl?
No one is seriously proposing that. No matter how despicable. The murderer of Sarah Everard would be the first in line, surely? Will never be released, so why feed him for 30 years?
And yet there is no clamour (among politicians at least) for that to happen.
Its a classic straw man to beat people on the right.
Eh? Plenty of evidence that the right want that sort of thing.
I was referring to politicians in general, not one Tory MP. We are not heading back to executing convicted criminals. We just are not. The Conservatives have been in power for 12 years - no sign of the Bring Back the Noose law yet.
They haven't even brought back execution for foxes.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Also not going to happen.
Backs to the wall, no EU, no ECHR, why not give capital sentences for nonces a whirl?
No one is seriously proposing that. No matter how despicable. The murderer of Sarah Everard would be the first in line, surely? Will never be released, so why feed him for 30 years?
And yet there is no clamour (among politicians at least) for that to happen.
Its a classic straw man to beat people on the right.
Eh? Plenty of evidence that the right want that sort of thing.
I was referring to politicians in general, not one Tory MP. We are not heading back to executing convicted criminals. We just are not. The Conservatives have been in power for 12 years - no sign of the Bring Back the Noose law yet.
Fair enough; I do hope you are right, but with the ERG and the Trussites in charge, I do worry. Remember that at least one Tory MP was going on about castrating sex offenders in recent years.
Nowhere else in the world seems to have formed a supranational court to keep in line with the UN Convention on Human rights. They trust their own institutions such as the Supreme Court of Japan to interpret said convention.
Imagine if the judges in the E(Court)HR were of the same bent as US Scotus justices and ruled that abortions couldn't take place because they infringe the No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law. para was violated.
Nowhere else in the world? What of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights? The Caribbean Court of Justice? The Inter-American Court of Human Rights? Or indeed the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea?
Laws of Oléron go back almost a millennium, supranational maritime law for Europe (the northern bits anyway).
OK, that last one was a slightly different case, but what of the other 3?
Nowhere else in the world seems to have formed a supranational court to keep in line with the UN Convention on Human rights. They trust their own institutions such as the Supreme Court of Japan to interpret said convention.
Imagine if the judges in the E(Court)HR were of the same bent as US Scotus justices and ruled that abortions couldn't take place because they infringe the No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law. para was violated.
Nowhere else in the world? What of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights? The Caribbean Court of Justice? The Inter-American Court of Human Rights? Or indeed the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea?
Laws of Oléron go back almost a millennium, supranational maritime law for Europe (the northern bits anyway).
OK, that last one was a slightly different case, but what of the other 3?
Indeed.
It's interesting, all the same, how ancient that particular legal scheme is. And that Brexiters unconsciously reject all international law when they go on about buccanneering and piracy. As opposed to honest trading.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Also not going to happen.
Backs to the wall, no EU, no ECHR, why not give capital sentences for nonces a whirl?
No one is seriously proposing that. No matter how despicable. The murderer of Sarah Everard would be the first in line, surely? Will never be released, so why feed him for 30 years?
And yet there is no clamour (among politicians at least) for that to happen.
Its a classic straw man to beat people on the right.
Based on overheard conversations this morning, whoever pulled the trigger to kill nine year old Olivia in Liverpool would not be missed.
I wonder whether the criminal fraternity there will give up the killer. The police were all but begging them to on last night's news.
Since the police already have the guy who was being shot at, the shooter can't be far behind. Would it be a defence in law that he killed Olivia by mistake while trying to murder someone else?
No. What with murdering anyone being illegal!
Not that straightforward. If he was trying to shoot a tin can and got the victim instead you are looking at manslaughter. Which would also be the case if he was trying to shoot a person other than the victim, but for the doctrine of transferred malice.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Also not going to happen.
Backs to the wall, no EU, no ECHR, why not give capital sentences for nonces a whirl?
No one is seriously proposing that. No matter how despicable. The murderer of Sarah Everard would be the first in line, surely? Will never be released, so why feed him for 30 years?
And yet there is no clamour (among politicians at least) for that to happen.
Its a classic straw man to beat people on the right.
Eh? Plenty of evidence that the right want that sort of thing.
I was referring to politicians in general, not one Tory MP. We are not heading back to executing convicted criminals. We just are not. The Conservatives have been in power for 12 years - no sign of the Bring Back the Noose law yet.
They haven't even brought back execution for foxes.
Nowhere else in the world seems to have formed a supranational court to keep in line with the UN Convention on Human rights. They trust their own institutions such as the Supreme Court of Japan to interpret said convention.
Imagine if the judges in the E(Court)HR were of the same bent as US Scotus justices and ruled that abortions couldn't take place because they infringe the No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law. para was violated.
The thing with the SCOTUS is the American voter has some sort of input into it via the Presidential right to appoint judges.
Its pretty haphazard, as recent history shows, but its surely better than being subject to the judgements of persons who have no stake in our country or its institutions whatever.
Yet - I see it the other way - sometimes you need an external third party saying - that is wrong...
I agree there's a good argument for the other way. We like to think our judges are impartial but the US system almost seems to concede that they are swayed by politics.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
Putin would be delighted to find Britain joining him and Belarus as the only 3 European countries outside the ECHR.
I take this as being quite a parochial view to be honest. None of the other 5-eye countries are members, nor Japan, nor India, or dozens of other free nations. But Hungary is. And Turkey. And Armenia and Albania.
Maybe because it is the 'European Convention on Human Rights'?
Doesn't seem to stop Australia being in the European Song Contest.
They're only allowed to sing European songs though. Nothing about kangaroos...
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
Putin would be delighted to find Britain joining him and Belarus as the only 3 European countries outside the ECHR.
I take this as being quite a parochial view to be honest. None of the other 5-eye countries are members, nor Japan, nor India, or dozens of other free nations. But Hungary is. And Turkey. And Armenia and Albania.
Maybe because it is the 'European Convention on Human Rights'?
Do Europeans have a superior need for rights to non-Europeans?
Europeans, possibly a few centuries late, decided that is was appropriate to let people on other continents do their own thing?
When was this? France sees itself as a global state to this day.
It's interesting; I often bemoan the lack of leadership from politicians on certain issues (principally immigration where I think they have a greater responsibility to try and convince the public of its benefits), but it could be argued that on the death penalty they do show leadership. While they may not actively try and convince the public, they do entirely ignore the will of the people:
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
Putin would be delighted to find Britain joining him and Belarus as the only 3 European countries outside the ECHR.
I take this as being quite a parochial view to be honest. None of the other 5-eye countries are members, nor Japan, nor India, or dozens of other free nations. But Hungary is. And Turkey. And Armenia and Albania.
Maybe because it is the 'European Convention on Human Rights'?
Doesn't seem to stop Australia being in the European Song Contest.
Fear not, moves to expel them are underway after they gave our brave would-have-won-but-for-them-pesky-Ukes entry nul point.
They didn't. The Australian public gave it 7 points. Their jury just didn't give us anything. Croatia were the only nation not to give us a single point although the Balkans in general were a bit of a dry spot for points.
If the Croatia public had given us lots of points, but their jury gave us zero, then it would have been a Split decision.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Also not going to happen.
Backs to the wall, no EU, no ECHR, why not give capital sentences for nonces a whirl?
No one is seriously proposing that. No matter how despicable. The murderer of Sarah Everard would be the first in line, surely? Will never be released, so why feed him for 30 years?
And yet there is no clamour (among politicians at least) for that to happen.
Its a classic straw man to beat people on the right.
Eh? Plenty of evidence that the right want that sort of thing.
I was referring to politicians in general, not one Tory MP. We are not heading back to executing convicted criminals. We just are not. The Conservatives have been in power for 12 years - no sign of the Bring Back the Noose law yet.
Mr Tubbs, those running Conservative Party policy in 2022 are a whole lot less enlightened and more cynical than those writing it in 2010.
At this point, the Liberal Establishment is just trolling us
“Rotherham has been named the 'Children's Capital City of Culture’ for 2025”
By 2026 the playgrounds of Rotherham will reverberate to the sound of 7 year olds humming Tosca, it will be impossible to book a village hall, because they'll be filled with Life Drawing for 8 year olds classes, and every football team captain will boost moral with lines from Henry V.
The resolve of the West in supporting Ukraine will be sorely tested in the coming years. No doubt there is some expectation management here but all the same it is grim. Meanwhile cranks blockade services on the M25 demanding no new oil or gas. idiots doing the Russians bidding.
