[jstone78]

{....The Brits don't have the death penalty, right? And yet the maximum for *manslaughter* is life in prison? Huh?....}

I am just as clueless as you are. All nations of the world look up to Britain, the nation that is supposed to be the gold standard of Western Civilization.

Whatever happened to English Common Law? What happened to the nation that provided America with its founding fathers? Institutions of modern democracy are derived, not from the Greeks, but from the British (Magna Carta, Parliaments, independent courts, rule of law, etc.)

If the gold standard of civilization as we know it, is not performing as it should, what does that say about the rest of us?

[CatoRenasci]

This is the result of 65 years of Labour governments and 150 years of statutory law mucking up the common law. Under the Common Law, as it existed even at the turn of the 20th century, an Englishman, confronted with an intruder who had broken into his house (or was indeed inside the 'close') in the nightime, would have been absolutely justified in executing the miscreant. That was, and in my view remains, the only sensible rule.

[Sinner6]

Institutions of modern democracy are derived, not from the Greeks, but from the British I would like to point out that native americans also gave us some good ideas for democracy.