In article 4f200299.948954125@localhost, Cynic wrote:
On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:22:10 -0000, "'Mike'"
wrote:

All electrically operated life-support machines invariably have an
alternate power source that will switch in automatically in the event
of a mains failure.

Dream on!

Bill the emphasis is on "electrically operated life-support machines". Maybe
not in your home but in hospitals, .. yes.

It is *especially* true in the case of life support machines designed
to be used at home. Hospitals will always have staff on hand to
manually operate a ventilator etc. should the power fail, but the
designer of a life-support machine meant for home use cannot rely on
the fact that someone with the necessary knowlege will be on hand
within minutes in the event of a power cut, and so the design of
backup systems and fail-safe failure modes is even more important.

Any domestic life support machine that is designed so that it would
kill the patient in the event of a mains power outage would not be fit
for purpose.

That is true, but the general approach in this country is that
all that is needed is protection for long enough to call for an
ambulance. The same applies to 'first-aid' courses, which don't
even contemplate the possibility that you might be more than a
minute away from a telephone, let alone from a road.

It would not surprise me if the backup had a design time of only
a couple of hours. That isn't enough for any non-trivial trip,
including getting to the nearest shops in many cases.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

"whisky-dave" wrote in message
...
On Jan 25, 11:38 am, "dennis@home"
wrote:
"harry" wrote in message

...

I could make prison work.

Prison does work, prisoners don't offend against the public while they are
locked up.
All you need to do is keep the re-offenders in there.

Burying them works too.


How about flame throwers as well.

On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:01:47 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

They fequently say that prison doesn't work and doesn't deter
re-offending. I've always wondered that even if prison doesn't work for
many of those incarcerated, do long sentences deter those that have
never been in trouble from getting into a life of crime in the first place?

Not significantly, no. In the first place, the average person who has
never been in trouble with the law is unlikely to have any idea what
the sentence is likely to be should he break a particular law. In the
second place, for anyone who is willing in principle to break a
particular (non-trivial) law, the decision whether or not to do so
will almost completely depend on how likely that person believes it is
that they will be caught.

--
Cynic

On Jan 25, 1:45*pm, Doctor Drivel
wrote:
"whisky-dave" wrote in message

...
On Jan 25, 11:38 am, "dennis@home"
wrote:

"harry" wrote in message

....

I could make prison work.

Prison does work, prisoners don't offend against the public while they are
locked up.
All you need to do is keep the re-offenders in there.

Burying them works too.


How about flame throwers as well.

No idea has it been tried....

In article ,
Doctor Drivel wrote:

"whisky-dave" wrote in message
...
On Jan 25, 11:38 am, "dennis@home"
wrote:
"harry" wrote in message

...

I could make prison work.

Prison does work, prisoners don't offend against the public while they are
locked up.
All you need to do is keep the re-offenders in there.

Burying them works too.


How about flame throwers as well.

Angle grinder.

--
*Born free...Taxed to death.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Cynic :
On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:43:51 +0000, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=AEi=A9ardo?=
wrote:

Not at all. But, if that "simple theft" does result in the death of an
innocent party, are you suggesting that we just accept it because that
wasn't the original intention? I would rather see you suggest that
criminals, major or minor, accept the consequences of their own actions,
especially if they impinge upon the lives of innocent people.

If, however, they manage to kill themselves in the course of their
illegal act it may serve as a warning to others.

Please remember that they have total freedom of choice in these matters
- their victims do not.

Do you feel the same way about a criminal who drives his car at 45 MPH
in a 40 MPH limit? It could result in death.

If 45 mph is too fast for the conditions, death could result. But the 40
mph speed limit is not relevant.

--
Mike Barnes

On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:38:48 -0000, "dennis@home"
wrote:

I could make prison work.

Prison does work, prisoners don't offend against the public while they are
locked up.
All you need to do is keep the re-offenders in there.

Ah. Someone who believes that every crime should carry a life
sentence. Try using your brain and try to figure out the consequences
of such a policy.

1) About 20% of the UK working population has a criminal record.
Having a life sentence for all crimes would therefore result in 1
person in 5 being in prison. That's a heck of a lot of prisons, and a
heck of a lot of non-productive people for everyone else to support.

2) Most people in prison can be trusted not to try to escape, because
the consequence of escaping is far worse than the consequence of
sitting out their sentence. If everyone was inside for life, there is
essentially nothing to lose, and riots and escape attempts would be
extremely frequent, requiring much higher (= more expensive) security
at all prisons.

3) Most people when caught committing a crime will submit to the
arrest and other processes without much resistance - because again the
likely consequence of resisting arrest is worse than the consequences
of submitting. If mass-murder carries the same sentence as
shoplifting, desperate criminals will put *everyone* at increased
risk.

--
Cynic

On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:43:59 +0000, Mike Tomlinson
wrote:

En el artículo ,
Clive George escribió:

Don't talk shite. Nobody is saying that there should be no punishment,
only that the death penalty is inappropriate.

The death penalty was self-inflicted in this case. Quite a different
matter from wishing to impose the death penalty on someone.

So would you express exactly the same attitude if the photograph
showed two incinerated children who died because they trespassed on a
railway line?

--
Cynic

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article om,
dennis@home wrote:
Prison does work, prisoners don't offend against the public while they
are
locked up.

All you need to do is keep the re-offenders in there.

It costs more than simply giving them a reasonable amount of money to live
on outside. Which makes it poor value for those paying the bills - ie the
taxpayer.

well if they are going to reoffend what else do you suggest?

