BN66/S58 update

[Old Greg]

Below is an example of the principle of prosecuting in the UK crew committed overseas. If such a law had had a retrospective nature to allow prosecution of child rape overseas before the enactment of the law, the retrospective nature would have been unjust?

Sexual Offences Act 2003 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dual criminality

Section 72 provides differing levels of dual criminality for specified offences according to the UK citizenship status of an offender. For UK nationals, acts performed outside the UK that would amount to an offence in the UK can be prosecuted as if they had been performed in the UK. Acts performed outside the United Kingdom have to constitute an offence in the country where they are committed, in order to constitute an offence under this Act.

[d000hg]

Romans 13:2 reminds us, "He who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves."

Yes well done, we were only talking about that yesterday "give to Caesar..." in the context of Jesus' teaching to obey the law of the land. You said that wasn't what he meant...


Greg, my position is that I'm very wary of such things BUT there are rarely no exceptions where people (and lawyers) are concerned.

If there for example was some legal loophole where I could go to country X and murder someone, and return home, and for whatever reason there was no legal way to punish me at the time... then changing the law to enable me to be extradited would make sense.

However in your example (and mine I suppose) the act IS illegal in the country it was committed at the time and this seems to me to blur the issue somewhat. Setting up a way for known criminals not to escape justice seems different than changing the law to make someone a criminal after the fact - if the UK says it will start cooperating with the cases of those accused of child rape, is this really retrospective or a simple change in position?

[Old Greg]

Yes well done, we were only talking about that yesterday "give to Caesar..." in the context of Jesus' teaching to obey the law of the land. You said that wasn't what he meant...


Greg, my position is that I'm very wary of such things BUT there are rarely no exceptions where people (and lawyers) are concerned.

If there for example was some legal loophole where I could go to country X and murder someone, and return home, and for whatever reason there was no legal way to punish me at the time... then changing the law to enable me to be extradited would make sense.

However in your example (and mine I suppose) the act IS illegal in the country it was committed at the time and this seems to me to blur the issue somewhat. Setting up a way for known criminals not to escape justice seems different than changing the law to make someone a criminal after the fact - if the UK says it will start cooperating with the cases of those accused of child rape, is this really retrospective or a simple change in position?

Simply:
1 UK nationals travel to poor countries to rape children.
2 These countries lack the capacity to launch extraditions and prosecutions.
3 Legislation was brought in to make it prosecutable under UK law.

If such legislation had a retrospective nature, would that have been unjust. Couldn't the tourists say that they were acting perfectly legally under UK law so why should they now be prosecuted for actions undertaken before enactment?

[d000hg]

Retrospective legislation to make it illegal for you to do something illegal seems OK in my book. OK it is technically still just another case of retrospective legislation but the people had committed a crime at the time they did it, the intent here is simply to tighten enforcement.

After all extradition rules change over time about which countries will extradite to which other countries so maybe you'll say I'm splitting hairs but this appears a special case to me.

[Old Greg]

Retrospective legislation to make it illegal for you to do something illegal seems OK in my book. OK it is technically still just another case of retrospective legislation but the people had committed a crime at the time they did it, the intent here is simply to tighten enforcement.

After all extradition rules change over time about which countries will extradite to which other countries so maybe you'll say I'm splitting hairs but this appears a special case to me.

You are splitting hairs.

But obviously you would oppose any war crimes legislation where there was a retrospective element to catch individuals whose have been committing atrocities perfectly legally.

[d000hg]

What kind of war crimes atrocities aren't illegal to start with? Even the Nuremberg Laws didn't make the Holocaust legal, it only restricted/removed the rights of Jews and others.

[Old Greg]

What kind of war crimes atrocities aren't illegal to start with? Even the Nuremberg Laws didn't make the Holocaust legal, it only restricted/removed the rights of Jews and others.

The post-war Nuremberg trials and equivalent in Japan used several retrospective instruments:

- Waging a war of aggression
- Genocide

Now we are all agreed these are terrible actions, bit was it just to apply them retrospectively?

[d000hg]

What was retrospective about declaring genocide illegal?

[Old Greg]

What was retrospective about declaring genocide illegal?

Everything.

[eek]

Reading Santa getting his knickers in a twist I've actually got another question.

Given that those people who entered the scheme claim to have entered it due to IR35 and the imposed costs that occur from being treated as employees why did you all settle upon a scheme that paid a mere 3.5% to HMRC when previously you were happily paying 25% corporation tax (I can't remember the exact rate at the time)?