Ginny [they/she]

  • 0 Posts
  • 35 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: July 16th, 2023
  • Ginny [they/she]@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•What's the difference between the UK justice system and the U.S. justice system?
    2·
    13 days ago

    The legal systems you find in the US (since some states I understand do things a bit differently) are largely based on the common law legal system of England and Wales.

    Scotland and Northern Ireland are different jurisdictions. NI is a broadly similar system to EW but with its own laws, but the Scottish system is more different; they operate on Scots law, which is kind of a hybrid of common law and European style civil law.

    Now, it would be hard for me to type on my phone an overview of the entire legal system of England and Wales because it - by itself - is essentially 4 legal systems in a trenchcoat that were smushed together in a car accident, but here’s an overview of the big differences you’d find in the criminal system.

    1. The first thing you’d notice after you were arrested is that you don’t get a lawyer; you get a solicitor. Here, there are two types of lawyers. Solicitors are the basically the people who handle everything that isn’t related to arguing in court. If it comes to court, your lawyer will hire a barrister for you. Barristers (so called because they are admitted “to the bar”, like US lawyers) are arguing-in-court specialists. These days some solicitors can argue in court, and some barristers can take clients directly, but this is still rare.

    2. Next a lawyer (usually a barrister) at the Crown Prosecution Service will decide whether or not you will be charged. The CPS is I guess the Law and Order equivalent of the District Attorney’s office, except we don’t elect a District Attorney. The head of the CPS is technically appointed by the government, but is basically appointed by a committee of lawyers and civil servants.

    3. No grand juries here. If you’re charged, you go straight to trial.

    4. If the crime is low level enough (like less than £1000 fine or less than 6 months in gaol or something like that) you go to Magistrate’s Court. A magistrate is basically a volunteer who isn’t a lawyer, but they will have a lawyer whispering in their ear. There will be three of them and there won’t be a jury. The idea behind this is that the magistrates are trusted members of the community (and they do get an amount of training), so it’s kind of like you have a permanent mini-jury on hand, but many lawyers don’t like the system.

    5. For a more serious crime, you end up in Crown Court. Crown Court will usually have a judge and jury. If the crime is extremely national security sensitive, and they can convince the judge that this is the case, then the judge may decide that you don’t get a jury. On the other hand, in most cases, you can decide that you don’t want a jury. None of our judges are elected; they are appointed by another committee and they are almost all former barristers.

    6. After that the system looks broadly similar, except for the fact that everyone is wearing robes and horse hair wigs. Next up is the Court of Appeal of England and Wales where there will be a few senior judges. They decide matters of law but do not second guess facts decided by jury. And then after that is the United Kingdom Supreme Court (for we all share one).

  • Ginny [they/she]@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoMemes@lemmy.ml•A small infographic
    719·
    18 days ago

    I don’t doubt that the Ukrainian army is full nazis and fascists. I also don’t doubt that the Russian army is full of nazbols and fascists. Armies tend to attract those sorts.

    I wouldn’t really know, but I would not imagine that Ukraine is a progressive country. Outside of the liberal enclaves of the bigger cities, I imagine it’s pretty bad actually. But here’s my surface level view.

    Russia:

    • has invaded a neighbouring sovereign country,
    • puts people in prison for being openly gay,
    • has banned legal and healthcare provision for trans people, and
    • openly declares to the world stage that it is fighting a rearguard action against western degeneracy in favour of Christian family values. (Admittedly I do not speak Russian and I can’t speak to what is translated as degeneracy or satanism or what-have-you, but no one has credibly disputed that this is the essence of what Russian ministers are saying on camera.)

    Ukraine:

    • has not invaded any of its neighbours recently,
    • has, on paper at least, legal protections for LGBT people, and
    • is still signed up to the European Convention of Human Rights.

    Regardless of the specific iconography that the less pleasant members of its citizenry choose to display their chuddery, one of the countries is prima facie more nazi than the other in its behaviour at this moment in time. And it’s going to take a lot more than “hurr durr imperialist propaganda” to convince me that it’s Ukraine, given those bare facts.

  • Ginny [they/she]@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoComic Strips@lemmy.world•Optical illusion
    78·
    2 months ago

    A. This is obvious whataboutism. Yes, you are literally the ones sacrificing children. The fact that you are sacrificing less children doesn’t let you off the hook.

    B. Cops in the UK don’t kill nearly so many children because most of the cops are unarmed. They are unarmed because mostly everyone is unarmed. Cops killing more children (not to mention everyone else) is literally a consequence of everyone having guns.

    Come on my dude, if you think the dead kids are an acceptable cost, then just admit it. Even the right wing talking heads can do that.

  • Ginny [they/she]@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoMemes@lemmy.ml•Two Things Can Be True At Once!
    18·
    3 months ago

    Again, word salad.

    The contradiction is between the increasing interconnection of production and distribution, and the concentration of the profits of this system into fewer and fewer hands.

    In what way is the interconnection of production and distribution increasing? Why is that contradictory with the concentration of profits into fewer and fewer hands? Our systems of production and distribution have been getting increasingly complex since the middle ages and yet the concentration of wealth has certainly ebbed and flowed in time. In what way are you suggesting one affects the other?

    The old system of imperialism is dying away,

    This is not a profound statement. It has literally always been the case since society has existed. The system of imperialism in the city states of antiquity died and gave way to the imperialism of the classical empires, which gave way to the imperialism of the feudal monarchies, and then the nation states, and the colonial empires, and so on to the capitalist economic imperialism of today.

    while the interconnected, post-imperialist world is rising

    Post-imperial? I doubt that and you have provided no evidence that that would be the case. It seems to me that the economic imperialism of the Western nation states is in transition to some kind of fascist corporate techno-feudalist imperialism.

    And again, how does this relate to the distribution of wealth and systems of production of distribution? It’s not big and it’s not clever to say they are related because the fact that everything is related everything else is basically axiomatic of the system of analysis. You have to point out how.

    On Contradiction isn’t word salad

    That’s just, like, your opinion, man.

    It doesn’t give answers, but it helps us find them.

    Which answers, exactly? Because the answer always seems to be the downfall of capitalism and to be replaced by socialism and then communism. And when that continues to not happen, the response always seems to be “but it totes will, eventually.” That isn’t analysis, that’s a teleological belief.