Zimmerman To Face Arrest …

 Politics  No Responses »
Mar 242012
 

Or at least he should.

In a bizarre and alarming incident illustrating the stupidity of the US attitude to guns and gun law, George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin in “self defence”. And then the police took his word at face value, and did not arrest him.

There a whole bunch of really strange about this issue :-

  1. Zimmerman was apparently running around as a self-appointed “neighbourhood” watch guard. Now I’m not sure what the attitude towards people like that is in the US, but I would label such a person as a “vigilante” and say that his behaviour is a clear indication of his lack of fitness to carry a gun. That’s not to criticise real neighbourhood watch volunteers – just that someone who runs around who is not part of such an organisation but acts as though he is.
  2. He wasn’t arrested. Whatever the legal situation is, it seems to me that anyone who kills someone – even a policeman who kills the neighbourhood serial killer in the act – should be arrested. Killing someone is always wrong; it may sometimes be less wrong than the alternative, but there’s no getting around the fact that killing someone is always wrong.
  3. The self-defence argument is interesting because it is entirely possible that Treyvon Martin could also quite legitimately make a self-defence claim if he had killed George Zimmerman. After all from his point of view, he was followed and then apparent confronted by this “strange man” when he was going about his legitimate business. Perfectly entitled to some self-defence there.
  4. The whole self-defence argument is a little weak though – it has been implied that in Florida killing is perfectly legal if the perpetrator believes it was necessary for his or her self-defence. Where is the “reasonable” in that ? To illustrate this, I might believe it is necessary for my self-defence to kill you because I’m unhinged – that does not make it reasonable however. Of course the sensible way of testing the self-defence argument is through the old-fashioned method of letting juries decide using their common sense.
On that last point, it only seems to be unreasonable to let a jury decide if Zimmerman acted in self-defence because our present legal systems grind away so slowly. Ignoring the issue of time, it seems perfectly sensible to put Zimmerman on trial to let a community of his peers determine if he acted in self-defence … or not.

Why All The Fuss About The “Granny Tax” ?

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 222012
 

You know anyone would think the media isn’t capable of adding up to more than 10 without taking their socks off given all the fuss about the so-called “granny tax”. By which they mean the gradual elimination of the increased tax allowance that older people get once the increased personal allowance reaches that level.

Either the complaint is that pensioners are paying the same level of tax as working people, or that the tax allowance for pensioners is not going to go up by the level of inflation for a couple of years. Neither are exactly catastrophic for pensioners – the poorest pensioners are not going to reach that level of income anyway, and those that will be effected will hardly notice the difference.

After all there is no guarantee that the tax personal allowance will increase by the level of inflation every year … neither the normal personal allowance nor the “bonus” allowances that older people get on top of their personal allowance. And why should older people get a special taxation allowance merely for being older ?

Eliminating that special case will make the taxation system just a little bit simpler – something to be encouraged.

I’m more likely than most to throw rocks at the Tories and their policies, but I don’t see this as being worth picking up a rock for. There’s quite a few other things about the recent budget to get excited about.

Like reducing the income tax rate for the wealthy from 50% to 45%; whilst the Tories are quite possibly right about it not being a great revenue raiser, it sends out the message that the Tories are on the side of the wealthy. Whilst they have also done a bit of tinkering with tax avoidance, and added a top rate of stamp duty (on residential property purchases), reducing the income tax rate for the top earners feels wrong.

So why is the media making more fuss about the non-issue that is the “granny tax” ? Someone more suspicious than me might suspect that the media is deliberately drawing attention away from the income tax issue – just how much do these journalists earn anyway ?

Fog On The Downs

 Photography  No Responses »
Mar 202012
 

This is from last week’s day off … which was the one day of the week when the fog was almost entirely solid from beginning to end. Almost but not quite – there was about 5 minutes worth of sun on the train back. But there again, sometimes not so great weather results in sometimes not quite so poor photos …

#1: Flying Over The Fog

Flying Over The Fog

Those distant black blobs in the sky are actually birds – this needs to be seen large.

#2: The Gate

The Gate

#3: Paths Meet

The Paths Meet

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