A blog, Letters From A Tory, which I won't deign to link to here, has been a little bit upset with the previous post. I'll summarise:
"Yesterday afternoon, the Daily Mail published new eyewitness testimony, yet you seem to have gone awfully quiet."
"Tomlinson stood out because of his football shirt and seemed in his own little world. It was weird. The van approached and a cop leaned out to shout at him to get out of the way. But he didn’t go anywhere. He just mumbled something and raised his arm a bit unsteadily. It was then it became obvious he was drunk because he wasn’t really coherent and couldn’t move well. The officer yelled at him again and when he didn’t move the riot van moved slowly up against him. It just nudged him gently but Tomlinson still didn’t get out of the way. They tried nudging him again. When that didn’t work four riot police moved in and dragged him on to the pavement. The van moved past but Tomlinson stuck around for at least another half an hour." - Daily Mail
"Now, curiously, you have gone completely silent when new evidence arrives that doesn’t fit with your tribal anti-police agenda. Not a single one of you has even given a passing mention to this new evidence and that, I’m afraid, makes you look rather cowardly."
"Labour Left Forum? Nothing. Penny Red? Nothing. The latter two, incidentally, openly accused the police of murder on Tuesday evening."
Murdering a drunk is murder. Murdering a homeless man is murder. Murdering a Millwall fan is murder. Murdering a man who is standing in front of a police van, whether he was there to wind the police up or whether he was "in his own little world", is murder. Even murdering a protester is murder.
Perhaps you don't care. Perhaps you are so wound up in your own tribalism that you believe that death at the hands of the state is a reasonable punishment for alcoholism, for not fitting in or for legitimate democratic protest. Perhaps everything is so contingent for you that raping a woman who has drunk half a shandy is a legitimate activity.
You won't listen to me, but you may listen to your hero, Margaret Thatcher: "none of us has a right, contingent or otherwise, to uphold the law that suits us and to break the one that does not. That way lies anarchy."(1) I would suggest that murder is a much greater transgression by an order of magnitude than breaking a shop window or occupying a runway, whether it suits the police or not.
Saturday, 11 April 2009
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7 comments:
"His brother died a year ago of a massive coronary and he was reported to be about the same age. So, another risk factor may have been genetics. Bottomline, is that he died as a result of an MI-not a push."
And from the comments. Apparently John F Kennedy died as a result of not having bullet-proof skin, so Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent.
Murder requires the mens rea of specific intent. If Tomlinson's death was actually caused by police, it is vastly more likely to be a criminal act manslaughter or gross negligence manslaughter.
Too many people on the left use the word 'murder' far too sparingly.
sorry, not sparingly, frequently.
Stupid brain!
"Too many people on the left use the word 'murder' far too sparingly."
In between writing these two articles, I paused and looked up the legal definition of murder. But the definition I'm using isn't a problem and it isn't confined to the left. It's simply common usage.
If my bag is stolen I don't hesitate to shout "thief" rather than cogitate upon the difference between theft and burglary. Similarly, if I faint in a car crash I will put it down to "shock" even if the medical profession would scoff at that idea.
Violence was premeditated. This wasn't a crime of passion. Somebody died as a result. I'm going to call it murder, although I respect your legal input too.
Am I right in saying that by a strict legal definition "Hitler never murdered a single Jew" is a correct statement?
That was a spammer linking to porn.
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