There are times I really like our Jury system

I will repeat & will keep repeating that I have not made any racist comment about anything or anyone, I never have & never will & please feel free to trawl through every post or comment I have made on the BBS & you will not find one word , I never get involved political debate or anything contentious , I passed a comment on vandalism & that was that , I do not have to justify myself & you do not know me so please do not judge me, if you did know me you would apologise to me straight away because I am nothing like this horrendous accusation suggests

 

??

 

The issue is inherently political and contentious, so "I never get involved in political debate or anything contentious" doesn't really make sense

 

Where to start?
You ‘broke my quote’ by deleting the end square bracket.

I’m not ‘just blaming Coulston’(sic), I am however holding him responsible for his actions, and as it’s his statue we’re discussing, I don’t think there’s anything controversial there.

And again, at no point have I defended those that vandalised the statue. However, contrary to your ‘opinion’ a jury of their peers found them not guilty having been given all the evidence and guidance on the law from a judge.

That’s really all there is to say about that court case. It followed due process and delivered a verdict, you’re free to disagree with the verdict, but the further away you are from all the facts of the case, the more insignificant your opinion on the matter.

I’m also interested how you live with yourself judging others when they’ve committed an act of vandalism, and me for using a modern phone but you don’t feel you can judge someone responsible for thousands of deaths? Seriously the only conclusion is ‘is it because they is black?’

Apologies if you don’t get the cultural reference.

But seriously, how do you manage the mental gymnastics required to hate people who damage statues and not be bothered at all about people who killed thousands.

I’ll not start on the biblical quotes (beyond inhuman to lean on such medieval beliefs).

 

And the assumption being that their decision was correct as you think it should have remained there

Presumably if you didn’t think that you wouldn’t be defending the erection of the statue? It’s not a wild guess is it

 

My issue is vandalism , there is nothing political & contentious about that & that makes perfect sense to me , my car got keyed yesterday for what reason I do not know , that also is vandalism & once again is neither political or contentious .

 

And I’ll politely ask again…

How is it possible for you not to have an opinion on the killing of thousands of black people, and get angry defending your right to have no opinion. And in the same breath have such a strong opinion on the defacing of an inanimate object?

It’s a simple question; and the more you hold your stance the more odd it looks.

Let’s look at my position re the vandalism: I can happily hold the view that I disapprove of vandalism, also that the statue should have been removed or the plaque changed earlier, and also believe that the courts decision is almost certainly the right one.

See; it’s easy to hold a nuanced view of something, but it seems you can’t even hold a simple view of whether it’s right to murder black people. No view at all - that’s weird to most people.

 

I’m not judging you other than to say that you are a hypocrite. As am I (so I’ve judged myself) as are most of us. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. You certainly don’t know the colour of my skin so please be careful with what you say about the value I place on black lives or my understanding of this subject. Perhaps your opinion is the insignificant one, being more removed than my own. Has that thought occurred to you?
I don’t hate the people who pulled the statue down, I just don’t think they should have done it or that it helps the debate. I’ll defer to your obvious superior knowledge on the subject of the trial as I have not read the transcript. I didn’t realise that one could only comment on a subject if you consider someone to be sufficiently well informed about it.
By the way, the quotes weren’t mediaeval but nor do I think they don’t hold true.

 

Not an anti-vaxxer Helen, but an anti-lockdown protestor (and, albeit, a man of colour). The amount of police that immediately surrounded him as he began to speak (while 'exercising his arms', due to lockdown laws re: 'exercising') was wholly disproportionate and led to him being violently shoved into a police van. This was in November, so not even a strict lockdown, unlike the BLM protest in Bristol, which was during lockdown and faced no resistance from police.

 

Not quite, the jury listened to the evidence and decided that the guilt of the accused was not proven beyond reasonable doubt - and under English law that means they are innocent and free to go about their lives.

Juries don't find the accused innocent, they decide whether there was enough proof of guilt.

 

I will politely answer you , , the thread was about the courts decision on a criminal damage charge , a statue was criminally damaged & my opinion is that I think that criminal damages & vandalism are bang out of order , regarding the statue I genuinely cannot even tell you the name of the person who it was, I have not researched it & have no interest to do so, there a literally thousands of statues in this country & I cannot tell you very much about any of them apart from those from the second world war which is one historical subject I am very interested in , I am sorry if you think I should know all the relevant facts about the statue but I do not , what I do know is that it was public property & it was vandalised , people are misinterpreting my comments , I am not commenting on the actual statue , what it is , what it stood for etc , all I did was comment on criminal damage & then I get wrongly accused of something .

 

Slavery in this country was "abolished" in the late 11th/early 12th century.

It was never legal after that.

 

Herein lies the crux:
It absolutely did help the debate.

There had been an ongoing discussion for decades about the place of Colston in Bristol, which had resulted in stalemate. Likewise dozens of other statues all round the country.

In the aftermath of this incident, lots of places in Bristol got renamed, and statues all over the country have been ‘reframed’ in context. Again, I’m not a fan of vandalism, but sometimes it takes an act of direct action to move the world on politically.

Isn’t that a great outcome?

 

Well firstly, the court decided the accused were not guilty of criminal damage - so you’re free to be ‘against criminal damage’ (a fair enough position), that doesn’t mean the court was wrong, you’d need something to support that opinion.
And having been told the facts that he was a slave trader responsible for 19000 deaths; you still don’t care.

That’s fair enough, no skin off my nose

 

To those who say vandalism is not the right way or not the way to get things changed I point you to the Women's Suffrage Movement -

https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/rather-broken-windows-broken-promises/

Vandalism has always been used where other forms of justice or protest have been unavailable or have not worked -

Machine breaking by "Luddites"

The Boston Tea Party

The "Molly Maguires"

Venus in Shreds

The "Umkhonto we Sizwe" guerillas in apartheid South Africa

 

As far as I am aware your car didn't profit from the exploitation of slaves.

By saying there's nothing political and contentious about the vandalism of a statue of a slave trader you're being political and contentious whether you realise it or not.

 

Where have I said it should have remained there?
I’ll answer it for you again I haven’t.

Again, show me where I have defended it going up?
I’ll answer it for you again, I haven’t.

So in answer to your question, the fact you’ve made two erroneous assumptions, yes it was a wild guess.

 

Maybe so, but some people are against the vandalism/pulling down of any statue regardless of the reason, and they don't wish to be drawn into the political debate surrounding it. And that's up to them. For me, I'm glad it came down for reasons given previously. We should respect @Red CB's decision to not get drawn on the debate, however much it irks you, and you should pay particular mind to the fact that Red CB has explicitly said he is NOT racist. That last point is very, very important.