"National Grid warns of three-year energy crisis as emergency effort launched to cut factory power use"
All applications for resource extraction & power generation need to be straight stamped "Yes" and fasttracked. Sod the NIMBYs and swampies. The Just Stop Oil lot and Mrs Moggins who doesn't want her view spoilt by a solar farm 3 miles from her house are two sides of the same coin.
I agree. Pandering to NIMBY's is just as bad and that also goes for housing not just energy.
The Tories really missed a trick by rowing back on wind farms onland earlier in the year. They are part of the mix. They also need to pursue tidal power as well. One thing that is guaranteed in renewables are the tides.
The Lib Dems shamefully exploited local NIMBYISM when they won Chesham and Amersham. Good short term politics but poor for the long term.
That was just one example of the Big Brother attitude adopted by the Conservative Party recently. People in Chesham and Amersham were voting against being dictated to - and so the Conservatives lost.
Energy prices will do for the hospitality sector in a way that Covid didn't.
A well known and very good pub in Kendal has just had its energy bill go up from £44,000 to £124,000 a year. One of our local pubs has received a 250% increase in their energy bill. It's not just them that suffer if they close but the whole ecosystem of other businesses that depend in part on their trade: the butchers, the wholesale suppliers, the brewers and wine merchants, the cleaning firms, pest control etc etc. All these ripple effects - the loss of business, jobs, rent, licensing fees, rates, tax etc - will be a big problem, one the Tory leadership contenders seem utterly oblivious to.
Fuck em. We’ll drink lemonade. That’ll put hairs on our chests.
Judging from this morning's posting spree, I imagine you're sleeping off the 'lemonade' now.
'A town at the centre of one of Britain's most notorious child sex scandals has been named as the world's first Children's Capital of Culture.
But the Government has now revealed it is reviewing the decision to award Rotherham £1.8million in taxpayer cash to fund the year-long initiative in 2025. [...] As well as the £1.8million from the Cultural Recovery Fund, it was also due to receive £13,600 from Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council and has been awarded £76,100 in National Lottery grants.
Yesterday, after The Mail on Sunday began raising questions, Levelling-Up Secretary Greg Clark said he would look again at the funding, which was agreed by his predecessor Michael Gove last November.'
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
Putin would be delighted to find Britain joining him and Belarus as the only 3 European countries outside the ECHR.
I take this as being quite a parochial view to be honest. None of the other 5-eye countries are members, nor Japan, nor India, or dozens of other free nations. But Hungary is. And Turkey. And Armenia and Albania.
It is you being parochial I'm afraid.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights mirrors much of what is in the ECHR. Many of the same people worked on the drafting of both. The countries outside Europe you mention subscribe to it. They are not planning to disown it. And yet you think Britain leaving a Convention it largely wrote, promoted and was one of the first to sign is somehow unimportant.
The ECHR was written in an age where movement of people across continents was rare, today it isn't and while I wouldn't advocate leaving, it needs reforming to reflect the modern era. Much as the US Constitution needs to be updated so does the ECHR. European countries have simply become a soft touch on illegal immigration because the fundamental principles of the ECHR never envisioned 700 middle income Africans getting on a plane to Italy and overstaying their visas.
It's the 1951 Refugee Convention which needs updating not the ECHR.
More the 1967 update that expanded it to the entire world. The original 1951 convention only applied to refugees internally in Europe.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
Putin would be delighted to find Britain joining him and Belarus as the only 3 European countries outside the ECHR.
I take this as being quite a parochial view to be honest. None of the other 5-eye countries are members, nor Japan, nor India, or dozens of other free nations. But Hungary is. And Turkey. And Armenia and Albania.
It is you being parochial I'm afraid.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights mirrors much of what is in the ECHR. Many of the same people worked on the drafting of both. The countries outside Europe you mention subscribe to it. They are not planning to disown it. And yet you think Britain leaving a Convention it largely wrote, promoted and was one of the first to sign is somehow unimportant.
The ECHR was written in an age where movement of people across continents was rare, today it isn't and while I wouldn't advocate leaving, it needs reforming to reflect the modern era. Much as the US Constitution needs to be updated so does the ECHR. European countries have simply become a soft touch on illegal immigration because the fundamental principles of the ECHR never envisioned 700 middle income Africans getting on a plane to Italy and overstaying their visas.
It's the 1951 Refugee Convention which needs updating not the ECHR.
More the 1967 update that expanded it to the entire world. The original 1951 convention only applied to refugees internally in Europe.
Yes - that has turned out to be a mistake. It is untenable now.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Also not going to happen.
TBH I understand and probably would in some circs advocate capital punishment - on an emotional level at least, when you look at cases like Brady etc.; horrible crimes of cruelty and sadism, where society is in no way served by keeping the unrepentant perpetrator alive and protected at significant cost.
But the rational obstacles are insuperable - firstly, it is irreversable, and people continue to be wrongfully convicted of serious crimes. One is too many, when you're talking about ending life as the consequence. More broadly, the idea that the state can, under certain circumstances, execute its citizens is a troubling proposition.
Agreed on every single point. Yes there are undoubtedly times when you look at a news item and think 'that bastard deserves to die' but all the points you make overwhelmingly argue against states having the power to end the lives of their citizens. It is just wrong.
'A town at the centre of one of Britain's most notorious child sex scandals has been named as the world's first Children's Capital of Culture.
But the Government has now revealed it is reviewing the decision to award Rotherham £1.8million in taxpayer cash to fund the year-long initiative in 2025. [...] As well as the £1.8million from the Cultural Recovery Fund, it was also due to receive £13,600 from Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council and has been awarded £76,100 in National Lottery grants.
Yesterday, after The Mail on Sunday began raising questions, Levelling-Up Secretary Greg Clark said he would look again at the funding, which was agreed by his predecessor Michael Gove last November.'
“The children’s capital for being raped by taxi drivers from Islamabad” I guess just doesn’t have the same ring, so they went for the shorter version, the Children’s Capital of Multiculture
At this point, the Liberal Establishment is just trolling us
“Rotherham has been named the 'Children's Capital City of Culture’ for 2025”
By 2026 the playgrounds of Rotherham will reverberate to the sound of 7 year olds humming Tosca, it will be impossible to book a village hall, because they'll be filled with Life Drawing for 8 year olds classes, and every football team captain will boost moral with lines from Henry V.
You forgot the "Our Island Story" video game. Very much part of culture these days, I gather.
A former House of Lords judge once told me years ago that he thought that juries would be much less likely to convict of murder if the death penalty was reimposed.
Awareness of miscarriages was so much greater, he felt, and defence barristers would be certain to make this point. So he thought that such a move would backfire. (Not that he was in favour of it. He thought a lot of judges would resign rather than be party to it.)
You have spend the last years writing erudite headers on this site explaining that our Police forces do not always deliver justice with the rigour that you demand.
So long as that remains the case, killing those convicted by evidence provided by police forces in the name of the state strikes me as a terrible idea.
Lock the convicted up for eighteen years like Judith Ward by all means, but then let them out when it becomes clear that the police case was based on fiction.
Perhaps the most remarkable case regarding a miscarriage of justice that, with the restoration of the death penalty, would have resulted in executions is the Cardiff Five. Not only did they track down the real killer of Lynette White through DNA revealing the detectives who pursued the case against the Cardiff Five did so on a fictional pack of lies, their fabrication was so egregious that a solid case was made against them. Lo and behold South Wales Police lost all the evidence just prior to the trial of their Detectives. The evidence was found again, once the case had been dropped.
'A town at the centre of one of Britain's most notorious child sex scandals has been named as the world's first Children's Capital of Culture.
But the Government has now revealed it is reviewing the decision to award Rotherham £1.8million in taxpayer cash to fund the year-long initiative in 2025. [...] As well as the £1.8million from the Cultural Recovery Fund, it was also due to receive £13,600 from Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council and has been awarded £76,100 in National Lottery grants.
Yesterday, after The Mail on Sunday began raising questions, Levelling-Up Secretary Greg Clark said he would look again at the funding, which was agreed by his predecessor Michael Gove last November.'
“The children’s capital for being raped by taxi drivers from Islamabad” I guess just doesn’t have the same ring, so they went for the shorter version, the Children’s Capital of Multiculture
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Also not going to happen.
Backs to the wall, no EU, no ECHR, why not give capital sentences for nonces a whirl?
No one is seriously proposing that. No matter how despicable. The murderer of Sarah Everard would be the first in line, surely? Will never be released, so why feed him for 30 years?
