Did anyone read this article in The Times yesterday on the London bombings?

[oliveoil]

I think it is spot on, what do you think? It's a bit long.

here it is

[northerner]

Tis very long Olive. Got the general gist of it though, and I agree too.

Time this country cracked down.

[muminlondon]

Yes, good article. I was irritated by this article yesterday - I thought his disclaimer was too weak. But he also seemed to suggest it was 'sassy' and 'cool' for young British muslims to be angry and radical rather than moderate and sensible like their parents. Also a weird lack of compassion from the colleague of a guy thought to have been killed in the bombings.

[oliveoil]

Not only the cracking down bit, although I do agree with that, but the media going into far far too much grisly detail. And the wallowing in other peoples grief.

There is a two minute silence today at midday and I don't agree with that either. I think a private pause or prayer would be enough. There is no end to the coverage.

[fishfinger]

ooh but alice miles i s generally a twat imfo

[oliveoil]

We are disagreeing today aren't we?



I can't recall any other articles of hers tbh. But I thought this one was really good.

So ner.

[fishfinger]

havent read artlicle BUT she wrot e a shite one about magistrates courts

[muminlondon]

I do agree with the two minute silence - as a demonstration of people on the streets. Two minutes is hardly a huge chunk of your time.

[northerner]

I always agree with 2 minutes silence. Is a mark of respect.

[fishfinger]

June 22, 2005

Explain how this is justice
Alice Miles
No juries for complex fraud trials? Fine. No juries for thousands of women sent to jail? Disgraceful





I?M NOT SURE why the Attorney-General insisted yesterday that the Government remains ?strongly in favour of trial by jury in the vast majority of cases?. I suppose he must have meant the vast majority of fraud cases, because the vast majority of all criminal cases are already tried without a jury. In 2003-04, some 1.3 million cases were tried in the magistrates? courts, without a jury, and about 95,000 went to the Crown Court. That?s fewer than one in ten.

When civil liberties campaigners protest about ending the centuries-old right to trial by jury, traceable back to Magna Carta, blah blah blah, for some reason they never mention this.

There is something not very sexy, I suppose, about all those shoplifters and people who couldn?t pay their fines coming up before the magistrates. And the women ? particularly the women. A sharp increase in the number of women jailed ? the female prison population has almost tripled over the past decade, a far sharper rise than among men ? has been led by low-level, poverty-based crimes such as shoplifting. These are not your multimillion-pound frauds.

In a detailed report last year, Women and the Criminal Justice System, the Fawcett Society examined the facts. Theft and handling stolen goods account for 60 per cent of female offending, compared with 36 per cent of male. Many of these are crimes of desperation. A Department of Health report two years ago found that ?women are more likely than men to commit ?acquisitive? crimes, eg shoplifting and fraud, through financial hardship particularly in relation to children?. It is because the crimes are relatively minor and tend to be non-violent that more than 70 per cent of women sent to prison are on short sentences of less than 12 months.

And many of these are sent into custody by magistrates, without being convicted by a jury. The most recent figures held by the Home Office, for 2003, show that 5,701 women were sent to prison by magistrates compared with 3,109 by a crown court. Thousands of women a year are being imprisoned, and more sent to jail on remand, so not even convicted, without having been tried by a jury which might have sympathised and released them.

[fishfinger]

( sorry to hijack)

wot a crock of shit

[oliveoil]

mmmmm, I'm not saying I am cross cos I won't get served in M&S (!) it's not the time that bothers me, just that this will get tons of coverage and their will be sobbing people etc and the media can trawl this all over again. I just don't think it is appropriate.

[muminlondon]

wonder if she's ever done jury service? it's not like in the movies. People come and leave with their prejudices intact. And lose 2 weeks' of time and often their salary in the process.

[fishfinger]

i HTINK ITS SAD
BUT its "only" 50 poeple imagine a bus crash - that woudlnt get all this coverage
or bhopal - seven THOUSAND lives!!!

example of the mondon centric media

[fishfinger]

yes and do the poepl whoa re on juries!

[fishfinger]

( sorry will mreove jury syetme argu8ument from this thread)

anyway alice miles=twat QED

[saadia]

I don't think it's fair to blame the parents or the communities - I mean paedophiles and serial killers also grow up in homes and communities where people are oblivious to what they're doing. Nobody blames their parents or their communities.

[Blu]

I think Alice miles article is unremarkable, and shot through with illogicality.

[Papillon]

I think it was Edam who said as a journalist on another thread talking about the explosions - that people want to tell their story. So its not necessarily entirely media stimulated.

Ilike the 2 mins silence - an outward show of solidatory for the people

I think heavy control brings strife. I resent it and perhaps that resentfulness is why people of muslim countries retailate. There are pacified means of resistance which I am totally PRO but the extreme communicative response adn effect of the war on terror and threatening countries is violence to reflect the violence.

[muminlondon]

I did find it mawkish when people cried for Princess Diana. But I feel angry that London was attacked by a bunch of young men who weren't able to imagine that their bombs were going off where muslims and many other communities prayed, lived and worked. I want to demonstrate solidarity with Londoners.

[fishfinger]

Hmm bet londoners woudln't do that if it happened eleswhere

[Blu]

Indeed, Saadia, and the young are the ones OUTSIDE 'the gehtto' which Ms Miles describes - they have broken out of the 'keep quiet and your head down' generation that the other journalist describes.

Timothy Mcveigh....

Everyone is using this to peddle and prove their own pet theories.

Me too.

[Blu]

ff - that is really really unfair.

Human beings are human beings, wherever they live.

But as numerous postings have demonstrated, people naturally feel more edgy when it is on their doorstep. Hence the sudden - and understandable fear when B'ham was evacuated, when Luton was affected - people feel th heat when it is close to them.

[muminlondon]

er, no, Londoners wouldn't be spontaneously demonstrating their pride in London as a multicultural city attacked by provincial madmen if an attack had happened elsewhere. That would be silly.

[oliveoil]

Also, the media today is full of coverage of the bombers. What happens to their families? Some of them were married with children, are they now ostracised (sp?) from their communities? Too much coverage, please stop.

I have been given some work to do so will have to leave this thread for now.

[binkie]

oliveoil, I will be doing the two minute silence, and will be outside for it.

I admit to being a bit anxious about exactly what message I am sending by doing it: but:

• I am right in the middle of the City (and commute to it through Edgware Road) and it is a place where so often "business comes first" - ie, oh I'll do that two-minute silent thinking thing after I've finished this e-mail - and I want to show a bit of balance;
  
  
• massed silent respect is not, I think, an opportunity for media-gushing, but a corrector to that. Unlike, eg, the mounds of flowers when Diana was killed;
  
  
• is it "dignifying" the atrocity? - tricky one. I think it depends on the mood of it in practice, actually. I am willing to give it a try. I think my very ambivalence about it means that not joining in would be a cop-out. If that makes sense.