{"id":2107,"date":"2011-12-23T11:05:23","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T11:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=2107"},"modified":"2011-12-23T11:05:23","modified_gmt":"2011-12-23T11:05:23","slug":"john-terrys-potentially-risible-penalty-for-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=2107","title":{"rendered":"John Terry’s Potentially Risible Penalty for Racism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the news this week was the announcement that the Crown\u00a0Prosecution\u00a0Service will prosecute John Terry<\/a> (apparently a famous footballer) for an allegedly racist verbal assault during a football game. Now I have no idea whether the alleged\u00a0offence\u00a0took place, whether John Terry is or is not the kind of person to make such remarks, or much idea on what football is.<\/p>\n

What prodded me into thought was the potential fine he faces for his offence – as much as \u00a32500. That’s quite a bit of money for me – certainly I’d think twice about doing something that might cost me that much. And there are those for whom such a such is much<\/em>\u00a0more significant. Yet for John Terry, such a sum is risible – according to one report, it is about the amount of money that he earns in an hour!<\/em><\/p>\n

This is not the place to go into the ridiculously high salaries that some footballers earn for an activity whilst it brings enjoyment to some, is really just kicking a ball around. But to point out that the variation that a particular fine means<\/em>\u00a0to different people on different incomes, effectively means our criminal justice system punishes the poor rather more heavily than it punishes the rich.<\/p>\n

Fines should be a proportion of our daily income – a\u00a0racist\u00a0remark should cost us 30-days worth of income whether that means 30-days worth of income support, of 30-days worth of John Terry’s salary. Similarly for other fines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the news this week was the announcement that the Crown\u00a0Prosecution\u00a0Service will prosecute John Terry (apparently a famous footballer) for an allegedly racist verbal assault during a football game. Now I have no idea whether the alleged\u00a0offence\u00a0took place, whether John Terry is or is not the kind of person to make such remarks, or much […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[916,915,914,558],"class_list":["post-2107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-criminal-justice","tag-fines","tag-john-terry","tag-racism","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-xZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2108,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107\/revisions\/2108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}