And yet there is no clamour (among politicians at least) for that to happen.
Its a classic straw man to beat people on the right.
Eh? Plenty of evidence that the right want that sort of thing.
I was referring to politicians in general, not one Tory MP. We are not heading back to executing convicted criminals. We just are not. The Conservatives have been in power for 12 years - no sign of the Bring Back the Noose law yet.
Mr Tubbs, those running Conservative Party policy in 2022 are a whole lot less enlightened and more cynical than those writing it in 2010.
Plus they had the LDs holding them back in 2010-15.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
The polls show not "most people" - only 38% are against killing child killers.
Our shoot to kill policy with regard to terrorists is now utterly unquestioned (Borough Market, London Bridge). Hard to believe it was such an issue in the 80s. (and yes I understand the difference between those cases and Gibraltar!)
The UK needs to agree with France that boats can be intercepted by them in French waters, with their permission, and all aboard landed back in Calais. No-one gets into UK waters.
The UK then agrees to accept a quota of vulnerable migrants directly from France once (and only once) these claims have been processed in country.
Sweeten the deal with lots of cash. Royal Navy also helps out France in the Med in return.
As the bulk of the people on the boats come from countries where there is no legal route for them to claim asylum, how about we offer one? Nobody would go on the boat if there was an alternative.
If we did that, how many do you think would apply and qualify?
It could go up one-hundred fold.
This is no answer without an answer on numbers.
The answer remains that the current asylum process is unsustainable and unfit for purpose. It cannot long survive into the century where climate and population growth in unstable countries is going to result in unsustainable flows of people to more temperate and prosperous climes. This is what the government is trying to wrestle with with its "hostile environment" and now the Rwanda nonsense, neither of which even begin to address the pressures in the system.
It also leads to complete absurdities. I was speaking to a friend yesterday who is acting for someone who has overstayed his academic visa because he has now got his qualifications and is employed by a front rank Scottish University teaching computing science. We are trying to send him back to Nigeria. Its completely absurd. We absolutely need people like this.
Once we accept that asylum is entirely at our discretion and that we choose who comes here and whom we want or need immigration will not stop but it will be directed at our needs rather than those who are less fortunate. Harsh, but inevitable in my view.
Without Rwanda, how do you stop the boats?
Unless you’re prepared to sink them/watch people drown, Rwanda is the only option
All this guff about “processing centres” is so much bullshit. France won’t do a deal with us because they want as many of them as possible in the UK, rather than France
Simple as
And they will keep crossing the Channel, rather than taking legal routes. because they know once they are here sans papiers we will shrug and say Stay
Rwanda is an expensive waste of time and will deter no one. It does generate a good headline mind. See the Israeli effort in Rwanda, the free to roam detainees all roamed back to where they intended to first go.
Your option B might work if anyone is heartless enough to try and sink the boats.
Maybe as Rochdale suggested earlier, if we made more of an effort to tackle the organised criminal gangs that are working the illegal entries and running the immigrants by providing illegal employment once they are here, that would be significantly more useful than the half-assed idea of sending a couple of plane loads of Afghans, Vietnamese and Kurds to Rwanda each year. If they got to the UK once they can do it again.
Rwanda will deter people if they know they'll actually be sent there.
If they're not, then it won't.
The Australian system worked by saying everyone, regardless of circumstances, would go.
And that's the point.
If the Home Office really wanted a scheme like Rwanda to work, it would need to have capacity for up to a thousand people a day for as long as it takes. That period of time might not be long, but that's the initial capacity needed.
What the UK bought was a lowish number of hundreds of places a year, becuase that's what Rwanda can absorb.
Judging the scheme on its own terms, it has to be Go Big or Go Home, becuause otherwise people won't Stay Home. That's true whatever you think of the ethics, legality or democratic mandate for the scheme.
Since it that isn't happening, it's a plan that can't work. The kindest explanation is that the Home Office are too dim to se it can't work. But we can't exclude the possibility that it's a gimmick (look we're doin' somethin') or a wedge (we wanted to do somethin', but the liberal judges banned it). And if that's what's happenin', it's a cruel trick.
Its not really the point. The Aussie system started small(-ish) but once it got over the legal challenges it was then expanded to everyone - at which point the numbers stopped.
Starting small, having the legal issues resolved, then ramping it up is a feasible way to go big.
Can't find any evidence that Braverman is pro-death penalty tbf to her.
Truss is a fool if she re-kindles this issue when there is a heaving in-tray to address.
Long term incarceration is a pretty heavy punishment that regularly institutionalizes or breaks people. It's deterrent enough, even for the most serious crime, surely.
If miscarriages occur there is a way back, as somebody said down thread.
“A drought in China is threatening food production, prompting the government to order local authorities to take all available measures to ensure crops survive the hottest summer on record.
On Tuesday, four government departments issued an urgent joint emergency notice, warning that the autumn harvest was under “severe threat”. It urged local authorities to ensure “every unit of water … be used carefully”, and called for methods included staggered irrigation, the diversion of new water sources, and cloud seeding.”
This is a big problem and not just for food. The Yangtze is a key industrial highway for raw materials and finished goods, and has hydropower stations with a total of 190Gb of nameplate capacity. That’s without the housing crash and economically destructive zero covid policies of Xi. It’s stagflation write large - simultaneously a massive drag on global growth with supply induced inflation.
190 GW of nameplate. Christ. Being hydro the uptime % will be high too...
One in the eye for Barts theory that the wily Chinaman only burns coal for energy, just to troll the rest of us.
Bart never, ever, said that. Or anything remotely close to that.
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
I didn't and don't want Johnson to be PM and think he has, on balance, been very bad for this country.
But visiting Kiev today is something that has a greater than zero chance of putting his life at risk. It may be slight but it is still there and he didn't have to do it. He is already on the way out and it creates no political gain for him.
So for once I will do a very rare thing and say well done. It clearly means something to the Ukrainians to have these visits from European leaders, even Johnson at the very end of his Premiership. So I would say he has done a good thing here and should be commended for it.
'A town at the centre of one of Britain's most notorious child sex scandals has been named as the world's first Children's Capital of Culture.
But the Government has now revealed it is reviewing the decision to award Rotherham £1.8million in taxpayer cash to fund the year-long initiative in 2025. [...] As well as the £1.8million from the Cultural Recovery Fund, it was also due to receive £13,600 from Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council and has been awarded £76,100 in National Lottery grants.
Yesterday, after The Mail on Sunday began raising questions, Levelling-Up Secretary Greg Clark said he would look again at the funding, which was agreed by his predecessor Michael Gove last November.'
“The children’s capital for being raped by taxi drivers from Islamabad” I guess just doesn’t have the same ring, so they went for the shorter version, the Children’s Capital of Multiculture
So Mr Gove misunderstood the last word, then?
Whoever ordained this grotesque decision - Rotherham! - is a tin eared idiot at best, and a loathsome troll at worst. If that’s Gove, then fuck him
Come To The Oswiecim Oven Festival of 2023. Bake a Pretzel
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good?
Yes.
Keeping him alive denies the state the power to kill people, some of whom may be innocent.
Can't find any evidence that Braverman is pro-death penalty tbf to her.
Truss is a fool if she re-kindles this issue when there is a heaving in-tray to address.
Long term incarceration is a pretty heavy punishment that regularly institutionalizes or breaks people. It's deterrent enough, even for the most serious crime, surely.
If miscarriages occur there is a way back, as somebody said down thread.
After reading Koestler's Hanged by the Neck, and this splendidly satirical book, both many years ago,
as well as Pierrepoint's autobiography, the other question that strikes me is the question of the impact on the executioner(s), who is doing the job for you and me and all the other subjects of HMtQ. You don't want to recruit people who want to do the job. And yet the other option is no more attractive; PTSD and guilt call, or worse.
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good?
Yes.
Keeping him alive denies the state the power to kill people, some of whom may be innocent.
Can't find any evidence that Braverman is pro-death penalty tbf to her.
Truss is a fool if she re-kindles this issue when there is a heaving in-tray to address.
Long term incarceration is a pretty heavy punishment that regularly institutionalizes or breaks people. It's deterrent enough, even for the most serious crime, surely.
If miscarriages occur there is a way back, as somebody said down thread.
Absolutely.
The only thing I'd change (and I'd change it for everyone) is if someone voluntarily wants to terminate their own life, that (with safeguards) ought to be able to be facilitated.
