As is my wont occasionally I am holding up my hands and apologising for a decision or rather two decisions made by the Labour Govt. both mistakes and both very damaging and embarrassing to the party members who believe in justice and fairness.
The Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs is on his last legs; he is almost blind; confined to a wheelchair and has to be fed artificially; along with his family he is pleading to be allowed home to die with his family around him.
"Whilst the medical evidence indicates that your ability to commit further acts of violence has reduced to a very low level, I am concerned that you might incite and be involved in such acts of violence." (Jack Straw; Home Secretary) With these words Straw shows us “Man’s inhumanity to man” he even has the arrogance to expect us to buy the crap that Biggs could be a threat to public order. This is the man of straw flexing his muscles for the press to show how tough he is, a pathetic charade; he couldn’t look tough sitting in a tank.
I am no fan of Biggs or his like; he is a self confessed career criminal and as such; given different circumstances could have been a Tory front bencher, an amoral thug who chose to live outside of society’s rules and was rightly imprisoned. Does this mean that he should die in jail without sight and wheelchair bound in his eighties, the answer to that is no, emphatically no.
Unfortunately for the coward Straw some of us have good memories; good enough to remember his more gentle side when he released a man responsible for the murder and torture of thousands of innocent people, the fascist beast Pinochet, one of Thatcher’s great heroes. Gentle Jack deemed him so unwell that he could not stand trial despite the fact that he flew here to see his friend and fellow criminal Thatcher and was shopping in Oxford St. prior to being released. This is a disgraceful slur on the Labour Party. Straw is a disgrace, he plays to the reactionaries over Ronnie Biggs and releases Thatcher’s pal Pinochet; a despot and blood soaked tyrant right up there with Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.
All Jack Straw has done is demonstrate that we have a Labour Home Secretary who is no better than the two others in this tragic farce; Biggs and Pinochet; a low life pair and an even worse Home Secretary. I know you won’t listen to me Jack but; I will tell you anyway.
No amount of power justifies sinking this low.
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33 comments:
Remind me, Terry - how is Mr Mills, the driver of the robbed train, these days? Alive and well, is he?
Or did I read that he died a few years later as a result of injuries suffered during the robbery?
I dislike Jack Straw, but this time, he got it right.
Well said Terry!
A worthy recall of the Pinochet affair too!
(Ariel) 13/07/09
Mr. Mills died some 7 years after the robbery from Leukaemia you clown. I made my opinion of the train robbers quite clear.
No mention of Pinochet says all we need to know about you.
(Jim) 08:44
The Pinochet affair was one of Britain’s most shameful episodes; Straw will be remembered with disgust.
And no mention of Mr Mills in your original post, plus equating a hammer wielding thug with any British political party,confirms all we thought about you, Councillor.
Mr Mills never worked again after Biggs gave him 'a little tap' with a hammer - a treatment not usually associated with a long and healthy life, even in Renfrewshire.
Again, I have no brief for Straw, but he got this one right.
Sorry, Ariel is spot on. The guy deserves as much sympathy as he gave Mr Mills while he was in exile in Brazil.
Apart from that, spot on. An unworthy successor to Barbera Castle.
The Pinochet affair.
Yes, I think I remember the general's lawyer's attacking an original panel of 4 judges findings because one of the judges had links to Amnesty International.
Personally, I couldn't believe that there were 3 judges not connected to Amnesty, but in the end the law lords went with the appeal and the general was allowed to return to Chile, rather than face the Spanish courts. Shameful indeed!
General Pinochet's regime engaged in some dreadful abuses of human rights, but he did revitalise the Chilean economy and prevent it from becoming a second ridiculous banana republic like Cuba. It's largely thanks to him that Chile today is a stable and secure democracy.
He also didn't kill any more people than Che Guevera.
Oh, and lest we forget, he allowed Margaret Thatcher to use his bases and provided us with intelligence during the Falklans War, without which many more British lives would have been lost.
(Ariel) 14/07/09
Your argument is so facile that you have to revert to making things up; I made my opinion of Biggs clear; going as far as comparing him to a Tory cabinet minister I cant insult him any more than that can I?
