Scottish comedian Brian Limond (@daftlimmy) expressed how happy he would be when Thatcher dies and Louise Mensch, the Conservative MP for Corby, is horrified, horrified I tells you, that the BBC would employ such a man…
Free speech includes the right to be offensive. It includes the right to describe an old woman in terms of such bitter hatred that you talk about her death being a jackpot. It includes the right to post faux-serious arguments like saying you are “removed from reality” if you don’t see that old woman’s death as a celebration. But the point is that our license fee should not go to BBC Scotland so they can commission multiple series from a healthy, middle-aged male who chooses to rain such hate on a woman of eighty-six, now mentally frail, vulnerable and unable to answer him back or defend herself. I hope Mr Limond feels like a big man for frothing over the forthcoming death of a very old woman.
Brian Limond didn’t say he would kill the ex-Priminister, just that he would be so happy he doesn’t think his heart would be able to take it.
I can only imagine how upset and disturbed Louise Mensch is about another BBC employee stating how, if he were in charge he would execute people in front of their family for striking…
Clarkson was asked what he would do with strikers, he replied: “I would have them all shot.”
He continued: “I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families.”
I await an outraged article in a newspaper somewhere calling for the BBC to give this psychopath the sack instead of our hard earned licence fee.
(last paragraph amended so it wasn’t a load of gibberish)
I missed this the other day, Vince Cable changing his mind about granting an export licence for a drug used in some American states for executing Death row prisoners…
Mr Cable initially said he could not restrict exports – but lawyers from Leigh and Day, working with Reprieve, subsequently established that no European supplies to the US were being used in medicine – meaning that they were only going to death row.
Furthermore, one of the manufacturers identified in the legal action said it did not oppose the government imposing export restrictions.
Excellent news.
So, Legal Aid is being used pay for a Judicial Review on the decision by Vince Cable not to block an export licence for the UK company to export to the USA a drug used in executions.
The review is being brought o behalf of two death row prisoners by Reprieve who…
Reprieve uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
We investigate, we litigate and we educate, working on the frontline, providing legal support to prisoners unable to pay for it themselves. We promote the rule of law around the world, and secure each person’s right to a fair trial. And in doing so, we save lives.
Without looking into them further, they sound quite an admirable organisation.
But, on the the point of using Legal Aid for this review, fair enough. The UK government, in allowing this export, is complicit in the execution of prisoners. These two guys on death row do not have the means to challenge Vinces’ decision. It is a UK company, enabled by the UK government that is knowingly providing the means for these executions to go ahead. It is only right that this should be challenged.
The UK doesn’t extradite to suspects to countries when, if found guilty, the result is execution. So what is the difference between exporting people to their deaths and exporting the means when it is known it will be used for executions? None.
The reason for allowing the export of this drug?
“Sodium thiopental is a medicine. Its primary use is as an anaesthetic … Legitimate trade of medical value would be affected by any restriction on the export of this product from the UK.” Any ban would be ineffective, he added, because supplies could be obtained from elsewhere.
Try changing what’s being exported from a drug to weapons. Would the government allow the export of weapons, whose primary and legitimate use is for defence against invaders, to a country that was shooting up it’s own people? (Ok, the government probably does, but you get the idea.)
And the reason that supplies could be obtained from eslewhere anyway is just risable that it hardly needs rebutting. The point would be that we, as a country would not be part of something that we are supposedly against.
This then, the actions that Reprieve are taking and how it is funded, I think is A Good Thing.
