I’m a Pundit

Meredith Kercher was pretty much your normal British exchange student, but in November last year her semi naked body was found on the floor of her apartment in Italy with her throat slit.

Now deaths like this are always a sad affair but should the family really be seeking £20 million in compensation, that’s around $40 million, or roughly 8,695,652 pints.  Now it would be naive to think that the family are not grieving the loss, and expecting some kind of reparations for the pain caused would be more than understandable.

But consider this, the average compensation for death in the UK is around £10,000, barring life insurance which tends to hover around the 4x earnings mark.  If the average is £10,000 why in God’s name would anyone try and obtain 2000 times that amount?

While I am unsure of who exactly the parents are trying to sue, since obviously the perpetrators were young and poor, while the government cannot really be held accountable, I think the amount being chased is unfair, unreasonable and in itself unjust.

written by Oli \\ tags: Compensation, Crime, Culture, Murder

I have often commented on the insanity of the British legal system, murderers get put in jail for 2 years while people who are too poor to afford taxes get 10, people who beat people in drunken brawls in city centre, trash peoples cars or break into peoples houses get off scott free, while someone defending themselves gets a sentence.

Therefore it was refreshing to read a story regarding a man, who after splitting up with his wife five years ago became an alcoholic, spending around £500 a week.  He was recently convicted of his seventh driving offence, but spared jail on the offence that he did not touch or drinking alcohol for 12 months.

This isn’t however what made me laugh, as part of the judges verdict, he said,

‘(That is) poor judgement on two counts there — drinking that much and drinking Melbourne Bitter,”

This coming from a country where personal choice in beer is sometimes fought for as aggressively as their support for football teams I could not help but laugh at the judge bringing this rivalry into the courtroom, something that would see a judge suspended in the UK.

God bless Australia.

written by Oli \\ tags: Australia, Crime, Drinking, Driving, Funny, News

It seems that more and more cases are appearing of women who have been kept in captivity for long periods of time by some fairly weird people.

The most recent case is that of a man in Austria who imprisoned his ten year old daughter for 24 years.  During this time he fathered 7 kids with her, 6 of which survived, and three of which were sent to his grandparents with the claim they had been abandoned on his doorstep.

Even more worryingly his wife denies any knowledge of his crimes, despite the daughter and grand kids being kept in his basement. You would have though at least the issue of the food bill might have come up at some point, i mean keeping 7 people fed and watered is no cheap thing to do!

The good news however is that this man will be going to jail for a long time, with kidnapping, imprisonment, Incest and murder of the dead child on the cards.

I think the real question which needs to be asked is HOW did this man get away with imprisoning a girl for so long?

Surely someone in the town must have noticed the disappearance at some point.  I think some real work needs to be done from stopping this king of thing from happening.

written by Oli \\ tags: Abduction, Crime, Imprisonment, Incest, Kidnapping, News

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is indeep trouble over allegations of child sexual abuse and brain washing. This church was founded around five years go in Texas by a man named Warren Jeffs (Currently in Jail as an accomplice in the rape of an underaged girl)

While the members of the church themselves have remained quiet on the matter it has become apparent that several of the children may have been put into marraige at a younger age than 14. The children themselves showed a strong sense of wanting to get married as soon as possible, with no age too young and to have as many babies as possible.

Now while some of the accuracy of the accusations has been debated and the families of the children hotly denying any wrong doing there is some major contention in the courts. (Where mass DNA testing is underway to decide the actual structures of these polygamistic families) . The adults are refusing to say the current relationships between the families fueling the investigation as to wether or not adults have been marrying and engaging in girls who in some cases may have not even hit puberty.

Personally I can see the plus points of polygamy, the child sex abuse is however something that needs to be looked into with all available resource, peaodphilia this widespread is something that deeply worries me.

written by Oli \\ tags: , Crime, Mormons, Peadophilia

Cannabis is one of the worlds most readily available and commonly used illegal drugs on the worldwide market.  Most people have at sometime tried it, and if they havn’t they will almost certainly know someone who has.  Last year cannabis was lowered from a class B to a class C drug at the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs or ACMD.  Their reasoning was that cannabis was a  relatively none harmful drug and that more concentration should be focussed on the more hardcore narcotics available.  This year Gordon Brown asked for a review of this, since he has always been against the drug, the ACMD reiterated their statement however and in a rash move Gordon Brown, someone who is meant to listen to the advice of the boards he set up, decided to ignore their recommendation.  This is coming from a man who has half a cabinet admitting they have tried marijuana.

Now who is the real dope.  Cannabis has a relaxing effect, and while scientists have claimed its use can incerease the chance of schizophreniaby 40% the total number of cases related to Marijuana smoking has not topped 800 cases in the UK, out of around 60.5 million people.

