Crime and punisment.

Firstly several people would like this petition to be publicised to widen the definition of 'Hate Crime'. I won't be signing it, don't get me wrong the attack on those two young lancastrians was a horrible thing but it wasn't any more horrible because of why it happened. The sentence for beating seven shades of shit out of two people, killing one of them, should be the same whether you do it because they are a goth, they called your pint a poof or they didn't bring their library books back.
If someone isn't going to get a stiff enough sentence for murdering someone, then the whole sentencing system is wrong. Saying that the defendant in case X should get more years in prison because their murder was due to race hate (for example) than the one in case Y which wasn't is an insult to the victim in case Y as it suggests their life is worth less.
Secondly a report in the garuniad says that a lethal injection review may halt US executions. Personally it sickens me that they are (potentially) stopping executing people because they think this particular method is cruel and unusual punishment. What part of judicial murder isn't cruel (obviously currently in the U.S. it isn't unusual) ending someone's life has no justification. Even if it is in response to them having killed, religion or otherwise, there is no excuse for "an eye for an eye" in this day and age.
Edit
A second petition is being promoted alongside the first

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to try anyone over the age of 12 as an adult in cases of assault.

I feel this is a call for institutional child abuse, I know our society is screwed up, but if it so screwed up that this is the only way to fix it, it may well be too late.

I believe putting children of that age through the adult criminal justice system is likely to either break the kid utterly or for the hard core, irretrievably setting them into a criminal mentality. If we need to improve deterrent to children (and I agree we do) we need to beef up the juvenile system not put them into the adult one.

You might as well advocate bringing back flogging and compulsory national military service.

For those of you who don't know what has prompted this, it was the murder of Sophie Lancaster

107 million copies of the Daily Mail.

In one of those not very remarkable co-incidences I was one of the genuine fresher newbies that joined the online world during 1993 when the Eternal September started.
Now in 2007 I am a bitter and twisted old hand and I am seeing a similar wave of effluent wash over the blogging community. Washing at the feet of the few remaining pillars of reasoned intelligent comment is a sea of small minded NIMBYs, luddites and other flavours of self-centred yahoos.
So let us put up our memorial to the time when this neighbourhood was an extension of debate away from the bastions of old media and out into the wider online community. Now that community is being taken over by reactionaries shouting across their points, probably about how X topic is effecting the price of their house, why Y politician can't be trusted because he did or didn't change his mind on a topic burning them like a case of the pox or why organization Z is lying about climate change to con money out of them.
It is getting harder and harder to try and read vast swathes of the internet, more and more sites have commenting systems attached to their stories and it is more and more difficult to avoid reading the bile appearing at the bottom of perfectly reasonably pieces of writing of all political flavour.
This is one of the factors demotivating me as far as writing for this blog, but I want to continue, so I am trying to work out strategies to seed this blog. I am even thinking of pulling headlines out of the RSS feeds for news sites and throwing them at me in a random order as a starting point.

Extradition and the European Arrest Warrant

The newspapers have reported that the McCanns have consulted Michael Caplan, QC and extradition law specialist. These reports also rightly point out he might not be of much help as any attempt to extradite them will almost certainly be under the European Arrest Warrant.
This is a device designed to simplify cross border justice in the EU and there are a limited number of criteria under which it can be contested in comparison with a traditional extradition request. Firstly the judge will have to decide if on a balance of probabilities the person in front of him is the person the warrant is for; in the specific instance of this happening to one or both McCanns I can't see this being an issue. Then we get to the big difference compared with most countries which we have extradition treaties with. There the judge must decide whether there is sufficient evidence to make a case to be answered (if they have yet to be convicted, in that situation other rules apply) this does not take place in an EAW case.
The only grounds to prevent extradition using an EAW are if the offence shouldn't be subject to a warrant on grounds of its severity, double jeopardy applies, persecution on the grounds of race or a number of the usual prejudices, the request is out of time or the person was too young, medical or physical conditions or the lack of suitable legal arrangements (including measures under the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages). Otherwise it is assumed that as the UK has declared this country to be competent to issue the warrant that their criminal justice system is of a high enough quality to not to endanger the human rights of the person the warrant has been served on.
What will be very interesting is what the more excitable sections of the press will say if the McCanns are subject to an EAW. The legislation that enforces them in UK law is the 2003 Extradition Act, the same act that brought in similar changes (again dropping the requirement to present a prima facie case against the person concerned) to the extradition situation with the USA; The fact that they haven't reciprocated caused very little in the way of widespread public debate until the case of the Natwest 3. At the time the EAW was proposed The rabidly anti-EU newsprint used it as an excuse to attack judicial systems based on the Napoleonic Code and the concept of examining magistrates on the grounds that they weren't British and therefore inferior, but again it didn't see widespread debate amongst the public. So which way will they jump?