On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:44:31 +0000 (GMT), wrote:

Any domestic life support machine that is designed so that it would
kill the patient in the event of a mains power outage would not be fit
for purpose.

That is true, but the general approach in this country is that
all that is needed is protection for long enough to call for an
ambulance. The same applies to 'first-aid' courses, which don't
even contemplate the possibility that you might be more than a
minute away from a telephone, let alone from a road.

It would not surprise me if the backup had a design time of only
a couple of hours. That isn't enough for any non-trivial trip,
including getting to the nearest shops in many cases.

So long as it included an automatic and reliable call for human
assistance, it would not result in a fatality. There are plenty of
ways for providing such a call that are sufficiently reliable in the
fact of a power cut - at the very basic level it could simply be a
battery-operated siren to alert neighbours (who have been informed of
the situation).

People on home life-support will always have a carer, and the carer
will need to take account of any time limitations.

--
Cynic

On 25/01/2012 13:42, Cynic wrote:
On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:13:54 +0000, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=AEi=A9ardo?=
wrote:

Do you feel the same way about a criminal who drives his car at 45 MPH
in a 40 MPH limit? It could result in death. Even parking in a
no-parking area could result in death.

Please cite a few examples.

Such imaginary scenarios are as easy to dream up as the imaginary
scenarios in this thread of a cable thief causing deaths.



Did you miss the pictures at the start of this thread?

A children's home is on fire. 136 children are trapped on the top
floor. The fire engine is delayed by 4.27 minutes due to a car being
double-parked on the access road. The delay results in 22 children
dying who would otherwise have been rescued.

You really want me to invent another few imaginary scenarios?


It's seems to be all you're good for, so go ahead if that's what turns
you on.

Heck, I could come up with a situation in which opening a window
caused the death of 100 people.


I'm sure you could, but the fact remains that being an apologist for
criminals in action by claiming that "worse things happen at sea" shows
how out of touch with reality you are. They DID put life and limb at
risk, but luckily it did not go beyond their own.


--
Moving things in still pictures

"Cynic" wrote in message
news:4f200830.950384734@localhost...
On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:38:48 -0000, "dennis@home"
wrote:

I could make prison work.

Prison does work, prisoners don't offend against the public while they are
locked up.
All you need to do is keep the re-offenders in there.

Ah. Someone who believes that every crime should carry a life
sentence.

Who? You?
I didn't say that.

Try using your brain and try to figure out the consequences
of such a policy.

Try reading what I said.

1) About 20% of the UK working population has a criminal record.
Having a life sentence for all crimes would therefore result in 1
person in 5 being in prison. That's a heck of a lot of prisons, and a
heck of a lot of non-productive people for everyone else to support.

How many of those are re-offenders?
Shirly not all of them.


2) Most people in prison can be trusted not to try to escape, because
the consequence of escaping is far worse than the consequence of
sitting out their sentence. If everyone was inside for life, there is
essentially nothing to lose, and riots and escape attempts would be
extremely frequent, requiring much higher (= more expensive) security
at all prisons.

Irrelevant.


3) Most people when caught committing a crime will submit to the
arrest and other processes without much resistance - because again the
likely consequence of resisting arrest is worse than the consequences
of submitting. If mass-murder carries the same sentence as
shoplifting, desperate criminals will put *everyone* at increased
risk.

So we need worse sentences for bad offences.
We could bring back the screw and let them generate power for their food.
The worse the offence the more they have to generate.
That should get the backing of the green party. 8-)

"Cynic" wrote in message
news:4f200e57.951959890@localhost...
On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:43:59 +0000, Mike Tomlinson
wrote:

En el artículo ,
Clive George escribió:

Don't talk shite. Nobody is saying that there should be no punishment,
only that the death penalty is inappropriate.

The death penalty was self-inflicted in this case. Quite a different
matter from wishing to impose the death penalty on someone.

So would you express exactly the same attitude if the photograph
showed two incinerated children who died because they trespassed on a
railway line?

That would indicate that vandals had broken the security fences, etc. and
that police action was required to find them.

On 25/01/2012 12:55, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In raweb.com,
wrote:
Prison does work, prisoners don't offend against the public while they are
locked up.

All you need to do is keep the re-offenders in there.

It costs more than simply giving them a reasonable amount of money to live
on outside. Which makes it poor value for those paying the bills - ie the
taxpayer.


OK, so you're in favour of allowing free-range crime because you don't
like the thought of punishment for criminals.

Your recurring themes demonstrate a totally inability to understand that
the rights of innocent people should be more important than those of
career - or even opportunist - criminals.

The fact is that whilst incarcerated such criminals are not making other
people's lives a misery by their actions, nor are they wasting the time
of the police and the courts and the victims. For those who, as a
consequence, do not get burgled, assaulted, killed, robbed, conned,
windows smashed, have their house burned down, or whatever, that must be
a bargain.



--
Moving things in still pictures

On 25/01/2012 14:16, Cynic wrote:
On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:43:59 +0000, Mike Tomlinson
wrote:

En el artículopvidnaWfzs3DR4PSnZ2dnUVZ8uKdnZ2d@brightvi ew.co.uk,
Clive escribió:

Don't talk shite. Nobody is saying that there should be no punishment,
only that the death penalty is inappropriate.

The death penalty was self-inflicted in this case. Quite a different
matter from wishing to impose the death penalty on someone.

So would you express exactly the same attitude if the photograph
showed two incinerated children who died because they trespassed on a
railway line?


Straw man strikes again. Grow up for heaven's sake.

--
Moving things in still pictures