But the state should never be able to kill people who are in custody. People at large in warzones etc aren't in custody.
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good?
Yes.
Keeping him alive denies the state the power to kill people, some of whom may be innocent.
Keeping him in custody keeps people safe.
The right thing was done. As unpleasant as it is.
That's what I said.
I know, I was agreeing with you, using my own words. You're right. 👍
And despite this the SNP hand delivered a 4 page glossy document today explaining why I should be voting yes in the apparently forthcoming referendum. Have they no consideration at all? Where are we supposed to put it when our bins are not being emptied?
A former House of Lords judge once told me years ago that he thought that juries would be much less likely to convict of murder if the death penalty was reimposed.
Awareness of miscarriages was so much greater, he felt, and defence barristers would be certain to make this point. So he thought that such a move would backfire. (Not that he was in favour of it. He thought a lot of judges would resign rather than be party to it.)
You have spend the last years writing erudite headers on this site explaining that our Police forces do not always deliver justice with the rigour that you demand.
So long as that remains the case, killing those convicted by evidence provided by police forces in the name of the state strikes me as a terrible idea.
Lock the convicted up for eighteen years like Judith Ward by all means, but then let them out when it becomes clear that the police case was based on fiction.
Perhaps the most remarkable case regarding a miscarriage of justice that, with the restoration of the death penalty, would have resulted in executions is the Cardiff Five. Not only did they track down the real killer of Lynette White through DNA revealing the detectives who pursued the case against the Cardiff Five did so on a fictional pack of lies, their fabrication was so egregious that a solid case was made against them. Lo and behold South Wales Police lost all the evidence just prior to the trial of their Detectives. The evidence was found again, once the case had been dropped.
I agree. I am against the death penalty. Always have been. Always will be.
Mind you, if someone killed one of my children or tried to I am quite certain that, if I could, I would kill them in revenge or to protect them.
And then hand myself in.
When I was burgled with the burglar walking into my bedroom while I was in bed and, not realising that someone was in the house, fleeing while dropping my own breadknife he had armed himself with, I was so incandescent with fury that if I'd caught the scrote, the police would have needed a hose to wash him off the floor not a police van.
But yes that's why we need a properly functioning justice system not tit-for-tat "justice".
I didn't and don't want Johnson to be PM and think he has, on balance, been very bad for this country.
But visiting Kiev today is something that has a greater than zero chance of putting his life at risk. It may be slight but it is still there and he didn't have to do it. He is already on the way out and it creates no political gain for him.
So for once I will do a very rare thing and say well done. It clearly means something to the Ukrainians to have these visits from European leaders, even Johnson at the very end of his Premiership. So I would say he has done a good thing here and should be commended for it.
Normal service will resume shortly
I'm not entirely sure what political capital remains for him to go to Kyiv today, so it is for once a personal rather than a party political statement, so good on him.
If on his return he recants his resignation all will become clear!
A former House of Lords judge once told me years ago that he thought that juries would be much less likely to convict of murder if the death penalty was reimposed.
Awareness of miscarriages was so much greater, he felt, and defence barristers would be certain to make this point. So he thought that such a move would backfire. (Not that he was in favour of it. He thought a lot of judges would resign rather than be party to it.)
Yes, and I believe this is one of the reasons for abolishing hanging in the first place, that juries were becoming reluctant to convict.
“Rishi Sunak refuses to commit to voting for Truss’s emergency budget if she wins Tory leadership”
That’s a bit crazy threat in the middle of a campaign isn’t it? How does he and his supporters now rally round once the party has chosen the leader and direction to follow?
What Rishi also said today, very much part of this, all the “freeze” proposals - the one from Labour, the one from Energy companies, require too much borrowing and he wouldn’t touch them.
Correct me where wrong, There is a clear difference in financial direction between these two rival camps, High Tax borrow hating Sunak, High Borrow tax hating Truss - there doesn’t seem the be any compromise or middle ground longer it’s gone in does there, each camp thinks the others plan unsupportable in cabinet and perhaps commons?
Anyone who doesnt will no longer be a Tory MP. So its bluffsville, or Rishi and a couple of his closer comrades do a pointless Change UK. Once he has lost he will find he has far fewer eager beavers behind him.
Thanks to Misty and Woolie for replying.
“ Anyone who doesnt will no longer be a Tory MP. So its bluffsville “
The problem you have with all your replies is if the election stopped at the MP stage Sunak and his views have won hands down. You make him sound very much out on his own now and alone with very strong disagreement on the next financial steps - putting it like that perhaps undersells the problem here, it’s not just his preference for his own views, he is saying the plan from the other camp will result in absolute disaster.
Like you said it depends how big that parliamentary group is who agree with him, but it’s a fundamental gap between the two camps - the media could soon have heavyweight critics of the Emergency Budget queuing up, the PM quite a rebellion on her emergency budget, couldn’t she?
And then, along comes one of Mike’s “the voters hate divided party’s” threads.
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
To my mind, that is an argument in favour of far more whole life tariffs. There are people who shouldn't be released on the grounds that they pose a significant danger to the public.
A former House of Lords judge once told me years ago that he thought that juries would be much less likely to convict of murder if the death penalty was reimposed.
Awareness of miscarriages was so much greater, he felt, and defence barristers would be certain to make this point. So he thought that such a move would backfire. (Not that he was in favour of it. He thought a lot of judges would resign rather than be party to it.)
You have spend the last years writing erudite headers on this site explaining that our Police forces do not always deliver justice with the rigour that you demand.
So long as that remains the case, killing those convicted by evidence provided by police forces in the name of the state strikes me as a terrible idea.
Lock the convicted up for eighteen years like Judith Ward by all means, but then let them out when it becomes clear that the police case was based on fiction.
Perhaps the most remarkable case regarding a miscarriage of justice that, with the restoration of the death penalty, would have resulted in executions is the Cardiff Five. Not only did they track down the real killer of Lynette White through DNA revealing the detectives who pursued the case against the Cardiff Five did so on a fictional pack of lies, their fabrication was so egregious that a solid case was made against them. Lo and behold South Wales Police lost all the evidence just prior to the trial of their Detectives. The evidence was found again, once the case had been dropped.
I agree. I am against the death penalty. Always have been. Always will be.
Mind you, if someone killed one of my children or tried to I am quite certain that, if I could, I would kill them in revenge or to protect them.
And then hand myself in.
When I was burgled with the burglar walking into my bedroom while I was in bed and, not realising that someone was in the house, fleeing while dropping my own breadknife he had armed himself with, I was so incandescent with fury that if I'd caught the scrote, the police would have needed a hose to wash him off the floor not a police van.
But yes that's why we need a properly functioning justice system not tit-for-tat "justice".
Fight or flight can be a funny thing in these circumstances, you never know how you'd react.
When I was woken up by someone who'd used a crowbar to break open my kitchen window and climbed in through it, I went down the stairs and came face to face with him with me in the living room and him in the kitchen. The kitchen backdoor had a key in it which he'd clearly already used after getting in to unlock it and after a brief moment of shock of us staring at each other, he turned and ran. Instinct took over and I ran after him, chasing him until he reached his car and drove off.
Considering he was holding a crowbar and I had nothing but my boxer shorts on, I've no idea what I'd have done if I'd caught him but the second he ran my instinct was to chase him.
“Rishi Sunak refuses to commit to voting for Truss’s emergency budget if she wins Tory leadership”
That’s a bit crazy threat in the middle of a campaign isn’t it? How does he and his supporters now rally round once the party has chosen the leader and direction to follow?
What Rishi also said today, very much part of this, all the “freeze” proposals - the one from Labour, the one from Energy companies, require too much borrowing and he wouldn’t touch them.
Correct me where wrong, There is a clear difference in financial direction between these two rival camps, High Tax borrow hating Sunak, High Borrow tax hating Truss - there doesn’t seem the be any compromise or middle ground longer it’s gone in does there, each camp thinks the others plan unsupportable in cabinet and perhaps commons?
I think Sunak knows any job he is offered by Truss isn't one he would want so is very happy to ensure there are enough dividing lines that he can turn any cabinet seat offer down.
Were it not for the forthcoming energy disaster the argument would be a valid one , reduce tax and borrow money or borrow less money and keep taxes as they currently are. The reality is however that events have often taken what would usually be a rational discussion and the only real question is how much more needs to borrowed and who will receive it...
