Murder Case Banker Gets off Lightly

Lets look at this scenario.

A man is having an affair. He earns around $600,000-1M a year. He is terrified his wife is going to divorce him and worried he will lose a lot of money. One evening he has a violent quarrel with her and kills her. She suffers, during the course of the 55 minute argument, over 40 visible injuries before he eventually strangled her.

But its ok not only is he wealthy, but he is a banker so he must be respectable. So no life sentence for this crime that he was well motivated to commit. No. This banker with 3M savings by his own admission gets a mere 8 years which in the British penal system translates to around 5 years so long as he is reasonably well behaved.


Justice in the UK is all wrong. Some offenses are treated so leniently its a joke but others are treated in a most draconian manner. Its time for a complete review of the sentencing and penal system.

What should happen?

For starters a mandatory death penalty should be brought back for offenders over 18 for the following offenses in cases where the identity of the offender can be proved beyond a shadow of doubt via CCTV, DNA plus one other confirming forensic identifier (fingerprints, fibres etc).

Rape (hetero and homo), Murder, Manslaughter when the death of the victim could reasonably be foreseen by the attacker (ie if he is strangling her he knows she is going to die, if he pushes her and she hit her head then he may not have done).

Self defence should be an allowable defence where the deceased had a weapon, a history of violence against the attacker and came to seek the attacker with the objective of doing him or his family some harm.

The age of criminal responsibility for crimes carrying a custodial sentence should be reduced to 13. Why? Because a child should definitely know right from wrong by that age. If he is being hired as a drug runner by older drugs dealers this is not really an excuse where the publicity about drugs, fire-arms and knives is so prevalent. If he watches TV or even walks down the street and sees posters he or she has to know what they are doing is wrong.

The use of 'soft option' sentences for young offenders has to stop. Many youths sentenced to hundreds of hours community service simply fail to turn up and are not punished for doing this. All sentences should be lock-down type sentences, even if the prisoner is allowed to go home to sleep he or she should be in a known place during their sentence term.

Some driving offences that are really serious should carry mandatory custodial sentences as well. Driving without a licence, or whilst banned from driving should result in permanent ineligability for a licence and a short custodial sentence. Parking offences should also be revised to add a single point per offence to the driving licence and the number of points before a mandatory 12 month ban should be increased accordingly from 12 to 17 (allowing one parking offence per year plus the existing points system).


What to do with all these new custodial offenders? First we must classify them into violent and non-violent. Violent offenders have actually harmed people and not merely threatened to do so. I am really in favour of tattooing violent offenders in a non-obvious but visible place, such as the rear of the knees. Definitely rapists should have an R there to warn prospective girlfriends.



For the non-violent offenders there is a simple option. Let them work on the land. We now have a lot of idle farmland so lets give our farmers a new crop. Simply equip each prisoner with a GPS tag, put a reciever and computer on the farmstead and if the prisoner strays off the farm send him to a traditional lock down jail. Meanwhile while he is on the farm he can grow food and help[ preserve the countryside, lay hedges and so on. Hard manual labour. Persistant shirkers and anybody who causes real trouble can be simply passed on to the violent offenders system.

For the violent offenders American style prisons where they live behind multiple layers of barbed wire, outdoors with minimal shelter, rather than in air conditioned TV equipped luxury would seem to be the best answer. Place these prisons in the uninhabited and underpopulated places. Back this up with soundproof Japanese coffin-hotel style solitary confinement cells for those who are still problematic. The prisoner who serves two years with no real problems can step back onto the farm system which gives an incentive.

For the most violent offenders, they will undoubtedly eventually commit murder or homosexual rape which leads to the death penalty. All executions should be carried out within 14 days of sentencing with no appeal possible (since conviction will only be by secure technical evidence plus statement/admission). The method of execution should be cheap - perhaps a return to the methods used by the Germans during WW2 would be expedient.

This is an effective design of penal system that I believe gives a balanced system of deterrance at a reasonable cost whilst giving society a chance to rid itself of the really 'bad eggs'.

G20 Police Propaganda

So the police have now been forced to release details of the 34 police injuries sustained during the G20 Anti-banker riots.

