the problem is, it doesn't limit violence. it lends it a proscenium arch.

there was nothing the IRA would have loved more than to see the brit government execute one of its members during the 1970's. nothing THatcher would have liked better    heroes and villain of thousand crappy rebel ballads. money rolling in from every bar from brum to boston, mass. heroic status assured on all sides.

as Churchill said, grass grows over a battlefield, but not a scaffold.

on your own shore - who was Timothy McVeigh, Sacco and Vanzetti? who were all the others? Star status assured!!

as for pendulums - it would be hard to imagine how much further it could swing to the right from the position of HUntsville's factory line of death.

Capital punishment teaches nothing except that if humans don't fit into our society -its alright to kill them, the story is the same from Jesus to Ted Bundy.

sociologists have pointed out for years that most of our criminals come from poverty. in the USA - you have nearly a third of your people living in poverty, and they have access to every kind of instrument of murder available.

i understand -its easier to blame the poor than to sort out your problems - but stop dressing it up in sophistry and fine words.

Ian Brady's lifetime in prison and mental hospital was a humane, restrained and decent response that England should be proud of, to an enigma of human behaviour - given our present level of understanding of the human condition.