Of course, everyman and his uncle will have opinions on the verdict by a coroner's jury on the shooting by police of Mark Duggan. According to 'ten good men (and women) and true' who spent months listening to the evidence including several visits to the scene, the police have absolutely no case to answer. Yes, they (with two exceptions) indicated that Mark Duggan was technically un-armed having thrown a weapon away (but who knew for sure that was the only one!) seconds before the police opened fire but even so the officer was justified in shooting him dead. With all the dread inevitability of a particularly loud but off-key opera chorus the family went nuts and Duggan's mother, a prima diva, given her 10 seconds of fame before the cameras ruined it all by ending her harangue with a communist party, clenched-fist salute. My waining interest in any of it wained even further when Sky News brought on that mechanical mouthpiece, Lee Jasper, who proceeded to do what he does best because it's all he can do, that is, attempt to beat the world shouting record.
None of Duggan's family or 'friends' expressed any interest in what 'their darling boy' intended to do with the gun he had purchased from a well-known armourer to London's gangland. Would they and the gobby Lee Jasper have shown the least interest in, let alone regret for, say, a bank clerk, or an innocent passerby, who might have been shot dead by the gun their 'darling boy' had just purchased? I doubt it. As for the policeman concerned, what can one say except that perhaps 'he should have gone to SpecSavers'! Also, perhaps, he is need of more and better fire discipline training. However, the afore-mentioned ten good men and true heard all the details and came to the conclusion that he had no case to answer and that is good enough for me. Taking human life should never be carried out lightly but on the whole, by and large, taken in the round, as it were, London is a marginally better place without the likes of a vicious little scrote like Mark Duggan.
