"The People have Spoken - the Bastards"

"Future Legislation?"

"We asked you to suggest a law that you would like to see put onto the statue books. We received 10,000 nominations and five were shortlisted. You then voted to select your preferred choice......and the winner is Law 5:"

"Homeowners should be able to use any means to defend their home from intruders."

"NB: In a tongue in cheek fashion, Stephen Pound was quoting Mark Twain's 19th.Century remark that "The People have Spoken - the Bastards" and NOT referring to either his constituents, Today listeners or anyone else."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/misc/law_result_20040101.shtml


Chocked full of chuckles. Enjoy.:evilgrin:

Other laws suggested included "beheading people towing caravans in the hours of daylight"

This is why the general public do not get to make the law.

Tony Martin has a very active vociferous campaign, I'd certainly not put it past them to organise and makes themselves known on this issue.

Just for info, Tony Martin concealed himself in a specially built compartment and ambushed too teenagers,. He shot one 15 yeard in the back. His last horrified words were "Please! Mum ! no!" Some hero this Tony Martin.

called in and pretended to be Brits in the contest...after all, we had an open appeal here for e-mail fraud in Wisconsin.

More on the idiotic misinterpretation of this poll HERE:

http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/guns/UK/index.plain

And a little actual science on the subject is there, as well:

"The proposition that widespread gun ownership serves as a deterrent to residential burglary is widely touted by advocates, but the evidence is weak, consisting of anecdotes, interviews with burglars, casual comparisons with other countries, and the like. ...The new empirical results reported here provide no support for a net deterrent effect from widespread gun ownership. Rather, our analysis concludes that residential burglary rates tend to increase with community gun prevalence.

Could it be that "community gun prevalence" whatever that means increases in response to burglary rates?

On line polls are not an accurate portrayal of actual opinion.

<i>Rather, our analysis concludes that residential burglary rates tend to increase with community gun prevalence. </i>

Corrolation =/= causation.

So much for "actual science."

get over it.

"residential burglary rates tend to increase with community gun prevalence"

MEANS

"a rise in residential burglary rates CORRELATES WITH a rise in community gun prevalence".

It sure as hell does NOT mean "a rise in community gun prevalance causes a rise in residential burlary rates".

So why anybody (anybody we know?) would bother saying "Corrolation =/= causation", well, I just dunno.

Nobody said it did.

The thing is, it also sure as hell does NOT mean "a rise in community gun prevalance causes a DECREASE in residential burglary rates". Git it?

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what do you expect?

Can you substantiate your description of the events? That's nothing at all like the events as I've read them in the extensive British press coverage. But I certainly could have missed something.

Based on my understanding of the facts, Tony Martin acted reasonably by the standards of most American states.

I always find it interesting to point out to other Americans that the guilty verdicts were 10-2. That shocks Americans who are accustomed to the requirement for unanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases.

http://www.edp24.co.uk/Content/search/format.asp?url=/archive_nnow/features/tonymartin/htm/storyboard.htm

http://www.edp24.co.uk/Content/News/Index/TonyMartin.asp

http://www.guardian.co.uk/martin/article/0,2763,214344,00.html
(There are links to other stories there too.)

A farmer accused of murdering a teenage boy who tried to burgle his house had laid booby traps and slept fully clothed with his boots on, a jury heard yesterday.

Tony Martin, 55, who described himself and his way of life as eccentric, lived in an isolated property called Bleak House, kept three rottweilers in a nearby cottage and had lashed a number of ladders to trees and outbuildings to make a series of "lookout posts", Norwich crown court was told.

Ground floor windows and doors of his home at Emneth, Norfolk, had been fitted with iron bars, parts of the inside staircase had been removed and there was "a booby trap at the top end of the landing".

The farmer had regularly professed his hatred of burglars, once threatening that if he caught them he would blow their heads off. The jury heard he had told police that Gypsies should be rounded up, put in the middle of his field and machine-gunned.

... Martin is accused of killing 16-year-old Fred Barras, a market trader from a Gypsy travelling family based in Newark, Nottinghamshire, during a late-night incident at his home last August. He is also accused of attempting to murder and unlawfully wounding Brendon Fearon, 29, with intent to do him grievous bodily harm.

... Rosamund Horwood-Smart QC, prosecuting, said Martin had been burgled in May last year and items were stolen. "When he reported the burglary he told the police operator, Mrs Wood, that the burglars had left some furniture outside and that they may come back and if they did he would blow their heads away," she added.

... Ms Horwood-Smart said that when officers visited his house to take details of the May burglary, Martin was "vitriolic about criminals, especially Gypsies, and talked of putting Gypsies in one of his fields, surrounded by barbed wire, and machine-gunning them".

Yer the lawyer -- sound like "self-defence" to you? It just sounds more kinda, um, premeditated to me. I tend more to this view:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/martin/article/0,2763,214334,00.html

Peter Tidey, the chief crown prosecutor for Norfolk, said: "Actions such as that taken by Tony Martin cannot be tolerated in a civilised society. When people break the law it is for the law to punish them, not for individuals to take the law into their own hands, whether acting out of revenge or their own individual system of justice."

There's a link here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/martin/article/0,2763,214417,00.html
to a transcript of Martin's own account of the matter, but I can't get the site to respond. In any event, I guess the jury didn't find him credible when he said things like:

"Look, I don't agree with shooting people. It's not something I take lightly. On the night of the burglary I was a terrified man alone in the house...

I always find it interesting to point out to other Americans that the guilty verdicts were 10-2. That shocks Americans who are accustomed to the requirement for unanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases.

Hey -- not nearly as much as it shocks the rest of us when those unanimous jury verdicts of yours end up killing somebody ... whether s/he dunnit or not.

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Nah, it's why we have radio talk shows!

It's just that the people who contribute to them in the UK are actually entertaining. I'd missed that one about caravan-towing altogether last time around! (Non-EastEnders watchers to the south should maybe know that a caravan is a house trailer ... or mobile home, or whatever it's called these days.) The one about banning xmas advertising pre-Dec. 1 caught my eye, and there was another I was kind of taken with ...

Tony Martin has a very active vociferous campaign, I'd certainly not put it past them to organise and makes themselves known on this issue.

Duh, eh?


edit --

Oh, and fond of playing with numbers as I am, I'd note that the number of people who did *not* want this particular law -- even when the choice was beheading caravan-towers and banning pre-xmas advertising -- was quite a lot bigger than the number who did, as I recall.

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Did Stephen Pound MP put forward the proposal like he agreed to?

"Thanks to Labour’s investment in police through the Home Office and Mayor of London street crime has been dramatically cut by more than a third, fear of crime is down by 14% and all crime in London down by 4%" said Toby Harris AM, Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority."

http://www.stevepound.org.uk/

I asked if Stephen Pound MP put forward the proposal for the new law like he agreed to do.