“I reckon that coppers convicted of crimes should get a much higher sentence than civilians,”

Mmm, I don’t know about that – I am a bit unconvinced by exemplary sentencing. I was “surprised” that the death by dangerous driving cop wasn’t immediately fired instead of being suspended (by which I mean I am not surprised, but he should have been).

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,615608,00.html

“I am, white middle class, middle aged male,”

Oh, that’s OK, then – white middle aged men have nothing to fear from the police! Oh…

you can buy special polystyrene “capsules” that you put the bottle into for mailing.

ooh, nasty.

“I suppose that he could have just chucked a petrol bomb at them and be making his escape. Doesn’t really look that way to me though.”

Even if he had, the same action would still have been (IMO, AFAICS, IANAL etc) assault/manslaughter because there was no justification for the use of force – it wasn’t an attempt to arrest him.

But you’re right – it’s possible that the video clip doesn’t show some crucial, vital fact that totally changes our perception of the whole affair. I’m buggered if I can imagine what that would be, though.

“people who speed should be held entirely unaccountable in an accident as they knew it might happen and their actions may increase the likelyhood but was stil highly unlikely.”

This is the wrong analogy to make because the cop shoving the man wasn’t an accident, it was a deliberate act.

An accident due to speeding is caused by negligent driving i.e. you didn’t intend to hit someone, but it was reasonably forseeable that (say) driving at 50mph around a blind corner might cause you to hit someone.

The right analogy would be if you deliberately drove into another car because you were frustrated that they were driving too slow, you wanted to shove them out the way, but you hadn’t expected the car to skid and hit a lamppost, killing the driver…which would be manslaughter.

“People taking part in a martial arts sport – one person gets a kick to the head in the heat of the moment of competition, dies a short time later.”

Implied consent – there’s no assault if the contact is part of the game. A rugby tackle isn’t an assault, but a punch in the face (even if it’s on the pitch) is an assault.

You’re actually thinking along the right tracks though: whether or not the death is manslaughter depends on whether the initial blow was an assault. In this case – unless there’s something really astonishing happening off camera – I’d say that it is an assault.

I’m not sure what the absurd element of the argument is – that a newspaper seller is entitled to the same legal protection as the Home Secretary?

“I agree that it’s common sense that not everyone is going to die if you hit them or shove them”

Innit – and as you say, the reason the law is the law is written that way is to discourage people from going shoving people unless there is a **** good reason for it. I believe – and hope the courts will agree – that “he wasn’t walking as quickly as I wanted him to” doesn’t fall in that category.

“purposefully flirted with a convicted sex offender,”

Aren’t you disgusted with yourself for comparing fine, honourable police officers to the likes of rapists? How dare you suggest that every policeman is a dangerous and violent person whose brutality is just bubbling under the skin and waiting to explode?

Meanwhile, back in the real world…

“I still dont know why they dont have the G20 on an Oil Rig. All incidents like this solved.”

Well, yes – this is what the Gleneagles approach was – try to hold a conference somewhere remote in order to make sure no-one’s photo op is spoiled by the slightest indication of democratic dissent or any hint of how unpopular these politicians are. Unfortunately, actually holding it offshore would just give the lie to how far the leaders need to be insulated from debate and demonstration – which, btw, is an integral part of the democratic process, not some kind of luxury add-on that should be barely tolerated or (if at all possible) criminalized.

“If I, as an ordinary non-Babylonian citizen, pushed someone over in the street and they died, I would get done for contributing to their death somehow, rather than simple common assault.”

Well said, that [wo]man. Is anyone seriously suggesting that if I shoved Jacqui Smith (who, by the way, is the same age as the man who died, I believe) to the ground and she died of a heart attack, that I would/should not be immediately arrested and charged with manslaughter?

If the police force is genuinely composed of mostly good blokes who are just out their to serve their community, then what’s the big problem with the Police Association fronting up and saying “it’s shocking, the guy’s let everyone down, and the only way of having justice seen to be done is to have a criminal trial”? The answer, of course, is that for them loyalty is more important than justice or the law.

“Its a shame a man died but to blame it all on the police isn’t realistic. He could have walked away quicker..”

Out in the street, they call it murder…

“the important thing is that it appears that 99% of the police did an excellent job”

The important thing is that on 99% of the days last year, I did *not* kill anyone. Why is everyone so quick to pick on the 3.6 days of the year when I did? I think your ranting just betrays your anti-me-ist prejudice. I have a tough enough job to do not killing people without people like you making it more difficult for me, constantly bleating about the few occasions when I do kill people.

