Commons passes bill critics say will breach international law

The Commons has voted to pass the Overseas Operations Bill, a bill that would allow British soldiers to escape prosecution for war crimes and torture.

A group of MPs led by Jeremy Corbyn defied the Labour Whip over the bill and as the Guardian has reported three MPs are no longer on the front bench as a result.

Freedom From Torture has shared Sonia Sceats’s, associate fellow in the International Law programme at Chatham House, tweet saying this is “disgraceful” and it “isn’t over”.

This move has been criticised by a British soldier and Shami Chakrabarti among others.

This is a damaging prospective blow to justice and challenges the aims of the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

This bill still isn’t yet ratified.

Killing the killer

The death penalty still exists in America.

I've never seen the process before.

A man not just pleading the case of a guilty man, but pleading the case of a man who is certain to die.

The man has done something grotesque.

He's done something grotesque for a romantic reason, but there's nothing romantic about killing people and everyone knows it.

I am not trying to defend the action of the killing in any way, it looked bloody and awful and real.

Only I look at the culprit and the world is turning up with a crying face to condemn.

The woman who the man has undone with killing is weeping and cursing he should have any happiness after doing such a thing.

I hear what she is saying and if I was her, I would feel exactly the same way.

Only my eyes hate killing and my heart knows that killing never brings the killed back, ever and it does not win the dead victim a better spot in heaven.

It ruins another life completely and I do not mean the killers.

I mean the mother's, father's I could go on.

Sure, send him to prison, bang him up for the rest of his natural life.

But prison versus death can still speak and can still speak might one day give an explanation, an apology, even dare I say it an answer, for how to not have anyone die in that way ever, ever again.

He is not Satan, he is human gone wrong, reach, teach, learn.

Stop.

The death of the court reporter

With local press funding disappearing at a rate of knots someone is fast disappearing alongside, the court reporter.

British courts are very different to American ones on one important point.

No recording devices are allowed inside.

Public justice

The OJ Simpson trial...

Couldn't have happened here in the same way.

This means the only way to find out quickly what has been going on in the courts is to actually read court reports.

Valuable work

There was a time when a court reporter was a major feature of most local papers.

Ensuring justice was seen to be done, one of the principles on which our system hangs.

Court reporters still exist, but are dwindling in number.

They do one of the journalistic jobs I most admire.

While on the box

As they are cut to beyond the bone I find myself looking at the Judge Rinder show in a different light.

Sure, the show is entertainment, it is not the justice system as such.

However, increasingly it is offering an open forum to prompt reflection of fairness and justice where we hear less and less of the story unfolding behind the court room doors.

It is not a substitute, but if this is the way we are headed, perhaps it's needed.