Have your say - either way - on capital punishment

The blogger Paul Staines, also known as Guido Fawkes, has put an e-petition on the Downing Street website calling for the return of capital punishment for murderers of children and of police officers killed in the line of duty.

Martin Shapland and other opponents of the death penalty have launched a counter petition opposing the return of capital punishment.

At the time of putting up this post the e-petition calling for the return of the death penality in those specified circumstances has 26,294 signatures, and the e-petition opposing the death penalty has 33,352 signatures.

There are a dozen other live petitions on the same subject, some supporting the death penalty, some against, four which call for a referedum on capital punishment and one which opposes such a referendum. However, the Paul Staines and Martin Shapland petitions both have many times more signatures than all the rest, apart from each other, put together.

You can read and support Guido's petition to bring back capital punishment here.

You can read and support the counter-petition opposing capital punishment here.

Comments

Jim said…
Just a question, but isnt it a pretty pointless debate?

I thought that the death penelty was removed totally by 21(5) of the Human Rights Act 1998, and under the 13th protocol the UK may no longer legislate to restore it, even if we wanted to.
6:04 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Guido's peition includes a clause about renegotiating any international treaties which might have a bearing on the policy. Whether the UK would have much chance of doing so if the proponents of capital publishment won the argument is another matter ...
9:16 am
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