Problem is that in leaving the cabinet Sunak risks ending up as Jeremy Hunt 2.0, with his political career over. So Sunak must betting Truss is going to bomb and take the Tories to a big defeat at the next GE. They will be then forced to confront the ERG and other extremists, and Sunak can say to the party he told them so.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
In the case of the Isis Beatles and Bin Laden there was no other way of dealing with them short of just letting them go. And obviously we have different rules for those who are an ongoing threat to the security to the citizens of our country. We allow armed police to shoot people who are an imminent treat to the public and, so long as that is strictly monitored and controlled I see no problem with that. We (usually) allow our citizens the right of self defence as a justification for killing in similar circumstances.
And I am surprised that you fail to see the difference between a vigilante mob killing someone in defiance of the law and giving the State the right and power to kill people when there are other alternatives available. Both are equally bad and both should be forbidden under law.
This is in no way hypocritical. It is you creating straw men in an argument you have already lost.
“Rishi Sunak refuses to commit to voting for Truss’s emergency budget if she wins Tory leadership”
That’s a bit crazy threat in the middle of a campaign isn’t it? How does he and his supporters now rally round once the party has chosen the leader and direction to follow?
What Rishi also said today, very much part of this, all the “freeze” proposals - the one from Labour, the one from Energy companies, require too much borrowing and he wouldn’t touch them.
Correct me where wrong, There is a clear difference in financial direction between these two rival camps, High Tax borrow hating Sunak, High Borrow tax hating Truss - there doesn’t seem the be any compromise or middle ground longer it’s gone in does there, each camp thinks the others plan unsupportable in cabinet and perhaps commons?
I think Sunak knows any job he is offered by Truss isn't one he would want so is very happy to ensure there are enough dividing lines that he can turn any cabinet seat offer down.
Were it not for the forthcoming energy disaster the argument would be a valid one , reduce tax and borrow money or borrow less money and keep taxes as they currently are. The reality is however that events have often taken what would usually be a rational discussion and the only real question is how much more needs to borrowed and who will receive it...
Problem is that in leaving the cabinet Sunak risks ending up as Jeremy Hunt 2.0, with his political career over. So Sunak must betting Truss is going to bomb and take the Tories to a big defeat at the next GE. They will be then forced to confront the ERG and other extremists, and Sunak can say to the party he told them so.
or he walks away in 2024 to a spend more time with his (wife's) money and does something else with his time..
A former House of Lords judge once told me years ago that he thought that juries would be much less likely to convict of murder if the death penalty was reimposed.
Awareness of miscarriages was so much greater, he felt, and defence barristers would be certain to make this point. So he thought that such a move would backfire. (Not that he was in favour of it. He thought a lot of judges would resign rather than be party to it.)
You have spend the last years writing erudite headers on this site explaining that our Police forces do not always deliver justice with the rigour that you demand.
So long as that remains the case, killing those convicted by evidence provided by police forces in the name of the state strikes me as a terrible idea.
Lock the convicted up for eighteen years like Judith Ward by all means, but then let them out when it becomes clear that the police case was based on fiction.
Perhaps the most remarkable case regarding a miscarriage of justice that, with the restoration of the death penalty, would have resulted in executions is the Cardiff Five. Not only did they track down the real killer of Lynette White through DNA revealing the detectives who pursued the case against the Cardiff Five did so on a fictional pack of lies, their fabrication was so egregious that a solid case was made against them. Lo and behold South Wales Police lost all the evidence just prior to the trial of their Detectives. The evidence was found again, once the case had been dropped.
I agree. I am against the death penalty. Always have been. Always will be.
Mind you, if someone killed one of my children or tried to I am quite certain that, if I could, I would kill them in revenge or to protect them.
And then hand myself in.
When I was burgled with the burglar walking into my bedroom while I was in bed and, not realising that someone was in the house, fleeing while dropping my own breadknife he had armed himself with, I was so incandescent with fury that if I'd caught the scrote, the police would have needed a hose to wash him off the floor not a police van.
But yes that's why we need a properly functioning justice system not tit-for-tat "justice".
Me too, and I would take my chances with a jury of my peers to determine whether it was self defence, or otherwise.
I don't want future Derek Bentleys dealt with in my name as they were in the 1950s. I do think a referendum is a cheap win for cynical populist politicians and that is a massive fear, and leaving the ECHR ticks that box.
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good?
Yes.
Keeping him alive denies the state the power to kill people, some of whom may be innocent.
Keeping him in custody keeps people safe.
The right thing was done. As unpleasant as it is.
Except we kill people all the time with our guns and bullets and drones. The difference is those people - often innocent - don’t get a trial
A former House of Lords judge once told me years ago that he thought that juries would be much less likely to convict of murder if the death penalty was reimposed.
Awareness of miscarriages was so much greater, he felt, and defence barristers would be certain to make this point. So he thought that such a move would backfire. (Not that he was in favour of it. He thought a lot of judges would resign rather than be party to it.)
Yes, and I believe this is one of the reasons for abolishing hanging in the first place, that juries were becoming reluctant to convict.
Which is why constant calls for ever-increasing tariffs for other crimes may be self-defeating.
I didn't and don't want Johnson to be PM and think he has, on balance, been very bad for this country.
But visiting Kiev today is something that has a greater than zero chance of putting his life at risk. It may be slight but it is still there and he didn't have to do it. He is already on the way out and it creates no political gain for him.
So for once I will do a very rare thing and say well done. It clearly means something to the Ukrainians to have these visits from European leaders, even Johnson at the very end of his Premiership. So I would say he has done a good thing here and should be commended for it.
Normal service will resume shortly
I'm not entirely sure what political capital remains for him to go to Kyiv today, so it is for once a personal rather than a party political statement, so good on him.
If on his return he recants his resignation all will become clear!
In which case I would suggest we turn him around and send him straight back to Kiev. Permanently.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
In the case of the Isis Beatles and Bin Laden there was no other way of dealing with them short of just letting them go. And obviously we have different rules for those who are an ongoing threat to the security to the citizens of our country. We allow armed police to shoot people who are an imminent treat to the public and, so long as that is strictly monitored and controlled I see no problem with that. We (usually) allow our citizens the right of self defence as a justification for killing in similar circumstances.
And I am surprised that you fail to see the difference between a vigilante mob killing someone in defiance of the law and giving the State the right and power to kill people when there are other alternatives available. Both are equally bad and both should be forbidden under law.
This is in no way hypocritical. It is you creating straw men in an argument you have already lost.
You said that "there are undoubtedly times when you look at a news item and think 'that bastard deserves to die'". If you were on a jury, would you acquit someone of murder who acted on that feeling?
“Rishi Sunak refuses to commit to voting for Truss’s emergency budget if she wins Tory leadership”
That’s a bit crazy threat in the middle of a campaign isn’t it? How does he and his supporters now rally round once the party has chosen the leader and direction to follow?
What Rishi also said today, very much part of this, all the “freeze” proposals - the one from Labour, the one from Energy companies, require too much borrowing and he wouldn’t touch them.
Correct me where wrong, There is a clear difference in financial direction between these two rival camps, High Tax borrow hating Sunak, High Borrow tax hating Truss - there doesn’t seem the be any compromise or middle ground longer it’s gone in does there, each camp thinks the others plan unsupportable in cabinet and perhaps commons?
Anyone who doesnt will no longer be a Tory MP. So its bluffsville, or Rishi and a couple of his closer comrades do a pointless Change UK. Once he has lost he will find he has far fewer eager beavers behind him.
Thanks to Misty and Woolie for replying.
“ Anyone who doesnt will no longer be a Tory MP. So its bluffsville “
The problem you have with all your replies is if the election stopped at the MP stage Sunak and his views have won hands down. You make him sound very much out on his own now and alone with very strong disagreement on the next financial steps - putting it like that perhaps undersells the problem here, it’s not just his preference for his own views, he is saying the plan from the other camp will result in absolute disaster.
Like you said it depends how big that parliamentary group is who agree with him, but it’s a fundamental gap between the two camps - the media could soon have heavyweight critics of the Emergency Budget queuing up, the PM quite a rebellion on her emergency budget, couldn’t she?
And then, along comes one of Mike’s “the voters hate divided party’s” threads.
Sunak's just following the well-trodden path of increasingly desperate shitting of the bed because he's losing. The fact he's placing whatever meagre success he can secure for his flatlining campaign above the future of the Tory party and the Tory Government is unsurprising. Yuckety yuck.
