To be honest I am surprised most of these perverted incels took the time to walk away from their basement computers to actually go to the Capitol that day.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Although they would have been dead and could not have appealed. Another bonus - extend the death penalty to all crime and there will be no more (discovered) wrongful convictions!
They can, though not always with conspicuous success. Worth a read:
I saw Conclave last night, and I think @Leon was completely wrong.
In particular his contention that in the last third there was a completely ridiculous plot twist that strained at the bounds of credibility was completely inaccurate.
The reality is that the entire thing was utterly unbelievable. I mean, I could check off each of the ways it was silly, but I shan't.
Because, you know what?
(a) It was fun, with some genuinely great acting. (John Lithgow was amazing, as was the actor who played Leon, who vaped away.)
and
(b) The cinematography was INSANE. It was the best looking movie I have seen for a decade.
So, look past the silly and absurd plot, and enjoy the spectacle.
Any drama about the Papal hierarchy has an unfair advantage, as the robes and buildings are gorgeous. I posted a clip from "The New Pope" as part of my Hell article, and it and its predecessor looks brilliant.
As for the book "Conclave", it's Robert Harris, so you know what you're going to get: workmanlike, twisty, meat and potatoes. Same as his other books. Okay, but best thought of as the first draft of a film script. Hitchcock would have eaten him alive.
I saw Conclave last night, and I think @Leon was completely wrong.
In particular his contention that in the last third there was a completely ridiculous plot twist that strained at the bounds of credibility was completely inaccurate.
The reality is that the entire thing was utterly unbelievable. I mean, I could check off each of the ways it was silly, but I shan't.
Because, you know what?
(a) It was fun, with some genuinely great acting. (John Lithgow was amazing, as was the actor who played Leon, who vaped away.)
and
(b) The cinematography was INSANE. It was the best looking movie I have seen for a decade.
So, look past the silly and absurd plot, and enjoy the spectacle.
Anyone else been to see the Dylan film? I loved it, although the subject remains an enigma.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
The police being fallible or even malicious is one reason why we have courts. It's not a strong argument against any given form of punishment.
Sure it is.
The police lie to cover up misconduct today.
They likelihood of them lying to cover up the conviction and execution of an innocent man is going to be significantly higher than them lying about a regular wrongful conviction.
Are you for or against assisted dying?
If somebody is given an incorrect prognosis by a doctor and makes the decision to choose assisted dying when their condition was not terminal, what is the likelihood that the doctor will own up?
I don't understand the relevance of your question to the discussion.
Mistakes are not the same as lies. People make mistakes all the time, and people die as a result of those mistakes; when driving, for example. And we -as a society- accept that people get things wrong from time to time.
Lies, though, are a teensy weency bit different. That's deliberately driving your car into someone, rather than there being a momentary lapse of concentration.
You are arguing that adding the power of life and death to the mix increases the likelihood of institutional lying. I'm just pointing out another example where we are moving towards being more tolerant of this risk.
In any case perjury is an offence just as drink driving is an offence, and deliberately driving your car into someone is (attempted) murder.
Lying is much more insidious than just perjury: for example not sharing information to the defence that you are duty bound to do so.
The police are not interested in finding the truth. As soon as they get someone in the frame they are looking for evidence to confirm their opinions. Not only do they ignore conflicting evidence they cover it up, and worst of all cease to investigate anyone else. Check out the Jill Dando story. They got Barry George in the frame using an agent provocateur. After he was finally acquitted the police to my knowledge have not attempted to look for anyone else.
I have no idea if they have continued enquiries in the Jill Dando case, and I don't know who killed Jill Dando, but it is not possible to exclude the chance that the ultimately acquitted defendant was guilty. When looking at probabilities account has to be taken of the evidence, including the ultimately excluded forensic evidence, and having regard to the fact that at no point did the defendant give evidence.
The defendant doesn't have to give evidence. The amount of gsr was microscopic, in one pocket, so could easily have been transferred innocuously. If he'd have shot her it would have been all over her. He may have been an undesirable but convicting him means someone else had gone free. Scandalous.
I think this should be rather bigger news. The Fermi paradox becomes weirder.
Not necessarily. 'Organic materials' just means carbon based molecules, not an asteroid dwelling little green person, nor anything remotely approaching life forms. That the universe contains a decent number of carbon based molecules is not a stupendous surprise. It is one of the things carbon does.
That the universe contains bits of building blocks of life as we know it is also not surprising. We would not be here if it didn't.
The surprising bit is that the building blocks configured life and ultimately us. For that to happen remains to a remarkable degree problematic.
BTW the obvious place to look to see if it has happened more than once is on planet earth.
One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.
That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?
I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.
Slavery gets shit done.
Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.
Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!
Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.
This is the first polemic against Pyramids I've ever come across. Excellent stuff. Very PB.com.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
The police being fallible or even malicious is one reason why we have courts. It's not a strong argument against any given form of punishment.
Sure it is.
The police lie to cover up misconduct today.
They likelihood of them lying to cover up the conviction and execution of an innocent man is going to be significantly higher than them lying about a regular wrongful conviction.
Are you for or against assisted dying?
If somebody is given an incorrect prognosis by a doctor and makes the decision to choose assisted dying when their condition was not terminal, what is the likelihood that the doctor will own up?
I don't understand the relevance of your question to the discussion.
Mistakes are not the same as lies. People make mistakes all the time, and people die as a result of those mistakes; when driving, for example. And we -as a society- accept that people get things wrong from time to time.
Lies, though, are a teensy weency bit different. That's deliberately driving your car into someone, rather than there being a momentary lapse of concentration.
