We Need To Talk About Stokes
First things first, this isn’t a climbing blog. Narrowly speaking, this is a cricket blog (the other sport I follow messianically), but more broadly its about when violence is justified or not. Bear with me here. If you follow sport, you’ll have seen Ben Stokes, England allrounder and possibly the best player in the world right now, was arrested about a month ago on suspicion of ABH. The raw facts are available all over the internet, just google it, but briefly there was a fight on the street of which video footage exists showing Stokes first being hit with a bottle and then brawling with two other men, one of which he knocks out after scuffling for a while. At this point, the footage ends. Stokes’ private defence, it seems, is that he confronted two blokes who were shouting homophobic abuse at a gay couple. One thing led to another, Stokes is threatened with a bottle, he gets hit and then proceeds to lay the other chap out. As he put it – ‘they started it, and I finished it.’...