"10:30 Thursdays; that's Real Hustle time. A fucking child knows that!"

[chaletian]

Jizzy Chrizzy, I need to stop reading CiF, because it just drives me mental. On a more general news level, this fucking Jamie Bolger case rearing its ugly head thing is pissing me off. I daresay people will disagree with me, but whilst I don't deny that what those boys did was absolutely awful, they were CHILDREN. All this "ooh, they did the crime; they should have the time" bullshit is ridiculous because, as noted, THEY WERE CHILDREN. And, yes, clearly very disturbed children and, yes, sanctions had to be taken, but that was done. I don't know, it seems to me that as a society we go batshit insane when a child is killed. We lose all sense of reason and proportionality. Justice is kidnapped in the middle of the night and we wake up to find Vengeance complaining about the milk tasting funny on its Frosties*. And the press revel in it. They print article after article of family and friends and perfect strangers lamenting the crime and bellowing for retribution. Mothers of murdered children are treated as the arbiters of justice when it's clear to all rational thinkers that they are the last people who should have any say in anything because their children were killed. Justice is blind, remember. Justice isn't sitting there, weeping over her dead child's corpse.

I think I just wish that, as a population, we weren't encouraged to react to every situation with blind, unreasoning sentiment.




Anyway, in other news, I spent this morning in a meeting from 9.30 to 11.30. Then I went to work and had some lunch. Did a bit of data stuff for fifteen minutes. Then went to Teddington for a meeting from 2.30 to 3.30, at which point it was too late to go back to work, so I went home. My kind of day. Also, I bought some pasta from Tesco for my dinner, but frankly c'était un peu ming, so that was disappointing.

Also, to people who are interested in this kind of thing, I recently got volume 1 of Unwritten, which I thought was really good, so I would recommend that.

And finally, the post this morning was seasons 2-5 of Press Gang, which I lent out over three years ago and which has now been repatriated. Woo.



* LOL at my pretentious metaphor.

Comments

[dozydormouse.livejournal.com]

I agree with you a million times over teh Bulgar case. I did not ever kill a child but I do know I'd hate to be judged at 32 on anything I did when I was 10.

Less laudably there is something about James Bulger's mother's baying for blood and vengeance which repulses me and leaes me not feeling the sympathy I should feel for someone whose child has been murdered. And of course had she not left her toddler outside a shop... Odd isn't it the McCann's are lambasted for leaving their child in a hotel room but nobody dares suggest that James BUlger should not have been left unattended outside a shop.

I personally would have charged 3 sets of parents with neglect over the Bulger case.

[megaleena.livejournal.com]

Is that what happened to him? I didn't know that.

[dozydormouse.livejournal.com]

That is indeed what happened to him. In my last job I read a file about those events that completely changed my perception but unfortunately I cannot tell what I read. Howevr as always there is far more to it than has ever been reported.

I am very very sorry James Bulger died but it doesn't give his mother the right to interfere with the justice system. On the same subject I have grave grave doubts about Sarah's Law. I don't think it is a wise plan. Tabloid readers want it, that doesn't make it right.

[balooky.livejournal.com]

Local rumour had it she was shoplifting and leaving him outside shops as a decoy.

[auntie-pat.livejournal.com]

I wonder why Jamie's mother feels that she has a right to know why Venables was returned to prsion - what he'd done. It has no bearing on the death of her child, and she has no more right than the next person to know!