“Rishi Sunak refuses to commit to voting for Truss’s emergency budget if she wins Tory leadership”
That’s a bit crazy threat in the middle of a campaign isn’t it? How does he and his supporters now rally round once the party has chosen the leader and direction to follow?
What Rishi also said today, very much part of this, all the “freeze” proposals - the one from Labour, the one from Energy companies, require too much borrowing and he wouldn’t touch them.
Correct me where wrong, There is a clear difference in financial direction between these two rival camps, High Tax borrow hating Sunak, High Borrow tax hating Truss - there doesn’t seem the be any compromise or middle ground longer it’s gone in does there, each camp thinks the others plan unsupportable in cabinet and perhaps commons?
Anyone who doesnt will no longer be a Tory MP. So its bluffsville, or Rishi and a couple of his closer comrades do a pointless Change UK. Once he has lost he will find he has far fewer eager beavers behind him.
Thanks to Misty and Woolie for replying.
“ Anyone who doesnt will no longer be a Tory MP. So its bluffsville “
The problem you have with all your replies is if the election stopped at the MP stage Sunak and his views have won hands down. You make him sound very much out on his own now and alone with very strong disagreement on the next financial steps - putting it like that perhaps undersells the problem here, it’s not just his preference for his own views, he is saying the plan from the other camp will result in absolute disaster.
Like you said it depends how big that parliamentary group is who agree with him, but it’s a fundamental gap between the two camps - the media could soon have heavyweight critics of the Emergency Budget queuing up, the PM quite a rebellion on her emergency budget, couldn’t she?
And then, along comes one of Mike’s “the voters hate divided party’s” threads.
The voting system is the voting system, there's no point moaning about "if it were different" when it isn't, that's the rules of the game.
Furthermore no guarantees Sunak would have won if it were MPs only. Eliminated in the final (which would have been penultimate if no member voting) round was Mordaunt, who then endorsed Truss. More of Mordaunt's backers have also followed her lead and endorsed Truss than Sunak too.
Hence why Truss now has more MPs backing her than Sunak does.
Of course it may have been different if no members voting, but its not.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
In the case of the Isis Beatles and Bin Laden there was no other way of dealing with them short of just letting them go. And obviously we have different rules for those who are an ongoing threat to the security to the citizens of our country. We allow armed police to shoot people who are an imminent treat to the public and, so long as that is strictly monitored and controlled I see no problem with that. We (usually) allow our citizens the right of self defence as a justification for killing in similar circumstances.
And I am surprised that you fail to see the difference between a vigilante mob killing someone in defiance of the law and giving the State the right and power to kill people when there are other alternatives available. Both are equally bad and both should be forbidden under law.
This is in no way hypocritical. It is you creating straw men in an argument you have already lost.
You said that "there are undoubtedly times when you look at a news item and think 'that bastard deserves to die'". If you were on a jury, would you acquit someone of murder who acted on that feeling?
I don't know. I suspect I would be strongly tempted to do so. These things are great to discuss in the abstract but - just like those on here who have mentioned confronting burglars - I am not sure what I would do in those circumstances.
Can't find any evidence that Braverman is pro-death penalty tbf to her.
Truss is a fool if she re-kindles this issue when there is a heaving in-tray to address.
Long term incarceration is a pretty heavy punishment that regularly institutionalizes or breaks people. It's deterrent enough, even for the most serious crime, surely.
If miscarriages occur there is a way back, as somebody said down thread.
Absolutely.
The only thing I'd change (and I'd change it for everyone) is if someone voluntarily wants to terminate their own life, that (with safeguards) ought to be able to be facilitated.
But the state should never be able to kill people who are in custody. People at large in warzones etc aren't in custody.
The termination thing is interesting because long term or no parole prison would I'm sure drive some to consider this option.
The court cases though?!
I'm sure some would want to argue the person would be in no state of mind to make that decision themselves.
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good?
Yes.
Keeping him alive denies the state the power to kill people, some of whom may be innocent.
Keeping him in custody keeps people safe.
The right thing was done. As unpleasant as it is.
Except we kill people all the time with our guns and bullets and drones. The difference is those people - often innocent - don’t get a trial
Bring back the noose. It’s time
Name one person in custody killed with guns or bullets or drones please.
If not in custody, a lethal solution may be necessary. If in custody, it never is.
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
To my mind, that is an argument in favour of far more whole life tariffs. There are people who shouldn't be released on the grounds that they pose a significant danger to the public.
Yes, one of our major sticking points with the ECtHR was that they said that whole life tariffs were incompatible with the Convention. The UK has respectfully disagreed but in Scotland it is pretty much impossible to impose such a sentence in theory although there are several in practice.
It is, all too often, a pretty rubbish court. I was prosecuting a case last week where the evidence in respect of some of the charges was exclusively from witnesses who were dead. Police came along and read out the statements that they had given to the court. The Judge raised a decision of the ECtHR which said that that if the evidence against someone was solely or primarily of this nature this was incompatible with a fair trial.
The UK Supreme Court, in an English case, had subsequently comprehensively demolished this decision on the basis that the law contains other safeguards and the rule allegedly divined from the Convention that it was based upon simply did not say that. When that case was inevitably appealed to the ECtHR they agreed with the Supreme Court and then applied the decision that they had taken to bits! They clearly had simply not understood the trenchent critique of the Supreme Court at all.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
“Rishi Sunak refuses to commit to voting for Truss’s emergency budget if she wins Tory leadership”
That’s a bit crazy threat in the middle of a campaign isn’t it? How does he and his supporters now rally round once the party has chosen the leader and direction to follow?
What Rishi also said today, very much part of this, all the “freeze” proposals - the one from Labour, the one from Energy companies, require too much borrowing and he wouldn’t touch them.
Correct me where wrong, There is a clear difference in financial direction between these two rival camps, High Tax borrow hating Sunak, High Borrow tax hating Truss - there doesn’t seem the be any compromise or middle ground longer it’s gone in does there, each camp thinks the others plan unsupportable in cabinet and perhaps commons?
Anyone who doesnt will no longer be a Tory MP. So its bluffsville, or Rishi and a couple of his closer comrades do a pointless Change UK. Once he has lost he will find he has far fewer eager beavers behind him.
Thanks to Misty and Woolie for replying.
“ Anyone who doesnt will no longer be a Tory MP. So its bluffsville “
The problem you have with all your replies is if the election stopped at the MP stage Sunak and his views have won hands down. You make him sound very much out on his own now and alone with very strong disagreement on the next financial steps - putting it like that perhaps undersells the problem here, it’s not just his preference for his own views, he is saying the plan from the other camp will result in absolute disaster.
Like you said it depends how big that parliamentary group is who agree with him, but it’s a fundamental gap between the two camps - the media could soon have heavyweight critics of the Emergency Budget queuing up, the PM quite a rebellion on her emergency budget, couldn’t she?
And then, along comes one of Mike’s “the voters hate divided party’s” threads.
Its possible, but its unlikely imo. Once the contest is over then Sunak has nothing to offer his supporters, and the parliamentary party will coalesce, if only in the short term. The party will have made its preference known, as they did on Brexit Boz versus Hunt and MPs will go along with it for a while. (At MP stage Sunak had well under half the MPs of course, he didnt win hands down, he won a plurality by 20 or so MPs) I cannot see a rebellion on any emergency measures which will be three line whipped, and the formal budget following later is a de facto confidence matter, any votes against will no longer be Tory MPs, they wont be ending their careers over it, not a couple of months after the party has voted. Media briefings? Sure. But arent there always??
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
To my mind, that is an argument in favour of far more whole life tariffs. There are people who shouldn't be released on the grounds that they pose a significant danger to the public.
Yes, one of our major sticking points with the ECtHR was that they said that whole life tariffs were incompatible with the Convention. The UK has respectfully disagreed but in Scotland it is pretty much impossible to impose such a sentence in theory although there are several in practice.
It is, all too often, a pretty rubbish court. I was prosecuting a case last week where the evidence in respect of some of the charges was exclusively from witnesses who were dead. Police came along and read out the statements that they had given to the court. The Judge raised a decision of the ECtHR which said that that if the evidence against someone was solely or primarily of this nature this was incompatible with a fair trial.
The UK Supreme Court, in an English case, had subsequently comprehensively demolished this decision on the basis that the law contains other safeguards and the rule allegedly divined from the Convention that it was based upon simply did not say that. When that case was inevitably appealed to the ECtHR they agreed with the Supreme Court and then applied the decision that they had taken to bits! They clearly had simply not understood the trenchent critique of the Supreme Court at all.
