Battleangel

As BBC reported last week, new European Commission Trade Regulation rules will soon outlaw David Lucas’s gallows sales. For ten years time, the Suffolk farmer has built and exported gallows to various nations including Zimbabwe (or so he claims). A questionable business practise sure, and a tad ghoulish. But it’s really the hypocrisy that strikes you first. Sure, people are being “railroaded through corrupt judicial systems” but personally I’d rather face corrupt justice than the heaps of weapons are exported every year by Britain and other western governments. Weapons that end up with large scale human rights violators and that ferment unending civil strife that goes far beyond a few gallows. Not to mention the bombs that maim and kill in the name of freedom and democracy and that are too courtesy of Britain and supposedly civilized western governments. Plus the fact that some in our neighborly group of so called western nations actually employ the capital punishment and still pass as modern, enlightened states. Also, needlees to say, Zimbabwe owes its current plight to, you guessed it, the good old British empire. So scorn Lucas all you want, but please spare us the hypocrisy.