It was the early hours of the morning when my phone rang. I was asleep and it took me a moment to get myself together. The voice of my friend Anne in California dispensed with usual greetings and instead simply said “Simon, your princess is dead.”
The TV news was carrying pictures of a smashed car in a Paris tunnel. Details were sketchy and confused. But by the time the country awoke that Sunday morning Diana, Princess of Wales, was dead and everything normal seemed to stop, as if standing in shock like everyone else.
I won’t re-hash what newspapers around the world will doubtlessly be saying today. I’ll just take this moment to remember Diana, Princess of Wales, who died on this day 10 years ago.
So you’re in love and you want to pop the question. You’ll need a ring or course. And not just any old ring. It should be unique and communicate something of the depth of your relationship, right? Well perhaps then this ring (pictured right) is the one for you?
Oh you might laugh, or gasp in horror maybe, but somewhere in the world there is a person who will be thrilled to find and wear this ring.
I discovered it by chance today while searching Google images for something unrelated to rings, or shagging come to that. But once I saw the picture of the ring on a blog post by Toronto resident, Eliane Duvekot, I just knew I had to blognap it.
Yesterday Liverpool celebrated its 800th birthday with street parties, parades, shows, and an unforgettable firework display to round off the celebrations.
The firework display was quite simply the most amazing firework display I’ve ever seen, beating that 4th of July firework display in Boston (USA) back in 2000. Fireworks were fired from the top of the Liver (pronounced Ly’ver) building, the catholic cathedral and the church of England cathedral, as well as a barge on the river Mersey.
The £250,000 ($501,950) 18 minute display was timed to perfection and set to music that was broadcast around the city and on a local radio station. I was proud to have a personal connection as one of my friends, James, was on the team responsible for the fireworks on the catholic cathedral.
I took up a position on the riverside at Birkenhead just before 10pm. I had my camera at the ready but only the discovered that I had forgotten to take a memory card with me, so none of these pictures were taken by me, but in truth I doubt that my shots would have been anywhere near as good.
What these photographs fail to give you a sense of was the enormity of the display that stretched across the entire city in perfect time. It truly was a beautiful awesome spectacle. I might have missed it had it not been for a text message that James sent me in the morning reminding me that the display was happening.
It’s hard to think of Liverpool in terms of being 800 years old but King John founded the port of Liverpool in 1207 after England had conquered Ireland and was in need of another port to send men and supplies across the Irish Sea.
The city is currently undergoing extensive redevelopment and regeneration hoping to further establish itself as one of Britain’s premier cities. If developers have their way the Liverpool riverside skyline will look more like Honk Kong and New York in the future. A series of ambitious plans have proposed a number of skyscrapers for the riverside that will dwarf the current ‘three graces’ that stand on the banks of the river Mersey.
I don’t feel as connected to Liverpool as I once used to when I used to get the ferry across the Mersey to work every day. I am after all a ’southerner’ hailing from the South East of England not the North West where I now live. But nonetheless it’s been my closest city for years now, just 6 miles away, and as such a part of me feels connected to Liverpool and that part was proud to see the fireworks light up the sky on it’s 800th birthday.
The fact that Texas recently executed another prisoner in its custody isn’t really news. Nonetheless, the media picked up on the story because it’s the lone star states 400th killing, and on this occasion the European Union took the unusual step of requesting that Texas cease the practice of carrying out executions altogether.
The United States has put to death 1,089 people since the Supreme Court lifted a ban on capital punishment in 1976. Since then the State of Texas has lead the way claiming 400 of those killings, 131 of those under George W. Bush in his tenure as governor. Lethal injection is the preferred method of execution, but the electric chair and gas chamber remain an option. Firing squads and hangings might sound barbaric, but those methods were used to kill 5 people in the United States as recently as 1996. In fact, it was only in 2001 that the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to put to death mentally retarded individuals. Following that, in 2005 the Supreme Court concluded that it was unconstitutional to execute anyone who was under the age of 18 when they committed an offense.
Johnny Ray Conner was executed in Texas on Wednesday for the 1998 fatal shooting of a grocery store clerk, Kathyanna Gon Thi Nguyen. Conner always denied the charge and in 2005, a judge overturned Conner’s death sentence and ordered a retrial, saying Conner’s lawyers had been ineffective. In January a federal appeals court reversed that decision.
Without a doubt it is a tragedy that Kathyanna Gon Thi Nguyen was shot and killed. But I’m unconvinced that a state sanctioned murder of her killer has redressed the balance or served any real justice.