I understand your concerns and agree re: full life tariffs, but leaving the ECHR is a baby and the bathwater exercise.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good?
Yes.
Keeping him alive denies the state the power to kill people, some of whom may be innocent.
Keeping him in custody keeps people safe.
The right thing was done. As unpleasant as it is.
Except we kill people all the time with our guns and bullets and drones. The difference is those people - often innocent - don’t get a trial
Bring back the noose. It’s time
Name one person in custody killed with guns or bullets or drones please.
If not in custody, a lethal solution may be necessary. If in custody, it never is.
Eh? Lethal solutions are very popular in prisons in the States. To the horror of the drug companies and medical professional bodies who find themselves involved.
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
To my mind, that is an argument in favour of far more whole life tariffs. There are people who shouldn't be released on the grounds that they pose a significant danger to the public.
Yes, one of our major sticking points with the ECtHR was that they said that whole life tariffs were incompatible with the Convention. The UK has respectfully disagreed but in Scotland it is pretty much impossible to impose such a sentence in theory although there are several in practice.
It is, all too often, a pretty rubbish court. I was prosecuting a case last week where the evidence in respect of some of the charges was exclusively from witnesses who were dead. Police came along and read out the statements that they had given to the court. The Judge raised a decision of the ECtHR which said that that if the evidence against someone was solely or primarily of this nature this was incompatible with a fair trial.
The UK Supreme Court, in an English case, had subsequently comprehensively demolished this decision on the basis that the law contains other safeguards and the rule allegedly divined from the Convention that it was based upon simply did not say that. When that case was inevitably appealed to the ECtHR they agreed with the Supreme Court and then applied the decision that they had taken to bits! They clearly had simply not understood the trenchent critique of the Supreme Court at all.
I understand your concerns and agree re: full life tariffs, but leaving the ECHR is a baby and the bathwater exercise.
Leaving the Court isn't getting rid of a baby.
The Convention of Rights should be kept, but enforced by the Supreme Court and Parliament, not an unaccountable Court.
A former House of Lords judge once told me years ago that he thought that juries would be much less likely to convict of murder if the death penalty was reimposed.
Awareness of miscarriages was so much greater, he felt, and defence barristers would be certain to make this point. So he thought that such a move would backfire. (Not that he was in favour of it. He thought a lot of judges would resign rather than be party to it.)
You have spend the last years writing erudite headers on this site explaining that our Police forces do not always deliver justice with the rigour that you demand.
So long as that remains the case, killing those convicted by evidence provided by police forces in the name of the state strikes me as a terrible idea.
Lock the convicted up for eighteen years like Judith Ward by all means, but then let them out when it becomes clear that the police case was based on fiction.
Perhaps the most remarkable case regarding a miscarriage of justice that, with the restoration of the death penalty, would have resulted in executions is the Cardiff Five. Not only did they track down the real killer of Lynette White through DNA revealing the detectives who pursued the case against the Cardiff Five did so on a fictional pack of lies, their fabrication was so egregious that a solid case was made against them. Lo and behold South Wales Police lost all the evidence just prior to the trial of their Detectives. The evidence was found again, once the case had been dropped.
I agree. I am against the death penalty. Always have been. Always will be.
Mind you, if someone killed one of my children or tried to I am quite certain that, if I could, I would kill them in revenge or to protect them.
And then hand myself in.
When I was burgled with the burglar walking into my bedroom while I was in bed and, not realising that someone was in the house, fleeing while dropping my own breadknife he had armed himself with, I was so incandescent with fury that if I'd caught the scrote, the police would have needed a hose to wash him off the floor not a police van.
But yes that's why we need a properly functioning justice system not tit-for-tat "justice".
Fight or flight can be a funny thing in these circumstances, you never know how you'd react.
When I was woken up by someone who'd used a crowbar to break open my kitchen window and climbed in through it, I went down the stairs and came face to face with him with me in the living room and him in the kitchen. The kitchen backdoor had a key in it which he'd clearly already used after getting in to unlock it and after a brief moment of shock of us staring at each other, he turned and ran. Instinct took over and I ran after him, chasing him until he reached his car and drove off.
Considering he was holding a crowbar and I had nothing but my boxer shorts on, I've no idea what I'd have done if I'd caught him but the second he ran my instinct was to chase him.
When I saw the man come into my bedroom my instinct was to freeze, for obvious reasons. I was exceptionally vulnerable and having a fight with him was the least of my concerns. I let him run and then called the police (the phone was next to my bed) and hoped that he could not hear me. The police came and rang the front door - having first turned up at the wrong house and ringing me back to complain that I was not answering the door!!
So I had to screw up my courage and run downstairs - I was on the top floor - with nothing to protect me, hollering at the top of my voice and hoping to God that he or any mates were not still in the house. I was terrified. This was not long after the burglary and rape of Jill Saward at an Ealing vicarage.
But after - when the police were in the house - my fury was off the scale. I could and would have beaten him to death.
So my first instinct was to protect myself - which was a bloody good instinct to have.
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
To my mind, that is an argument in favour of far more whole life tariffs. There are people who shouldn't be released on the grounds that they pose a significant danger to the public.
Yes, one of our major sticking points with the ECtHR was that they said that whole life tariffs were incompatible with the Convention. The UK has respectfully disagreed but in Scotland it is pretty much impossible to impose such a sentence in theory although there are several in practice.
It is, all too often, a pretty rubbish court. I was prosecuting a case last week where the evidence in respect of some of the charges was exclusively from witnesses who were dead. Police came along and read out the statements that they had given to the court. The Judge raised a decision of the ECtHR which said that that if the evidence against someone was solely or primarily of this nature this was incompatible with a fair trial.
The UK Supreme Court, in an English case, had subsequently comprehensively demolished this decision on the basis that the law contains other safeguards and the rule allegedly divined from the Convention that it was based upon simply did not say that. When that case was inevitably appealed to the ECtHR they agreed with the Supreme Court and then applied the decision that they had taken to bits! They clearly had simply not understood the trenchent critique of the Supreme Court at all.
I understand your concerns and agree re: full life tariffs, but leaving the ECHR is a baby and the bathwater exercise.
Oh I agree. It is indisputably in the "just not worth it" pile for me and should stay there. The international damage it would do (as @Cyclefree has eloquently pointed out) as well as the rather more practical points that I have made about having a comprehensive batch of judicial precedent that would have to be relitigated at great public expense if the wording was changed mean it is just a bad idea.
The only case I have ever been involved in which would make me pause in relation to the death penalty was that of Angus Sinclair. He was prosecuted in the early 2000s for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Glasgow train station many years earlier. It was one of the very first "cold" cases that used DNA to bring forward additional evidence that had not been available at the time of the original investigation and the biggest challenge was showing that these items had been in safe custody all that time and not contaminated.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good?
Yes.
Keeping him alive denies the state the power to kill people, some of whom may be innocent.
Keeping him in custody keeps people safe.
The right thing was done. As unpleasant as it is.
Except we kill people all the time with our guns and bullets and drones. The difference is those people - often innocent - don’t get a trial
Bring back the noose. It’s time
Name one person in custody killed with guns or bullets or drones please.
If not in custody, a lethal solution may be necessary. If in custody, it never is.
Eh? Lethal solutions are very popular in prisons in the States. To the horror of the drug companies and medical professional bodies who find themselves involved.
Leon said "we".
We are not the States, despite what some people think.
Comments
It's interesting, all the same, how ancient that particular legal scheme is. And that Brexiters unconsciously reject all international law when they go on about buccanneering and piracy. As opposed to honest trading.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Don't watch it...
“Rotherham has been named the 'Children's Capital City of Culture’ for 2025”
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/should-the-death-penalty-be-reintroduced-for-the-murder-of-a-child
Good for them!
(My coat awaits...)
But I think we can be sure that the Strictly curse would strike!
@BorisJohnson
What happens in Ukraine matters to us all.
That is why I am in Kyiv today.
That is why the UK will continue to stand with our Ukrainian friends.
I believe Ukraine can and will win this war.
https://www.twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1562432251203182593
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11130593/Grooming-scandal-town-Rotherham-UKs-Childrens-Capital-Culture.html
'A town at the centre of one of Britain's most notorious child sex scandals has been named as the world's first Children's Capital of Culture.
But the Government has now revealed it is reviewing the decision to award Rotherham £1.8million in taxpayer cash to fund the year-long initiative in 2025.
[...]
