Do you want the police deciding these groups, or the courts? Who decides who is worthy of protection?

I'm not wholly comfortable with the reasoning behind any sort of "it's extra bad because of a specific motivation" offences. Any assault is serious, regardless of why the dick did it, and they should all be sentenced on the same, preferably harsh, basis. Getting stamped on is getting stamped on, whatever the stampers are shouting while they do it.

Yes, me, too.

Yes, me, too.

That's works fine in a truly equal society where people don't kill each other because they look a bit different. But we don't live in that society and the extra deterrent is so people know that there is zero tolerance to discrimination.

I have been since twenty to three.

How does that remotely follow? That only makes sense if people are more likely to kill someone because they're racist or whatever, and will simultaneously be more likely to be deterred by a higher sentence (the two, of course, not sitting well together). I'm not sure there's any evidence that's actually true.

I'd rather no one killed anyone, and we had sentencing that reflected that.

I'm a little too tired today to debate that in full, but sentencing is supposed to act as a deterrent, you'll have to concede that. Whether it does in practice - probably not since all crime still exists.

In any event, sentencing is not black and white.

You don't get X years for Crime A; Y for Crime B.

If you line up Crime A as attracting a punishment of X years then you'll have mitigating features that will reduce the sentence then you have aggravating features that will increase the sentence. Racial (or otherwise) motivation is clearly an aggravating factor.

If someone attacks another because of their race or whatever, then a sharper punishment ought follow because it's abhorrent, socially unacceptable etc etc etc.

As far as I'm aware the measures being taken by Manchester police isn't changing the sentencing at all. It's simply recording whether the person being attacked is a member of a subculture to determine if that was a motivating factor.

Why should the latter crime have a higher penalty, when the effect on the victim is the same? Why is the former victim's pain and suffering worth less deterrence?

I WANT TO ARGUE BORING TECHNICAL LAW STUFF WITH SATURNALIAN LIKE THE MASSIVE TEDE I AM.

Ahem

Sentencing isn't compensatory punishment for the victim.

If you break someone's legs after getting drunk you'll get the punishment and the adjustments for the circumstances.

If you break someone's legs because they're black then you're a special kind of danger to the public.

Of course, if you're a loon who breaks people's legs cause you're a dangerous irrational psychopath, well, you'll probably get a steep punishment anyway for being a loon.

It's Friday, man, and The Walking Dead finale is on in 15 minutes.

Did you learn all about QOWCS though?

What if we all lived on the moon in space bears and shot at each other with mind cannon fists?

What if we all lived on the moon in space bears and shot at each other with mind cannon fists?

Speaking about attacks on minorities, I find it terrifying how the local buses now have posters on them about reporting and recognising disability hate crime. I mean, that was all practically unknown, or at least extremely rare, just 3 or 4 years ago.

It's definitely not, but the extent of it certainly is.

Should the police get to decide to treat the mods or the rockers more favorably? Two sub cultures in society.

Have you got some figures showing that absolute numbers of offences have gone up (rather than number of reported offences going up due to greater awareness etc)?

How could anyone have those sorts of figures, though? By definition, the figure would be the number of reported offences, surely?

Should we trust the police to decide who gets that extra protection in a fair and unbiased fashion?

Just started watching Arrested Development.

Man it's good. Why did I wait so long to watch it.

It's not extra protection. The goth/emo has already been attacked. It just gets logged as a hate crime. I suppose, after a few years, they will test the statistical significance and make some suggestions based on that.

The question is not 'what they shout while they stamp on someone'; it's 'the reason they are stamping on someone in the first place'.

I was walking into Shipley to buy some more chemicals and rags when a car slowed down. It was a Hyundai Coupe had three young lads in it.They expressed their liking of my rucksack in street patois over the noise of their syncopated music in It was an uplifting moment on a sunny day.

Cock. Just dropped my phone on the floor. Screen cracked.

What was it? Some are surprisingly cheap and simple to fix.

Galaxy S2. This isn't one of those, is it?

Nope. 70 quid for the parts by the look of it.

In 2011 the captain of a Boeing 767 was unable to gain re-entry to the flight deck having taken a short break, with the plane airborne over the London area.

He used an emergency code to get in, to find the first officer unconscious. He came round on shaking.

Dr Rob Hunter, head of flight safety at Balpa, said: "A pilot falls asleep on the flight deck on a UK-registered airplane at least once in every 24 hours - and probably a lot more than that.