You are arguing that adding the power of life and death to the mix increases the likelihood of institutional lying. I'm just pointing out another example where we are moving towards being more tolerant of this risk.
In any case perjury is an offence just as drink driving is an offence, and deliberately driving your car into someone is (attempted) murder.
Lying is much more insidious than just perjury: for example not sharing information to the defence that you are duty bound to do so.
The police are not interested in finding the truth. As soon as they get someone in the frame they are looking for evidence to confirm their opinions. Not only do they ignore conflicting evidence they cover it up, and worst of all cease to investigate anyone else. Check out the Jill Dando story. They got Barry George in the frame using an agent provocateur. After he was finally acquitted the police to my knowledge have not attempted to look for anyone else.
I have no idea if they have continued enquiries in the Jill Dando case, and I don't know who killed Jill Dando, but it is not possible to exclude the chance that the ultimately acquitted defendant was guilty. When looking at probabilities account has to be taken of the evidence, including the ultimately excluded forensic evidence, and having regard to the fact that at no point did the defendant give evidence.
The defendant doesn't have to give evidence. The amount of gsr was microscopic, in one pocket, so could easily have been transferred innocuously. If he'd have shot her it would have been all over her. He may have been an undesirable but convicting him means someone else had gone free. Scandalous.
Of course he doesn't have to give evidence. The judge of course can invite a jury to draw such inferences as they think they may from exercising this right in considering the totality. In law it is not a wholly neutral act.
Agree about the gsr. The probabilistic point is that it both may and may not be evidentially significant, though legally it was excluded (eventually) quite properly.
It isn't possible on the data to exclude the possibility of guilt.
It is, as happens sometimes, an entirely unsatisfactory case. Evidence is rum stuff.
I think this should be rather bigger news. The Fermi paradox becomes weirder.
Not necessarily. 'Organic materials' just means carbon based molecules, not an asteroid dwelling little green person, nor anything remotely approaching life forms. That the universe contains a decent number of carbon based molecules is not a stupendous surprise. It is one of the things carbon does.
That the universe contains bits of building blocks of life as we know it is also not surprising. We would not be here if it didn't.
The surprising bit is that the building blocks configured life and ultimately us. For that to happen remains to a remarkable degree problematic.
BTW the obvious place to look to see if it has happened more than once is on planet earth.
Surely that'd be very difficult, given the scarcity of 'old' rocks on Earth and the fragility of the evidence?
I saw Conclave last night, and I think @Leon was completely wrong.
And his contention that in the last third there was a completely ridiculous plot twist that strained at the bounds of credibility was completely inaccurate.
The reality is that the entire thing was utterly unbelievable. I mean, I could check off each of the ways it was silly, but I shan't.
Because, you know what?
(a) It was fun, with some genuinely great acting. (John Lithgow was amazing, as was the actor who played Leon, who vaped away.)
and
(b) The cinematography was INSANE. It was the best looking movie I have seen for a decade.
So, look past the silly and absurd plot, and enjoy the spectacle.
Have you read the book? It's quite good.
I haven't read any Robert Harris for a decade, but why not...
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Minority Report style, you mean? I doubt many of those were originally banged up for what would be capital offences. Unless you're going to hang everyone convicted of any crime?
Why bother with a conviction: if the police said he did it, that's good enough for me.
I think this should be rather bigger news. The Fermi paradox becomes weirder.
Huh. The question which strikes me is how did the amino acids get there?
Unlikely to be Mexican Amino Acid dealers, but not impossible. Was that your point?
Well, just that. Amino acids strike me as surprisingly complex things to be on a tiny bit of space rock. I'dhave thought if they were to form, they'd do so somewhere more benign. Did the asteroid come from a populated planet?
I think this should be rather bigger news. The Fermi paradox becomes weirder.
Not necessarily. 'Organic materials' just means carbon based molecules, not an asteroid dwelling little green person, nor anything remotely approaching life forms. That the universe contains a decent number of carbon based molecules is not a stupendous surprise. It is one of the things carbon does.
That the universe contains bits of building blocks of life as we know it is also not surprising. We would not be here if it didn't.
The surprising bit is that the building blocks configured life and ultimately us. For that to happen remains to a remarkable degree problematic.
BTW the obvious place to look to see if it has happened more than once is on planet earth.
Surely that'd be very difficult, given the scarcity of 'old' rocks on Earth and the fragility of the evidence?
Yes, but much easier than looking anywhere else. Has anyone ever thought scientifically about how such a search would be undertaken? And, to ask a 6 year old's question, are we 100% certain that 100% of all already known life forms are related to a single origin, and if so how do we know?
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
At least you'd have no problem with the Trolley Problem.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
At least you'd have no problem with the Trolley Problem.
It's not equivalent to the trolley problem because in the trolley problem you know specifically which person or people you are choosing to sacrifice, but you don't know in advance which convictions will be unsafe.
I think this should be rather bigger news. The Fermi paradox becomes weirder.
Not necessarily. 'Organic materials' just means carbon based molecules, not an asteroid dwelling little green person, nor anything remotely approaching life forms. That the universe contains a decent number of carbon based molecules is not a stupendous surprise. It is one of the things carbon does.
That the universe contains bits of building blocks of life as we know it is also not surprising. We would not be here if it didn't.
The surprising bit is that the building blocks configured life and ultimately us. For that to happen remains to a remarkable degree problematic.
BTW the obvious place to look to see if it has happened more than once is on planet earth.
Surely that'd be very difficult, given the scarcity of 'old' rocks on Earth and the fragility of the evidence?
