In The News gunk today is the tale of two teenagers who, just for fun, beat a pensioner unconscious in front of his three year old granddaughter. The victim (Ekram Haque) died later in hospital from injuries sustained during the attack.

Apparently the boys (14 and 15 at the time) who were convicted of manslaughter will be free in about 18 months time.  Now while the sentencing issues are obviously the leading topic in the papers and are rightfully distressing for the victim’s loved ones, there is another issue which will probably go unmentioned...

The distinction between murder and manslaughter has always been a little shady to me in cases like this and that’s one of the things that I think deserves discussion.  The fact that there is a distinction between these two crimes is valid. Manslaughter covers a vast range of situations where the action of one party leads accidentally or indirectly to the death of another.  It can also be used to define more complex cases where the inaction of a person or some form of organization leads directly or indirectly to the death of someone.  There are many valid cases where this has occurred, when at no point was harm ever intended on the victim. 

However it is my opinion that any act of direct violence which leads to a death cannot be considered in the same light.  The boys in this incident did not accidentally attack the victim, they did not carry out an action that indirectly lead to harm, they did not through fault of negligence put someone else in danger… they did it on purpose, plain and simple and their only intention was to inflict violence upon another person.  The fact that they probably had no intention of killing the victim is irrelevant, they attacked him and by doing so maliciously ended his life. There were no extenuating circumstances, there was no provocation, there was no justification to their actions.  Purely and simply they attacked a vulnerable old man just for the fun of it.  Manslaughter is an inappropriate description of their crime. They deliberately attacked the man and killed him, full stop.

Secondly and this is the crux of this article right here.  The printed media have referred  to this bloody and deadly crime as a "Happy Slapping" incident. It was a vicious and unprovoked attack on a defenceless elderly man which lead to his death.  To refer to this as "Happy Slapping" downgrades the seriousness of the crime to something that sounds almost trivial or comical.  Re-branding and jargonizing of real world situations and events does nothing but slowly dilute extremes to the point where the outrage that should be associated with them, is replaced with an almost apathetic acceptance of inevitability and dismissal. 

If I were cynical (and I am) I might think that there was a conscious decision involved to slowly and deliberately change the way people think about the woes of the world, as the powers that be are pretty much incapable of actually dealing with them. 

Will it continue?  Will there be more renaming of serious incidents and concerns so that we eventually just accept them blindly as inescapable and unavoidable elements of our daily lives? 

Are Earthquakes to be re-branded "Wobblies"?

Is Aids now "Snufflepuffs"?

Has Murder now become known as "Happy Slapping"?… oh… hang on…

Yes it looks like it has.