Oh, those Brits.
Fox, meet henhouse. Henhouse, fox. But I see you’re already acquainted.
Ugh. Much as I hate internet censors, is there any chance this stuff was on his computer for official, crime-fighting reasons? If not fuck him, child abuse/child-porn is the worst crime I can imagine.
If so, I hope he gets a fair day in court.
Sure, those five pounds of pure cocaine were in the officer´s home for… eh… crime-fighting reasons… because the forensic laboratory was… eh… too far. Yeah, that´s it! Nothing suspicious here, move on!
Did you read the whole two lines I wrote after that, Mr. Snark? Just trying to cover all the “innocent til proven guilty” bases, before flushing the guy down the toilet.
Sounds highly qualified to me.
If he was supposed to have those images where he had them and it was for work, they wouldn’t have arrested him. And, if he was in the right, he wouldn’t have stepped down so quickly after the arrest. The authorities are well aware of his advisor position and whether or not it was in his official capacity to possess child porn in the manner that he did.
Now now, let’s not rush to judge this man. He was brought in by David Cameron, and surely Mr Cameron wouldn’t exhibit poor judgement in selecting his cabinet… well… anyway, previously the man worked for Margaret Thatcher. Surely someone who worked for Thatcher wouldn’t be evil…
Never mind.
Most of what is legally considered “child porn” does not involve children or abuse at all. Healthy human beings have sex drives long before they reach the legal age where they can produce pornography. In the age of ubiquitous digital cameras, particular cameraphones with Internet connectivity, that means a millions of young people take “illegal” pictures of themselves and their partners. Moreover, IIRC, in both the most US states and the UK, the age of consent is younger than the age that one can appear in an erotic film. That means many sexual partnerships entail perfectly legal fucking, but felonies every time someone dares document the act visually.
You know, that kind of knee-jerk reaction is exactly what’s been used for years to pass a large number of laws that slowly take away any and all freedom.
First, child abuse and child porn are two different things: in the first case, the perpetrator is directly responsible for, indeed, abusing a child and should be dealt with accordingly; in the second, it may only be files downloaded off the net. If the person has never personally approached a child, as despicable as they may be it is nowhere near the same level as the previous case.
Second, qualifying such crime as “the worst crime” reminds me of early XXth century pulp where, quite regularly, the hero saved the damsel in distress from a fate “worse than death”, i.e. rape. Sorry but no. The worst crime is to kill someone. You don’t come back from that. Anything else, there is always the possibility for the victim to recover.
Much as right now my normal reaction would be to point and snark, I’m actually kind of worried by quite how incompetent the prime minister is at choosing his advisers.
This is a routine thing in politics. You hire someone from the inside of the industry to help you figure out what would be the best way to regulate without disrupting profits or contributions. May have been taking it too far in this case, but it’s a new day and new ideas are needed. Right?
It’s always seemed strange to me how very often people rationalize complete destruction as preferable to having to rebuild after very severe damage.
You could think that way about a damaged car, writing it off as a “total loss”, but then cars are replaceable.
And yet I imagine if we all only ever had one shot at a car, we’d have a lot more societal emphasis on road safety and a lot more people becoming qualified mechanics. Which is strange, because we clearly don’t act that way about human lives, despite our only having one each.
One would think, long before becoming a relatively powerful member of the government, one would learn the important lesson: do not download child porn on the office computers.
Yeah… Seems too easy. Maybe it’s the house of cards bender that is influencing my judgment, but this feels like a scam.
Powerful people just don’t go out this easily.
If only there were some sort of handy phrase about “watching watchers”, or something…
Yeah. Could be that proof we’re living in a simulation.
Oh gods, I’m laughing so hard right now. I know it’s not funny but… it’s so horribly funny.
I’m still singing “ding dong the witch is dead” every time I hear the name Thatcher.
Powerful people just don’t go out this easily.
Nixon comes to mind and many other assorted powerful people that are/were nutbags.
