Thought Crimes

Can one commit a crime, merely by thinking about it?

The Catholic Church would have us believe that we will be condemned to ever lasting hell for "thought crimes", even though we never act on our thought and carry out our "criminal/immoral impulse" in reality.

However, Nanny intends to go one stage further than Holy Mother Church; she intends to lock people up in this life for their thought crimes, or rather for their perceived thought crimes.

I think it fair to say that we in Britain produce more than our fair share of people with, how shall I put it?, unusual and challenging personalities. In short, we are a nation of individualistic, strong willed eccentrics.

Now, Nanny doesn't like this; because such people are very difficult to control and to break. Hence the fact that we have always taken a stand against foreign aggression, even when the odds have been heavily stacked against us.

Nanny has decided to try to use the medical profession to identify people who, because of their "unusual personalities", may commit a crime in the future (even though they have yet to commit a crime). Once these people have been identified, Nanny would of course lock them up for our own, and their, "protection" for an indefinite period of time.

Nice eh?

Sounds all a bit too similar to other past dictatorships doesn't it?

The question is, what constitutes an "odd personality"?

Could, for example, the elderly lady who keeps 20 cats be considered to be odd?

No?

What if she was also leading a campaign against the council tax?

Maybe she needs to be locked up, because she is a threat?

Get my point?

Were the doctors to obey Nanny, and report patients with "unusual" personalities, it would be a breach of their ethics.

The doctors face a dilemma they will be damned if they do, and damned if they don't. Quite how a doctor can predict from someone's unusual behaviour that he or she is a future criminal is beyond me.

However, instead of blaming the police and the Home Secretary Nanny will in future be able to blame the doctors for the rise in the crime rate.

It's a real winner!