Now compare that to the number of drinking related incidents and issues caused by cancer, not to mention fatty food problems, and the estimated thousands of deaths of starvation in third world countries caused by loss of farmland to ethanol fuel consumption which is being mandated by US and European Laws and suddenly you ask yourself, is the risk really that high?

Put ontop of this the medically proven benefits of cannabis (Which they are constantly trying to recreate without the pleasure for medicinal purposes) and the health problem part seems to become a bit suspicious.   especially when you consider the thousands upon thousands who regularly use Cannabis as pain relief.  I personally didnt think this was such a big thing till my mothers doctor actually suggested she find a dealer to supply cannabis for her back pain.  The truth of the matter is that it is being suggested as pain relief because it is bloody good at it!

Now the government, anti drug lobbys and those with an analy high moral code can all complain as much as they like about how bad cannabis consumption is.  But I will, and always will maintain that the average bod on the street needs something to escape, be it be a cigarette, alchol, low key drugs or even, heaven forbid, religion.  People are willing to risk a little bit occasionally for a bit of fun, you could risk a broken ankle playing football or a broken neck off-piste skiing, but without these things life would be boring.

So why is Cannabis banned apart from the health side effects?

The two main reasons are crime and its role as a step onto harder drugs.  Both I think can be argued.

Crime.  The crime part of this has two aspects, first the money made goes to crimanals (Which wouldn’t happen if it was legalised) and second it drives people to steal for their fix.  Now this I would argue against, sure some people get heavily hooked on cannabis, but I would say the percentage of people stealing for a cannabis addiction is significantly lower than that of alcohol.

Then there is the step onto harder drugs question.  Now this is in some cases true, but in my experience the people who go from cannabis to harder druggs would have done so soon enough with or without cannabis.  While it certainly increases a persons exposure to the world of drugs this would become much less apparant if it was legalised.

It has been announced in France that they will not arrest or even caution anyone smoking cannabis in the upcoming football games. They will however be out in force actively breathalising fans and reusing them entry if they are believed to be drunk.  This to me is a clear indication that neither health nor crime is the real issue, since here marijuana is being used to reduce violent crime in the streets of Paris.

God damn the English system is screwed!

written by Oli \\ tags: Cannabis, Drug Laws, Drugs, Gordon Brown, Marijuana

The Government released a report this week that stated

“Teenagers are drinking 44 bottles of wine or 177 pints of beer a year each, a new study into under-age alcohol intake and violence shows.

The figures relate to 15- to 16-year-olds in the North West of England and stem from a study of 9,833 such youngsters.”

It’s nice to know that the government was shocked by the results, even nicer to know is that the idiots who have been looking into this failed to realise that your average 15 to 16 year old is going to massively overstate his achievements.

However binge drinking in the UK is apparent in many situations, whether it is actually a problem is debatable.  The level of drinking in the UK has remained steady for a hell of a long time.  We drink pints, we drink tehm fast and we have a great time.  And yet according the our newspapers it causes violence and antisocial behavior.

While I would agree that people lose their inhabitions after several pints  I dont think taxing alcohol is going to reduce the problem, since  lets face it, most of the nob ends who start fights in town tend to have something wrong in the head, they don’t need alcohol to start trouble.

The government has responded to this threat by raising the tax on beer by 4p, and it is going to reduce this duty by 6% above the rate of inflation every year for 4 years.

Jesus christ I hate our government.  Not only are they heavily taxing one of the few luxuries we enjoy in our repressed and recessive nanny state, they fail to realise that the trouble is more likely to come from the cider drinkers, especially with the young binge drinkers.

Beer - £2 - £2.50 a pint ($4-$5 )

Cider - £1 ($2) for two litres (Around three to four pints)

The ones who tend to cause trouble on a night are from low income families, they drink the cheaper drinks.  the governments new tax on beer willbring in over half a billion pounds ($1,000,000,000) per year from this yeas tax increase alone.

Go figure why the government decided to tax beer drinkers over the cider drinkers.

written by Oli \\ tags: , Beer, England, Politics, Tax

I read This story on the BC website today.  I am glad to see the Judge and Jury system has finally rejected the insanity plea on a horrific case.

This man Microwaved a two month old baby for around 20 seconds.  for 20 seconds he saw his daughter burn in the microwave.  This isn’t insane, it’s taking a pleasure in causing pain and suffering.

I fully support the 25 year sentence, and personally think his lawyer should be removed from service for trying to claim that the offender Joshua Mauldin was insane at the time he put his daughter in the microwave.

The fact that people are even considered applicable for this sickens me.

written by Oli \\ tags: America, Atrocities, Crime, Insanity