As well as the £1.8million from the Cultural Recovery Fund, it was also due to receive £13,600 from Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council and has been awarded £76,100 in National Lottery grants.
Yesterday, after The Mail on Sunday began raising questions, Levelling-Up Secretary Greg Clark said he would look again at the funding, which was agreed by his predecessor Michael Gove last November.'
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
So long as that remains the case, killing those convicted by evidence provided by police forces in the name of the state strikes me as a terrible idea.
Lock the convicted up for eighteen years like Judith Ward by all means, but then let them out when it becomes clear that the police case was based on fiction.
Perhaps the most remarkable case regarding a miscarriage of justice that, with the restoration of the death penalty, would have resulted in executions is the Cardiff Five. Not only did they track down the real killer of Lynette White through DNA revealing the detectives who pursued the case against the Cardiff Five did so on a fictional pack of lies, their fabrication was so egregious that a solid case was made against them. Lo and behold South Wales Police lost all the evidence just prior to the trial of their Detectives. The evidence was found again, once the case had been dropped.
Oh yeah I see your point....
Our shoot to kill policy with regard to terrorists is now utterly unquestioned (Borough Market, London Bridge). Hard to believe it was such an issue in the 80s. (and yes I understand the difference between those cases and Gibraltar!)
Starting small, having the legal issues resolved, then ramping it up is a feasible way to go big.
Long term incarceration is a pretty heavy punishment that regularly institutionalizes or breaks people. It's deterrent enough, even for the most serious crime, surely.
If miscarriages occur there is a way back, as somebody said down thread.
At the time Sinclair was in custody for another rape but he was eligible for parole. He had been acquitted of the Worlds End murders then although he was subsequently convicted of them after the law had been changed to allow a second trial. Everyone involved in the case was very conscious that if he got parole people would die. He was a monster, thankfully now dead.
He must have been told that he looked evil and not to look at the Jury so he spent the trial looking at me and my senior. It was not a pleasant experience. Did keeping him alive and in custody for another 20 years do any good? I think not but I know that a state that takes the power to kill its own citizens is a greater risk. Just.
But visiting Kiev today is something that has a greater than zero chance of putting his life at risk. It may be slight but it is still there and he didn't have to do it. He is already on the way out and it creates no political gain for him.
So for once I will do a very rare thing and say well done. It clearly means something to the Ukrainians to have these visits from European leaders, even Johnson at the very end of his Premiership. So I would say he has done a good thing here and should be commended for it.
Normal service will resume shortly
https://twitter.com/catherine_mayer/status/1562436098407534595
🇺🇦 🇬🇧
Come To The Oswiecim Oven Festival of 2023. Bake a Pretzel
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Yes.
Keeping him alive denies the state the power to kill people, some of whom may be innocent.
Keeping him in custody keeps people safe.
The right thing was done. As unpleasant as it is.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Handbook-Hanging-Being-Introduction-Execution/dp/0752460684
as well as Pierrepoint's autobiography, the other question that strikes me is the question of the impact on the executioner(s), who is doing the job for you and me and all the other subjects of HMtQ. You don't want to recruit people who want to do the job. And yet the other option is no more attractive; PTSD and guilt call, or worse.
"Armed officers were on standby to arrest or shoot the gunman if he was located."
"police understanding has changed particularly around gun crime … we’re confident we will get justice."
Both of these sentences suggest efforts to arrest him alive are going to be... limited.
Cheer up, dude!
The only thing I'd change (and I'd change it for everyone) is if someone voluntarily wants to terminate their own life, that (with safeguards) ought to be able to be facilitated.
But the state should never be able to kill people who are in custody. People at large in warzones etc aren't in custody.
Mind you, if someone killed one of my children or tried to I am quite certain that, if I could, I would kill them in revenge or to protect them.
And then hand myself in.
When I was burgled with the burglar walking into my bedroom while I was in bed and, not realising that someone was in the house, fleeing while dropping my own breadknife he had armed himself with, I was so incandescent with fury that if I'd caught the scrote, the police would have needed a hose to wash him off the floor not a police van.
But yes that's why we need a properly functioning justice system not tit-for-tat "justice".
If on his return he recants his resignation all will become clear!
Rumours say he's off to Haas.
“ Anyone who doesnt will no longer be a Tory MP. So its bluffsville “
The problem you have with all your replies is if the election stopped at the MP stage Sunak and his views have won hands down. You make him sound very much out on his own now and alone with very strong disagreement on the next financial steps - putting it like that perhaps undersells the problem here, it’s not just his preference for his own views, he is saying the plan from the other camp will result in absolute disaster.
Like you said it depends how big that parliamentary group is who agree with him, but it’s a fundamental gap between the two camps - the media could soon have heavyweight critics of the Emergency Budget queuing up, the PM quite a rebellion on her emergency budget, couldn’t she?
And then, along comes one of Mike’s “the voters hate divided party’s” threads.
State leaders who came to visit Zelensky in Kyiv early on in the war will be honored with plaques in front of the presid. palace.
Duda had his unveiled first. "
Nothing about Boris.
When I was woken up by someone who'd used a crowbar to break open my kitchen window and climbed in through it, I went down the stairs and came face to face with him with me in the living room and him in the kitchen. The kitchen backdoor had a key in it which he'd clearly already used after getting in to unlock it and after a brief moment of shock of us staring at each other, he turned and ran. Instinct took over and I ran after him, chasing him until he reached his car and drove off.
Considering he was holding a crowbar and I had nothing but my boxer shorts on, I've no idea what I'd have done if I'd caught him but the second he ran my instinct was to chase him.
And I am surprised that you fail to see the difference between a vigilante mob killing someone in defiance of the law and giving the State the right and power to kill people when there are other alternatives available. Both are equally bad and both should be forbidden under law.
This is in no way hypocritical. It is you creating straw men in an argument you have already lost.
I don't want future Derek Bentleys dealt with in my name as they were in the 1950s. I do think a referendum is a cheap win for cynical populist politicians and that is a massive fear, and leaving the ECHR ticks that box.
Bring back the noose. It’s time
Furthermore no guarantees Sunak would have won if it were MPs only. Eliminated in the final (which would have been penultimate if no member voting) round was Mordaunt, who then endorsed Truss. More of Mordaunt's backers have also followed her lead and endorsed Truss than Sunak too.
Hence why Truss now has more MPs backing her than Sunak does.
Of course it may have been different if no members voting, but its not.
The termination thing is interesting because long term or no parole prison would I'm sure drive some to consider this option.
The court cases though?!
I'm sure some would want to argue the person would be in no state of mind to make that decision themselves.
He does me, too BigG. But hats off to him for today's trip.
Hopefully in a fortnight he never need trouble my thoughts again.
If not in custody, a lethal solution may be necessary. If in custody, it never is.
It is, all too often, a pretty rubbish court. I was prosecuting a case last week where the evidence in respect of some of the charges was exclusively from witnesses who were dead. Police came along and read out the statements that they had given to the court. The Judge raised a decision of the ECtHR which said that that if the evidence against someone was solely or primarily of this nature this was incompatible with a fair trial.
The UK Supreme Court, in an English case, had subsequently comprehensively demolished this decision on the basis that the law contains other safeguards and the rule allegedly divined from the Convention that it was based upon simply did not say that. When that case was inevitably appealed to the ECtHR they agreed with the Supreme Court and then applied the decision that they had taken to bits! They clearly had simply not understood the trenchent critique of the Supreme Court at all.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
(At MP stage Sunak had well under half the MPs of course, he didnt win hands down, he won a plurality by 20 or so MPs)
I cannot see a rebellion on any emergency measures which will be three line whipped, and the formal budget following later is a de facto confidence matter, any votes against will no longer be Tory MPs, they wont be ending their careers over it, not a couple of months after the party has voted.
Media briefings? Sure. But arent there always??
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/at-home-early-medical-abortions-made-permanent-in-england-and-wales
If only the English elected a Conservative government.
The Convention of Rights should be kept, but enforced by the Supreme Court and Parliament, not an unaccountable Court.
So I had to screw up my courage and run downstairs - I was on the top floor - with nothing to protect me, hollering at the top of my voice and hoping to God that he or any mates were not still in the house. I was terrified. This was not long after the burglary and rape of Jill Saward at an Ealing vicarage.
But after - when the police were in the house - my fury was off the scale. I could and would have beaten him to death.
So my first instinct was to protect myself - which was a bloody good instinct to have.
We are not the States, despite what some people think.