Monday 12 March 2007

Cut the Knee-jerk Law-making

The petition is entitled take a measured and whollistic approach to the justice system and stop introducing knee-jerk, opportunistic measures in criminal law simply to capture the current "buzz" of topical news items and there are no explanatory notes.

How I wish, wish, wish I thought anyone was going to pay attention to this idea! (I wish the petitioner had checked how to spell holistic, too - just to be even-handed and criticise the petitions I agree with as well as the ones I don't!)

I have an awful, pessimistic, cynical feeling that the biggest problem with this petition is that the majority don't agree. Obviously "people submitting petitions to the PM's petitions site" are a self-selecting group with goodness-knows-what strange biases, just as "people I know and talk to about news and politics" are also self-selecting and with a strong liberal/libertarian/fluffy/common-sense bias. But while the latter group would whole-heartedly support this idea, the impression given by the petitions submitted is overwhelmingly, well, knee-jerk. All the many petitions wailing about immigration, benefits, crime - from people who know nothing about the subject with so few nice liberal sensible petitions on the subject. So I can't help thinking that perhaps by knee-jerking away and "capturing the current buzz" the government is maybe doing exactly what the majority want. A singularly depressing thought.

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