I have used Snip quite a lot- disappointed to see it go.

I thought it was bad, all i saw in the subject line was "hello and goodbye" I thought PMP was finishing and got upset, what a relief when it was a goodbye for that snip

I’m lucky in having time to do it, but I always think you get back what you put in, and a disciplined dog, like a child, is much happier than an uncontrolled hooligan. I just have to convince Storm of that now - little sod has been up at the worktop three times today to steal my scourer and try to tear it apart. I only catch him with it in the garden, never in the act, and it seems as if I am constantly telling him off, which is a shame, but he is much harder work than Shadow.

It's amazing how different siblings can be but they're very good for such young ones. That's all down to your training Beth.

Yes, they caught me on the hop, as I was turning round to shut the gate. They were good this morning - there is a short section of the next track along where cars and lorries come to the plant nursery, and I am using that as an exercise to teach them to Wait before reaching it, and if there is traffic I put them on the lead, if not, we do off-lead heel work - i.e. me bending over like Quasimodo, bribing them with treats to walk in place next to me, while trying not to trip over the potholes, or get the treats sucked out of my hand by thought-transfer. If Shad gets a treat he is happy to carry on in the hopes of another, but once Storm has one he says, ‘That’s it, I’ve done what you want, I’m off now’ and takes off. There is a very slight improvement now - we have got all the way along a couple of times, but still definitely a work in progress.

Even the best of us have a bad day Beth.Maybe it was the excitement at the start of a walk and they forgot to behave.Glad you were not hurt.

Indi must have been swept along with the puppies enthusiasm. As you say, not like her. Maybe the pups were not expecting to see a dog so close to home and it was too exciting. You're still teaching them and they'll get there.

What about the people who kill by going on a gun rampage? Are you happy for the ones who just want revenge on their teachers or classmates and shoot dozens, or the man who stabbed the children in a classroom, or the dance hall, to just smirk at the families in court, laugh at them, and get a clever barrister to keep appealing when there is no doubt that they did it - they are on CCTV, stalking through the building with AK47 machine guns. But no, let’s keep the dear little souls in prison, where they can wheedle their way to a secure hospital block instead, at a cost of £2-3,000 a day, or where they are revered in prison as a multiple or serial killer, given respect and hero status, inspiring more impressionable teenagers to copy them. Do we need people like that on our planet? Anyone who would automatically find them not guilty if we had the death penalty shows whose side they are on - and it’s not the victims.

Of course, the police never 'fit' evidence to get the result they want, are always completely innocent, and with the rise in AI everything we see is true etc., etc. If you are thinking about the costs, the cost of keeping someone in prison under a death sentence are very high and there are also the costs of appeals to consider too (though that is not a consideration for me). Far too many miscarriages of justice to ever consider bringing back the death penalty, IMHO. I do not trust the police nor the state in some cases (past history has led to that). One innocent victim of a miscarriage of justice that led to a state-sanctioned execution is one too many. I also do not believe anyone has the right to take the life of another and that includes the State. However, Life should mean Life, I agree. Most (if not all) evidence points to it having very little impact on crime rates too. I've held this belief since I was 11 and it has never wavered over the decades despite debates at school, uni and among friends.

Beth, 100% with you on this, lets start with the brutal murderers of Lee Rigby, and the driver that dragged PC Andrew Harper along the road untill he died. Sorry but for me it's an eye for an eye.

All these for and against posts are very thought provoking (thanks folks)

All I've ever thought on the subject is if that person killed another by which or however means and was or is unequivocally accused / evidenced / trialed to be guilty their sentencing is NOT long enough

***LIFE should be LIFE*** NOT a piddling say 15 to 20 years with the chances of appeals after what (i’m not sure of this) say 5 years. Make the appeals procedure to start at least 20 years into prison term of a LIFE sentence

SORRY - It would cost more for this in the long run BUT just have a thought for the Families, close Friends and or work Colleagues of the ‘victims’ not having that person around for the rest of their Families, Friends, Colleagues lives. That is heartbreaking and absolutely abhorrent

The crimes incorporating intentional violence - should also be a LOT longer the ‘victims’ of theses cases probably having suffered extreme trauma during and also long after the attack, incident (to name a couple)

Note: Ive no idea how I would deal with some of the other wishy/washy crimes to be honest - some of those are controversial to say the least

There have been enough miscarriages of justice in recent years - including very serious crimes that would, in another age, have carried the death penalty - for any rational person to recognise that this is a very bad idea.

