Should He Be Given Jail Or A Bigger Hammer?

[royfromaus]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10395493/Hammer-wielding-activist-scales-BBCs-Broadcasting-House-starts-destroying-Eric-Gill-sculpture.html

[andy-hughes]

Tomus - Colston wasn't a 'horrible person' judged by the morals of the society in which he lived.

The statue was to celebrate his philanthropy, not the perfectly acceptable way in which he acquired his fortune.

[tomus42]

OK, so there's even less correlation then. One is a statue celebrating a philanthropist. The other is a statue made by a horrible person.

[ichkeria]

The statue was controversial and probably should have been removed.
I don’t agree with people taking a hammer to things any more than I really approve of the violent pulling down of a statue. Thinking again about things like Dzerzhinsky and Saddam Hussein, they were done during a state of revolution.
Nonetheless just because you don’t agree with it doesn’t make it illegal automatically.
But it feels wrong that people are allowed to act violently and while I accept the verdict of Colston I’d worry that it had set a violent precedent.

[ichkeria]

“ Colston wasn't a 'horrible person' judged by the morals of the society in which he lived. ”

His trade was repulsive to many even at the time.
I doubt it either man was “horrible” but both were controversial

[andy-hughes]

Gness - You offer a scenario that does not exist, infer a response to it from me that I would not make, and then condemn me for acting in the way you have decided I would.

I decline to dignify such nonsense.

Not for nothing is it called the 'So Rule'.

Come back when you have something realistic and reasonable to discuss.

[jno]

I agree with tomus (or he agrees with me). I can't blame gness for responding as she did to someone she knew personally, but it's hard to get worked up about an artist who worked a century ago - and whose "victim" seems to have been entirely unconcerned about it in later life. I don't see that anybody need be outraged on her behalf if she wasn't.

The BBC has already cancelled Gill - Gill Sans, anyway, the typeface he invented and which they used to use. They went for a marginally different one of their own , which won't cost them money to use.

[ichkeria]

I’m inclined to agree with you jno

[andy-hughes]

Jno - I can't blame Gness either, but that does not make visiting fictional scenarios on me, assuming me to be callous, and then condemning me, acceptable.

[jno]

I made no comment on that, andy.

[gness]

What a pathetic reply, Andy. Tells us so much about you. Come back when I have something to discuss?

I inferred nothing. Condemned nobody. I just asked you a question which, with your usual pomposity, you have not replied to.
Perhaps reread my post and answer my question?

[andy-hughes]

I didn't say you did.

Is it your turn to complain to me about something I didn't say?

[andy-hughes]

Gness - If you want to invent fantasies so you can shoehorn me into being the villain in them, you go right ahead.

But I am not being party to your nonsense.

Goodnight

[gness]

Thanks, Jno for at least not blaming me. When you went through what I did it stays with you for life no matter how much you try to put it behind you. It's impossible not to feel as bitter as I do about every sexual abuser.

[gness]

My nonsense, Andy? Well that has told me so much.

[royfromaus]

and whose "victim" seems to have been entirely unconcerned about it in later life.
________________________
"victim"

How odd. You think because his daughter knew no different she wasn't a victim?

[sunny-dave]

I don't want to get involved in any argument that is going on here - just to quietly say that (for me) it is impossible to separate the art from the artist.

For instance, at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, I see no way in which it is possible to appreciate a (very talented in some cases) watercolour if you then discover that a Mr A. Hitler signed it at the bottom. As to whether I would destroy one of his works if I had the chance, I rather think I would - especially if I thought that someone was attempting to turn a profit on it.

[jno]

his daughter lived to 92 and in the words of one obituary, "A remarkable aspect of those liaisons with Petra is that she seems not only to have been undamaged by the experience, but to have become the most calm, reflective and straightforward wife and mother. When I asked her about it shortly before her 90th birthday, she assured me that she was not at all embarrassed – ‘We just took it for granted’. She agreed that had she gone to school [the children were taught at home by their father] she might have learned how unconventional her father’s behaviour was."

No need to impute ignorance to her, she had a mind of her own and decades to think about it, and regularly insisted when asked that she hadn't been harmed.

[gness]

It tickles me now that Andy had to either agree with me or change his original opinion..... and he can't bring himself to do either......:-)

[royfromaus]

You are as weird as andy on this subject.

‘We just took it for granted’. She agreed that had she gone to school [the children were taught at home by their father] she might have learned how unconventional her father’s behaviour was."

That doesn't help your ''victim'' statement.

[jno]

well, she told enough people often enough that she didn't require their pearl-clutching; but you go right ahead, a man should always be listened to on these subjects.