These life threatening results of an attack by the forces of chaos included:

A complaint of neck pain after wearing a heavy protective helmet for a long period.
An officer who scalded his hand making a cup of tea.
Two were hurt in unspecified accidents
Two were hurt while holding on to other officers in police lines
One was injured after slipping on a fallen metal barrier.
A female officer fainted when she was crushed by police during a maneuver.
One officer was bitten by a dog.
The most serious injury was to an officer whose hand was broken when a piece of wood hit it, however he did not realize this until the day after.
The remaining 24 injuries were bruises and scrapes.

In short the police counted every single accident and mishap even when caused by themselves to the total of 34 'injuries' that they presented to the inquiry to try and justify the level of of violence they used. They gave the impression these injuries were all serious matters and caused by the protesters. Is it any wonder that the publics trust and confidence in the police is now Zero?

Police Hooligans Terrorize London

Can we compare this to:

One Death
Seven hospitalized
'Several dozen' treated by paramedics
Untold hundreds suffering from severe bruising.
Untold hundreds suffering from mild bruising (as per the polices 20 or so).

Sorry but the police need to be accountable for their actions and that goes right up the chain of command to the senior officers who decided to wade in rather than maintain a minimal security force whilst keeping a large reserve 'around the corner' if needed.

Moron Wankers -- Oops sorry More On Bankers

Its seems that even Larry Flynt of Porno/Hustler fame has taken to arms on this issue, see his editorial here. Its very true what he has to say about the history of banking.

Even now here in the UK the parliamentary report on banking has some interesting views not least: 'It (the government) should also review the wisdom of allowing a banking market to be dominated by firms whose balance sheets are larger than the national economy.'



Another interesting one was: 'We recommend that the FSA assess whether bank executives should possess relevant qualifications.' Aha so they failed their economics A levels then... Its nice to know that many of the people in charge of our money are unqualified louts but maybe we guessed that when six bankers ran up a £44,000 wine bill at Pétrus in 2002. They drank a 1982 Montrachet at £14,000 and followed with a 1945 Pétrus at £11,600, a 1946 Pétrus at £9,400, a 1947 Pétrus at £12,300, a 1900 Chateau d'Yquem at £9,200. The food was thrown in for free. Mind you even this pales into insignificance compared to the middle aged investment banker who spent £32,000 on a single bottle of whisky - a Dalmore 62-year-old malt - and drank it with friends in one night at a Surrey hotel in 2006.

The 'tough new measure to reform banking' decided on by Gordon Browns committee actually boils down to ... 'If they continue to gamble and pay huge bonuses then we may decide to restrict how much of their capital they can lend by a few percent.' Since banks typically are allowed to lend 10-15 times their capital this is hardly even a slap on the wrist so its business as usual.

Worse. We have now found that the tax payer has subsidized the generous final salary pension schemes enjoyed by many banking staff at the failed banks... in order to compensate for the slowing down of the economy... when are we going to stop supporting these parasites?

When are we going to learn?

Time To Leave This World Today

The evidence just keeps mounting. A few years ago Scientists were saying large object collisions with planets were few and far between. The odds against seeing one in your lifetime are billions to one they said. Well with the Shoemaker-Levy Comet collision with Jupiter, the recent object unknown collision with Jupiter and now evidence of a planet to planet collision in our own back-yard (100 light years away is our own backyard) we have to revise this opinion. Maybe the odds are quite high that we will see an extinction level event on earth before 2100AD.

Astronomers have detected the infrared signatures of Molten Rock and vapourising Rock from a planetary system in the Pavo constellation. Calculations suggest that a planet around the size of Mercury was struck by a smaller object which was moving at 22,400 mph.

And we just happened to be looking in that direction with the correct instruments at the right time....

As Terry Pratchett once said: 'Mathematicians have calculated that the odds of such a thing ocurring are a million to one. Unfortunately Wizards have observed that million to one chances come up nine times out of ten!'

Jack o' the Green

Full Size View of Jack o' the Green

I was wandering around Epping forest this weekend, visiting an Iron Age Fortification. I took a lot of pictures and while editing one my eyes hit upon this curious picture.

