Latest Site News

[vidcapper]

My understanding is that there was general support for the abolition of capital punishment at the time because of some high profile cases. Those high profile cases also led to juries being less likely to convict in capital cases.

The Full Fact page doesn't really give the full facts. In order to test the hypothesis that abolition led to an increase in the murder rate, you need to look at what was happening before 1964. Again, my understanding is that the murder rate was going up and that the trend just continued after abolition.

But the unanswerable question is - would that trend have continued if capital punishment had still been in force? The infamous Moors Murders happened soon after abolition, for example.

Did the murder rate include or exclude the murders from the "troubles"?

Most people are fed up with voting on anything more than even once every 2 years. To suggest that anything more than a minority of activists would vote online on an ongoing wide variety of issues - and with all the risk of hacking that goes with it - is fantastical and unrealistic I'm afraid.

I assume the stats would have included those from NI.

You're right about most people not wanting to have to vote often, in elections or referenda, especially on the same issue.

OTOH, at least activists are at least more likely to be aware of the issues involved - but by far the hardest obstacle to overcome would be the resistance of politicians!