it doesn't matter that it was a 'non-event', they're still guilty of the offence as charged.
if you don't want legislation for incitement then you have to accept that some EDL prick will be legally entitled to start a facebook group calling on people to 'burn out the pakis' or something.
(If these two lads were EDL members and their facebook page was racially motivated, I wonder what the response would be from some of those complaining about the sentences?)?
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spesh., Wed 17 Aug 2011, 10:31,
Reply)
I'm not convinced that anyone has argued that they are not guilty of the offence
just that the sentence is harsh in relation to the severity of the crime.
We are in a situation where justice is being replaced by punishment and that's a dangerous road to be on.
But what do I know, I'm a mong cunt.
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scarpe We Stole Bikes, Wed 17 Aug 2011, 10:41,
Reply)
they could have got 10 years
(assuming the crime they were guilty of inciting is Riot)
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spesh., Wed 17 Aug 2011, 10:44,
Reply)
I know what they could have got
but that doesn't bear any relation to whether 4 years is harsh or not.
Edit: Just seen your second point about what the reaction would be if it was EDL. I confess that I would probably find it harder to get as annoyed about, but that wouldn't neccessarily make the sentencing any less wrong, it would just need to find different voices than to mine to argue the case. And yes, that's my hypocrisy and one that I can live with.
Although the racial aspect is actually allowed for in law, so by definition the harsher sentence could be argued to be more valid anyway. So it would depend if they were explicitly inciting racial violence or not.
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scarpe We Stole Bikes, Wed 17 Aug 2011, 10:45,
Reply)