Recent posts by simon gray

Botched executions in the USA

As yet another execution in the USA is botched, it's worth pointing out that the death penalty there is designed to be Cruel And Unusual by design; by design it causes the maximum amount of stress and trauma to the condemned person, even when it is not botched.

Even when everything goes smoothly to plan, the methods used to judicially murder people — gas chamber, lethal injection, electric chair, and firing squad — draw the process out as the condemned is marched from their cell to the execution chamber, and tied to a gurney, a chair, or a post, and any further preparations made before the execution itself is delivered.

And then when the process itself is started, it is not instant; the choices of chemicals and gasses used, the action of electrocution or of shooting somebody, make for minutes of sheer torture in agony for the final minutes of life.

By contrast, the long drop method of hanging as used in Britain in the first half of the 20th Century at least makes for an instant death from the drop, and the whole overall process itself was over and done with from beginning to end in a matter of seconds.

For those with both a morbid curiosity of the subject as well as those who feel a moral obligation to further inform themselves, the fictionalised documentary film Execution and the BBC's Life and Death Row actual documentary series make for essential viewing.

#crime

Conviction and punishment for sexual assault

Over on Threads, another user said thus:

Castration for sex offenders should just be a basic requirement.

It's not an unpopular thing to say; the urge to viscerally respond to a viscerally wicked crime is understandable.

There are many reasons why it's not actually a good idea, not least because, as I replied:

Well, it might stop the ability to reoffend with the penis being the principle weapon used in the assault, but there are plenty of ways of sexually assaulting people without using one’s penis as a weapon, and indeed it wouldn’t stop the ability for a physically stronger person to exercise violent control over a physically weaker person, which is mainly what most people who commit sexual assault are doing.

To which the other person replied to the effect that the death penalty could be the alternative. 

Again, viscerally understandable, but in practice an even worse answer.

If you’re going to kill the rapist, they might as well kill their victim when they’re done.

Plus, see the already woefully low — for a variety of reasons, some of which have solutions — conviction rate for rape plummet even further, since the whole reason the death penalty was abolished in the UK was people who had served on juries were increasingly reporting that they did not want to be responsible for potentially sending an actually innocent person to the gallows.

Saying ‘yeah, cut their goollies off’ feels like good allyship, but it’s really not.

We need to improve the conviction rate; we need to find out from juries after an acquittal the details of what did not cause them to find the accused guilty. Was it because the evidence was lacking? Was it because prosecution witnesses were not sufficiently believable? Was it because they genuinely concluded the accused was genuinely innocent?

We need to improve evidence gathering when a report is made; we need to be better at preserving the physical evidence in a timely manner, we need to develop better interview technique to be more sure about what the victim, the accused, and any witnesses are saying in interviews.

We need to improve reporting; how cases of sexual assault just go unreported because victims either feel their complaint won’t be taken seriously, or worse, because they feel the trauma of going through the process to the end — with no guarantee of a conviction — will actually be worse than the initial assault.

And, of course, we need to do something about the atmosphere in which seriously disturbed people commit sexual assault in the first place; we need to deal with the toxic climate on our streets, in our homes, and on the internet where people take frustration as an excuse to be violent with their hands as well as their words.

All this should be perfectly capable for a sophisticated civilisation to achieve.

#crime 

Leadership elections

Leadership elections for membership organisations — how’s this for a process:

All those who would be leader declare their candidacy and are nominated for the election by however many signatures from whatever constituency the organisation decides as an appropriate gatekeeping method.

The nominated candidates are then put forward to the membership to vote by ranked preferences, the voter marking as many preferences as they wish.

The counting of those ballot papers, however, is done twice — a count using the Alternative Vote method (which will tend towards the most preferred candidate) and a count using the Condorcet method (which will tend towards the least disliked candidate).

If both counts result in the same candidate at the top that’s grand, and that candidate is duly elected winner.

If the counts result in two different candidates at the top, then both candidates then go forward to a second round as a straight A/B choice. Possibly with a reöpen nominations option with an agreed threshold.

To my mind, this should ensure the winner really is the duly elected choice of the membership of the organisation with minimal room for folks to grumble, and whilst it might sound complicated, it’s not really any more complicated than a lot of organisations’ ways of running leadership elections.

#Democracy

Private sector forms functionality - just as bad if not worse than the public sector

In #LocalGov #LocalGovDigital we're rightly concerned about how too much of our online service design and user experience falls short of the high expectations many of us would like to see of it.

But having to deal with an online letting agent's landlord/tenant portal right now, oh my days, the worst pothole form I've ever completed is a breeze compared to this.

Speaking to somebody from the letting agent's office just, she said 'I have a word for it', which I responded 'the word I have for it is abomination!' She went on to say at the previous place she worked they tried the particular product portal for a week and got rid of it it was so bad.

It's the year 12,023 of the Human Era. The Internet should be better than this by now.

Never Mind The Glen Miller, Here's The Sex Pistols

I posted the following on Facebook two years ago. The people who were 16 when Never Mind The Bollocks came out are this year now 62.

#marketing #advertising #stereotypes

Today is a significant day not just in music history, but in marketing history.

It's 44 years to the day since the UK release of the Sex Pistols' debut album, Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols.

'What is the significance of a 44th year anniversary?', I hear you ask.

Well, let me answer that question for you.

44 years ago today, when the album was released, people who were 16 on that date would have been born in 1961. ie, people who were born in 1961, would have been old enough to get married, have children, do various other things which are the first steps that the UK's legal framework considers to be 'becoming an adult'. And those nascent adults in 1977 when Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols was released will now be 60.

So when those people who were 16 when NMTB,HTSP came out, when their grandmothers were 60 they would have retired. Indeed now, although the formal state pension retirement age is some years beyond 60, 60 is still considered the age when people start to transition into 'retirement age'.

'Where are you going with this, simon?', I hear you press me because you're getting a bit bored by now.

The age cohort who were just transitioning into adulthood on this day 44 years ago when Never Mind The Bollocks were released are now the people who are just transitioning into retirementhood.

And the relevance to marketing? Marketing people - stop representing 'retired people' in terms of folks who want to listen to Glen Miller and dance the foxtrot. Indeed, stop thinking you're hip and 'understanding your audience' by representing retired or retiring people as wanting to listen to The Beatles. The demographic of people who are coming into retirement age now, they're the people who were just starting to listen to The Sex Pistols when they just started to become adults themselves.