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Weekly UpdatesIT IS rather unfortunate to read a reader's letter (by ANON, of course...) supposedly about progress, but really all about the past in some sort of glorious imperial or splendid isolationist past.
As muddled and based as much on hearsay as it is, a few points raised need a reply.
On the death penalty, progress is the increasing abolishment of the death penalty as it has proven to be unreliable.
To many innocents under the law - found as such on review, when it is too late, as you pardon, exonerate but not revive - have been and are being executed by various states. This included Britain in the past, never mind elsewhere with questionable legal systems.
Britain is rightly committed to abolishing it worldwide, and as part of the EU it regularly reminds the USA, China and Iran of this, though several US federal states have taken steps to abolish or retire it recently.
The independent chief inspector of prisons' report recently has made grim reading of the state of affairs in prisons, including the care of inmates.
The rights of the dead person, in the case of murder and manslaughter etc, in this country are called justice, not revenge, and are being served by the justice system, not some sort of throw-the-key-away attitude or worse.
The line about "one time if you stood in one place too long" is quite a dangerous departure from British Civil Liberties, and surely not to be conflated with some sort of "human rights carry-on".
I just wonder, is ANON a muddled or perhaps even deviously 'clever' apologist for the BNP, as this piece throws everything together in halfspelled out lines. This, finally, also goes for the line "our country is in debt, yet we welcome all regardless", ignoring the freedom of free movement of labour, for Brits and others, in the EU, as well as the UK draining many developing countries of their skilled labour to keep the NHS and other key infrastructures ticking over, and gaining economically by this.
RICHARD KOTTER, Newcastle.
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