WRT Julie Bindel’s piece: Here’s Thylacosmilus, a female blogger who doesn’t fit the stereotype, putting the other side of the argument.

Thanks for the link there QT, it’s pretty much more on the line of my thoughts in all honesty. At the end of the day it cannot stop domestic abuse, no guy is going to stop abusing his partner because he’s aggrieved they’ll not go down for fully fledged gold star murder if they snap. So little seems to have been done by the government to try and deal with the causes of aggressive behaviour from the very root of it’s being, instead always treating the result.

Whoa, hold on. Just because the new legislation doesn’t stop domestic abuse (how do you plan to make that happen, guys?) doesn’t mean its a bad idea. Why shouldnt people be punished more accurately for their crime? that’s the point here - that some men exploit loopholes to get away with abuse.. this about punishment, not rehabilitation..

I don’t think I disagree with the legislation (though feel a bit concerned about how readily people will employ the “emotional abuse” factor to try and get lesser sentences for what is ultimately unacceptable behaviour), but people *are* claiming this will somehow help domestic abuse…it won’t.

Don’t you think it sends a bit of a dubious message - specifically ‘killing someone isn’t murder if you can come up with a good enough excuse’?

but people *are* claiming this will somehow help domestic abuse…it won’t.

Who is? There might be an element of deterrence, but mostly its about justice.

QT - erm, there are already distinctions between ‘murder’ anyway, for example manslaughter, pre-meditated murder and all the rest of it.

The ‘good enough excuse’ in this case is a serious amount of abuse that will make sure the other person is in a very precarious emotional state. Its not exactly the same as a contract killing on someone and the law should accordingly treat it differently.

For me the bigger issue, which is what I said above, is that it kind of assumes there is no other “out” for the person. Now if someone was abused, tried to get it sorted through the police, social services, whatever, and the state failed and it resulted in the murder of someone I could completely understand….but this kind of stance assumes that people won’t do that (or that the services don’t help enough), and this is in itself a problem, both to assume that people not wishing to go for help is O.K and purely a choice, and that the current state of support is at a level that cannot be increased to help women more than a drop in sentencing.

I don’t know, my brain is muddled, but it is once again an arse about face way of solving a problem which I’ve come to expect from all parties now.

Sometimes I ponder that ‘justice’ is just an politicised umbrella term which means different things to different people depending on their political view of whether the technicalities or actualities as more important, rather than their ability to use individual cases as a method of demonstration to show that political balance is both vital and necessary.

For me the bigger issue, which is what I said above, is that it kind of assumes there is no other “out” for the person. Now if someone was abused, tried to get it sorted through the police, social services, whatever, and the state failed and it resulted in the murder of someone I could completely understand….but this kind of stance assumes that people won’t do that (or that the services don’t help enough), and this is in itself a problem, both to assume that people not wishing to go for help is O.K and purely a choice,

No, it’s simply a fact that some people feel they cannot seek outside help or they fear the consequences of doing so.

Yes ukliberty, exactly…now aren’t there policies that can be made for that problem? Isn’t it better to perhaps put some of the billions going in to ID Cards in to domestic violence support schemes? Instead we get this sort of thing that, while is all well and good, is yet another plaster on the problems we face.

Lee, what I meant by my previous post is that I don’t think it is assumed that not seeking outside help is ok or personal choice - it’s just a reality we have to deal with.

I’m not sure there are any polices we can create to solve the problem of women being in so much fear that they cannot seek outside help. We can only do our best - now, perhaps this isn’t being done - to make sure that they know there is outside help and that it is effective. But there will always be some who we cannot help.

Person’s announcement isn’t even a good plaster - it is about political expediency not justice, as you can tell from the manner of the announcement, who it was announced by, and its content.

“But there will always be some who we cannot help.”

I accept this, but I also note that it is also possible already of course to give quite low sentences for murder. To promote manslaughter as a charge applicable to someone who has premeditated the killing of their partner seems somewhat pointless to me given the difference in terms to be served, unless women that kill after planning to are ultimately to be rewarded with their actions by being sentenced for no longer than those that did “just snap”.

“Lee, what I meant by my previous post is that I don’t think it is assumed that not seeking outside help is ok or personal choice - it’s just a reality we have to deal with.”

The way I meant what I said above is that essentially this move is one that admits defeat on that front. Like you say, we have to deal with it, and the supposedly most intelligent people on this matter can come up with nothing better so this is it. Deal with those that we can’t reach as a statistical ambiguity that can’t be helped, and instead give them the comfort of a couple of years off their sentence. It’s almost like some kind of guilt thing, we’ve not helped these women so the lease we can do is shave their sentences down, do we then feel better about ourselves as a society?

“I’m not sure there are any polices we can create to solve the problem of women being in so much fear that they cannot seek outside help.”

Tackling the reasons why women get in to situations where they believe with all of their heart and mind that no-one is there to help would be a start. Removing from the equation women that are abused only the once or are unfortunately murdered in a fit of rage or similar, is there a profile of women that enter an abusive relationship knowingly or unknowingly and refuse to talk to anyone about it? Is there any research there, any study? Are these women all perfectly happy sociable and strong independent types that are beaten down by their partners, or are they in themselves emotionally insecure, perhaps suffered from abuse as a child…do we actually know any of the common traits of an abused person in an abusive relationship that we can be trying to combat before relationships even start to become a factor for that person?