football

Some Situations, half-hypothetical or other

Most of the following things have happened. See if you can spot which one didn’t.

  1. A 17th century king takes offence at the words recounted to him by a diplomat. A country is invaded.
  2. A white supremacist bombs a government building. All white people are interned.
  3. A group of mostly Saudis attacks a trade building. Several predominantly muslim countries are bombed and invaded, even though the people in those countries had nothing to do with those attacks.
  4. One member of a tourist bus tour pisses in the street. All the tourists are deported.
  5. A resistance movement against the Nazis kills an officer of the SS. All the men, women and children in the village where the assassination took place are killed.

All of the above are examples of collective punishment.

Very few people would find the homicidal rationalisations that people give for such actions to be sane. In fact, they would generally be disgusted.

Or would they?

There are certain situations where some people actively support such actions.

I don’t mean they support the mass killing of anyone who happens to live near the person or people who have caused damage or offence, I mean that they suppport the principle of collective punishment.

And this is your example….

The level of violence at Euro 2016 has been alarming, but more alarming for me has been the willingness of both UEFA, the media and also individuals to support the idea of collective punishment.

Experts believe that there are around 150 Russian hooligans who are organised and have even trained for this. Bad people, no doubt. However, for me it does not follow that as a result of the behaviour of these people, 5000 Russian supporters should be deported and the Russian team should be expelled from the tournament. This has been threatened by UEFA and supported broadly across the media.

There have also been problems with England, Croatia and Poland.

Did the players do it? Did the majority of Russian/English/Croatian/Polish supporters do it? No. So why should the rest of them be subjected to collective punishment?

If you can’t justify it in the situations I gave above at the start of this article, then I don’t see how you can morally or logically justify it in the situation of this tournament, or, because it is widely done, in sporting situations in general.

A simple stark fact about a crime or an offence, whether it be real or only perceived, if you can’t find who did it, you cannot justifiably punish anyone. I know it is a difficult thing to accept in situations that are both volatile and emotional, when people are crying for someone’s head, but you can’t seriously make an appeal to justice and fairness by asking for revenge on a group of people, most of whom had nothing to do with the crime or crimes in question.

You find the people who actually did it, then you follow the law. Anything else is revenge, not justice.

 

The Turnout 1 – Mark Frankland on Hillsborough

Hillsborough_anniversary

This is the first in a new series of podcasts looking at issues around the world.

Future episodes will come from far and wide, but we start in North England, 27 years ago.

Mark Frankland was in the stadium on the day the Hillsborough disaster happened.

I asked him about his experience and what followed.

Download here if you right click THIS LINK and “save as”

 Listen to the show online at its web page

 We can also be found on youtube.

The show has a Facebook page

You can subscribe at the RSS feed

These podcasts are independently minded and independently funded, you can help to keep them going by making a donation.

 

That Hypocrisy Meter Again…

hypocrisy_meter__a_graphic_for_facebook_and_forums_by_askgriff-d5myy33Don’t you just love Westminster.

BBC had the story in the image below up today.

The MP in question is Damian Collins (that isn’t him in the photo, that’s Chuck Blazer).

You might be interested in this article about Collins in the Independent. It’s about MPs who own homes in London yet still claim rent.

 

MP FraudThose two links in conjunction makes me wonder about the other thing we learned about Westminster today, which is bB1eXGHyIQAAQ03Aasically that they are destroying expenses records to make sure no one can look into them and some other MPs felt fit to comment on it.

I can think of another one who has had some serious questions about his expenses over the years, but given his current position of running for what no one has even tried to make an important post yet, I’m not sure any journalists will bother to bring it up.