Yes, but much easier than looking anywhere else. Has anyone ever thought scientifically about how such a search would be undertaken? And, to ask a 6 year old's question, are we 100% certain that 100% of all already known life forms are related to a single origin, and if so how do we know?
I think we are - but that doesn't mean only one source of life arrived. It's not unexpected that the 'best' source of life easily outcompeted the others.
Trump says he's signing an order to build a migrant detention camp in Guantanamo Bay
It's amazing there are enough crayons in all the world for these signatures.
"It's a tough place to get out off"
Unless of course you are a rioting insurrectionist in which case...here is your taxi home.
Still, the slight majority of Americans voted for this shit sandwich and so they must eat it. Including loads and loads of Trump loving and voting hispanics whose non-documented mothers who have led blameless lives in US for thirty years will now be in cattle truck.
To be honest I am surprised most of these perverted incels took the time to walk away from their basement computers to actually go to the Capitol that day.
The Warlock: [to Matt] "Why did you bring a cop to my command center?" John McClane: [laughs] "Command center? It's a basement!"
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
Singapore has very low rates of crime. The deterrent effect is so strong that they execute more people for drug offences than for murder.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
Am I alone in having never heard of Tempsford before today?
I still havent heard of Tempsford.....
It is apparently the epicentre of the Reeves-Starmer 'get Britain growing again' plan.
Concrete will be laid.
A sleepy hollow somewhere near OGH in Bedford.
I suggest we send our travel correspondent @Leon before it is wiped out.
It’s where the East Coast Mainline & the planned Oxford <-> Cambridge railway cross. Obvious place to put a load of housing frankly.
Oxford to Bicester and Bletchley to Bedford are already open, Bicester to Bletchley should re-open in the summer, leaving only Bedford to Cambridge to be re-built.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
Am I alone in having never heard of Tempsford before today?
It’s tiny, so unsurprising that no-one had heard of it!
A few years back I mentioned a tiny 'museum' in a barn in Tempsford, which was where SOE agents flew out to France during WW2. The entire airfield was made to look like a farm.
I came across the barn during a run; it was quite a moving place to stumble across.
Am I alone in having never heard of Tempsford before today?
I still havent heard of Tempsford.....
It is apparently the epicentre of the Reeves-Starmer 'get Britain growing again' plan.
Concrete will be laid.
A sleepy hollow somewhere near OGH in Bedford.
I suggest we send our travel correspondent @Leon before it is wiped out.
It’s where the East Coast Mainline & the planned Oxford <-> Cambridge railway cross. Obvious place to put a load of housing frankly.
Oxford to Bicester and Bletchley to Bedford are already open, Bicester to Bletchley should re-open in the summer, leaving only Bedford to Cambridge to be re-built.
I've already sent in my comments to the EWR public consultation. A few vague ramblings about local access to the proposed Cambourne station, a query about electrification and freight, and a more polite version of JFDI to end.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
Singapore has very low rates of crime. The deterrent effect is so strong that they execute more people for drug offences than for murder.
Am I alone in having never heard of Tempsford before today?
I still havent heard of Tempsford.....
It is apparently the epicentre of the Reeves-Starmer 'get Britain growing again' plan.
Concrete will be laid.
A sleepy hollow somewhere near OGH in Bedford.
I suggest we send our travel correspondent @Leon before it is wiped out.
It’s where the East Coast Mainline & the planned Oxford <-> Cambridge railway cross. Obvious place to put a load of housing frankly.
Oxford to Bicester and Bletchley to Bedford are already open, Bicester to Bletchley should re-open in the summer, leaving only Bedford to Cambridge to be re-built.
Pity Oxford rushed to build a business (!) school. If they'd delayed, they could have kept the LNWR station and used it as the terminus with its Crystal Palace modernity.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
Singapore has very low rates of crime. The deterrent effect is so strong that they execute more people for drug offences than for murder.
I saw Conclave last night, and I think @Leon was completely wrong.
In particular his contention that in the last third there was a completely ridiculous plot twist that strained at the bounds of credibility was completely inaccurate.
The reality is that the entire thing was utterly unbelievable. I mean, I could check off each of the ways it was silly, but I shan't.
Because, you know what?
(a) It was fun, with some genuinely great acting. (John Lithgow was amazing, as was the actor who played Leon, who vaped away.)
and
(b) The cinematography was INSANE. It was the best looking movie I have seen for a decade.
So, look past the silly and absurd plot, and enjoy the spectacle.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
Singapore has very low rates of crime. The deterrent effect is so strong that they execute more people for drug offences than for murder.
But the arguments made in favour of assisted dying rather undermine the arguments against capital punishment. If the state can facilitate and help carry out the death of someone who wants to die, why should it not do so to punish the most serious of crimes and to protect its citizens? The latter is not obviously less moral than the former.
If those in favour of assisted dying are prepared to take the risk of some people being coerced into suicide, even through feeling a burden - as some of the comments of its sponsor, supporters and those giving evidence in favour of the Bill to the Committee considering it suggest they are, why should the state not equally take the risk of some people being wrongly executed?
To be clear, I am against capital punishment precisely because the risk of one man or woman being executed wrongly is one I think we should not run. But once the state allows - or actively facilitates - the possibility of bad actors, loopholes and even one person being coerced into death, then it has rather undermined this position.
Miscarriages by state administrators are as bad as miscarriages of justice.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
Singapore has very low rates of crime. The deterrent effect is so strong that they execute more people for drug offences than for murder.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
Singapore has very low rates of crime. The deterrent effect is so strong that they execute more people for drug offences than for murder.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
I’ve heard it said that, in the U.K., when arresting people for other moderately serious stuff, the police always try and get access to computers and phones.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Yes. But utilitarianism has its critiques. Like, the whole trolley problem thought experiment.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
So what do you say to the wage earner and father of two who is told his treatment isn't value for money so he has about 2 years to go when he asks why there is 50k a year to keep her in prison but you cant afford half that to keep him alive
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
Singapore has very low rates of crime. The deterrent effect is so strong that they execute more people for drug offences than for murder.
