Answering the wrong question?

When I was a civil servant, I used to have to write annual reports on my staff. Back then I had to effectively give marks out of ten on various aspects of performance, one of which was "penetration" - defined as "the ability to get to the root of a problem - to see beyond the surface". The Government have come up with proposals to amend the law relating to murder and manslaughter which to my mind rate no more than a 2 for penetration. Because the problem is not what names we use, or what defences we allow, but simply the fact that - thanks to Parliament - murder carries with it a mandatory life sentence. By taking away from judges the discretion to make the sentence reflect the offence we have created a tail-wagging-the-dog situation where we have to find some way of not calling it murder when it clearly is, but we feel a life sentence would seem unduly harsh. Do away with the mandatory life sentence and the problem goes away - we can just have one offence of unlawful killing with a sentence appropriate to the circumstances. Of course the argument most commonly put forward is that judges are not elected, and therefore not accountable. But the other side of the coin is that decisions taken by people who are elected tend to be taken on the basis of which decision will be the most popular, rather than which decision is the right one. Put it this way - if my fate were in the hands of a judge or a politician, I know where I'd want it to be!