hunnymonster said:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-21668528
Fill your boots Chris... It's got it all - alcohol, allegations of infidelity, domestic violence and singing gypsies (may have made that last bit up)
Justice was done - domestic violence had taken-place, investigations had to take-place but previous behaviour and circumstance meant that no prosecution resulted. I know that I'm regarded as being a "soft touch", or perhaps insufficiently macho for the B&B types around here (thankfully we're not as bad as Guns & Ammo, though knife fetishization has appeared hereabouts in the past few months), but, if I'm the only member able to differentiate between an old woman pouring a can of cheap cider over her husbands' head and giving him a slap around the chops (which I'm not condoning, BTW), and a gun-obsessed international sporting icon pumping his girlfriend full of lead, then the person who needs to have a rethink ain't me.
Just because I find violence against women abhorrent does not make me any less of a man, just as Pistorius's lack of natural legs doesn't make him less of a man. What, IMO, may make him less of a man is if (and I stress "if") he shot his girlfriend knowingly, whether in a rage or cold-bloodedly because he felt she deserved punishment. Let's consider one of the things we tend to claim sets us apart from B&B - they make a song and dance of being "Gentlemen", while we just
are. I notice that many of those members whom I respect the most, such as Bechet, who, while I sometimes disagree with him, is a gent), SirPrize, Gairdner, Sunburyboy etc., have refrained from posting jokes relating to the shooting. Maybe I'm the strange one - maybe the fact that I'm physically vulnerable myself means that I can't contemplate beating someone up who would have been no physical threat to me had I been able-bodied. Perhaps, had I been able-bodied, I might have been pissing myself over the sheer comic value of a woman getting blown into eternity, Heaven, Valhalla or whatever you prefer by an angry, aggressive, gun-toting boyfriend (allegedly). Fact is, I'm not. If that's unwelcome, ban me.