Can you show me where you learned that Biggs was a hammer wielding thug and how you found out that he struck the blow?
I think that anyone who wants an elderly frail man who is blind and wheelchair bound as well as reliant on being fed artificially to die in a prison cell as quite sinister and not a little disturbing, particularly if; like you; they are prepared to lie so easily.
Did you know that the inquest in to Mr. Mill’s death found that it was not related to the events of the train robbery?
(Allan) 14/07/09
You are saying that you want an elderly frail man who is blind; wheelchair bound and unable to feed himself to remain in prison for the short time he has left to live. I have no time for people like Biggs as I have already explained but I find your position and that of Ariel every bit as sinister and disturbing as any train robber, you have also fallen in to the position of putting the weapon in his hands because you have been conditioned to say that over the years. I wasn’t aware that Biggs struck the blow which injured Mr. Mills.
Barbara Castle while being a politician of immense stature and a fighting socialist; superior in every way to Straw was never Home Secretary.
(Jim) 08:59
Why would a judge with links to Amnesty International be regarded as unsuitable? I thought they were the good guys, what was Pinochet afraid of?
It was a truly shameful affair and it happened on Labour’s watch Straw will never be forgiven.
(Anonymous) 12:15
So what’s 3 or 4 thousand murders and torture sessions he brought financial stability; Mussolini got the trains to run on time; Franco brought discipline and old Adolf sorted out the Jews didn’t he so the blood soaked old bastard was in good company; so are you.
Pinochet killed innocent people including women and children while Che Guevara killed tyrants and fascists; he helped lay the foundations of a better society in the only way they could. America is now seeing things differently and the Royal Ballet and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra are making plans to visit Cuba, it looks like history is leaving you fascist goose steppers behind.
(Anonymous) 12:16
Two blood drenched criminals together how cosy.
“without which many more British lives would have been lost”
Without the war criminal Thatcher no lives would have been lost.
There's a whiff of the midden about your politics, your arguments and your morals, Councillor.
Biggs and Co. set out to commit a crime, tooled up for and willing to use, violence against anyone who got in their way and you want to let him out!
Thank God you're anti-British as well as stupid , as I'd prefer not to have you on my side!
So what were we supposed to do, then? Just allow British citizens to be taken over by Argentinian fascists? There's an element of hypocrisy there.
I made it very clear that Pinochet committed dreadful and unjustifiable human rights abuses. The answer to your question, whether ensuring economic freedom justifies encroaching on personal freedom, is an immensely complex one. I don't have the answer, but I certainly am not a "goose-stepping fascist". Pinochet wasn't a fascist either, as it happens, since fascists hate free market economics and both Hitler and Mussolini pursued broadly the Keynesian orthodoxy of the time. Pinochet, as you no doubt know, turned the economy over to the Chicago Boys, who succeeded in trebling the wealth of the average Chilean in a decade (though admittedly from a low starting point).
You are viewing Che through rose tinted goggles. It simply isn't true that he never killed innocent civilians - there are numerous well-documented cases, which you would find if you spent five minutes on google.
Well... yes, though i notice that you have excluded the bit about him being a fugitive of British justice (if such a thing exists) for over 25 years. Would you have the same sympathy for a Nazi war criminal?
Jack Straw succeded Barbera Castle in being the MP for Blackburn.
Terry, I couldn't agree with you more on this post, but as an active member of Amnesty I'm afraid I can't say any more on the Pinochet case - apparently wanting these c*nts brought to order for their crimes against humanity means that you're prejudiced against them.
It's a funny old world!
'Without the War Criminal (Thatcher) no lives would have been lost.'
Argentine forces firing blanks when they attacked the Royal Marine barracks at Moody Brook, were they, Napoleon?
Excellent post. Biggs is a low life but keeping him in prison serves no real purpose other than allowing Jack Straw to 'look togh' whilst doing SFA about crime.
Pinochet reardless of what help he gave this country in the past is a blood soaked monster and deserved to die in jail. I can't see he was any better than Mugabe or any other criminal dictator you care to mention.
