• 1 Post
  • 44 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: October 4th, 2023
  • tal@lemmy.todaytoUnited Kingdom@feddit.uk•UK has 'no authority' over death of woman shot in USEnglish
    12·
    15 days ago

    It’s actually kind of more interesting of a question than I initially thought from the title.

    So, not an area of expertise, but from my quick skim;

    • Daughter is British citizen

    • Father is British citizen (maybe dual American citizen, dunno)

    • Father shoots daughter in US; states that discharge was unintentional. Father was apparently drunk at the time.

    • A grand jury in US gives a “no-bill” result. It’s stating that the prosecution doesn’t have a viable case and should not proceed. The bar for the prosecution to get an indictment from a grand jury is not very high, and so this result is exceptionally uncommon.

    • Mother of daughter goes to US, tries to get district attorney to prosecute anyway. This is apparently technically possible to do. After a grand jury returns “no-bill”, the prosecutor is not prevented from convening another grand jury to attempt to get the prosecution to be approved, but it is very rare for this to happen once a grand jury has returned a “no-bill” result. In this case, the prosecutor is not interested in trying again and is not willing to see the mother.

    • I was wondering about the FCDO (like…I don’t think that trying to sell the prosecutor on a new attempt directly is the best route). The FCDO actually has a webpage dealing specifically with this sort of event, which rather sounds like they want people to stop trying to get them to get foreign legal systems to prosecute foreign crimes, and that they normally defer to foreign courts.

      https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/murder-manslaughter-and-infanticide-of-british-nationals-abroad-memorandum-of-understanding/murder-manslaughter-and-infanticide-of-british-nationals-abroad-memorandum-of-understanding-mou

      The legal responsibility and authority (the jurisdiction) for the investigation into the circumstances of the death is most likely to remain in the country where the death occurred. The FCDO’s role does not extend to any investigative activity, and we cannot interfere in another country’s investigative or judicial processes. The FCDO will register UK interests and request updates from the foreign competent authority where appropriate and possible. The foreign country is under no obligation to provide the information requested.

      In most cases there is little involvement from, or role for, England and Wales police forces or coroners. A coronial investigation will only take place if the body is repatriated to England and Wales and reported to the coroner, and where the death is violent, unnatural, or of unknown cause.

    • A British coroner returns a finding suggesting manslaughter. I’m assuming that this is just a “this is consistent with manslaughter and one could be charged” finding, since I can’t imagine that a coroner could return much that would be meaningful; whether or not manslaughter was committed would depend on how reckless or something the father was in his actions, and the state of the body wouldn’t provide much information.

    • Mother goes to local British police force. These guys can liase with the American police where the crime occurred, but otherwise don’t have much of a role, and their statement says that they can’t really conduct an investigation in the US.

    • There is a law in the UK that permits prosecution in the UK of a British national who commits manslaughter abroad; father is a British national, so could potentially be subject to this. It sounds like this customarily is not used if the person is tried in a foreign court and acquitted (though this is apparently not a hard legal restriction, unlike an analogous law in the US). It sounds like the grand jury returning no-bill probably would not probably constitute an acquittal.

      The Home Office also states that generally, they don’t want to attempt to prosecute people domestically if there’s a foreign judicial process:

      https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/domestic-abuse-bill-2020-factsheets/extraterritorial-jurisdiction-factsheet

      Does extending extraterritorial jurisdiction mean that the UK will be responsible for prosecuting relevant offences committed anywhere in the world?

      Government policy generally on the jurisdiction of our courts is that criminal offending is best dealt with by the criminal justice system of the state where the offence occurred. If an accused person is not prosecuted in the state where the offence occurred, a prosecution would only take place in the UK if the accused person were physically present in this jurisdiction (following extradition if necessary), there is sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and it is in the public interest to prosecute.

    So it sounds like:

    • Technically, a second American attempt at prosecution with a second grand jury is possible, but would be uncommon subsequent to such a grand jury “no-bill” finding.

    • Technically, a British prosecution attempt could happen, even in the event of an acquittal, but would not be normal.

    • I don’t know what weight British prosecutors give a grand jury finding in the US, as the UK doesn’t use grand juries in 2026. It guess it’s possible that the issue hasn’t come up before. The UK invented grand juries about eight hundred years ago, but hasn’t used them in England or Wales in a century.

    • A British prosecution would probably only happen if the father was physically present in the UK and they believed that they had a viable case; it sounds like he lives in the US, so the UK would presumably have to have him extradited.

    So my guess is that the UK probably does assert authority to prosecute, but that this is something that would only be used in exceptional cases.

    It sounds kind of like, while the article doesn’t do a great job of splitting them up, the mother has tried three different avenues, first trying to get another attempt at American prosecution, second on a “this could be prosecuted in the UK” route and third on a “I have additional information and want more American investigation using this information”.

