Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh
It would depend on the evidence and arguments, and the explanations given by both barristers (and the Judge) of the laws she was alleged to have broken - unlike you
I wouldn’t have made my mind up before I had heard any of that; I would have made tried to have made an informed judgement based on the information I had heard, and then discussed with the rest of the Jury…
|
And therein is the issue here, none of us on here were jurors because she pleaded guilty. Now, personally, if she had pleaded not guilty and it had gone to a full trial, from what I know (and admittedly if I had been a juror and heard the full case, I may well have learned something more, which may have changed my opinion), they I probably would have voted to acquit.
Why, because what she said was appalling, stupidly unwise, but do I think that based on it anyone would have started making petrol bombs? No! So at best she is guilty of being an idiot, which is not a criminal offence (yet).
But, should she be in prison, absolutely yes, for the simple fact that she pleaded guilty, she admitted that what she had done was exactly what she was accused of and hence the Court had little option but to follow the sentencing guidelines. We can all argue that she was badly advised and should have stuck it out, but she didn’t, it is what it is.
None of us are perfect, people say stupid things (see the Robin Hood airport bomb threat), the vast, vast, vast majority of us are rational people, we can read that and just think ‘idiot’ and move on.
As mentioned in a post above, I think there is a massive difference between some random post on Facebook, and standing at a street corner with a megaphone, telling everyone that ‘the illegal immigrants being housed at your expense at luxury accommodation at 123 Humpty Dumpty Road are all planning on raping your daughters so here’s a stock of petrol bombs, arm yourselves and we march now!!!’
Now that’s incitement!
Now, do I think that some asylum seekers have been guilty of sexual assault against young girls? Absolutely yes they have! But then again it was not too long ago when a former school caretaker was convicted for multiple attacks. Do we castigate all school caretakers?
Of course not! But, but for those asylum seekers who have been convicted of a crime, obviously they are not too appreciative of us granting them asylum so just return them to where they originally came from, which I know this isn’t always easy to ascertain.
So how about this as a plan, any asylum seeker who has been granted asylum here but then has abused this by committing and convicted of a (serious) crime is bundled onto an RAF plane, fitted with an automatically opened parachute and then chucked out of the plane over southern Afghanistan?
Which does sound horribly extreme but ideally the threat of it actually being done might well act as a deterrent!
I want to live in a society that welcomes genuine asylum seekers, people who are fleeing repressing regimes, I don’t care about your religion, sexual orientation, whatever, all I ask is that you are prepared to integrate, don’t expect us to change everything to simply accommodate you, but, maybe, over time, we do incorporate some part of your culture into ours and it becomes part of ours. Because that’s how we all evolve and improve and move on!
This post is far too long, isn’t it? And may have wondered off topic, so my apologies to the mods and I quite understand it you see fit to delete it on those grounds.