The green arrow points at the head of a strange goblin-like apparition holding his left hand up to his open mouth, he is looking right to left. I do hope you can see this Jack O Green as well and its not just my imagination! This image is not edited (other than by adding the arrow!) and is full size to the original data. I keep telling myself it is just the shade and sunlight on leaves but the proportions and detail is too good, even down to the gleam of light on the head, nose and cheeks!

The larger picture is the original but has been reduced to fit on blogger - the small section comes from the far right hand side.

Whole Picture (Reduced size)


Now at this point a lot of people will assume the picture is manipulated somehow but it has not. In an ideal world everybody should have an open enough mind to believe this is an unretouched picture of something strange. Unfortunately this is not an ideal world....

Political Systems... New Balls Please!

So what sort of political system should we have in this modern age? The original democratic system was based on each individual qualifying citizen having his say directly in the Senate at Athens. As cities became bigger we had to move to a system of representation.

All systems of representation are not truly representative of the thoughts of the populace. Now however for the first time since the Athenian age we can provide individual citizens the power to have their say via the Internet. This makes political parties and indeed politicians completely unnecessary!



Here is the type of system that I propose would make an ideal substitution for parliament.

1. Every year all eligable citizens would be issued with a unique 20 character identification, linked to their name. They can log into the peoples parliament site using their surname and the 20 character ID code.

2. Via a forum system on the site any citizen may sponsor a bill if they can get 100 votes from other citizens. The citizen writes the draft of the bill which is then passed to a civil service cleric for research into the practicalities of implementation and emerges no later than three months after submission as an official first draft.

3. The first draft is published for criticisms and people write notes on what they see as the good and bad points. After one month the bill is withdrawn for redrafting and republished as a final draft one month later.

4. The bill is voted on as a whole, people voting on the bill have to prove that they have read the bill by getting an 80% pass mark on a multiple choice test based on the bills contents.

5. If the bill is declined it cannot be resubmitted in any form for 12 months.

6. If the bill is passed it goes into the refinement stage. Every clause is similarly voted on to be good or bad. Clauses voted bad are subjected to revision as per 3 above and those judged to be good are passed to be included.

7. The final bill is now presented on the website for an adoption vote. People who dislike the bill may post articles on why they dislike it, people who are for the bill can post articles stating why it is a good idea. After one month these articles are frozen and 5 days of voting begins.
People voting on the bill have to prove that they have read the arguments by getting an 80% pass mark on a multiple choice test based on the contents of the pro and con arguments.

8. The bill goes into legislation or is demoted back to step 3 above.

In this way everybody can have their say on subjects they feel strongly about and hopefully a more correct legislation will result because people who feel strongly on an issue often have more knowledge.

Tattoo Removal (Laser tattoo removal and skin graft)

I guess I was lucky that in my teens and early twenties I avoided the horrors of the tattoo shop. Now many of my friends are in their forties and fifties they are thinking again about the wisdom of having a band logo tattooed on their arm or (in one case) Rude words across the knuckles. I have only one tattoo and that is a little dot that happened when somebody threw a drafting pen at me, I caught it and the nib stuck in... ouch!

Friend 1 who had an inappropriate tattoo of an ex boyfriends name on her arm did start out by suggesting that her husband change his name to Gary. He refused and so she headed for the laser tattoo clinic. It took 6 treatments to remove and each one was more painful than the last, however her tattoo is now just about invisible. When the healing process fades it will be gone completely her removal artist said. She testifies that laser tattoo removal is far more painful than getting the tattoo done to start with. She was lucky though - her tattoo was monochrome black/grey the easiest to remove.

Friend 2 had a botch job of a tattoo that was a kind of multi-colored splodge. It was once, he insists, a bunch of flowers but it spread because it was tattooed wrongly. The trouble with multi-colors is they do not take to laser treatment too well. After four sessions it still looked as awful as ever so he decided to go for the ultimate solution and have it surgically removed and a three inch circular area of skin grafted over the spot. Not only was this painful for weeks and incredibly expensive but now he has to avoid the sun since the new skin plus its scar tans unevenly.

Please think carefully before you have any sort of tattoo done. Think 'will I still want this when I am 85?' If the answer is yes then get a monochrome black/grey tattoo, at least they can be removed using a laser tattoo removal machine!