Do the US States with the death penalty have fewer murders per capita than those without?
Are we so Anglocentric that the US is the only comparator we can think of? We don't have to copy the way the US does it.
Because murder is a state rather than a federal crime in the US it's a particularly good laboratory as there are many fewer cross-cultural differences than there are between American states.
But it's far from perfect. You also need to be very vary of mixing cause and effect. For example, US states with the death penalty may do so because they have more murders, which could make the death penalty look ineffective or even counter-productive. Also there are many other factors to consider. As blacks in the US tend to murder at about 3-4 times the rate of communities of Hispanics with similar income and demographic profiles, and as the states with the death penalty have most of the highest black populations, you'd expect higher homicide rates in the death penalty states however strong the punishment.
Another good set of comparators is Singapore and Hong Kong. Singapore uses the death penalty enthusiastically, while Hong Kong does not have it. Both have very low murder rates, though at 0.07/100k people compared to 0.4 in HK (or 0.97 here, or 20.7 in Mississippi), Singapore's is rather lower.
As so often in these multi-causal debates, you can get the answer you want depending on the variables you use and the studies you cite.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
So what do you say to the wage earner and father of two who is told his treatment isn't value for money so he has about 2 years to go when he asks why there is 50k a year to keep her in prison but you cant afford half that to keep him alive
The NHS budget and the Prisons budget are seperate things.
Should we spend the money on the father of two, or a training sortie of an F35?
If we do that sort of comparison the Health Service would be much better funded!
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
So what do you say to the wage earner and father of two who is told his treatment isn't value for money so he has about 2 years to go when he asks why there is 50k a year to keep her in prison but you cant afford half that to keep him alive
What I am trying to point out and you are absolutely failing to see is we can justify more money every year to keep a murderer alive than to keep a productive member of society alive....that doesn't seem wrong to you?
I need to find a keynote speaker for a conference. Someone relatively famous in the business or economics world, likely to be on the books of a speakers’ agency, and ideally not an active politician or partisan blogger. And someone known internationally because the audience is international. Last year we booked George Osborne for the same event.
We had Mark Carney lined up but for obvious reasons he’s no longer able to do it. I have so far suggested Christine Lagarde and Tim Harford (who’s known surprisingly widely). Flirted with the idea of Liz Truss for the lols. Considering Yannis Varoufakis. Any other suggestions?
I need to find a keynote speaker for a conference. Someone relatively famous in the business or economics world, likely to be on the books of a speakers’ agency, and ideally not an active politician or partisan blogger. And someone known internationally because the audience is international. Last year we booked George Osborne for the same event.
We had Mark Carney lined up but for obvious reasons he’s no longer able to do it. I have so far suggested Christine Lagarde and Tim Harford (who’s known surprisingly widely). Flirted with the idea of Liz Truss for the lols. Considering Yannis Varoufakis. Any other suggestions?
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
So what do you say to the wage earner and father of two who is told his treatment isn't value for money so he has about 2 years to go when he asks why there is 50k a year to keep her in prison but you cant afford half that to keep him alive
The NHS budget and the Prisons budget are seperate things.
Should we spend the money on the father of two, or a training sortie of an F35?
If we do that sort of comparison the Health Service would be much better funded!
Don't be dense....both costs are of keeping people alive....you prefer to spend on keeping letby alive than someone who has done nothing wrong even though keeping him alive would be half the cost.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
Singapore has very low rates of crime. The deterrent effect is so strong that they execute more people for drug offences than for murder.
I need to find a keynote speaker for a conference. Someone relatively famous in the business or economics world, likely to be on the books of a speakers’ agency, and ideally not an active politician or partisan blogger. And someone known internationally because the audience is international. Last year we booked George Osborne for the same event.
We had Mark Carney lined up but for obvious reasons he’s no longer able to do it. I have so far suggested Christine Lagarde and Tim Harford (who’s known surprisingly widely). Flirted with the idea of Liz Truss for the lols. Considering Yannis Varoufakis. Any other suggestions?
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
I just see no pressing need for capital punishment, outside of wartime.
Outside fiction*, the number of murderers in the U.K. is tiny. The cost of warehousing them is minuscule next to national budgets.
*In one episode of Morse, there were more murders than had actually occurred in Oxfordshire in 25 years.
There are about 5 300 murderers in prison in the UK prison. I have met a few dozen as Gartree Prison in Leics is nearly all murderers, and I get a fair number in my clinic. They are an interesting bunch, and apart from being chained to two guards as escorts would not be noticed otherwise. They are surprisingly normal people when you meet them, though the occasional one gives me the creeps.
I need to find a keynote speaker for a conference. Someone relatively famous in the business or economics world, likely to be on the books of a speakers’ agency, and ideally not an active politician or partisan blogger. And someone known internationally because the audience is international. Last year we booked George Osborne for the same event.
We had Mark Carney lined up but for obvious reasons he’s no longer able to do it. I have so far suggested Christine Lagarde and Tim Harford (who’s known surprisingly widely). Flirted with the idea of Liz Truss for the lols. Considering Yannis Varoufakis. Any other suggestions?