Supporters of the death penalty often cite the Bible verse, “An eye for an eye“, as some kind of divine justification. But the same book also says that God himself said “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.”
So where is the moral directive for justice? Upon what did we base our judgement that killing is wrong? If it was wrong of Ray Conner to kill Kathyanna Gon Thi Nguyen, why then was it right for the state of Texas to kill Ray Conner?
Perhaps the family of Conner’s victim feels better now that her killer is himself dead. But is it the job of the judiciary system to exact revenge in such a way? In effect, are we to believe that in this case two wrongs have made a right?
Conner was in jail for the crime of murder. He no longer posed a significant threat to people of Texas. One day he might have been released, and I will agree that such a prospect seems utterly unthinkable when one considers that his victim is dead. But in killing Conner isn’t the State of Texas simply demonstrating the fact that it simply doesn’t believe in it’s own rehabilitation system?
Perhaps execution is justice. Maybe killing a killer serves as a warning to other would be murderers that the same fate awaits them should they be caught. However, as the President of the European Union pointed out, there seems to be absolutely no evidence from any quarter that the death penalty serves as an effective deterrent. Most murders are not the result of a calculated well thought out process of reason.
If justice is equal handed then one thing troubles me about the death penalty; how come there have been so few executions compared to the number of crimes that are potentially punishable by death? I understand that the process of law takes time, but in the state of Texas alone there were 55,902 murders between 1976 and 2005 and yet only 355 executions. How is there such a vast difference between the numbers of crime and so-called justice?
In Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 US Supreme Court case that resulted in a temporary end to executions, it was concluded that the death penalty was “cruel and unusual punishment” proscribed by the Eighth Amendment as incompatible with the evolving standards of decency in modern society. Back then Justice Potter Stewart wrote “These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual. For, of all the people convicted of rapes and murders in 1967 and 1968, many just as reprehensible as these, the petitioners are among a capriciously selected random handful upon whom the sentence of death has in fact been imposed.”
Stewart went on to write “I simply conclude that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and so freakishly imposed.” However, just four years later the Supreme Court allowed states to rewrite their death penalty statutes. Florida reinstated the death penalty within five months, followed shortly by 34 other states.
By the end of this month, barring last minute appeals, the State of Texas will have killed three more people, Daroyce Mosley, John Amador, and Kenneth Foster. I’ve not looked at their specific cases, and make no mistake I’m not suggesting that Texas is especially savage, I’m merely asking whether killing these men and the others that will follow, will really serve justice, and if not then shouldn’t the United States be examining the motives for the death penalty in the first place? What do you think?
What inspires you? That’s a big question and one that you might want to ponder for a while. Inspiration comes in many forms and today I’d like to share with you a video of one guy whom I find truly inspiring. His name is Ben Saunders, and he’s an Arctic explorer.
Anyone who enjoys listening to someone tell a good story will enjoy listening to Ben Saunders. The 30 year old British adventurer is the youngest person ever to ski solo to the North Pole, a challenge described by revered mountaineer, Reinhold Messner, as “ten times as dangerous as Everest”.
In this extraordinary 18 minute video recorded back in 2005, Ben modestly describes himself as being someone who “specialises in dragging heavy things around cold places.” However his achievement of skiing solo to the North Pole is quickly put into context when you learn that over 2000 people have climbed Everest, 12 people have stood on the moon, and yet only 4 people have skied solo to the North Pole.
“Unsupported polar expeditions are right at the edge of what’s humanly possible, both physically and psychologically.” Say Saunders when asked why he would choose to undertake a challenge like skiing to the north pole. He hopes that the journey inspires people to think about what they want to do with “the tiny amount of time we each have on this planet.”
Like all great explorers though, success in his last challenge has driven him to seek an even bigger one. In less than two months Saunders will set out on his next expedition, SOUTH, the first return journey to the South Pole on foot. This 1,800-mile expedition will be the longest unsupported polar journey in history. The current record stands at 1,350 miles, and most experts agree that going another 500 without assistance is practically impossible.
You can follow the build-up and progress of Ben Saunders SOUTH expedition on his blog.
Additional note : SOUTH was put on the backburner for a while. For more information about Ben’s upcoming adventures, and there will be more, see his blog.
Perhaps the family of Conner’s victim feels better now that her killer is himself dead. But is it the job of the judiciary system to exact revenge in such a way? In effect, are we to believe that in this case two wrongs have made a right?
