Legal Inconsistencies

The BBC reports that seven of ten challenges to harsh sentences handed down by courts relating to the riots in England in August have been rejected. Disturbingly, among the seven were two four-year jail sentences for 'incitement to riot' made by a couple of jokers on Facebook (riots which, incidentally, never occurred):

Jordan Blackshaw, 21, of Northwich, Cheshire, jailed for four years after admitting encouraging a riot on Facebook, which never happened

Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, of Warrington, Cheshire, jailed for four years after admitting encouraging a riot on Facebook, which never happened

It appears that the two cases are quite different, as detailed by Index on Censorship:

Blackshaw, who will serve his sentence at a young offenders’ institution, called upon his virtual friends to meet for a “lootin’”. He created a Facebook page entitled “Smash Dwn in Northwich Town”. Only nine of his 147 friends responded to the event and Blackshaw arrived alone at the designated meeting place. He was met by police officers rather than fellow looters and was immediately arrested.

On 9 August, Sutcliffe-Keenan created a page called “Let’s Have a Riot in Latchford”. A few hours later, he took down the post. According to his lawyer, Rebecca Tanner, Sutcliffe-Keenan was drunk while posting the messages and quickly removed the event after “a phone call from a friend prompted him to remember his action”. Once he “realised the gravity” of his actions, Sutcliffe-Keenan removed the page and made a public apology. No one turned up for the event, but 47 individuals confirmed their attendance on the page. According to prosecutors, the Facebook post still caused panic in the town.

Even if you accept that Blackshaw should have been jailed, as he appears to have been quite serious about trying to start a riot, four years is nevertheless excessive, and Sutcliffe-Keenan's sentence is utterly ludicrous. It was clearly a drunken prank, and a short-lived one at that which he regretted and apologised for at the time. And for both, four years for something that never happened is disproportionate and clearly a case of vindictiveness in sentencing.

It is in marked contrast to the rugby player Greg Johnson who sexually assaulted a bride-to-be in a pub and glassed her in the face when she spurned his advances, almost costing her the sight in her right eye and leaving her vision permanently damaged. He received a pathetic two years jail sentence.

And we can also usefully compare the cases of Blackshaw and Sutcliffe-Keenan with the evangelical churches in London which are telling HIV sufferers in their congregations that their medication doesn't work and that the Lord will cure them (presumably helped with generous donations to their churches - that's usually the way of things with the evangelicals).

People have died because of this, and yet the most the government can say is:

"Over 60 recommendations were made [in the House of Lords committee report into HIV awareness] and we will be responding to Parliament in the next few months."

Pretty feeble stuff, considering evangelical Christian pastors are, in effect, inciting members of their congregations to kill themselves. These deaths have actually occurred, they are not notional or hypothetical events in the sense that the riots-that-never-happened were. And yet I see nothing about arresting the pastors concerned for conspiracy to murder, or perhaps collusion in manslaughter or maybe incitement to commit suicide.

Fox run to earth at last...

Accident-prone portly Secretary of State for Defence Little Liam Fox has finally fallen on his sword.

How typical of the Tories in their reaction, however - they bleated on and on about the ban on fox-hunting in 2005, but when that most noble of bloodsports is finally revived, all they can do is condemn it!

Come on Tories - make your minds up about what you want!

Charlie Brooker Loves Grandaddy!

I am not - as the title of this entry might imply - accusing Charlie Brooker of incestuous gerontophilia (and possibly necrophilia, as I have no knowledge of the metabolic status of his grandfathers).

No, for the first time ever, McTodd dips his toe into the uncertain waters of - wait for it - Popular Culture. Not only that, McTodd goes on to paddle off to the entirely alien (but very tiny and substantially deserted) island of Not Slagging Something Off!

Yes, you read right - it's not McTodd Hates! it's McTodd Likes! I think I'll have a lie-down first...

Right, having recovered, let the rambling commence.

Listening to Charlie Brooker's new(ish) Radio 4 show So Wrong It's Right, I couldn't help noticing that the feme choon is a track by the magnificent American alt-rock-country-indie-electronica popular beat combo Grandaddy. To be specific, it is Summer Here Kids from the sublime album Under The Western Freeway, which you can listen to on YouTube:
Summer Here Kids Videographic Motion Picture & Song

And because I can't be arsed to link to the official BBC webulous page for So Wrong It's Right, because they keep fucking around with their Listen Again feature so by the time you've found, and read, this page it will probably have pissed off again, here's a link to some sad bastard's upload of a radio show (an entirely audio medium) onto YouTube (an entirely video medium, as implied by the 'tube' part of YouTube, in honour of the term 'tube' being derived from the fact that television was made practical by the advent of the cathode ray tube, thus superseding the pisspoor electro-mechanical scanning-disc system of the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird):
So Wrong It's Right (a radio show) on YouTube (a video site)

Still, (s)he* might be a sad bastard, but it's done me a favour.

Brooker has form with Grandaddy, as he used another track from Under The Western Freeway (the fabulously plinky plonky A.M. 180) for his Screenwipe series.

I have now dug out all my old Grandaddy albums (on CD no less!) and am wallowing in the gorgeousness of them. That is because I am a man, and therefore terminally sad.

*Though I'd wager it's a man because only a man could be that sad.

It's HAVE you cunts, not OF!

What is fucking wrong with people these days?

What simple, utterly elementary part of the English language can people increasingly not understand that compels them to write could of - would of - might of instead of could have - would have - might have?

I'll tell you what - fucking CRETINISM!!!

It is now creeping into every part of the internet like some hideous linguistic cancer. For all I know it may be infecting the written word outside of the worldwidewank, but as I am fortunate enough not to have to ever read anything written by a pleb offline, and as standards are (just) high enough for it not to have affected books, periodicals and newspapers (broadsheets anyway, I can't vouch for the tabloid mindrot read by proles), I cannot say.

I can understand the mechanics of the error - when spoken, especially given the slovenly inability of most people to open and close their fucking mouths properly and work their tongues with some vestigial memory of care and attention to detail, the h is usually dropped from have, and the word is further corrupted to sound like of.

But it's NOT actually of, is it? As even the most peripheral encounter with the English language should underscore, as even the most moronic braindamaged dribbling cabbage of twenty years ago would surely have appreciated, have is not fucking of!!!

Are teachers not addressing this in schools? And if not, why not? If I taught in a school and caught some hideous greasy pimply little shit writing of instead of have I would beat the ignorant fucker to within an inch of his life. Never mind bringing back corporal punishment in schools, I'd bring in capital punishment for that particular crime.

Honestly, it makes me so angry I feel the day Western Anglophone civilisation falls and the Chinese take over the world can't come soon enough.

That'd learn us.