I feel for Rishi actually. I expect the speaker circuit is difficult, because what does he represent? He’s not right wing enough to be the MAGA speaker. Not centrist enough to be the Tory remoaner. Not old enough or in power long enough to be the Major/Blair/Merkel/Chirac elder statesman. Not controversial or amusing enough to compete with Boris or Liz.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
Singapore has very low rates of crime. The deterrent effect is so strong that they execute more people for drug offences than for murder.
I need to find a keynote speaker for a conference. Someone relatively famous in the business or economics world, likely to be on the books of a speakers’ agency, and ideally not an active politician or partisan blogger. And someone known internationally because the audience is international. Last year we booked George Osborne for the same event.
We had Mark Carney lined up but for obvious reasons he’s no longer able to do it. I have so far suggested Christine Lagarde and Tim Harford (who’s known surprisingly widely). Flirted with the idea of Liz Truss for the lols. Considering Yannis Varoufakis. Any other suggestions?
Dario Amodei or Demis Hassabis? Both quite frequent speakers on podcasts/youtube/whatever and quite 'of the moment'.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
I just see no pressing need for capital punishment, outside of wartime.
Outside fiction*, the number of murderers in the U.K. is tiny. The cost of warehousing them is minuscule next to national budgets.
*In one episode of Morse, there were more murders than had actually occurred in Oxfordshire in 25 years.
There are about 5 300 murderers in prison in the UK prison. I have met a few dozen as Gartree Prison in Leics is nearly all murderers, and I get a fair number in my clinic. They are an interesting bunch, and apart from being chained to two guards as escorts would not be noticed otherwise. They are surprisingly normal people when you meet them, though the occasional one gives me the creeps.
Most murderers are not all evil. They did something terrible which most of them regret. The typical murderer is not Dirlewanger.
No, she wouldn't make the best Prime Minister. But she is probably the best Prime Minister in the present House of Commons.
That's a bit like saying that syphilis is the best STD to catch.
In that it’s factually untrue. (Chlamydia clearly a preferable STD to catch.)
He said, 'best', not 'most preferable'. So it depends how you define 'best'. (I'd agree that Chlam is 'preferable'.) It's like Harold Shipman being described as the UK's worst serial killer. I'd describe him as the UK's best serial killier. The UK's worst serial killer is one of the presumably numerous people who have killed exactly 2 people. (Someone who has committed one murder is not a serial killer, and someone who has committed no murders is not a killer at all.)
pedantic-betting.com
I think volume is the wrong measure, or at least incomplete. Probably some kind of scoring system needed with judges.
Or, the best serial killers are those we don't know about, I guess (after all, if you're really good at your trade, why would you be caught or - potentially - even detected?).
Actually, I agree. Shipman was successful by volume but was actually quite uninteresting, killing people without much life left anywayand in quite a boring way. No crossbows or calling cards or eccentric themes or really any exoticism whatsoever. If they made a film about him it would be shitter than pyramids.
Your phrase in bold: That is quite unfair. Most were old. But they were not ill. They had families and were loved and many were active members of their communities. And the vast majority were women - about 170 of the 250 he is estimated to have killed. Shipman's victims should not be dismissed so casually and thoughtlessly.
The Shipman Files on iPlayer: a 3-part documentary on him and his victims is well worth watching. It raises the troubling issue that he deliberately targeted older women precisely because he knew that he would be more likely to get away with it.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
So what do you say to the wage earner and father of two who is told his treatment isn't value for money so he has about 2 years to go when he asks why there is 50k a year to keep her in prison but you cant afford half that to keep him alive
The NHS budget and the Prisons budget are seperate things.
Should we spend the money on the father of two, or a training sortie of an F35?
If we do that sort of comparison the Health Service would be much better funded!
Don't be dense....both costs are of keeping people alive....you prefer to spend on keeping letby alive than someone who has done nothing wrong even though keeping him alive would be half the cost.
Isn't the RAF supposed to keep us alive too?
Do you think we should euthanase people with expensive long term conditions so that we can spend the NHS budget on cheaper patients?
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
I just see no pressing need for capital punishment, outside of wartime.
Outside fiction*, the number of murderers in the U.K. is tiny. The cost of warehousing them is minuscule next to national budgets.
*In one episode of Morse, there were more murders than had actually occurred in Oxfordshire in 25 years.
There are about 5 300 murderers in prison in the UK prison. I have met a few dozen as Gartree Prison in Leics is nearly all murderers, and I get a fair number in my clinic. They are an interesting bunch, and apart from being chained to two guards as escorts would not be noticed otherwise. They are surprisingly normal people when you meet them, though the occasional one gives me the creeps.
My father used to teach literacy to prisoners at the local jail near him in Rugby. Most of the people he got were quiet, polite middle aged types from the protected wing. Ie, in most cases, paedophiles. He said it was always an odd experience. These men were clearly not cut out for prison life, yet they were in for some of the worst offences on the books.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
I need to find a keynote speaker for a conference. Someone relatively famous in the business or economics world, likely to be on the books of a speakers’ agency, and ideally not an active politician or partisan blogger. And someone known internationally because the audience is international. Last year we booked George Osborne for the same event.
We had Mark Carney lined up but for obvious reasons he’s no longer able to do it. I have so far suggested Christine Lagarde and Tim Harford (who’s known surprisingly widely). Flirted with the idea of Liz Truss for the lols. Considering Yannis Varoufakis. Any other suggestions?
Dario Amodei or Demis Hassabis? Both quite frequent speakers on podcasts/youtube/whatever and quite 'of the moment'.
Interesting thought. I was actually discussing Demis Hassabis in a completely differing context earlier this afternoon. I shall explore.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
So what do you say to the wage earner and father of two who is told his treatment isn't value for money so he has about 2 years to go when he asks why there is 50k a year to keep her in prison but you cant afford half that to keep him alive
The NHS budget and the Prisons budget are seperate things.
