Sometimes you do get surprised by other country's justice systems. A few days ago I read the story of a Kenyan accused in a Kenyan court of abusing a goat. I won't put the link on here in case it upsets people.

But what surprised me was that the victim, the goat, was brought into court. It was quite big and black and looked a bit sorry for itself, its stump of a tail was down.

We are talking about human rights, but that Kenyan court has taught us a lesson about animal rights too and a justice system we can only envy.

Unfortunately for the two accused they don't have a stump of a tail to cover their arses.

They could of course try using their middle stump for protection, but I fancy they may well come to regret it.

The sentencing policies in different countries for the most horrible murders are quite revealing.

In the US they sentence the murderers to death, keep them on death row for 20 years and then give them a lethal injection. In China they take them from the court and put a bullet in the back of their heads. In Norway they put them in a nice cell with a TV. In the UK we lock them up until they die in prison.

Which is the most humane?

I plump for the Chinese method, it's short and infallible. It's cruel in the extreme to keep a person on death row for all those years, and so is forcing them to watch X Factor for 40 years.

As usual the UK prevaricates - and if they try and hasten their death we force feed them, like the Moors murderer.

from what is normally reported about Kenya the goat has the best of the deal, most crims get dumped in a jail that the goat wouldn't want to visit letalone stay in.

which is what we did with murderers of the IRA when they went on hunger strike. Much better to let them die, but that isn't acceptable to the fluffy bunnies - who have more sympathy for freedom fighters like the IRA than they do for their victims and their families.

Domino, if you can remember your history the deaths in prison of the IRA members who starved themselves resulted in even more British troops and innocent civilians being killed.
How do you deal justly with these two now is beyond the scope of existing UK law which Is why I asked the question why did the police not do what they are trained for. The fuss would have died down by now.

I'm sorry but you're wrong. When they let Bobby Sands die in Ulster, it brought the peace process nearer because the IRA realised that nobody was bothered.

And the police aren't trained to kill people, they're trained to keep them alive.

We need the fuss (fuzz) to keep us safe, occasionally monsters appear among us and it's time to throw away our liberal halos and put them down.

I beg to differ on two pionts, the conflict level in NI increased after the death of Bobbie Sands. Knowing a member of Police armed response team I am aware that they are not trained to disable but to act in such a way that the danger to themselves and the public is dealt with quickly and with appropriate force. When firearms are used it is the final resort but one of maximum force.

The real talking began after the Mull of Kintyre crash.

as I was trained (outside the UK) on terrorist and incited crowd control the idea is to take out the leader(s) and many/most will start to dissipate immediately.
that is what "leaders" are, a beacon for their own ideals that almost meet those of the majority - hence the popularity of UKIP/BNP etc.

all any of these incidents, such as BS and others, did was to incite a few rebels who kept up their pressure but were only a small minority. The more that were taken out the less the pressure. Hence the complaint by the IRA that the SAS be removed from NI as they were to experienced and brutal with it.

and as HBG says, allowing them to live in there own shite also proved no one cared - until the fluffy bunnies from outside were called in and started spouting Human Rights.
Perhaps we should have our own version of Gitmo.

And whilst I will never agree to allowing untrained and frightened troops to be deployed (it has happened more than once in NI history), I will also never agree to allowing the type of scrutiny and court action against soldiers who are operating under orders (no matter how strict or fluffy) and cannot be seen to hold back, when those they are fighting are allowed to kill them with immunity - and recently be granted asylum in the UK because of it.

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I believe you are right. What happened was unbelievable, then and still is now. We will never know and perhaps it's best not to.

To clarify, I don't mean I believe it was a terrorist attack, I really don't know one way or another. But it killed a lot of intelligence experts and left the anti-terrorist forces severely weakened. Suddenly it was in their interests to talk.

Jeez give me strength.

Please not another ridiculous conspiracy theory without a scrap of solid evidence to support it.

You misunderstand. Helicopters do crash, the Mull of Kintyre does get some atrocious weather conditions, and the Northern Irish Special Branch did meet regularly with their bosses from MI5 and the Home Office.

Forgetting any conspiracy theories, the crash effectively wiped out the command structure of the Special Branch in NI. The IRA hated them and would not have entered into talks with them.

The serious talking did start not long after the crash and eventually led to the relative peace we now have in Northern Ireland.

Sometimes there's a fine line between conspiracy theories and mere co-incidence, and you can toss a coin to decide which one is correct.

The Republicans signed the Anglo-Irish Downing Street Declaration, something that most people see as the real start of the end. It led directly to the "complete" ceasefire by the Ra. It could be argued that the final blow was the Omagh bombing by the RIRA and the reaction by the Republican movement.

In fact, from memory the DSD stated that the North could never be considered to be allowed to be "repatriated" until violence had completely ended and renounced.