Understanding British law, with Melanie Phillips
1:21 pm - July 30th 2008
| Tweet | Share on Tumblr |
You’ll all know by now that policies are complicated things. They use Big Words and Complicated Jargon. They come in large PDFs, and not only do you have to read the whole thing, but you’ll need access to other reading materials to make sure you understand context, history and competing points of view.
Phew, that’s enough to work anyone into a sweat – thank God no one actually writes about policy anymore!
Well, one brave woman still does. Ever the wonk, Melanie Phillips has forensically studied the details of the proposed changes in murder law and, for her policy-averse readers, managed to summarise it in just 34 words.
To quote The Knowing One, the proposals:
as far as I can see, will mean that if a woman kills her husband she will get away with it whereas if a man kills his wife he will be convicted of murder.
See, before I read this, I was just being spoon-fed lies by demonic feminists who had me thinking the aim was – among other things – to remove the provocation defense so you couldn’t claim ’she made me go to Matalan! And my mother-in-law’s such a bitch!’ as an excuse for murdering your partner. But no, apparently that’s just a smokescreen to allow more women psychopaths to roam the streets.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, there are lots of well-educated people who disagree with her – Harriet Harman, Baroness Scotland, Geoffrey Robertson QC and the solicitor who founded Justice for Women – and all of these people have a considerable amount of experience in practicing law, whilst Mel is but a meagre journalist who studied English at Oxford. But you, dear reader, would be forgetting Law of Melanie # 49: Just like with that MMR thing, if lots of well-qualified experts disagree with you, that simply means they’re all wrong.
It turns out it’s also possible for very smart people to disagree with these proposals and still stop short of saying it’ll allow women to murder with impunity. Perhaps he just didn’t read the fine print as clearly as our Mel.
Related
Laura Woodhouse: Reforms to help victims of domestic violence
Sadly – but unsurprisingly – the proposals have caused outcry in certain circles. David Howarth, Lib Dem justice spokesman, claims that:
On domestic violence, ministers are guilty of hype. As the government’s own research shows, there are no recent examples of men being found not guilty of murder simply because of sexual infidelity.
Nice, Dave, really nice. Two women killed every week by partners or ex-partners is just “hype”. In any case, this isn’t about being found not guilty. This is about men like Paul Daulton, who received only two years in jail for manslaughter after killing his wife Tae Hui:
Dalton punched her, she died, then he cut up her body with an electric saw, and stored the pieces in a freezer. He was cleared of murder on the grounds of provocation; the judge said that he had suffered “no little taunting on her [his wife’s] part”. Dalton received just two years in jail for her manslaughter, but got three years for what many might consider the lesser crime of preventing a burial. He is appealing against the sentence.
The proposed laws would ensure that men who kill their wives cannot resort to misogynistic defence strategies in order to avoid the punishment they deserve, and I really fail to see what’s so wrong with that.
| Tweet | Share on Tumblr |  |
Neil Robertson is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He was born in Barnsley in 1984, and through a mixture of good luck and circumstance he ended up passing through Cambridge, Sheffield and Coventry before finally landing in London, where he works in education. His writing often focuses on social policy or international relations, because that's what all the Cool Kids write about. He mostly blogs at: The Bleeding Heart Show.
· Other posts by Neil Robertson
Story Filed Under: Blog ,Equality ,Feminism ,Humour ,Media ,Sex equality
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Reader comments
Dalton wasn’t let off on the grounds of provocation, he was acquitted on the grounds that he didn’t intend to inflict serious bodily harm. This is *the whole point of the difference* between murder and manslaughter, and has absolutely sod-all to do with the current ‘you can’t stab someone to death for moving the marmalade’ law change.
Loonies like Phillips need criticising, mocking and slating wherever possible, but it would be nice if we could get the facts right while doing so…
@John B
If you check my own blog, there’s no link to that F Word post. In fact, right now is the first time I’ve laid eyes on it. I suspect this site’s esteemed editor spliced them together because they were two posts on the same subject, which isn’t something I have any problem with, but it’s perhaps better to take them as separate entities.
Heh, yeah I put that in there as an extra bit. Nothing to do with Neil’s takedown of Mel Phillips, I assure you, but I thought it was relevant.
@John B (again)
I suspect you might be right about the Dalton thing. However, in fairness to author of that F Word piece, the article she links to is a far better riposte to Howarth’s deadfully misjudged “on domestic violence, ministers are guilty of hype” statement. It’s just unfortunate that most of the examples in that link would’ve been better than the one she used.
Except that the article isn’t really a rebuttal of Howarth’s point – none of the cases listed appear to be predicated simply on sexual infidelity and the majority seem to have resulted in a murder conviction or a murder-suicide, while most of those convicted of a lesser offence seem to have had a history of mental health problems.
Howarth’s only real misjudgement here was to preface his comments with the words ‘On domestic violence’ even though he goes to clarify his remarks by relating the accusation of hype specifically to the government’s hard sell on sexual infidelity, and only then because this too easily lends itself to the misinterpretation evident in the post from the F-Word.
Wot John B said.
I don’t understand the last bit of the Katharine Viner article. She says men get away with killing their partners yet it appears no individual in her list of cases escaped a prison sentence except for those who committed suicide.
“yeah I put that in there as an extra bit”
??? WTF???
Oh well.
Giles Coren would have a field day with Sunny’s editorial magic wand 😉 
I’m torn between horror at the thought of Giles Coren, and horror at the image that “Sunny’s magic wand” conjures up in my naturally filthy mind. I just am not used to thinking of our esteemed editor in THAT way…
[while we’re slating the subs – sorry Sunny – can we have a quick “there’s no such thing as British law and any changes won’t apply in Scotland” moment?]
Melanie Phillips is an ignorant, contemptable waste of space who is ideologically opposed to rational thought — for example, she thinks creationism should be taught in schools. The problem with denying reality is that it has serious and unpleasant consequences: for example, people have died because Phillips — and idiots like her — have slagged off the MMR vaccine.
Let’s just hope that we can find a way to put me up for manslaughter rather than murder when I see Melanie Philips in the street and kill her. She’s been provoking me for years.
Inability to take criticism, and censorship, are classic hallmarks of highly paranoid and corrupt regimes.
Ask Mugabe, and the Chinese government.
Reactions: Twitter, blogs
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