I wonder if his defenders would be so keen to let a murderer who did a lot of good work in the community or a peadophile who raised a lot of money for British charities off the hook. Nah thought not.
Just self serving scum protecting their own as usual. Perhaps they'd be better laying off debates on justice until they learn what the word means.
""Without the war criminal Thatcher no lives would have been lost.""
Without the war criminal Bliar (and Bush) hundreds of thousands of lives in Iraq would not have been lost. You and your comrads in the Labour Party have the blood of many men women and childen on your hands.
There are clearly 2 things different about me and people like you; one is your lies I have shown my contempt for Biggs and his like by comparing them to Tory Cabinet members, and you still want to portray me as his friend in some way.
The other thing is your willingness to abuse people in a way that I suspect you would not dare do to their face, you are a coward.
You might think that the ‘tough guy’ stance works but; what it really does is show you as someone who desperately feels the need to act tough.
anonymous
"whether ensuring economic freedom justifies encroaching on personal freedom, is an immensely complex one"
Or you could stop dissembling and say overthrowing a democratic Govt.imprisoning; murdering and torturing thousands of it's citizens and then leaving their society to the mercies of the crazy bastard Friedman and the Chicago boys is not breally immensely complex at all.
It was an act of international crime and anyone who can attempt to justify it is no better than they were, that means you.
Allan.
Why are you afraid of the issue? I don't believe that Biggs given his age and condition should spend what little time he has left in a cell it's that simple. I cling to the belief that human beings are better than that.
There is a couple of guys being tried just now as suspected war criminals both in their late eighties/early nineties I would not put them in prison.
There is absolutely no point to it except revenge or the scoring of political points, both of which are in my opinion unhealthy reactions and do not make progress.
You are of course right about Straw/Castle I thought you meant as Home Secretary.
Pinochet was perfectly capable of standing trial and he was let off by our Govt.
There is a very strong case for looking again at how we deal with such matters.
I am not in favour of giving an 80 year old a life sentence nor am I in favour of doing nothing; perhaps the experts could look at some other way.
Locking up the very elderly and infirm is not right; at least not in the same way you lock up a 30 year old murderer, most penal systems are rotten and politicians are afraid of the right wing press that's why they won't do what's necessary to sort it.
Ariel.
How naive are you? The war criminal Thatcher was the most unpopular PM since records began, that was the reason for the Falklands.
She knew that enough flag waving clowns like you would buy it.
Alex.
You are right about Pinochet; he is right up there with the very worst of them and he was the great friend of our P.M. Thatcher, a disgrace.
Anonymous.
Your willingness to blame Blair and Labour for everything that was/is bad rather dilutes your argument, it just sounds like anti Labour point scoring.
The piece is about a very bad episode in Labour history and you can't seem to address it, rather twisted are you not?
Answer the question Terry - are you saying Argentine troops fired blanks when they made a totally unprovoked night attack on the Royal Marine barracks at Moody Brook?
(Ariel) 18/07/09
No I'm not; I'm not interested in Moody Brook this is the first time I've heard the name but; I watched in disbelief with the rest of the world as one of the biggest task forces ever assembled sailed out to fight Argentina over a small group of islands which were not even known to the British people.
This was done to save the career of Thatcher; that's why these lives were lost.
Councillor, re Moody Brook and the Falklands.
It seems you are commenting on a war you know nothing about, that was fought over an island you were unaware existed!
This is something new even by your standards. If it will help, I know a large Marine in Arbroath who will be happy to fill in the gaps in your education.
I know enough about the Falklands war not to be fooled by the propaganda, I campaigned against it to try prevent deaths to save Thatcher's career. Unfortunately flag waving gullible clowns like you were eitherto stupid ortoo craven to see the truth.
I find Some people inpressive and some not and wearing a uniform does not come in to the equation; marine or otherwise; I leave that to grovellers like you.
Terry Lad, you'd never heard of Moody Brook, you'd never heard of the Falklands, you've never heard about Craddocks squadron being caught and destroyed off Stanley in WW1.
Son, because you know nothing, you should stop pontificating. It makes you look a prat.
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