Should we spend the money on the father of two, or a training sortie of an F35?
If we do that sort of comparison the Health Service would be much better funded!
Don't be dense....both costs are of keeping people alive....you prefer to spend on keeping letby alive than someone who has done nothing wrong even though keeping him alive would be half the cost.
Isn't the RAF supposed to keep us alive too?
Do you think we should euthanase people with expensive long term conditions so that we can spend the NHS budget on cheaper patients?
You already do....someone has a treatment greater than the NICE qaly figure they dont get treated even if if would give them a longer life.....don't get on your high horse your profession makes these cost vs life decisions now. You just object to me pointing it out
I need to find a keynote speaker for a conference. Someone relatively famous in the business or economics world, likely to be on the books of a speakers’ agency, and ideally not an active politician or partisan blogger. And someone known internationally because the audience is international. Last year we booked George Osborne for the same event.
We had Mark Carney lined up but for obvious reasons he’s no longer able to do it. I have so far suggested Christine Lagarde and Tim Harford (who’s known surprisingly widely). Flirted with the idea of Liz Truss for the lols. Considering Yannis Varoufakis. Any other suggestions?
Anthony Scaramucci? If he talks like he does on TRIP US he'll be entertaining at least.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
I just see no pressing need for capital punishment, outside of wartime.
Outside fiction*, the number of murderers in the U.K. is tiny. The cost of warehousing them is minuscule next to national budgets.
*In one episode of Morse, there were more murders than had actually occurred in Oxfordshire in 25 years.
There are about 5 300 murderers in prison in the UK prison. I have met a few dozen as Gartree Prison in Leics is nearly all murderers, and I get a fair number in my clinic. They are an interesting bunch, and apart from being chained to two guards as escorts would not be noticed otherwise. They are surprisingly normal people when you meet them, though the occasional one gives me the creeps.
That is my experience as well. Most murderers have just been unlucky when an assault has had catastrophic consequences. The only one I have found deeply disturbing was Angus Sinclair. He was strange.
I need to find a keynote speaker for a conference. Someone relatively famous in the business or economics world, likely to be on the books of a speakers’ agency, and ideally not an active politician or partisan blogger. And someone known internationally because the audience is international. Last year we booked George Osborne for the same event.
We had Mark Carney lined up but for obvious reasons he’s no longer able to do it. I have so far suggested Christine Lagarde and Tim Harford (who’s known surprisingly widely). Flirted with the idea of Liz Truss for the lols. Considering Yannis Varoufakis. Any other suggestions?
If you want a lecturer on elections and political betting, I'll do it (publication list and lecture list available on request, anonymity required if unsuccessful)
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
Singapore has very low rates of crime. The deterrent effect is so strong that they execute more people for drug offences than for murder.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
So what do you say to the wage earner and father of two who is told his treatment isn't value for money so he has about 2 years to go when he asks why there is 50k a year to keep her in prison but you cant afford half that to keep him alive
The NHS budget and the Prisons budget are seperate things.
Should we spend the money on the father of two, or a training sortie of an F35?
If we do that sort of comparison the Health Service would be much better funded!
Don't be dense....both costs are of keeping people alive....you prefer to spend on keeping letby alive than someone who has done nothing wrong even though keeping him alive would be half the cost.
Isn't the RAF supposed to keep us alive too?
Do you think we should euthanase people with expensive long term conditions so that we can spend the NHS budget on cheaper patients?
That's me done for then!
(Actually tbf, because of the expensive NHS investment in me 45 years ago I am confident I have been a significant net contributor to the tax coffers overall. But it wouldn't have looked likely back in 1979.)
I need to find a keynote speaker for a conference. Someone relatively famous in the business or economics world, likely to be on the books of a speakers’ agency, and ideally not an active politician or partisan blogger. And someone known internationally because the audience is international. Last year we booked George Osborne for the same event.
We had Mark Carney lined up but for obvious reasons he’s no longer able to do it. I have so far suggested Christine Lagarde and Tim Harford (who’s known surprisingly widely). Flirted with the idea of Liz Truss for the lols. Considering Yannis Varoufakis. Any other suggestions?
Dario Amodei or Demis Hassabis? Both quite frequent speakers on podcasts/youtube/whatever and quite 'of the moment'.
Interesting thought. I was actually discussing Demis Hassabis in a completely differing context earlier this afternoon. I shall explore.
Say "hi" from me.
(That said, I'm not sure he'd do it. Tim Harford would be my recommendation.)
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
I just see no pressing need for capital punishment, outside of wartime.
Outside fiction*, the number of murderers in the U.K. is tiny. The cost of warehousing them is minuscule next to national budgets.
*In one episode of Morse, there were more murders than had actually occurred in Oxfordshire in 25 years.
There are about 5 300 murderers in prison in the UK prison. I have met a few dozen as Gartree Prison in Leics is nearly all murderers, and I get a fair number in my clinic. They are an interesting bunch, and apart from being chained to two guards as escorts would not be noticed otherwise. They are surprisingly normal people when you meet them, though the occasional one gives me the creeps.
That is my experience as well. Most murderers have just been unlucky when an assault has had catastrophic consequences. The only one I have found deeply disturbing was Angus Sinclair. He was strange.
The sex killers, the torturers, the poisoners, those who plan murder in cold blood, are the evil minority of murderers.
If the police were universally honest, then opposition to the death penalty would simply be on moral grounds. One either believed or did not believe the State has the right to take a life.
But the police lie. Occasionally it is because they are criminals themselves. More often they do it to protect the good name of the police. Or because they are convinced they have the right person. And sometimes they do it because they believe they are good people and the lie serves the greater good.