There are also two practical considerations. One is that relatively few people in prison are there for these crimes. Prisons are cluttered up with 'nuisance value' crimes such as burglary, drugs, motoring offences and so on that attract relatively short sentences but have massively high rates of re-offending. The second is a pragmatic one. No matter what the offence, no matter how overwhelming the evidence, many jurors less bloodthirsty than you would simply refuse to convict. I would not send a man to the gallows, and even if he was caught with a smoking gun in his hand and immediately said, "I did it, " I would find him Not Guilty.

We need to be addressing the causes of petty crime (shoplifting, car crime and so om) and steering tens of thousands of people away from it, not getting our underwear in a twist over a few hundred people in high security prisons.

Read 'Private Eye' on the Lucy Letby case and the weaknesses in the prosecution evidence that were not challenged in Court. Many people far more intelligent and knowledgeable than me are convinced that she is innocent. How would YOU, as a juror, feel if it later transpired that you had sent an innocent person to their death?

I'm with you on this, James. And then there's the moral question. Does (or should) anyone have the right to decide who lives and who dies?

What me and my husband were talking about last night in connection with prison overcrowding is that maybe some people who've done lesser things than murder, etc, should be given sentences of working in the community? For example, maybe a robber (without violence) could work in a voluntary position at a foodbank? The problem there, of course, is that there aren't enough probation officers, etc, to make such a scheme safe and worthwhile (thanks to 15 years of Tory cuts). It's a dilemma, for sure.

Absolutely not, it is an awful practice and I am shocked that anyone wants it reintroduced. Far, far too many people have been executed because there was "no question of doubt" only for, lo and behold, it to come out that they were, in fact, innocent. Besides that, the death penalty is unbelievably expensive. It costs an enormous amount to execute one person because of all the appeals and time.

And perhaps more than anything, it does absolutely nothing - less than nothing - to clean up the system. How many people do you think get executed? So far this year, the USA, which loves the death penalty and is larger than the UK by a comical amount, has executed, wait for it, nineteen people. Assuming the UK executed people at the same rate as the USA, which is 5x larger than us, we'd have executed four people this year. 3.8, technically, but I guess if you kill someone 80% of the way it still counts? Does executing three and a half people at extreme expense to the taxpayer help with our decimated system?

Another group we could get rid of to help numbers (I don't know whether it'll be like a pee in the ocean or not) are the foreign nationals. The ones where a judge hands down a custodial sentence to be followed by deportation. Why let them clog up our system & us having to pay for them being here - send them straight back from when they came.

So innocent people would be killed? If there was doubt it wouldn’t happen.

There are many innocent people being killed by them. Don’t they matter?

I think scammers should have much longer sentences than they seem to get - three or four years seems to be common, whereas they can ruin the lives of vulnerable and elderly people, stealing their savings and any hope they had of comfort in old age, or taking away their chance of a better level of care home, for example. I know some have Proceeds of Crime against them, but those who are convicted can just come out and start again - and I would include rogue builders with them, too.

I do feel sentences for burglary particularly should be longer .

These irritating crimes are costly to those burgled and courts to deal with.

If I were PM for a day I would say 10yrs no early release.Maybe that might be severe enough to stop people.If it worked then continue with other petty crimes that criminals feel it’s worth risking getting caught and maybe then we could make the serious crimes a life sentence and mean life as prisons might not be so full they want to release people early due to overcrowding.

That’s why I said ‘no doubt’ - if you see a guy lift a gun and shoot a woman in the street, and somebody rugby tackles him while he’s holding the gun, there is no doubt. If a man sticks a woman in a suitcase in their house, is seen on CCTV trundling it through the streets and is traced to have bought it that day, there is no doubt. The man who killed his parents to gain their money and house when they refused to bankroll him any more, buried them in the woods and it was proven forensically when unique soil from the area he had chosen was found on the shovel he used, there is no doubt. I specifically excluded saying ‘identification’ because people are fallible on this; forensics and being caught in the act are not.