The McCanns

Even if you believe their story as they told it from the beginning I think the McCanns should have been charged with something, child neglect, they left their children unsupervised and unmonitored. Obviously, as with everything in law, is a debatable point, but I feel that in a resort where a babysitting service and a crèche were available they should have been used and certainly leaving the patio doors unlocked is a best foolish and at worse culpable behaviour. Gerry McCann has been quoted as saying "We have been advised that, legally, our behaviour was well within the bounds of responsible parenting, and have been assured that no action will be taken." But even that implies he was worried enough about the consequences of their actions to ask a lawyer.
I am saddened by this particular news, I really am, but this just builds on weeks of speculation, especially since the UK scene of crime team was brought in and I hope that all the rumours of them having killed Madeline are false, because I obviously want her to be found alive. But time is going on, it is getting less and less likely she will be found un-harmed and the law of averages does lend theories involving her parents a slight tinge of respectability. One of the counter arguments is how and why could they have done it. One of the most compelling explanations is as a pair of doctors, they could have sedated the children while they were at dinner and got the dose wrong or suffered from the bad luck of a reaction.
I still hold on to a shred of hope that thy haven't been playing us along, but if this is all a smoke screen I am glad I have never played poker against those two, they obviously are the type do a lot of big stack, all-in chip thugging. What they won't have realised,, if this was the case was that the world, especially the world's press almost never folds, pretty much every hand goes down to the river and they especially aren't newbies that will be fooled into thinking a full house beats four of a kind. So what will we see if all the card do get turned face up on the table?

Odds and ends

I have had this post by Ben Goldacre open for some time while I tried to think of a story to write around it, I am giving up on that and have decided to just post the link and a thought.
I really respect Ben's writing on Bad Science and there are some very good points in here and I agree with almost all of it, my one quibble is with point one, lots of places have fostered a great community with actual proper conversations in the linear comments of a news site/blog, check out Radio 4's PM, so I don't think that At best your discussions might work with threaded comments, or with peer voting is right I think in those places there is a sense of community it will make life a heck of a lot easier, in those places where there isn't one or two will develop and on the news sites and blogs where the comments make me think the Daily Mail is a reasoned piece of journalism and the Daily Express is more than a two story pony no amount of change will help.

Since even before I was a teenager I helped out at a variety of playschemes for children with a wide variety of needs, from those with a wide variety of physical impairments to those with milder problems such as Hyperactivity. So I know that the research reported on yesterday will come as no surprise to anyone, we always when shopping for the refreshments looked for the magic flashes on the bottle of squash (all rare in the 80s) "additive free" or "no artificial colours" and when we couldn't find those look through the ingredients list to see which E numbers were in the drink. Even before I read the article the demonic inscription E110 floated into my mind and the cold certain knowledge that giving even weak orange squash with that in the Hyperactive kids would be causing mayhem.

Dave shows his true green credentials.

In The Sun David Cameron set for his plan for 16 year-olds to do “patriotic” national service, which I suppose will appeal to those that believe a bit of discipline will do the nation's feckless youth some good. Unfortunately in the plan is a dropped clanger so large it would squash the soup dragon.

Youngsters going into adulthood will be able to take part in a mini triathlon, military training or the Three Peaks Challenge.

Well large numbers of environmentalists and residents near the three peaks in question Ben Nevis, Snowdon and Scafell Pike would prefer significantly less people doing the challenge.
To give you some context here is some advice from the Institute of Fundraising's Summary code of practice for Outdoor Challenge Events in the UK

• If possible avoid weekends.
• Limit walkers to no more than 200 per event.
• completely avoid late June and early July
• Do not use large coaches - only minibuses as roads are narrow

It is going to be difficult to fit any seizable percentage of the population of 16 year-olds doing this in their summer holidays into doing this without increasing the strain on the local amenities and causing further erosion on the hills. I hope that in the same way that if they do charity work half their terminal bribe goes to the charity, half the cash being given to the kids on the Three Peaks Challenge could go to the mountain rescue groups who will undoubtedly be called upon more often, volunteer staffed charities all.

Letter Published

The letter I wrote to Observer Sport Monthly was published. Not to my complete surprise it has ended up being a tiny bit shorter.

Bank on it
I enjoyed last month's cover story right up until the point when Tom Bower stated: 'Football is not a utility or a bank, but part of the fabric of England.' Football has been around in its current form for 150 years. Banking has been 'part of the fabric of England' for three times longer.
Tony Kennick, Sheffield