Not including Nick Cohen. But including Peter Hitchens, both on cannabis and on pornography.
The Iraq War revealed one of the great, great fault lines. Not between existing parties or conventional political tribes. But across them. If it had not been that, then it would have been something else. As it turned out, however, it was that.
It is very well worth consideration, not least by Nick Cohen, that Ian Brady acted under the influence of nothing "more" than the material that was available under the counter in this country in the early 1960s.
Peter Hitchens, sadly, is disingenuous about the death penalty. Under the provision for that in place at the time of the Moors Murders, the perpetrators in any case could not have been executed.
In his blog posts, he has been moving away from the desire to add Britain to the list of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and those parts of the United States which have only in the last week, after half a century and even then not without considerable opposition, been granted judicial, but not elected political, permission to move their polling places 50 yards without the pre-approval of the federal government.
Even most of those last, though, hardly ever give effect to capital punishment these days. To return to it really would be line up with the very vilest regimes on earth and with pretty much no one else at all.
As for the claim that its abolition would lead to the routine arming of the police and to their trigger-pulling on the streets as a matter of course, the jurisdictions that still have it are the places like that. Britain certainly isn't, and there is every reason to assume never will be.
But there is nothing to worry about. Most people regard the whole thing as something foreign or, if anything to do with this country, then as part of an ever-more-distant past, so long ago that even Ian Brady and Myra Hindley could not have been subject to it if they had been apprehended earlier.
It is no more coming back than black and white television, or only one telephone per street, is coming back.
The Iraq War revealed one of the great, great fault lines. Not between existing parties or conventional political tribes. But across them. If it had not been that, then it would have been something else. As it turned out, however, it was that.
It is very well worth consideration, not least by Nick Cohen, that Ian Brady acted under the influence of nothing "more" than the material that was available under the counter in this country in the early 1960s.
Peter Hitchens, sadly, is disingenuous about the death penalty. Under the provision for that in place at the time of the Moors Murders, the perpetrators in any case could not have been executed.
In his blog posts, he has been moving away from the desire to add Britain to the list of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and those parts of the United States which have only in the last week, after half a century and even then not without considerable opposition, been granted judicial, but not elected political, permission to move their polling places 50 yards without the pre-approval of the federal government.
Even most of those last, though, hardly ever give effect to capital punishment these days. To return to it really would be line up with the very vilest regimes on earth and with pretty much no one else at all.
As for the claim that its abolition would lead to the routine arming of the police and to their trigger-pulling on the streets as a matter of course, the jurisdictions that still have it are the places like that. Britain certainly isn't, and there is every reason to assume never will be.
But there is nothing to worry about. Most people regard the whole thing as something foreign or, if anything to do with this country, then as part of an ever-more-distant past, so long ago that even Ian Brady and Myra Hindley could not have been subject to it if they had been apprehended earlier.
It is no more coming back than black and white television, or only one telephone per street, is coming back.
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