  • tal@lemmy.todaytoUnited Kingdom@feddit.uk•Thames Water creditors to vote on emergency £2.4bn loan as cash runs lowEnglish
    3·
    17 days ago

    Thames Water has previously said that customers will not be on the hook for the interest on the £3bn loan

    I mean, there’s no direct liability, but I’m operating on the assumption that the company’s source of income is going to be its customers, and that’s the only way it could repay said loan. So even if indirectly, it’s gotta come from their pockets.

    I guess if the government nationalizes the company, then taxpayers might wind up paying for the loan, but aside from that…outside of managing to convince unwise creditors to lend more than the company assets are worth and then having debt discharged in bankruptcy, I don’t see who else would eat the cost.

  • tal@lemmy.todaytoUnited Kingdom@feddit.uk•BBC to force more to pay licence fee with ‘YouTube tax’English
    8·
    1 month ago

    Why would the BBC be allowed to collect money on services it does not provide? This is basically saying “everyone must pay this fee, or unplug their internet”.

    I think that it’s because the BBC puts content on YouTube (and I assume either doesn’t have ads enabled or wants more money than they generate).

    I guess I could understand someone saying "well, with TV, I have to watch British broadcast or cable stations, and with YouTube, I don’t, but I’d think that the same would apply to TVs using satellite receivers, and I assume—though I don’t know, don’t live in the UK—that satellite TV users are also subject to the license fee.

  • tal@lemmy.todaytoUnited Kingdom@feddit.uk•Ministers preparing to slash heat pump subsidies to fund defence spendingEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    Madeleine Gabriel, a director at the charity Nesta, said: “Bills are soaring again because of high gas prices. Our reliance on gas is the reason we are in an energy crisis, so cutting funding for heat pumps makes no sense.

    Mmm…I’d say that high gas bills—if they are high relative to electricity prices—are a good reason not to need a subsidy, because it means that people already have a potent incentive to switch to a heat pump.

    You need a subsidy or a tax on something when there is a positive or negative externality, something that isn’t captured in consumer price information, because then purchasing decisions are made without incorporating that externality. You internalize the externality. But…in the case of a high gas bill, price information informing a consumer to switch is present. If they already want to switch on their own…shrugs You could maybe argue that the incentive isn’t as strong as it should optimally be, but I’d certainly think that the argument for a tax or subsidy is weaker if there is price information that would make a consumer want to switch than if there is not.

    Not only that, but in general, for negative externalities, you normally want a tax, and for positive externalities, you normally want a subsidy. The issue with natural gas heating is the carbon emissions, which is a negative externality. You probably don’t want a subsidy on heat pumps to internalize that, but rather a tax on natural gas heaters. A subsidy to heating will tend to cause more use of heating relative to what would be optimal if the externality is negative.

  • tal@lemmy.todaytoUnited Kingdom@feddit.uk•Why hotter summers are making British potatoes smallerEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    Most potatoes require 200ml of rain or other water and this year they’ve had about 35ml. It’s also been incredibly warm. Potatoes don’t bulk up above 28°C. I think we’ve had 40 days above that."

    Probably possible to genetically-engineer potatoes that can deal with drought better, given time and work.

    The EU has historically had a pretty anti-genetic-engineering position, but (a) I understand that things have been slowly changing there in EU politics and (b) I don’t know whether Brexit and the TCA permit for broader use in the UK regardless.

    searches

    From this Telegraph article, it sounds like the UK and EU are currently negotiating terms (that is, apparently this isn’t gonna depend on the TCA), so all this is gonna be in a state of flux, but it gives me the impression that gene-editing, a slightly-restricted form of genetic engineering, may be getting the thumbs-up.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10/01/uk-gene-edited-crops-to-be-spared-from-brussels-ban/

    British and European negotiators are close to a deal that would save UK gene-edited crops from an EU ban.

    Britain used Brexit freedoms to pioneer the crops, which are more resistant to drought and disease.

    In an important breakthrough, two British farmers became the first in Europe to grow and harvest gene-edited crops in commercial field conditions this summer.

    And on irrigation:

    Back in Helmsley, Tim Rooke wants changes to planning laws to make it easier to build and run water storage lagoons, capturing winter rain and using it in the summer.

    Even aside from that, my understanding from past reading is that the UK is now building some of the first new reservoir capacity in decades, so there is action there.

    searches

    https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/areas-new-reservoirs-finished-first-why-long-build-4700022

    The areas new reservoirs will be finished first – and why they take so long to build

    The UK is only just building its first reservoir in 30 years, with a further nine still years off construction

    The nine reservoirs are planned across Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Suffolk, Kent, East Sussex and the West Midlands.

    Some are further along than others. The White Horse reservoir, near Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and the Fens reservoir, near Cambridge, are the most advanced, though both remain in the planning and design stage, with White Horse expected to be completed by 2040 and the Fens by 2036.