Bettering Mankind Vs. Making a Coffee

Many a time, over a coffee at work I've informed my workmates quite openly that were I not banished to the back warehouse, I would roam the main of the building shooting the doddering old people that so clutter up the lives of people with lives still to live. You're retired for God's sake! Why on earth do you feel compelled to dick around attempting to pay for your shopping with your library card when normal people are on their lunch break, or are late for work?

If the everyday business of living becomes such confusion, then maybe its time for the old folk's home.. or God's cue for me to take you round back, like a faithful old sheepdog, and put you out of your misery.

But.

In all honesty, with joking aside, I've never thought the death penalty was the right way to go for the majority of crimes. When a country coolly and calmly decides its going to kill someone, that's murder, and committing murder infront of a pre-invited group of priests, locals and family members of the condemened is, well, sick.

What does it acheive? By simply giving someone a lethal injection you are not even hoping to rehabilitate a criminal, its pure punishment and a very strange message to people.

We will deter murderers by openly and explicitly murdering people.. thats pretty fucked up, let's be honest, and it gets worse, religious executions are even more disturbing than state ones. Preaching the tolerance and love of God, by stoning a pregnant woman to death is unacceptable.

Plus who does it really punish? The criminal? Not really, they have a nice last meal, then they are murdered and then that's sort of it. Try remembering what it was like before you were born.. that's what it's like.. sorry. So in reality, the punishment is really dealt to the family, dependents and children of the person being "punished". That's even more fucked up.

Clarkson once wrote;

"You can define a truly civilised nation by two things;

1) It has a large fleet of nuclear submarines
2) It does not have the death penalty "

That leaves you with France and the UK. A handful of the more pleasant, tolerant and progressive American states too do not have the death penalty.. but I'm not sure where the US keep their nuclear submarines..

Now, I'm not saying that we should go easy on criminals, and yes I can think of numerous people I would like to see quietly and efficently murdered for the betterment of the human race;

Various religious fanatics, Maggie Thatcher, Sarah Palin, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il, people who like oom-pah music, people who own ceramic representations of turds smoking pot, vegetablists, people in vulgar t-shirts from the internet, hardline Republicans, hardline conservatives, people who own a sign saying "You don't have to be mad to work here, but it helps", people who attempt to make a living as a living statue in city centres, homophobes, nationalists, people who drink Carling C2, people who bought a G-whiz, tiny women that drive huge off-road vehicles, people who bought a Smart car, people who put bodykits on their cars, Heather Mills, the Pope, people who don't realise how pointless organic vegetables are, people who order skinny lattes-to-go, people who listen to Beyonce Knowles, chavs, anyone who buys trashy celebrity magazines and Jack Tweed.

but with those people, it'd be a crime of passion and you can sort of understand that I'm sure. You're trying to engineer something better. Its the same as a hardworking man who is trying to raise his kids right and be a good husband, coming home daily to find his wife having sex with the 13 year old who delivers the paper.. somethings gotta give. Eventually, he'll snap, shoot them both and not even the Texans would electrcute him for it.

Of course though, you allow something like that to continue often, and you'd end up able to compare me to Saddam Hussein's favourite son.. you know.. the one that fed hookers to his pet tigers, and that really isn't acceptable.

So, the solution it seems would be to shoot me afterward, so maybe I'll just make a coffee instead.