Posts by Steve Parks
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emotive, Russell emotive.Since when has a law been made on the basis that it is not enforced? Answer that.
Ha! "Answer that" demands the avoider of tricky questions.
Let's look again at Dave unemotively, coolly, conveying a story about assault.
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Paul,
Your answer doesn't really address the second part of Graeme's comment that you quoted, though.
As for Dave, I wouldn't go so far as to say he's a troll, but he doesn't argue in entirely good faith.
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while permitting police discretion on a law banning cigarette sales in supermarkets.
One problem with the "ban smoking" analogy is that, if we did have such a law (which we shouldn't) I doubt a defense would be allowed whereby they only smoked a small, "least harmful" amount and so weren't criminals after all.
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Is it that odd? I can't ever see myself smoking a cigareete, but don't think it should be illegal. I can't ever see myself smacking a child, but don't think it should be illegal.
Smoking inside your house, with your children around, is demonstrably, indisputably harmful to them, even if it's just a few light cigarettes; but I'm guessing few here would want it made a crime punishable by imprisonment.
1) On smoking in the house:
Is it demonstrably, indisputably harmful? That's not a rhetorical question; I thought the passive smoking issue was still in hot dispute. However, if it IS clearly harmful, I think an argument could be made that smoking inside the home with children regularly around should be legislated against. There are other factors involved, though, but in principle I'm not against the state saying a parent cannot impose their smoking on children.
2) That said, the reason it seemed an odd comparison is that the reason most people are okay with smoking being legal even though they may be "against smoking" is that they see it as a personal freedom issue, that affects the individual only (notwithstanding the passive smoking aspect).
I imagine that you and I, and most people here, are of the view that smoking is basically a "bad habit", i.e. an unhealthy habit that we wouldn't recommend. However, we accept that it is up to the individual to run their own life; it is not for the state to make them criminals. That's why I believe it should not be illegal.
That is not applicable to smacking, which by definition is not purely a personal matter, and involves one individual interacting with another by force.
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Rob:
A soft punch by a strong man is still a punch.Mason may not be a "bad man" in some wider sense, but he is a person who committed assault.
I'm not sure anyone here is arguing he should be the subject of hatred "for the position he got himself into". But he should be judged by his actions.
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I've wondered about similar issues, Rob.
Under the old law, couldn't "reasonable force" have been argued in this case, by a lawyer claiming something like "the strike to the face was not even sufficient to cause bruising - therefore the amount of force used was not unreasonable. That is the issue before you... " etc...
One might think a jury would not fall for such an argument, and I suppose so. But then, I wouldn't have thought the jury would have accepted the "reasonable force" defense in the bullwhip case, either.
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Didn't I pull out of the smacking part of this discussion a while ago?
Heh. I guess, with your rather odd comparison with smoking, you mean?
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I don't believe your words of praise had dismissive quotation marks then.
Yeah, people shouldn't use dismissive quotation marks just to suit their case. Ain't that right Dave?
seven if you count the police "witness". - Dave Crampton
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I hadn't caught up with page when I made my last post.
So, if I'm reading this right, Deborah, Russell, and Gareth: you broadly agree with the view I've developed, that marriage is something the state could get out of almost completely?
From a legal standpoint, marriage is pretty much just a contractual arrangement. From a non-legal standpoint, each to their own.
It's another hang over from religious marriage IMO. The state can only allow people that "really mean it in some illdefined and clearly inaccurate way" to marry. That was the priest, the celebrant is the "secular" alternative.
I see no real need for either - so what if it's a "sham" marriage?Quite. In my view, there pretty much is no "sham" marriage; if participants agree to the arrangement, it's a marriage.