My aoplogies for commenting without research earlier.
Having read up, Ian Huntley ticked most of the tarriff boxes to ensure he serves a whole life term (40 years) before parole:

(from wikipedia, of course)

Crimes where whole life tariff are recommended:

a) murder of two or more persons, where each murder involves any of the following :
- a substantial degree of premeditation or planning,
- the abduction of the victim, or
- sexual or sadistic conduct,

b) child murder if involving the abduction of the child or sexual or sadistic motivation,

c) murder done for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause,
d) murder by an offender previously convicted of murder,

e) other offence if the court considers that the seriousness of the offence (or the combination of the offence and one or more offences associated with it) is exceptionally high. For example, high treason can warrant such a sentence, if it is grave enough.

I didn’t mean to imply that I disagree with the parole board system – I was just responding to Shopkeeper Man’s point which referred to instances where parole is determined inconsistently (in which he blamed the judiciary).

I don’t disagree with you about information, but I think it’s fair to say that if EVERY national decision were made by everyone, people simply wouldn’t have enough time to consider all the information which may or may not affect the consequences of the decision. (Not that politicians always consider this information either, of course.)
If only some decisions are given to the public, we get the problem of who decides what questions should be asked, how, and when (I think we already have this problem to some extent).

The ‘tyranny of the majority’ doesn’t imply actual tyranny, but it IS, in a sense, an argument against referendum-style democracy. What it isn’t, of course, is an argument FOR rule by an elite minority.

All the phrase means is that when any decision is legitimised by a simple majority, the views of anyone not in that majority become irrelevant and so can be ignored. (A similar problem to FPTP, really.)

“blame lies with the parole board and not the judiciary”

Why blame, if parole like a trail is based on the particulars of the case then each should be judged on its merits.

If you don’t want two murders given the same sentence to be potentially released at different times then don’t have a parole board.

Equally if you have a problem with different sentences for the same crime then just have a set penalties for each crime and remove discretion from Judges.

Maybe I am over stating it but your argument seems to be Judges sometimes make different judgements on sentencing depending on the case and people don’t like that, but I thought that was how the system was supposed to work.

Peter

I disagree with you about drugs, the best way to reduce the harm caused by them and particularly (as I’m not religious) with Paul H-J’s argument about destroying “souls”, but I don’t think this is really the place to go into that discussion, so we’ll have to agree to disagree there.

My point above, however, was that despite individuals’ differing assessments of relative harm/evil, people generally have a far stronger instinctive reaction against the direct perpetrators of harm, especially violence, than against the indirect ones – even where the indirect harm is greater.
This is especially valid in relation to the death penalty – I’m sure a lot of people’s support for it is due more to instinctive reactions than to considered analysis or even morals.