"LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN CAST THE FIRST STONE” ( John 8:7)

Great Britain is compliant with torture; despite denials we are. We stand four square behind our ‘special’ American allies who torture people and hold them without charge or trial for years. This is in preparation for trials which could see them face the death penalty; I think I have got that much right but; I’m sure someone will take issue with it. I want to make one thing absolutely clear here before I go any further; Mr. Akmal Shaikh the British National who was executed in China should never have been put to death; he should never have been executed under any circumstances; references to his mental health condition are neither here nor there it should not be relevant; had there been no mention of a mental health problem would he have been left to his fate? A job remains to be done to find out exactly what happened here; this man was allegedly set up by Polish Gangsters to smuggle heroin to China; it all sounds like an over the top caper movie; we need to pursue how this happened. My position on Capital Punishment remains resolutely against which means of course I am also against the possible execution of those prisoners whom I mentioned earlier whether they are found guilty or not they should not face the death penalty; no one should.


It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the West is having a go at Communist China here and is guilty of Hypocrisy; look again at our “special friends” in America. During Clinton’s run for presidency he interrupted his high profile campaign in a huge blaze of publicity to fly home to Little Rock Kansas where he was governor to sign a death warrant for a convicted murderer who had a mental age of eight years; all to prove he was tough on crime; did Britain protest? ‘the hell we did’ This kind of hypocrisy has a habit of rebounding on you and it is now; China can say who do you think you are lecturing us when you behave as you do to foreign prisoners; just as Iran can say why is Israel allowed illegal WMD’s and we are not; no matter which side you support there is a certain logic in the questions.


China is an ancient place where change has been incredible over the last 200 years; from the time where Chinese people were exploited all over the world especially America where they worked and died like slaves on the railways. They are now a world super power and will not be ordered about; Britain did it’s usual colonial exploitation and destroyed millions with the Opium Trade and the Chinese haven’t forgotten.


We should try as always to learn from such a tragedy; we along with other like minded countries should try everything we can to persuade China and other countries that Capital Punishment is wrong and also importantly it does not work. We need to have China more or less on line with the rest of the world and that means compromise from them; from us; from America and the other countries; none of us are perfect and we should be prepared to admit that. Capital Punishment is barbaric; it solves nothing and improves nothing it simply lowers the levels of decency which we should all aspire to, the whole squalid business of putting our fellow human beings to death should be confined to history and put somewhere alongside the burning of witches and the stoning of sinners.