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Shady Depravity.


Why do newsreaders put so much emphasis on an incident being committed “in broad daylight”, like the crime isn’t so bad when it’s only partially lit?

Surely nobody who’s been mugged at night has thought to themselves, “Well, that was pretty awful, but thank God it didn’t happen in the day. I would have hated to see that in vivid detail.” They’d prefer to be fully illuminated, with plenty of witnesses. Even the shyest, most light sensitive person would agree.

You can’t base a legal system on brightness. That would be a nightmare to police. What if everyone present at a crime scene wore sunglasses? How could you legislate that?

The severity of a crime can’t be decided by the tilt of the Earth on its axis. You’d wind up with a myriad of subtle jurisdictive variations dependent on your geographical position at dusk; move at the right speed in the correct direction and you’d stay ahead of the law.

(I had very little sleep last night and it’s sent me off on a tangent.)

A felony is no less stressful under mood lighting. Pick a fight in the lamp department at John Lewis and you’ll see. Or you won't, depending on the dimness.

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