If public executions are bad in Iran, and if Iran is bad to women, both of which are true, then just wait until you hear about Saudi Arabia. But the Iranian and the Saudi regimes are both able to define a woman at all, unlike the British political parties that the Saudis have bought and paid for. Since the Gender Recognition Act admits of Lady Haldane's interpretation, then it needs to be amended so that it no longer did.
We are heading for a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.
It is indeed hypocritical to condemn public executions in Iran and not Saudi.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, Jeremy Corbyn and the Left’s support for Castro’s Cuba-which practices the death penalty and executed over 4,000 political dissidents-was disgracefully hypocritical given their opposition to capital punishment everywhere else (including in free democracies such as America).
My position is that of David Davis, Peter Hitchens and others-that the death penalty is wrong when practiced by the likes of Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Iran and is only justified when practiced by free democracies with adversarial courts, common law, a presumption of innocence and right to jury trial.
I am not aware that that has ever been David Davis's position; someone would have made an issue of it by now. As for for Peter Hitchens, he has devised his "but there are no longer the safeguards" line, as if there ever were, to avoid having to admit where he has ended up. He has similar lines on nuclear weapons and on the monarchy, although he is frankly in favour of mass renationalisation and of the European Single Market. The contradictions of that position are for the people who hold it. Hitchens is also in favour of Scottish independence and of a United Ireland.
Delete“As if there ever were”-the safeguards that existed were the existence of unanimous jury verdicts and jury qualifications. The abolition of both in Britain (which continue to exist in the US states which permit the death penalty) coincided with the abolition of the death penalty here. As Peter Hitchens points out in A Brief History of Crime/The Abolition of Liberty, this is one more example (like the rise of an armed police in Britain since the death penalty was abolished) of how the weakening of punishment for the guilty led to weakening of civil liberties for the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteDesperate, pitiful stuff. There was a reason why that chapter was taken out.
DeleteI must have missed the unarmed Police in the United States. Or the absence of wrongful executions, whether there or before the changes here to which you refer.
Only poor people, black people, and political dissidents being killed, I suppose. Now that he is resigned to being a political dissident to end of his days, even Hitchens has given up on this one.
You have to read Hitchens book The Abolition of Liberty to know it was the hanging judge Lord Goddard who also abolished national identity cards in the 1950’s. Because civil liberties and the death penalty have always gone hand-in-hand. Since we abolished the death penalty we abolished the safeguards of unanimous jury verdicts, an unarmed police and the protection against double jeopardy. None would have been possible if we still had a death penalty,
ReplyDeleteYou do not have to read that book to know that. Like your first sentence, so to speak, your last sentence is laughable.
DeleteEven Hitchens has given up on this one.
As in Britain, the latest polling which I post below, shows the majority of Americans support capital punishment for convicted killers, as did every single Catholic Pope up until John Paul II (whose view was warped by his experience of capital punishment under a Soviet communist regime). People in free democracies tend to support the death penalty,
ReplyDeletehttps://news.gallup.com/poll/404975/steady-americans-support-death-penalty-murderers.aspx
It has rarely been polled in Britain, or in any Western country other than the United States, in anything like recent years, because people found the question offensive, like being asked whether they approved of mixed-race marriages.
DeleteEven America, an extremely violent country, hardly uses the death penalty. Japan, Taiwan and India (again, India is not the most peaceable of places) almost never do so, and no one would be surprised if none of them ever had another execution. Every other country that even retains the provision is hardly a "free democracy". Who wants to be in company like that?