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I’m getting more confident walking in and out of court rooms – it seems to be the accepted “thing” for reporters to be roaming around. However I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I am fabricating public humiliation, or as my colleague puts it, “part of the justice system!”.
(Huh. I just realised, it is hilarious, because she reminded me of Julia Louis-Dreyfus or possibly even Elaine when we first met. She puts exclamation points at the end of almost every sentence!)
She was referring to journalists and journalism, but I don’t think that’s right. I think we should be questioning the system itself and not the poor sods caught up in its web of bureaucracy.
My thoughts about the system today were that, damn, it’s hard to get someone behind bars. A guy caught with 5,000 child porn images was sentenced to 25 days of porn training, a symbolic sentence he will never serve, and… that’s it. I guess the public humiliation sort of polishes off his punishment.
The poor sod who just accidentally broke someone’s nose two years ago and now might suffer in his hairdressing practice, that one was unnecessary, but to be fair any reasonable person would understand it wasn’t such a big deal. Though I guess everyone will know about his testicle cancer now – I didn’t mention the one that was removed, out of consideration.
No, what disturbed me today was the sheer amount of nonsense that gets in the way of these trials. Every single one of them was delayed by at least two years. This is two years of mental agony, uncertainty of what might happen once their case is finally opened. Living in fear for years until the incident they were charged with is nothing but a speck in their past life and they have morphed into somebody new… but the beast of bureaucracy, some may call it justice, comes back to bite them, and bite them on the arse followed by the gentle caress of public humiliation.
Like with a dog, you do not rub its nose in its mess after the event – you catch it in the act and punish it right then and there, or it forgets and thinks you have gone mad, you are unpredictable and cruel. Though we humans may have a slightly longer memory span, it surely does not last two, three years. We are keen to disbelieve those defendants who say “I can’t remember”, but can we remember the precise facts of an event or a conversation two years prior?
No, it’s all very convoluted and ugly. I must learn the tools of the trade, learn to talk and act like a reporter, then move the f*** on. Pronto. Callousness can come, but it must come for the right people – not these poor, poor sods.
Saw half a fox today on the M4.
I listened to more government propaganda on the radio despite my promise to self not to do so. It can really wreck my mood for a few hours. I know I should let things wash over me like George Michael’s voice, but this paranoia is getting out of hand. I didn’t wear a mask in the Lidl today, and nearly charmed the mask off the clerk at the till at the end with my klutzy ways. How tragic to see only ¼ of everybody’s faces. I have decided that if confronted, I will say in my innocent manner, “I just think it’s all a bit creepy,” and hope for the best!
The truth of course would be that it makes my stomach churn to see all these people so readily submit to “government guidelines”… that reduce their social interaction to near-zero… taking for granted the preciousness of our interactions with one another, even if they are from afar. And that, only if the person is elderly or likely to come in contact with an elderly person. On an individual basis, I am happy to make an effort, always. On a mass authoritarian level, no, never. It is messy, meaningless, ugly and overbearing.
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