Comments on: Incarceration of Gillian Gibbons in Sudan

By: better put a fake name

better put a fake name — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:24:05 +0000

oh it was a peach…
i live in an area with a lot of muslims…
[the only way i can tell they are muslims is by their dress: the birds are wrapped up - half or wholly - and the blokes wear skirts and beards... much the same way you can tell who is jewish (skull cap) and who are sikhs (turban), etc... otherwise, i can't tell and have no interest.]

anyway, i went into my local NHS Health Centre the other day (which is frequented and served by ‘all sorts’)…
and there, on the reception counter was a teddy bear…
we were being invited to ‘Name the Teddy’ and donate a £1 in aid of charity.
[i believe the competition had started before all the sudan palaver]

oh the temptation to put “mohammed” was enormous…
but… i don’t think the joke would have been appreciated by the birds in black behind the counter – i probably would have got mugged on my way out; and, i’m not sure i would have got in to see the doc…
so, i resisted the urge.

shame, really, because it was this kind of ‘stoic humour’ that got us through the wars and made britain great… and it’s with the help of cartoonists like Matt that we get through the daily press today.

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By: Elliott

Elliott — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 16:55:47 +0000

Was Mr Osler (November 29, 2007 7:19 AM ) being deliberately ironic when he wrote “Most importantly, we should never be made to feel that we have to PANDA to rotten cultural values that are not just different but blatantly wrong.”(my emphasis) – thereby mixing black/white racial issues up with what was a purely teddy-ursine case?

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By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 01:48:36 +0000

Boris… when you say a return to Palmerston’s days, do you mean you’d like to force yourself onto one of the ladies in waiting to The Queen al Messer Palmerston ? I think Boris that might be beyond the pale even for the voters of London.

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By: h addison

h addison — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:00:32 +0000

by humouring the sudanese, let alone by providing the platform for lord ahmed and baroness warsi to glow in the limelight, we’re just playing into all their hands… and asking for it to happen again (in Sudan as well as elsewhere).

so, how much did we have to pay in ransom money to get her back?

this is a simple case of bribery, corruption and kidnapping. the people who ‘arrested’ her in sudan (as well as ahmed and warsi) must be laughing all the way to the bank; their egos well stroked.

we are being made to look fools; and not only by foreigners.

britain’s a soft option with weak leadership… bring back maggie: antoagonists would think twice before meddling with a maggie.

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By: Elizabeth Obisanya

Elizabeth Obisanya — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 09:55:26 +0000

I read of a lady that brought her teddy from Harrods and named it after Mohammed (Al fayed…)

anyway…thats is what happens when you change names..Teddy already has a name and was named after Roosevelt!
I guess the honouring thing got lost in translation!

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By: Charles Johnson

Charles Johnson — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:00:47 +0000

At the very least, a ludicrous sentence, apparently ‘terrifying’ according to Ms. Gibbons.
How much more terrifying might have been arrest without being told of the nature of her offence, nor of the date of her release? I wonder if these two types of justice, Sudanese and Gitmo-style, might in any way be related as another organ would put it?

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By: Stanley Morgan

Stanley Morgan — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:26:30 +0000

Lordy, lordy, don’t you see? It’s all God’s fault for giving us humans brains the size of cabbages. We have the capability of inventing nukes but not one iota of common sense to go with it.

Religion? The greatest ever source of human misery.

Why? Because the more of ourselves we give to any cause or belief, the less of ourselves remains.

[...]

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By: Dan Wise

Dan Wise — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 12:01:31 +0000

What a non-story. So someone in the world gets imprisoned for no reason? Surely there are more tragic examples of this even in our own country, let alone in the wider world. Take the situations of those wrongfully imprisoned in Russia and Pakistan for example – of much more significance globally.

Is this not just another example of our media misrepresenting the facts to generate a big story?

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By: PaulD

PaulD — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:08:07 +0000

“Fair doos, Ed. She hasn’t been convicted yet.”
You were saying….?(Ed W).

I said that she had broken the law. Ed modified this as the teacher hadn’t been convicted at the time. Quite right in theory (I was hardly expecting a knock at the door from men in white robes!).

She has now been “pardoned”. I wonder, is this the same as an acquittal? Over here, you are pardoned only after being convicted.

Belated reply as the site’s been down again.

[Ed: thankfully, back up again! Thank you for your understanding)

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By: Steven_L

Steven_L — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:27:44 +0000

“This is an outrage. There was an article in the Sun yesterday about the jail they’ve put her in. It’s like the black hole of Calcutta in there. Hundreds of people crammed in, flies, excrement in an open hole in the ground, babies dying in the heat.” (Sam)

You hit on an important point here. In a poor nation, with an economy unable to meet the demands of its populations’ basic needs, surely corporal punishment and public humiliation is the best option to maintain law and order.

Flogging and caning might upset our Western sensibilities, but you can hardly fine poor African peasants, likewise if prisons had better conditions than on the outside there would be an incentive to commit crime and be locked away.

Now I’m not advocating the use of the cat-o-nine tails, but in terms of petty crime surely there is no harm is using safe (but painful) corporal punishment in public to maintain law and order, if economic circumstances dictate that it is actually the most humane and effective way of dealing with the problem?

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