Anyway, what’s wrong with wanting vengeance? Justice should be impartial, but once proven, why shouldn’t a victim’s family have the right to see the offender suffer?

There are not enough social workers and probation officers to keep up with current released prisoners on licence - the platitude that ‘oh, they will be under stricter controls and monitoring, and will be returned to prison if they re-offend’ is ludicrous. There will be many out to get revenge on their earlier victims who got them banged up, and they will put that ahead of any potential sentence. There aren’t enough tagging devices now, how will they tag all these abusers and killers.

It didn't work as a deterrent before and it wouldn't work again. It would just mean innocent people were killed. Not many, sure, but how many is ok? All convictions require there to be "no doubt", but then we find some were innocent after all. Our criminal justice system is based on rehabilitation not vengeance.

There is also the actual cost to the tax payer of keeping someone in prison.

Just think how much it would save the country on accomodation

@ Fidsta, and pigs might fly. 🤣🤣

But this HAS been mentioned. Rupert will have a referendum on this when he becomes PM.

I think there are probably quite a few snakes around that we never know of. They like dry, sandy ground, rather than gravelly, rough surfaces, so I have seen them on the moorland tracks but less frequently on the gravel drives. I can understand a fear of snakes, although I think they are beautiful, fantastically designed creatures and could watch them happily for ages, but fear of them, like spiders and scorpions, and other ‘creepy-crawlies’ is a self-preservation deep-rooted brain stem reflex that I read was a vital life-saving instinct in early mankind and has been passed on through generations to modern times. I have the same feelings round children! 🙂

@Beth - No, you obviously can't keep a dog on a lead in your own (secured) garden but I'm talking about when dog walkers are out in public places, especially during nesting season in an area where rare ground-nesting birds are, or for the dog's own safety when there are venomous snakes around. Obviously, that's very difficult where you live, Beth. I'm not sure what the answer to that is (unless you have special dog fields on offer where they can be run off lead?). By the way, snakes are one of the reasons why I could *never* live in the New Forest, even though I used to love visiting it as a kid with family (and never saw a snake there at all). The fact that they are now on nearby moorland freaks me out a bit I must say. But there's a golf course there too and snakes are basically shy so, hopefully, they'll stay away from our gardens and stick to the deeper part of the moor.

Never ever seen a snake in UK and I’m old !

Putting dogs on leads is not always effective - we’ve got a 2’ long adder in the garden (at least - haven’t seen him this year but must have grown) and a grass snake (harmless) that is massive - last seen two years ago, but at least 3’ long, as he was in the pond and I could see both ends as he crossed the pond. The ones I have seen on the heath over the years - probably only four or five in my life - have been crossing the track or sunbathing. They are a danger, but five in 55 years of dogwalking is pretty good odds, and keeping a dog on a lead isn’t going to give it much exercise.

It also depends on the size & health of the dog whether the bite causes a problem but as Lol said the snake is more likely to shuffle off than bite.

Yes, adders have been spotted up here in Yorkshire on the moors. It must be global warming as they were never seen around here years ago. I really hope I don't see one when I'm out on the moor as I'm absolutely terrified of snakes! Anyway, dog walkers have been warned to keep their dogs on leads on the moors - but they never seem to bother, not even in nesting season (we have rare ground-nesting birds here).

I saw an article in my Kennel Club newsletter (Indi is insured with the K.C.) that said vets do not all routinely stock anti-venin and those that do, usually only keep a small number of doses, so if they have used theirs recently, or it is out of date, you could be left in a bad state if your dog is bitten by an adder, as it will mean you or the vet ringing round other vets, then driving or getting a courier to collect it - not an easy situation to find yourself in. I rang my vet, a long-established practice, to check, assuming they would stock it automatically as we are in the New Forest and adders are not rare here. The receptionist went to check and said she wasn’t sure but thought they had one dose in stock. I know anti-venin is probably expensive (I wouldn’t fancy milking an adder) but even so, one dose seems incredibly optimistic, especially as snakes are more active in warm or hot weather.

The adder is a British native snake, they usually prefer to escape rather than attack. The dog probably scared it or even tried to play with it.

Cold blooded creatures will be a lot more lively as their bodies warm up in hot weather