Bear in mind too, that reimposing the death penalty would result in more police lying, not less. The pressure to cover up the (bound to happen) fact that the wrong person had been executed would be enormous.
So, no, we can't have the death penalty.
To my mind it's also a bit pointless. Even advocates for bringing it back only say for the most heinous, full life term crimes - i.e. those committed by monsters or the irretrievably damaged for whom the death penalty isn't a deterrent - and in some cases might be an incentive.
So really we're talking about punishment - and unless you're convinced of a religious disposition and want to parcel someone off to hell as soon as possible - is being locked away for life with the scum of the Earth really a lesser punishment?
You could say it saves on cost but it's a tiny number of people compared to the prison estate as a whole and savings might be largely swallowed up by the additional hoops you'd have to jump through to get a death sentence confirmed, even in fairly clear cut cases of guilt.
Is it really worth abolishing the moral high ground can use to try and persuade states who use the death penalty in appalling ways to give it up?
The argument that we must abolish the death penalty because it gives us something we can hector other states about doesn't strike me as morally serious.
If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.
Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:
More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation
Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.
The point is that the ledger has two sides when considering the risks to innocent people, but it's true that there's no reason why murder should be the only capital offence, unless you believe in a strict 'eye for an eye' policy.
Take Singapore's policy of executing people for drug trafficking for example:
"This is not a matter discussed between the chancellor and me. Its a Singapore issue. We have stated our position clearly. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking - the penalty is death. In this case it was an enormous amount of drugs being trafficked. Its nearly 400 grammes of pure heroin, which is equivalent to 26,000 doses of heroin if you do it shot by shot. Which means untold misery and suffering to hundreds if not thousands of addicts and their families. The man was charged, convicted, appealed, dismissed. He put up a clemency petition. The clemency petition was considered all factors were taken into account including petitions and letters from Australian leaders. Finally the government decided the law had to take its course. And the law will have to take its course."
Christ almighty that set you off on one.
Home Secretary, shit Defence Barrister and hanger and flogger David Waddington would have been happy to see his innocent client Stefan Kizsko swing. That case alone is enough for me. Perhaps when you rid the nation of dodgy cops and shit Defence Lawyers perhaps you can revisit.*
* There will always be bent coppers.
Ok not saying I support the death penalty as I don't
However NICE hands hand death penalties all the time because its not cost effective to keep you alive on QALY terms....I think from memory its about 20k per each year of life....I can understand why people get upset when convicted people on a full life term...ie the worst cost 50k plus a year.
If I am 30 for example and kill 7 or 8 people I probably get a full life term....even if let out in 40 years and live 10 years after that is 2 million cost whereas I won't get treatment that costs more that 500k a year to live to 80
Are you answering someone elses question? I didn't mention cost savings. My point was an innocent man would have been recommended for hanging by his incompetent defence barrister who later became a pro hanging Home Secretary.
If you hang 100 men ten of which are innocent, but it saves 110 lives that would have been taken by those men (obviously not the innocent ones) its a gain of 10 innocent lives
Just as a matter of interest, how much lower are murder rates in countries with the death penalty?
you make the mistake as most do that the point of the death penalty would be to reduce the murder rate. It is more to reduce the costs of keeping someone for 50 years....and yes you will go on about appeals....one appeal within a month then get on with it
So you would have strung up Letby then?
I would have let her appeal within a few months
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
So what do you say to the wage earner and father of two who is told his treatment isn't value for money so he has about 2 years to go when he asks why there is 50k a year to keep her in prison but you cant afford half that to keep him alive
The NHS budget and the Prisons budget are seperate things.
Should we spend the money on the father of two, or a training sortie of an F35?
If we do that sort of comparison the Health Service would be much better funded!
Don't be dense....both costs are of keeping people alive....you prefer to spend on keeping letby alive than someone who has done nothing wrong even though keeping him alive would be half the cost.
Isn't the RAF supposed to keep us alive too?
Do you think we should euthanase people with expensive long term conditions so that we can spend the NHS budget on cheaper patients?
You already do....someone has a treatment greater than the NICE qaly figure they dont get treated even if if would give them a longer life.....don't get on your high horse your profession makes these cost vs life decisions now. You just object to me pointing it out
No, I am fully aware of how NICE assesses QALY's.
There is a difference though between active killing by the state, and assessing cost effectiveness of various treatments.
Look, the solution to the death penalty is obvious. As shown on this thread, we cannot trust the police but judge’s (with access to all the evidence when the police don’t fail) never make any mistakes. So we need to bin the police, arm the judges, and get them on the streets to dispense summary justice.
This model was first proposed in the late 70s, I think.
I need to find a keynote speaker for a conference. Someone relatively famous in the business or economics world, likely to be on the books of a speakers’ agency, and ideally not an active politician or partisan blogger. And someone known internationally because the audience is international. Last year we booked George Osborne for the same event.
We had Mark Carney lined up but for obvious reasons he’s no longer able to do it. I have so far suggested Christine Lagarde and Tim Harford (who’s known surprisingly widely). Flirted with the idea of Liz Truss for the lols. Considering Yannis Varoufakis. Any other suggestions?
Comments
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2002/1141.html
As for the book "Conclave", it's Robert Harris, so you know what you're going to get: workmanlike, twisty, meat and potatoes. Same as his other books. Okay, but best thought of as the first draft of a film script. Hitchcock would have eaten him alive.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7vd1zjlr5lo
I think this should be rather bigger news. The Fermi paradox becomes weirder.
Concrete will be laid.
A sleepy hollow somewhere near OGH in Bedford.
