AS a fellow 'townie' from Kingston upon Thames, may I welcome Mr Geoffrey Cox to Torridge and West Devon. I am sure he will get as good a welcome in the next 22 months as I did 22 years ago when I moved here.
I would perhaps advise him not to sell his property in Kingston too quickly as he may need it again before 22 months is up.
The introductory article (March 2) about Mr Cox promises many areas of interesting debate. Europe of course will be prominent but perhaps it would be better to leave that until a little later as it appears Mr Portillo is in the current process of changing Tory European policy on the hoof, so it needs time to settle down, and no doubt Mr David Weeks of Exbourne will be first into the fray.
What really interests me is the statement that Mr Cox favours in principle the reintroduction of the death penalty in this country — and he a human rights lawyer.
Time and time again in recent years we have seen examples of miscarriage of justice in our courts where people convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment have been subsequently found either innocent or that the conviction was unsafe.
Were the death penalty in force, what hope would they have had then and who would have born the guilt of their execution — the barristers like Mr Cox? I doubt it.
He then mentions that such a reintroduction might start with certain classes of killers such as assassins. By definition an assassin kills a prominent person, does Mr Cox therefore believe that one human life is worth more than any other? With the exception of the symbolic monarchy, that is not a view I could ever share.
Consider also what would have happened if we had had the death penalty in Northern Ireland in the last 30 years and had hanged the same people that are currently being released, with Tory agreement, back into the community, my view would be martyrdom followed by even more bloody civil war. Perhaps a careful re-examination of Irish history covering the period when the British did hang the Irish would tell Mr Cox some lessons about the effectiveness of the death penalty.
Welcome Mr Cox, I look forward to the debate.
Cllr Noel R H Cartwright
Liberal Democrat