These days, you aren’t allowed to have an opinion and hold any sort of office.
The new deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, Lee Anderson, has said he would support the return of the death penalty.
In an interview with the Spectator before he was appointed to the role, he argued “nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed”.
This is not an uncommon point of view. Indeed, I suspect that it is probably the majority one. On a matter of fact, it is correct. I don’t share it for precisely that reason in reverse – you can’t release someone that you have wrongly convicted and I simply do not trust the state and its justice system to be 100% accurate with its convictions. One wrongly executed person is one too many. Hence, I would never want to see the death penalty return. However, I can and do, see that there are equally pragmatic arguments to be made for reinstatement. This is because I am an adult. Unlike the Labour party.
But Labour accused Rishi Sunak of not being strong enough to stand up to what it called Mr Anderson’s “nonsense”.
It’s not nonsense. He is right. An executed murderer will never be guilty of recidivism. And, when I see people let out only to kill someone else, that argument resonates with me. However, Labour seem to think that this in some way means that Sunak should do or say something simply because Anderson has an opinion that many people share and they don’t, obviously, and we should all fall into line and have exactly the same opinions on everything. Those approved by the Labour party, of course. We can hold differing views and have a reasonable discussion and accept that maybe, we just happen to disagree. It doesn’t mean that anyone should do anything about it. It certainly doesn’t mean that his boss should stand up to him over it. It doesn’t mean that it should bar him for the role to which he has been appointed. Sunak said they disagree. That’s it. Nothing more to be said.
On a more general note,
Mr Anderson hit the headlines in 2021 when he refused to support the England team’s run to the final in the European Championships in a protest over players taking the knee.
And in an address at the party conference in September last year he claimed food banks were staffed by “do gooders” trying to “make themselves feel good”.
No wonder they don’t like him.
Like you l do not support the death penalty, not for any moral reason but because all the time humans are involved in the process it (in my opinion) is impossible to be 100 % certain of guilt and this is where l feel the bar has to be set.
I’m pleased to say that Anderson, during an interview this morning seems to set his bar at the same level. He does acknowledge that there is no chance of capital punishment being reintroduced.
Labour is however ok to be sending arms for a US/UK proxy war in Ukraine and thwarting peace negotiations? Nobody dies there obviously.
The sense of priority for politicians, of all sides, is just wrong.
I know it is heresy. But food banks are wrong.
People have paid tax on the money they spend on the food.
Here the donated food cannot be fresh so it is all processed. Loose spuds not allowed, tinned spuds ok. So straight off it costs more, has travelled further and has its price inflated by the processing, the transport costs, the processors costs and profit and waste disposal of the can.
A win for the government. It gets income tax, VAT, and somebody else pays for the support of some needy person.
The needy person learns to use processed food, and learns nothing about using cheap fresh food.
There are a couple more issues that I think are relevant here. One is the enormous cost of state welfare, huge amount of money spent yet we have people who can’t afford food? Another issue is, how do we know which people aren’t just taking advantage of the availability of free stuff?
Search for and watch a few episodes of a program called Benefits Britain on YouTube.
It’s a few years old now, but you’ll see that in the vast majority of cases, the not being able to afford food is down to the individual’s highly questionable choices and priorities.
Don’t have much money for the week and behind on your gas bill? Why not go and blow it all on a kebab and a tattoo?
I would support it in limited cases.
For example, the bloke who chucked the six year old off the Tate balcony.
Or the ones who starved their boy to death, feeding the poor boy salt.
Just fucking bury them under the prison. Before or after execution is fine.
Why do we always have to jump from one extreme to another. Nobody has murdered innocents when they are in solitary confinement. We should simply enforce the laws we have now and put murderers behind bars and keep them there for a very long time. I’m happy with them being released about 20 minutes after they die.
We have too many examples of Plod fitting up people because they know it is him. When proven otherwise, in some cases after death, its Ooops. We learnt from that mistake and it won’t happen again.
I simply don’t trust our legal system.
Mr. Anderson, a former coalminer, joined the Labour Party at 16 and sat as a local councillor for that party as recently as five years ago. Presumably he didn’t come to this opinion last week. So perhaps Sir Kier might be able to tell us how many of his own members think the same way but aren’t permitted to say so.
“And in an address at the party conference in September last year he claimed food banks were staffed by “do gooders” trying to “make themselves feel good”.”
The Mirror omits to mention that the reason he knows this is that he’s involved in running one.
No he isn’t. He’s being sued for libel by a man who runs one for implying he bribed the council in a planning application.