My two opinions.

I haven't blogged for a while. Again.


Blogspot is disabled at work so I can't blog on the little breaks that I get.

Instead, I have decided, I shall write out my posts at work, email them to myself and post them later, perhaps taking care to edit my erstwhile thoughts.



So, here's the one for today.
There's that kid, Edward Woollard. You've seen/heard about him. He was sentenced to over two and a half years in prison for throwing a fire extinguisher off the top of the Tory headquarters during the big student protest.
My own internal opinion is actually fairly divided on this one, I haven't made up my mind yet. But invariably I fall into two types of thought depending on the time of day:
1) This kid did something inherantly wrong. No matter which way you look at it, you have to be a thoughtless individual to throw a fire extinguisher off the top of a building and not give a fuck about the consequences (be they your own legal ones, or just the immediate ones of what happens when a fire extinguisher hits someone's skull at that speed). Yes, he is young and inexperienced, but come on, he's knew better than that. He knew what he was doing and he got caught, and there are thousands of kids (and older people) who are just as thoughtless.

What we need is a society where people actually care about other people, and no matter the circumstances you cannot throw something from a building that has the possibility of killing someone, and not be severely punished.
2) You're talking about an 18-year-old who got caught up in a single moment. We've all done stupid things we can't explain. It was his first trip to London on his own. It was his first student protest. He had no idea what he was getting into. It was probably a very surreal experience, and in that state of mind people do stupid things. He proves it.

So now we punish him horrendously for being a human being. We give him a more severe punishment than some drunk drivers have gotten for killing people. That's the message that has been sent out. Killing someone isn't as bad as endangering someone.

The judge "made an example" out of him, but these are incredably specific circumstances and very rare. Most people wouldn't throw a fire extinguisher off a roof, no matter the circumstances, and anyone who is in the state of mind to do something really stupid like that aren't going to first think "ooh yeah, but that kid got 2 years in prison for throwing a fire extinguisher off a roof, better not complete this act of mindless stupidity".

That's the point. It was a thoughtless act. He didn't think, and he should be punished for not thinking. But to punish someone that young and that severely in those circumstances...

Perhaps instead of investing money in sentencing kids to jail sentences for thoughless act, maybe we should pump money into education so that everyone thinks a little bit more about the consequences of their actions.