Comments on: Sun rises in east

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 05:02:00 +0000

I didn't say "all laws".

By: Andrew Bartlett

Andrew Bartlett — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 04:45:00 +0000

The codification of all circumstances is not just practically imossible, but logically impossible.

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 04:08:00 +0000

"not grossly disproportionate" is another totally ambiguous phrase for lawyers to argue over at 500 quid an hour. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some laws which actually said what you may or may not do, so that you’d know when you’d broken them?

By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 15:31:00 +0000

Decent Conservatives also reject the ‘any’ action, preferring ‘not grossly disproportionate’. I think that’s silly, but it’s certainly better than ‘any’.

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 15:23:00 +0000

To be fair, the reason it says "reasonably or not" is the way "reasonable" has been defined by the Government regarding force. The trouble with "reasonable" is that it's a carte blanche for future governments to redefine it to mean "no". That being said, there's probably a better solution to that problem than stating "reasonably or not".

I think there's a substantive difference between reason for killing and intent to kill. The difference between murder and manslaughter is the difference between a murderer and a non-murderer.

Besides, no-one's discussing whether character and likelihood to reoffend should be taken into account with sentencing, since they always were. The problem with the law on racially aggravated murder is that it stopped likelihood to reoffend being taken into account at the sentencing stage, shifting it to the evidence-gathering stage and the plea-bargaining stage, making it more difficult to obtain the appropriate longer sentences. But, hey, it sent the right message. Oh, joy.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 13:23:00 +0000

It appears if he did there could be no legal sanction. I never said lots of Conservatives want to give everyone a James Bond style licence to kill, so I don't really understand you. I said:

"A lot of Conservatives wish to take this further, arguing that you should have the right to kill anyone on any part of your property you have the slightest suspicion might be a burglar, without any legal sanction at all"

Which is exactly what the bill allows, in fact it doesn't even require the suspicion to be reasonable, as it says "reasonably or not".

By: JuliaM

JuliaM — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 13:06:00 +0000

'Which I think justifies my statement'

Well hardly. I've read the pdf & it's not really James Bond's licence to kill, is it..? And what is your point regarding the garden? Are you expecting to see a homeowner standing over the neighbor's kiddie's corpse saying 'Yes, I know officer, it turns out he was just retrieving his ball but I thought he was a burglar' if this law passes?

By: Pete_London

Pete_London — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 12:57:00 +0000

JuliaM

What this bunch of liberal bedwetters is saying is that some lives are more valuable than others. They are being judgemental and discriminatory (nothing wrong in that of course) but, being liberal bedwetters, they cannot bring themselves to admit it.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 12:32:00 +0000

"What this law does is put a tariff on an act based on the reason for the intent to murder."

As Dsquared said this is not a new thing. Of course it matters little to the chap who is murdered (or even say if they were seriously injured) but it matters a lot to other potential victims of the murderer, ie the public. I think courts would deal more seriously with someone who murders people merely because they spilled his pint than someone who killed a burglar.

Talking of which, if you haven’t seen anyone advocate this policy you haven’t been looking very hard. Tory MP Roger Gale issued a private members bill (http://www.rogergale.co.uk/hcb36.pdf) which (you can click on the link but I have cut bits out for clarity and capitalised bits for emphasis) would make the law:

A (the householder) is NOT GUILTY of an offence by reason of ANY act done by him in relation to the person …(B)…who is in the dwelling or is attempting to gain entry to the dwelling…if A believes REASONABLY OR NOT, that …A is acting …in self defence, in defence of another person…to preserve or protect property…or to apprehend B…

Which I think justifies my statement, particularly the reasonable or not bit (and note dwelling in English law means your garden too).

By: JuliaM

JuliaM — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 12:16:00 +0000

"the 'wrong opinions' are not, 'I hate black people'. But rather, 'I hate black people and believe that it is legitimate for me to express that through murder'"

Well, it would never be legitimate for you to murder someone (as defined as illegal killing), regardless of the reason for it.

What this law does is put a tariff on an act based on the reason for the intent to murder. I would say it matters little to the chap who is murdered whether it was because he was black, Jewish, homosexual, or because he spilled someone's pint in a pub. Dead is dead. If you are the type to randomly attack strangers on the basis that they spilled your pint, or wore the wrong footie shirt, are you somehow less of a threat to society than because you attack strangers for any of the other reasons?

And as for "A lot of Conservatives wish to take this further, arguing that you should have the right to kill anyone on any part of your property you have the slightest suspicion might be a burglar, without any legal sanction at all" I haven't seen anyone with anything serious to say on this subject suggest any such thing....

Sure, there are idiots on both sides of the self defence argument (as any other argument in the blogosphere), but that doesn't seem to be the position of any of the supporters of the bill I've read.