Perhaps if you applied a little more thought and actually read my original post rather than just completely misrepresent it, you might understand that your ridiculous analogy just makes you appear to be unintelligent, belligerent and antagonistic. If you need a dictionary to help with any of these words just let me know.
Ouch a split infinitive. Without wanting to get too legal on you, to what extent do you think Clarkson thought using the word he used is offensive to black people? I.e. before he said it.
Exactly. To put it simply, if someone lights a fire near a house and the house burns down, they would be found guilty of deliberately burning the house down if it could be proven that they knew lighting a fire near the house could well cause the house to burn down. In law, it's called a level of intention. I.e. even though you didn't directly intend something, if you know something is very likely to occur, that is intention. As you say, there's no real doubt that Clarkson knows that racist words are likely to offend people. His use of them, when being filmed, is therefore undoubtedly intentional.
Well, I think there is a significant difference between targeting an individual for personal abuse as in your football analogy, and muttering a rhyme that millions of children were taught at school.
That is the same thing - mens rea is your awareness. If you are aware (i.e. have foresight) of something occurring you have the necessary mens rea. In the converse, it's why the monumentally stupid can do something which you or I would be convicted of and yet be found not guilty. They are incapable of foresight. And if they had no foresight, they genuinely didn't believe that something criminal was likely to occur from their actions, they cannot have the mens rea.
Yep. It hinged on the fact that he told them he couldn't swim. Given that he told them he couldn't swim, and they pushed him into water, would you say they had the foresight that he would be likely to drown? More theoretically, if he hadn't told them, would they have had it?
