Capital Dumbishment.

   You've probably already heard, it's been trending on twitter all day,  but there's talk of MPs taking a vote on the place of Capital Punishment in the UK. They're doing this because, apparently, a majority of the nation want to see Capital Punishment reinstated. Well, a majority of the nation also vote on reality TV shows and pray to an invisible cloud wizard, So I don't think they're fit for making any kind of decisions. Unless that decision is whether Candeice has a better tits than April.

  For moral guidance on Capital punishment  I decided to look in the Book. No, The Bible, better.; The Lord of the Rings.
 There's a brilliant bit in Book 1, where Gandalf is telling Frodo how he and Aragorn caught and interrogated Gollum, before setting him free. Frodo is angry at this and tells Gandalf that he should have killed Gollum while he had the chance. The following is my favorite line from the Lord of the Rings. And pretty much somes up my entire views on the death penalty

" Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise can not see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum  can be cured  before he dies. But there is a chance of it. " 

                                                           ___

  To me, Capital Punishment is not a question of whether criminals deserve death or not. But it's a question of whether the rest of us have the right to give it to them. And as far as I'm concerned, we don't.
 I think it goes back to the macho-conservatism that I talked about in my first blog post, when deluded people seem to insist that it's justice  'AN EYE FOR AN EYE" they'll scream. I'm surprised this is such a commonly chanted mantra, when decades ago Gandhi completely ruined it by ingeniously adding  '... will make the whole world blind' to the end.

 It also needs pointing out that Capital Punishment doesn't work as a deterrent. There are no results that show that crime goes down when it's instated, and no results to show it goes up when it's taken away. If somebody really wants to commit a crime they will, whatever the the punishment, because, believe it or not; they usually plan around getting caught.

 Capital Punishment doesn't prevent crime, it just pushes it under the carpet. If you really want to permanently reduce the rates of crime in the UK, first do something about the 13 million living in poverty. It's not a little know fact that their is higher crime in poorer areas. Reduce poverty, you reduce crime. And instead of dehumanising the already prisoners, you educate them to be, so when they go back into the outside world, they can get a job, instead of having to revert back to crime.