h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/3617276.stm

""Callous" thieves have stolen a wheelchair belonging to a terminally-ill youngster from outside a house on Teesside"

They *stole* a *wheelchair*.

Can you *get* any lower?

That is pretty sick.

We find it unthinkable which is only slightly different than what the theives experienced. Unthinking. No one who thought about their actions would do such a thing. The same train of thought that would stop us from stealing a wheelchair could be paralleled by a train of thought about the thieves' motives. Did they think it was another, different wheelchair? Did they think it would be easlily replaced by the Health system? Were they drunk and not thinking at all? I tend to believe the last one.

This is the ME society we've created. Asociety where people protest about soeed cameras, because they should be able to drive as fast as they want, where people regularly park in the disabled spots, without a moment's thought for the people this cause severe difficulty to. Where a wheelchair is something that can be stolen and used for an hour, then (doubtless) vandelised.

A world where the weak don't count, and drunkness is seen as a reasonable excuse.

Good point, I did imply that drunkeness was some kind of excuse. I didn't mean to. Perhaps a suitable punishment for the thieves would be some kind of temporary blindness or physical handicap?

Law has always tried to favour the weak, I believe. With too consequences it would seem. The strong don't feel so bad exploiting the weak since the legal (and often social or political) system(s) tend to compensate. And those deemed to be at a perceived disadvantage can often be the perpetrators of crime themselves.

Pah!

Oops. *two*

Alas - The Law and Justice are, at best, distant cousins.

If someone hasn't said it already they should have: *Justice for the Weak and Law for the Wealthy*. Too true.

So how does anyone feel about the temporary *eye for an eye* solution? Have something of the thieves stolen when they steal, have the user of the handicapped zone be temporarily handicapped? Make speeders live on the median of a freeway for a while? It would work all the way up to murder I imagine. Temporarily killing someone and then restarting their heart wouldn't really have the right effect I think.