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These points are well made by magoo & jj. Animal cruelty never used to be taken too seriously in the USA until it was discovered that people who committed very serious assaults or murder often had a record of animal abuse. It is now consider a serious crime in some States. I take magoo's point re the need to make sure there is sufficient evidence and yes, you may well be right that the extremely nasty farmer would have got away with it if he had been charged with allempted murder. However affray with which he was convicted carries a much heavier sentence than two years. I not sure what it is. I think it may be life. Magoo is probably right that charging the two lads with burglary was inappropriate, however if you enter property as a trespasser you can be charged with burglary if you have an intent to cause criminal damage. In the case cited, I agree criminal damage would be a better charge.

Beyond Belief by Emlyn Williams. I found it hard going, didn't like his style of writing. Never finished it.

Wasn't he more of a playwright?

I know only the bare minimum about the Moors murders. There are some things just too horrible to imagine, like the business with those sick bastards in Belgium. How anyone can do those sort of things to other people, let alone children, is thankfully beyond me.

...I can't help feeling that an 'inchoate' offence borders dangerously on something one might do, rather than has done.

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Doesn't mention that he also played midfield for Liverpool...........

That's the fella. Think he was in the aborted 1930s film version of I Claudius.