“But if he had a heart attack shortly afterwards then it was just a matter of time anyway…”

You’re right – in fact, the cop was probably doing him a favour. I mean, when would be a better time to have a heart attack than when there are so many people trained in first aid all around? And sure, he died quickly – but isn’t that matter than some horrible long drawn-out illness?

In fact, why don’t we introduce a scheme where everyone in the country is shoved to the ground by a riot cop once a year in order to screen them for heart disease? It could save the NHS millions!

“It is normal in an advanced country for the state to ensure that there is a fully integrated transport infrastructure, including unsurprisingly, the capital city. “

That may be in the state’s interest, but it’s not the UK parliament’s responsibility to do that – it’s a devolved power. The part of the state that’s responsible for that is the GLC. ;)

Brave? No. Insightful? No. True? Yes, probably. A new idea? No.

“Oh, and BTW, until this announcement Innocent was a private company owned mainly by the founders with absolutely no obligation to seek the greatest return for shareholders i.e. growth wherever possible”

It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t publicly traded; each of the directors has a responsibility to all the other shareholders (even if they’re BFFs with the shareholders). If you don’t want to grow a business (or, rather, maximise shareholder value, which might be something different), then using a for-profit company structure isn’t the right path for you.

“in 18m there will be no more Innocent. And for all those parents who struggled to get little Johnny to get his veg and fruit in without a fight, thats a shame. “

You Innocent bashers can’t have it both ways – is Innocent just an evil greenwashing scam with clever marketing (the horror!), or was it a brave little juice company that was helping parents get their kids to eat fruit and that’s turned its back on its principles for evil money? You can’t sell out something that isn’t there!

PS – I am slightly surprised that someone said that giving 10% of profits to charity is “just clever marketing”. Do you tithe your wages? What more do you want from a fricking drinks company, blood?

“Future increase in scope, could you expand that point TJ? “

For an example of this, why not look at the compulsory ID cards for foreigners/airport staff: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/07/id_cards_contracts/

it’s being trialled on them before expansion to the rest of us. And what’s this? A new feature? Being embedded into the UK banking network as well?

“Hall also said the agency was considering adding Chip and PIN to the ID card.

Hall said: “One of the reasons for the format of the card is we have the opportunity to put it in to card readers and potentially use it in existing networks such as the ATM network.

“We are in discussions with the financial services industry and, if they come forward with a compelling view of the rationale for chip and pin for them, that’s definitely something we’ll take extremely seriously.

“If we conclude that chip and pin is a key part of making it useful, there’s no technical reason why we couldn’t do it.””

What a load of crap. They have a solution waiting for a problem – they will have ploughed a huge amount of cash into a scheme for no appreciable benefit, and now they want to graft it onto the financial services network in order to make it seem useful. It’s not up to the government to solve banks’ security problems, and they haven’t been asked to. Spankers and liars, all of them.

“Valued employee or not- porn is a line that companies will not overlook. “

Not true – companies will overlook a lot of things – some will still sign off on strip club/massage parlour expense. It depends on the employee and the manager and the industry and the circumstances…

“The checking of expenses for MP’s seems to be poor”

Let’s use a FoI/Web 2.0 approach – publish all MPs’ expenses claims to the web and hive collaboration will flag up the dodgy claims. If three punters flag it as suspicious, it is queued for re-examination, like ads on Craigslist…

“(not to mention potentially being a criminal offence of fraud, but I forget the legislation!) “

It’s the trickily named Fraud Act 2006 (England & Wales). Before that, fraud was a common law offence that could be prosecuted under a number of different heads, IIRC. http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/en/ukpgaen_20060035_en_1

But it would require intent to be fraud, and to be fair even I don’t think that Smith deliberately fiddled the expenses on her fiddly films.

“What was so great about Innocent anyway? Apart from their marketing that is?”

Good ingredients, decent products – and donating 10% of their profits to charity: http://www.innocentfoundation.org/

“Also I don’t subscribe to the theory that businesses have to grow continually to be “successful” There are plenty of nice little private businesses, making a nice living for their owners, who seem to live happy lives without worrying about global domination.”

You’re obviously not a director of a company then – you’d be obliged to seek the greatest return for shareholders i.e. growth wherever possible. That’s what companies are for! Co-ops, non-profits or self-employment have different aims.

Just out of interest – why TF should Johnson be held accountable by MPs of any persuasion?