I suggest we send our travel correspondent @Leon before it is wiped out.
He may have been an undesirable but convicting him means someone else had gone free. Scandalous.
That the universe contains bits of building blocks of life as we know it is also not surprising. We would not be here if it didn't.
The surprising bit is that the building blocks configured life and ultimately us. For that to happen remains to a remarkable degree problematic.
BTW the obvious place to look to see if it has happened more than once is on planet earth.
(Except for stepped pyramids)
Agree about the gsr. The probabilistic point is that it both may and may not be evidentially significant, though legally it was excluded (eventually) quite properly.
It isn't possible on the data to exclude the possibility of guilt.
It is, as happens sometimes, an entirely unsatisfactory case. Evidence is rum stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earliest_known_life_forms
Trump says he's signing an order to build a migrant detention camp in Guantanamo Bay
"In a split second, Russia wipes out three generations of a Ukrainian family"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyp8nkgxj3o
Hope Trump enjoys his meeting with him, whenever.
Unless of course you are a rioting insurrectionist in which case...here is your taxi home.
Still, the slight majority of Americans voted for this shit sandwich and so they must eat it. Including loads and loads of Trump loving and voting hispanics whose non-documented mothers who have led blameless lives in US for thirty years will now be in cattle truck.
Them's the breaks eh?
John McClane: [laughs] "Command center? It's a basement!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Singapore
I came across the barn during a run; it was quite a moving place to stumble across.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/raf-tempsford-memorial-barn
There's a more convenient memorial on the western side of the A1 in Tempsford, near the pub.
Don't forget however as I pointed out I don't favour the death penalty I am merely pointing out two 30 years olds one kills 7 people, one has a disease but they can keep him alive till 75 at a cost of 40k a year but will otherwise die within 2 years....the governement and tax payers only pay for the one that killed 7 people even though it costs more. I am saying thats the argument people are seeing....the guy who did nothing wrong condemned to an early death because of costs....the guy who destroyed lives kept at a higher cost for a lifetime
But the arguments made in favour of assisted dying rather undermine the arguments against capital punishment. If the state can facilitate and help carry out the death of someone who wants to die, why should it not do so to punish the most serious of crimes and to protect its citizens? The latter is not obviously less moral than the former.
If those in favour of assisted dying are prepared to take the risk of some people being coerced into suicide, even through feeling a burden - as some of the comments of its sponsor, supporters and those giving evidence in favour of the Bill to the Committee considering it suggest they are, why should the state not equally take the risk of some people being wrongly executed?
To be clear, I am against capital punishment precisely because the risk of one man or woman being executed wrongly is one I think we should not run. But once the state allows - or actively facilitates - the possibility of bad actors, loopholes and even one person being coerced into death, then it has rather undermined this position.
Miscarriages by state administrators are as bad as miscarriages of justice.
https://www.createstreets.com/projects/creating-new-towns-fast-and-well/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/24/lucy-letby-refused-permission-to-appeal-against-attempted-conviction?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
So should she be killed by the state?
Because, quite often….
I just see no pressing need for capital punishment, outside of wartime.
But it's far from perfect. You also need to be very vary of mixing cause and effect. For example, US states with the death penalty may do so because they have more murders, which could make the death penalty look ineffective or even counter-productive. Also there are many other factors to consider. As blacks in the US tend to murder at about 3-4 times the rate of communities of Hispanics with similar income and demographic profiles, and as the states with the death penalty have most of the highest black populations, you'd expect higher homicide rates in the death penalty states however strong the punishment.
Another good set of comparators is Singapore and Hong Kong. Singapore uses the death penalty enthusiastically, while Hong Kong does not have it. Both have very low murder rates, though at 0.07/100k people compared to 0.4 in HK (or 0.97 here, or 20.7 in Mississippi), Singapore's is rather lower.
As so often in these multi-causal debates, you can get the answer you want depending on the variables you use and the studies you cite.
*In one episode of Morse, there were more murders than had actually occurred in Oxfordshire in 25 years.
Should we spend the money on the father of two, or a training sortie of an F35?
If we do that sort of comparison the Health Service would be much better funded!
I need to find a keynote speaker for a conference. Someone relatively famous in the business or economics world, likely to be on the books of a speakers’ agency, and ideally not an active politician or partisan blogger. And someone known internationally because the audience is international. Last year we booked George Osborne for the same event.
We had Mark Carney lined up but for obvious reasons he’s no longer able to do it. I have so far suggested Christine Lagarde and Tim Harford (who’s known surprisingly widely). Flirted with the idea of Liz Truss for the lols. Considering Yannis Varoufakis. Any other suggestions?
They also have Theresa May and Mervyn King on their books.
But, there is an evil minority among them.
The Shipman Files on iPlayer: a 3-part documentary on him and his victims is well worth watching. It raises the troubling issue that he deliberately targeted older women precisely because he knew that he would be more likely to get away with it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n1h4
Do you think we should euthanase people with expensive long term conditions so that we can spend the NHS budget on cheaper patients?
(Actually tbf, because of the expensive NHS investment in me 45 years ago I am confident I have been a significant net contributor to the tax coffers overall. But it wouldn't have looked likely back in 1979.)
(That said, I'm not sure he'd do it. Tim Harford would be my recommendation.)
I learned that the three most important skills for a detective are an appreciation of real ale, crossword-solving ability, and a knowledge of opera.
So I hope the curriculum at Hendon concentrates on these, rather than irrelevant rubbish like interrogation techniques or riot control.
There is a difference though between active killing by the state, and assessing cost effectiveness of various treatments.
This model was first proposed in the late 70s, I think.