Posts by Joe Wylie
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Would you have the thrasos to say the same thing with other minorities replacing the "Scottish" part of your post?
Minorities such as sanctimonious scolds? Betcha there's a gene for that too.
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Though if they can preserve the gene that once made the respectably hung Ewan McGregor get his ting-tong out in every other movie, I would be grateful.
Heh!
OK, just the kilt gene. There has to be one. Switch it for something more decorative, like bioluminescence. -
Ewww...
Ewww indeed, though it'll take more than underpants. Pray that they isolate the gene that causes Scottishness, that humanity may be rid of this scourge.
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Do we keep them in prison until they die, even if they otherwise qualify for parole? What about rest homes? How would the other residents feel then?
Perhaps they'll be forced to take the law into their own hands, as happened in Owen Marshall's excellent gothic short story "The Rule of Jenny Pen". If anyone's interested, it can be found in the collection _Tomorrow We save the Orphans.
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One thing you've certainly achieved here, Mr Garrett, is to engender a certain sympathy for Rodney Hide. While I'm sure that, once again, you've no idea what I'm talking about, you're welcome to take it as a compliment.
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This is a left wing site isn't it? Are you all champions of the "proles" or is that only the ones who agree with you?
Now you're just being cute. Left wing, right wing - you know there's more to people than that, particularly if they're genuinely concerned about finding solutions to pressing issues without without adhering to blind ideology.
Hopefully you're over the oil rig posturing - dressing up as some kind of Village People stereotype's hardly likely to get anyone to take you seriously, in or out of jail.
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Wadestown liberals....
Been a long time since I've heard that one.
As I said earlier, pretentious prolier-than-thou contest. And you're still at it. So long as sweeping generalisations are all the go, I'll take the opportunity to note that the world's a far more complex and diverse place than the average grandstanding lawyer could ever begin to guess. -
. . . if Graeme Burton is stabbing people in prison, then we're failing to protect society from him, because prisoners are also part of society. If we say they aren't, if we exclude them to that level, then no wonder they don't see any value in playing by society's rules.
There was a drink-driving TV ad a while back in South Australia that showed a guy arriving in jail and being eyed up by the inmates, with the blatant suggestion that he was about to receive some unwelcome sexual attention. As the state had recently increased penalties for such offences, drink-driving was presented as something that could land you, the complacent middle-class viewer, in jail. And it's a received wisdom that such things happen in jail, isn't it? After all, no-one likes to be taken by surprise by life's nastier aspects. Fortunately it was pulled after protests, as it crossed the line into a particularly barbaric area that suggested that being raped in jail was part of state-sanctioned punishment.
I really doubt that Sensible Sentencing et al would have had a problem with such an approach. Hinting at an intimate knowledge of what goes on in the prison system in order to intimidate 'middle-class' critics betrays an attitude that endorses the fostering of monsters such as Graeme Burton within the system because of their imagined punitive value.
There's plenty of anecdotal evidence, going back many years, of prisoners being exposed to dangerous inmates as a form of coercion, with those unpleasant characters enjoying rewards and privileges in return for playing their part. These are practices that desperately need to be reformed and eliminated, rather than cynically encouraged.
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Because of where I happen to live, I've been 'blest' in the last few months with three ex-jailbird neighbours who've been released into the 'community'. One's a decent guy, really trying to make it, the other two live from one drink to the next. All swear they'll never wind up inside again, and all require assistance with such basic literacy issues as deciphering power bills. None, as far as I'm aware, have dependent children, or regular assistance from social workers. Although they're middle-aged, in some ways they seem barely more than children themselves. They're nothing remotely like the stereotype of Garrett's fantasies.
BTW great post Lucy - impressed that you don't buy into Garrett's pretentious prolier-than-thou contest.
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Thanks Steven - forgive me if this has already been posted, but in a somewhat similar vein, Hoogerbrugge. Nails is a real personal fave of mine.