London has devolved powers. The Mayor of London is directly elected by London voters, and whether he does a good job is for the London Assembly (to exercise oversight) and for the voters (to re-elect or sack him as appropriate). AFAICS, if he shows up for a committee of MPs, he’s doing them a favour, not because he should be under any obligation.

(Not that he isn’t a total tool).

Wouldn’t it be a lot cheaper and easier to, say, make it a law that everyone’s mobile phone had to log their movements every hour of the day, and that that log was uploaded to the cops every evening?

And that everyone had to give the cops a copy of their housekeys, just in case?

And curtains were banned?

Well, if it’s legal, then there’s nothing actionable about it. So change the law/rules on expenses.

You mean like the pumps/siphons instead of letting it drain with gravity? “Apparently” it’s standard on Mercs now.

Noel Edmonds is one of the UK’s most loved celebrities, I am sure he’s beating them off with a stick.

true, but then you would end up having no morals about what you would and wouldnt do.

Yes – this is the problem, I agree. There has to be a scale of immorality (rather than yes/no) because otherwise you end up saying that Hitler was only as responsible as the 17 year old conscript, which is obviously bollocks.

But an employee of Kyocera (for instance) slagging off an employee of BAT as some sort of evil deathmerchant is missing the point about how business works – if you don’t work for BAT, you probably sell photocopiers to them (as it were).

I would be unlikely to accept a job with a tobacco company, but I have done consultancy work for them (for my employer) in the past. So…

Edit: the point being that you can’t get into some morality arms race about tobacco companies’ behaviour: either illegalize what is wrong, or just expect them to get on with it.

great apes – genius work.

Well, you know, if you say that anyone who commits horrible crimes is mentally ill, then yeah, but I don’t think that is logical or factual.

Meanwhile – understanding the story behind the sentencing isn’t immediately easy because I can’t find any media reports that aren’t the Daily Fail or the Lowestoft Gazette.

There’s an argument that says that working for BAT is obviously worse than working for, say, John Lewis – but there’s also an argument that says anyone looking for clean hands in massively interconnected global capitalism is engaged in a futile game of moral one-upmanship (sp?).

“I once met somone who worked for De Beers and questioned how they could work for a company like that; hate them I do”

Do you feel the same way about Cadbury’s or Douwe Egbert/Sara Lee? You know that De Beers doesn’t work in conflict zones, right – its mining ops are well out of conflict zones, and its buyers are all bought into the Kimberley Process (as far as it goes)? You know what chocolate and coffee workers’ conditions are like, don’t you?

he is able to speak for himself, but i suspect that you have misinterpreted GG’s post if you think he is some Muslim-basher.

You should feel free to politely refuse if you don’t feel comfortable doing it. Ideally, she needs someone independent (i.e. who doesn’t have to worry about recrimination from the boss) and well-informed about the various issues. With respect, you’re not either (and I wouldn’t be in your position either). But if you explain this to her, and she still just wants someone to sit with her, be a fresh pair of ears, and doesn’t have anyone else – you could try doing your best.

I have to say that while I usually find myself on the other side from the “string ’em up, fackin judges don’t know nothing, PC gone mad” crowd, I am surprised to see that BBC article. There must be something pretty substantial/exceptional in the substance of the case to make five years appropriate – or else it’s simply a wrong decision.

“Perhaps I should go abit further being a racist appears to be a bigger crime in this society than being a rapist, beating up old folk, physically hurting innocent folk etc”

Yes – just look at the long prison sentences that John Tyndall, Nick Griffin, Jim Davidson and Bernard Manning all got. Oh, wait…

can’t believe you guessed that!

d’oh, double post.

“i remember helping my parents check under there cars in the 90s”

That’s bizarre behaviour if there isn’t some specific reason for it (like, being an RUC/IRA member, drug dealer, exiled political leader…).

Clarke might conceivably be one of the straight ones – although only because he was raking in so much from his outside jobs.

“he wasn’t giving a testimony in a court of law”

or even a court of tennis! ;)

If you’re interested in crap arrests (oh, and the occasional civil liberty), then you’d do worse than to follow Schnews (www.schnews.org.uk, I think). Based in Brighton, it’s like a political fanzine, sent out by email once a week. A regular feature is “Crap Arrest Of The Week” – and it’s from reading that I can tell you that this is not the first time someone has been arrested for chalking on the road/pavement, it’s has already happened some years ago. Can’t remember the details though.