Capital punishment – TV coverage could be more popular than football (Capital punishment)

Member Name: libertybell

Product:	Capital punishment
Date:	13/01/01 (106 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: TV rights could reduce tax, satisfies human urge for revenge, and would sell more newspapers

Disadvantages: I don’t believe a word of it.

I think we should bring back capital punishment – in fact we should allow it to become a public spectacle. Think of all the money, which could be made (and taxes saved) if the Home Office licensed the rights to TV stations. There could be Pay per View for about £15 per session. An evening’s entertainment could start with a few unknowns’ being bumped off using lethal injections. The major event could be a paedophile or child molester swinging from a noose or even smouldering in an electric chair. The highlights could be available on terrestrial channels – carefully edited to remove the non-gruesome bits. Think of the possibilities. Videos and DVD’s of the best events. The Home Office could even sell the rights internationally.

What is great about capital punishment is it allows everyone to have a go at those right at the bottom of the pile of humanity. Asking for the resignation of Gerald Corbett is no fun. Attacking black youths and paedophile is more interesting. Supporting the death penalty for the scum of the earth is a basic human urge. It’s like burning witches, bashing queers and attacking lesbians. It’s not rational. It doesn’t matter if the person is innocent – it’s the fact that you can exercise that basic desire to seek revenge. And even if we kill off the wrong person, its not as though you can bring them back! There will always be another person to hate next week.

With the re-introduction of the death penalty, we can also have a British death row. The tabloids can print all the gory details of those about to die. They can print stories about how bad a murderer is. They can try and save the wife of a dead husband because she is pretty and did it after years of abuse. You might even see phone and Internet polls with titles such as ‘who is for the chop this week’. Then there are the sob stories, which could be published – the victims’ family, the executed p
erson’s family. There would be a never-ending diet of this stuff. Posh and Becks would never again be on the from page.

Finally what would the government of the day be doing? It would be calculating the cost of not saving the lives of those executed. It would probably be fighting legal challenges from those on death row and those families whose loved ones were wrongly bumped off. The government would also be producing statistics to prove that the death penalty does/does not affect the overall level of crime. We would have to put up with the odd riot in Brixton or Handsworth – but that’s the price you pay for the right to kill people.

HOLD ON THERE.

Before you batter me with your comments – please read this. The extreme scenario described above is the sort of thing, which could happen if the death penalty was re-introduced. Okay, you probably wouldn’t get live hanging on TV, but I can see many of the other unpleasant aspects of the business occurring.

I don’t agree with capital punishment for the reasons I described in my parody. Please take a little time to work them out for yourself.

But I hear you say – this would never happen here. Wanna bet. Many tabloid newspapers seem to have few morals when publishing lists of paedophiles or wanting to find out the addresses’ of the James Bulger killers. Its all about ratings and circulation when talking about tabloids and trash TV. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story!

We have a reasonable tolerant society. I would like to keep it this way

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