03:10 p.m., Friday, February 22, 2002
And it just breaks my heart that noone cares about Afghanistan any more.

People are starving out there, and what are we doing? Bush is touring Korea and China. (If he went to Afghanistan, I certainly didn't hear about it.) Blair is trying to divert attention from the latest government scandal. The Brit Awards were this week. Ho hum, how normal life is.

PEOPLE. THESE PEOPLE ARE DYING. IGNORING THEIR PLIGHT WILL JUST GET US ATTACKED AGAIN. WHY SHOULDN'T THEY, WHEN WE DON'T CARE?
[by Beth] comments?

03:07 p.m., Friday, February 22, 2002
Yes, it's a very depressing news week. I hope that there is some breakthrough in this case soon. It seems incredible - in the literal sense of the word - that a boy could die like this and not be identified or missed for so long.
[by Beth] comments?

02:57 p.m., Friday, February 22, 2002
Sometimes too much imagination is a bad thing. When I heard this morning about the murder of Daniel Pearl, I couldn't help thinking about his wife and how she will have to make the choice whether to watch the video of her husband's murder. I can imagine it will be a horrendous decision for her and if I was in that situation I don't believe I could ever make a decision I was happy with. Seeing it would haunt me, but not seeing it but knowing it was out there.... it must be terrible for her.
[by Beth] comments?

02:39 p.m., Friday, February 22, 2002
It's good to know that some policemen in the UK have the guts, the courage and the conviction to speak out like this.
[by Beth] comments?

01:55 p.m., Friday, February 22, 2002
I know it's not exactly the same, but this case demonstrates many of the reason's I'm against parents having access to registers of paedophiles.
[by Beth] comments?

01:49 p.m., Friday, February 22, 2002
The Pentagon now has its own propaganda unit to help it win the propaganda war against Muslim extremists.

There are not words that can describe what a bad idea I think this is. Destroy a regime with lies? Why not tell them the truth and let them make up their own minds?
[by Beth] comments?

01:40 p.m., Friday, February 22, 2002
After my post yesterday about the effectiveness of jailing criminals as a punishment and deterrent, I find this article about the lack of support available to victims of crime in the UK. Only 3% of crime victims see the person who targeted them put through the courts, and 1% receive compensation.

So the needs of the victims aren't being considered and the jail system is a mess. What precisely are we trying to achieve here?
[by Beth] comments?

04:45 p.m., Thursday, February 21, 2002
Further proof that the Government in the UK wants to limit and control our right to freedom of speech: 'Laws being introduced by the Government would give it the power to see academic papers before they are published and suppress them. It could also prevent the use of e-mails between foreign colleagues.'
[by Beth] comments?

04:24 p.m., Thursday, February 21, 2002
The Home Office in the UK have brought in a scheme for prisoners to be released early with electronic tags to monitor them. They hope that this will deal with overcrowding in jails. At present the jail population in the UK is 68,500, which is a record high.

However, prison staff are refusing to release eligible inmates for various reasons - some because they disagree with the scheme, some for fear that if they get it wrong they will be the cause of more crime and generate bad publicity.

I generally do not agree with jailing people as an all-purpose punishment and deterrent for most convicted criminals. I don't think it deters many people and I think its value as a punishment is questionable. I think that this country needs to rethink our attitude to criminals - to why we put people in jail, to whether they would be better punished or reeducated in some other way, to whether we're just making things worse for ourselves. The only circumstance where I do believe jail is the only possible option is for those who are very likely to reoffend and hurt people.
[by Beth] comments?

04:11 p.m., Thursday, February 21, 2002
Did you hear about the peacekeeping force who shot at a family who broke the curfew to get a pregnant woman to hospital?

It's so sad. The soldier insisted they were fired at first, but the family insist that they are poor and had no weapons.

The paratroopers have been flown back to the UK, but locals have lost their faith. I'm surprised they any had any faith in us, what while we started out by bombing them to the ground.
[by Beth] comments?

04:05 p.m., Thursday, February 21, 2002
France and Germany have joined forces in opposing military strikes on Iraq.

The German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, has said that Germany will not back strikes unless there is proof that Saddam Hussein's regime is directly linked to the attacks on 11 September.

I'm glad that they're making a stand on this.
[by Beth] comments?

03:58 p.m., Thursday, February 21, 2002
Until earlier this week, the EU had a team monitoring the presidential elections in Zimbabwe, which are widely suspected to be rigged. However, Robert Mugabe expelled the head of this team, and now the EU has pulled out the team and imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe which the the US has matched.

It's hard to say whether they did the right thing. I'm worried that this will have a poor effect on the people of Zimbabwe, but then, it's also hard to say whether they could ever really have had an effect on the outcome. I just hope that the people of Zimbabwe have had enough and vote him out, despite all the propoganda.
[by Beth] comments?

03:05 p.m., Thursday, February 21, 2002
I personally do think far better in metric measures than in imperial, but I do think that there was a good point made in the case of the metric martyrs (sounds like an Enid Blyton novel doesn't it?!?).

'Mr Herron said the court's decision showed that an act of the UK parliament could be overruled by a "mere directive" from "an entity, a gathering of unelected bureaucrats over which we have no democratic control".'

The EU has brought in a directive to state that metric measures should be used for all sales in Europe. This would be all well and good if the 1985 Weights and Measures Act, which includes imperial measures, wasn't already in place. And what can we do about this? Precisely nothing.
[by Beth] comments?

02:59 p.m., Thursday, February 21, 2002
I'm a bit late with it, but George Speight, who led an armed coup of the Fijian parliament in 2002, was sentenced to death for treason but then had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

I'm glad about this. I would like to see the death penalty erased from all the courts of the world, but in the unlikelihood of that happening I'll go for courts commuting it every time it's used.
[by Beth] comments?