Some more food for thought:
@ Winty - technology is a marvelous thing, but never forget where it originates from - the hand of man. Maybe a computer will be devised one day which can read someone's memories. But that computer will have been programmed and built by a human (perhaps at one or more removes, but still ultimately originating from human hands.) Given how buggy, crash prone and generally poorly coded most software is these days, a computer to read memories will always be subject to error.
@Everyone in general: Question: Many of you are saying that death penalities are humans "trying to play god". How many of you are practising Christians (of whatever flavour), Muslims (ditto), Rastafarians, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus etc? And what do our atheists or pagans think? Without wanting to offend our religious members, in my
opinion the best thing which ever happened in the UK was the decoupling of religion from the organs of state power.
@Question related to the above: If you are against the death penalty for capital crimes, do you also consider war to be wrong too? Ignoring the knee-jerk "of course it is" response, stop and think for a moment. War, even if in defence of your people/country from a foreign aggressor, is still state sanctioned murder. If you are against capital punishment for capital crimes, then you must also be against a country having an army, navy or airforce, even if those will only ever be used in self defence. If you do condone armed forces, how do you reconcile this with your abhorence of the death penalty for capital crimes?
re: Crimes against children: There is a reason why this is such an emotive issue for many people, and why they consider crimes against children to be the ultimate wrong. I would imagine the majority of people on the planet are hetrosexual. Again, of them, I would imagine the majority will want to have children at some point or other. (And yes, I realise homosexual men and women also raise children). Now, in breeding hetrosexual couples, children will always be cared for above all else in most cases, simply because of the biological coding in the human race. A species which fails to care for its young, who are the next generation, tends to die out fairly quickly. Carrying a child to term and then birth represents a vast expenditure of emotional and physical energy for a woman. The newly born child will also represent a huge drain on the financial resources of the parents. Children, and especially babies, are physically, emotionally, and mentally in a total state of vulnerability compared to their environment until reaching a certain age.
This is why so many people find crimes against children/babies to utterly abhorrent, especially if the crime is a sex crime. For a start, almost everyone would agree that ideally sex should be a consensual activity between adults. A child under the age of majority can't consent to sex, nor comprehend the ramifications and possible consequences of the act.
Most of us view crimes against adults in a different light to crimes against children. The adult is far better placed generally to defend themselves or to avoid such situations. The child is not. The adult has at least had a chance to live a long life, gain experience, etc. The child has not.
In my
opinion part of the reason for the current lamentable state of the UK legal system is a direct consequence of our political system. In this country, there is no check or balance on the power of the executive (ie: "the government" or "the labour party" (at present)). The Judiciary is now subordinate to the executive. The House of Lords has been eviscerated, and is now no longer an effective check on abuse of power by the House of Commons. A well orchestrated campaign by anachronistic labour party members fixated on old class battles allowed the Lords to be portayed as exclusively full of hereditary Tory peers. In itself, this is no problem. The problem is that the second house was gutted like a fish, with no thought or discussion as to how best to replace it with a second chamber which
would have a democratic mandate to act as a check on the commons. What we now have is a House of Lords stuffed with Labour placemen. Which is no improvement on the previous system.
In the UK, the
single remaining thing in my
opinion which prevents the Government running rampant is the Financial Markets in the City of London. You can forget the Judiciary (who are too scared to do anything lest they are sacked), you can forget the police (who are ditto scared to act, lest they be branded racist, and whose ages old independance from the politicl process is now over), you can forget the press (who have remained utterly silent in the wake of the current government's abuses of its citizens rights) and you can forget the House of Lords as well. Having Financial Markets as the sole check on Government power may be effective, but its not ideal. Money is a poor guardian of democracy.
The point of that rant is this: Legal policy is now decided
exclusively by the executive. This means they will react in a knee-jerk fashion to pass ill-thought out laws which are more designed to apease their supporters, and ensure continued support at the ballot box at the next election, than they are to solve serious problems. There is no longer and prior process of consideration of the best approach.
Take an example: People in this country are out of work, live in poor housing and suffer endemic crime in large areas of our cities. Yet the Government spends months of parliamentary time farting about with a law to prevent rich old toffs dressing up and chasing a fox across the hills. I mean, for goodness sake, who
really gives a flying fuck. Lets get our priorities straight here.
Oh well, I'm rambling and should really get back to work
