Oh, that's alright. I did think it was a bit harsh on Bulger's dad.Originally Posted by Monty92
Oh, that's alright. I did think it was a bit harsh on Bulger's dad.
Hmmmm ... he is a scouse b
I don't know anything about Bulger's parents, other than the fact that his mum was distracted when he got snatched, which does seem rather unforgivable. I mean, you can sometimes lose track of the movements of a 4 or 5-year-old, but a two-year-old? Nah, you *always* have one eye on a two-year-old when out in public.
Exactly. I remember kids at that age and the idea that you could lose track of them for more than a few seconds without going into panic mode seems unthinkable to me.
However, I'm sure her conscience has punished the poor woman enough for the last 24 years, so I'm not going to kick her.
On a related note, people generally speaking are weird when it comes to ethics. If someone moderately drink drives and gets away with it, they'll be considered little more than naughty scamps. yet if someone moderately drink drives and kills a kid, the opprobrium goes through the roof. Why? The 'crimes' were identical on a moral level.
Yes, I've always felt dubious about the principle of scaling punishment on the basis of its consequences. It's always seemed to punish bad luck to an unfair degree. I remember that chap who fell asleep at the wheel a few years ago and somehow managed to cause the Selby train crash. He got five years. If he'd given into sleep a few minutes earlier, there's every chance he might just have veered onto the hard shoulder and gone up the bank. Result? A few points on his licence, maybe. The disparity between those punishments for essentially the same offence has always seemed arbitrary and unfair to me.
So do you think the chap should have got nothing more than a few points on his license, or that people who crash onto the hard shoulder but kill no-one should be treated as harshly as if they'd caused a train crash?
That's where it gets tricky, huh?
Sure, but it's a tacit acknowledgement that the state sees it as its duty to exact a blood price from perpetrators. That seems to me to undermine the whole notion of equality under the law.
Because we measure both outcome and intent. Hence attempted murder is a lesser offence than murder.
In a moral sense you are right, there is little difference. You may drive home completely ****faced but without incident. Another night you may tip slightly over the limit and kill a child through no real fault of your own.
The former is a far worse offence but the latter involves a dead kid.
You are talking legalistically. I mentioned nothing of the law. I am asking why our ethical framework as a civilisation is skewed so irrationally.
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