Archive for the 'Law' Category

No shit Sherlock

January 26th, 2012

I am appealing to my Irish readers.

Well, that’s not strictly true as the vast majority of you are not living here [lucky sods], so most Irish don’t find me appealing.

Anyway, this is for the few who do live here.

You may have heard that one of our ministers [a little cunt by the name of Sherlock] is trying to implement a bill that will effectively hand over control of the Interweb to our gubmint and the music industry.  It is essentially the same as the American SOPA thing in that they can shut down a site if they don’t like its content. 

Seeing as our shower are just puppets for the EU, that means we hand over control to Brussels.  They claim that it’s to prevent copyright infringement, but knowing the EU, it will go much further than that.  Even this humble little site could be under threat as once or twice [*cough*] I have said a few things that could be construed to be anti-EU.

In a few days, they hope to implement this bill without even a vote [democracy at its best again?] so there ain’t much time.

The only way we can stop this is by lobbying. and that is very simple.

Get your arses over to Stop SOPA Ireland and sign the petition.

It has occurred to me that they can’t tell the nationality of the signature if the email address is a .com but of course I would never ask all you non-Irish .coms to sign now, would I? [*cough cough*]

So do you want the likes of EMI to dictate what sites we visit?  Do you trust our gubmint?  Do you trust the EU?

If the answer to any of those is no, then sign the damned thing.

If the answer to any of those is yes, then you are nothing short of a fucking moron.

So just sign the fucking thing.

OK?

Or would you like to see me wiped off the airwaves?

Putting out the welcome mat

January 15th, 2012

I am not a great admirer of our legal system.

There are times when it seems to work against the common good for the benefit of the few.  There are too many petty laws and restrictions, and frequently laws are introduced where existing laws are perfectly adequate.

On Friday however a new law came into effect that does meet with my approval.

Householders are now legally allowed to use any reasonable force to protect themselves and their property.

There are two things I like about this law.  The first is that the householder only has to perceive a threat.  Now I am a very insecure and paranoid person [for the purposes of this act] and I frequently perceive that a raised eyebrow or nod of the head is an implied deadly threat.  The second is that “reasonable force” covers the full range up to and including dispatching the intruder off to his [or her] maker. 

I had a busy day yesterday.  I have now secreted pitchforks, bill-hooks, pistols and grenades at various points around my property, ready for that intruder. 

I am now waiting for the first knock on the door.

Indeed, it is a good law.

Strange logic

November 13th, 2011

I read a little piece in the Irish Times yesterday.

‘Free beer’ offer snares suspects

I am confused.

Maybe someone can help me out?

More than a dozen suspected criminals have been arrested as part of an undercover sting operation after being duped into ringing the police to claim free beer.

Derbyshire Police said the suspects were detained after officers sent letters to a string of people who had evaded arrest for several months, urging them to claim a complimentary crate of beer from a marketing company.

OK.  So far so good.

Chief Inspector Graham McLaughlin, who led the operation, said: “These suspects are people who have managed to evade arrest for some time so we have used different tactics to find them.

“It has been very cost-effective as it can take a lot of time and money to track people down.

On the face of it – fine?

But let’s move back a bit….

it can take a lot of time and money to track people down.

and

officers sent letters

So they didn’t know where the suspects were, but had their addresses?

Did it not occur to these bastions of law and order that if they had the addresses of those people, that that might have been a good starting place to look for them?

Or am I missing something?

Rules and Regulations

November 6th, 2011

I don’t know how people would label my political philosophy?

Right Wing?  Left Wing?  Conservative?  Liberal?

Personally I don’t give a shit about labels but if I had to give myself one, I would like to think of myself as as Aspiring Libertarian.  And what is that, you may ask?  Essentially I believe in personal liberty.  People should be free to make their own mistakes.  The only law that should exist should be there to protect people from the action of others, and any law that doesn’t fulfil that basic requirement is a bad law.  Government dictats that tell me what I can eat, drink, smoke, where I can park my car or any other action that doesn’t affect others is a bad law.  The goal of an intelligent mature society should be to have a few laws as possible and not to have life so wrapped up in petty laws, rules and regulations as to make it virtually impossible to live without breaking some fucking rule or other.

I would like to think that I use my philosophy in the running of this site.  I try to have as few rules as possible.  There are some things though that I will not tolerate here.

I will not tolerate anything that could be deemed to be libellous.

I will not stand for racial or religious intolerance.

A bit of banter is fine but serious abuse of commentators is not allowed.

The most important rule though is that I have the final say in what is acceptable or not.  I reserve the right to alter or delete comments I deem to be offensive.  I reserve the right to bar people from commenting altogether.  I reserve the right not to give any explanation for my actions.

So there you are.  Essentially just four rules.  A Libertarian site?

Of course there is another rule…..

It’s my site and I can do what I fucking like with it.

Living above the law

May 30th, 2011

There was a wee item in the news last week that caught my attention.

An off duty Garda [police officer] was accused in the courts of beating the shite out of a bloke during a late night street brawl.  In a nutshell, a bloke made a comment about the Garda’s brother’s shirt looking ‘gay’, so the Garda beat the crap out of the bloke, leaving him unconscious with a broken nose, facial fractures, broken teeth and bleeding to the brain.  Nice.

Anyhow the Garda was convicted after pleading guilty to assault and was given an eighteen month gaol sentence last week.  He got off damned lightly in my opinion, but that’s not what struck me.

The day following the sentence, the judge announced that he had ‘revised the sentence’ and that the full eighteen months was to be suspended.  Apparently members of the Garda and prison staff are ‘entitled’ to reduced sentences as they would have a particularly tough time in gaol.

There are a couple of minor points that concern me about this.

The first is that Gardai are supposed to be the face of law and order in this country.  They should lead by example and if caught breaking the law they should receive much tougher sentences than the rest of us lawless citizens.  I can’t help but wonder if I were convicted of the same crime, would I receive a mere eighteen months [suspended]?

How come that the judge revised the sentence the following day?  There was no official appeal apart from the Garda’s legal representative contacting the judge.  The judge claimed he had ‘overlooked’ the fact that the accused was a Garda.  Again I wonder how long I would have to wait for an appeal against a sentence?  Slightly more than twenty fours hours, I would imagine.

I wonder what the victim made of all this carry on?  As he was being kicked to a pulp, he wasn’t given the chance of a reprieve?  He didn’t get the kicking suspended?  I think a sentence of eighteen months [with no suspension] would be grand.  Let the Garda get the shite kicked out of him by his cellmates so he can see what it feels like.  But then he wouldn’t have had any cellmates as he would have been given special treatment.  He would have been given a cell of his own away from the riff raff, just in case he should be treated badly by the other prisoners.

One law for them and one for us?

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