Ronnie Biggs poll - let him out?

[blueboyno1]

Nobody really knew who hit the driver. The main suspect was Frank Williams ,but no one person was ever charged with the assault due to lack of evidence ,which was kind of strange because most of them were shopping each other in an attenpt to get less jai time .Some actually said he was never hit with an iron bar but fell aganst the sde of the train when the robbers charged in mob handed to lift the sacks out .Dont suppose we will ever know.

[hugh]

Where's the priority in the media's when illness and death of Ronnie Biggs and Jade Goody can gets hours and hours of attention on BBC and Sky News, compared two the few minutes for Harry Patch or the everyday heroes dying in Afghanistan or in a fire

Bakbjerg, I'm in almost total agreement with you. I think Biggs was just a big waster, but I think his "badness" is being exaggerated.

[ionnsaigh]

Now, if Jack Straw releases a man convicted of terrorism the government may lose face with the electorate,

That may well be the case, however serious questions remain as to the legitimacy of the verdict. So I suppose the British Government - or Scottish Government for that matter, could always put their hands up saying ( Sorry we got it wrong ).
If freedom on compassionate grounds, is good enough for an English man - God forbid, that the great British public - are in anyway racist - then Mr Megrahi should be freed immediately.

[daftdog]

al-Megrahi, was found guilty of the Lockerbie bombing, if he thinks he is innocent, then he should keep appealing. BUT, to compare Al-Megrahi to Biggs is just nonsense. Al-Megrahi was convicted on 270 counts of murder and given a life term but in 2003 or 4, was told he would have to serve a minimum 27 years where as Biggs didn't kill anyone and was given a 30 year sentence. He has went through the system and eventually he is now being released on health grounds after serving 9 yr 10 months approx of his sentence. He wasn't found guilty of murder...

Al-Megrahi has been found guilty of murder and its up to his lawyers to prove his innocence for his release or get him released on health grounds.

I would be curious if someone could give me the name of someone serving a prison term for murder on that scale who got released on compassionate health grounds???

But in my opinion the lockerbie bomber, whether its al-Megrahi or someone else, they should have saved the tax payers the money and did a James McDade and blown their own sorry excuse for a human being to bits planting the bomb and Robert Campbell should have had a pint in McGurk's bar when that bomb went off also. Cowards the lot of them..

[maxmix]

At least the Poll is looking a bit more sensible now !

Pity no more are voting....

maxmix

[bakbjerg]

Nobody really knew who hit the driver. ... Dont suppose we will ever know.

Does it matter, they were all accomplised !?

[Pete Reek]

At least the Poll is looking a bit more sensible now !

Pity no more are voting....

maxmix

Voting?
Are you crazy? The state this country is in now is a direct result of the fixation everyone seems to have for voting

As for Mr. Biggs, he should still be inside. Someone has been going on about him being a "bit part player"!
Well as the old saying goes "if you're with the crows you'll be shot" and that includes bit part players, no matter how much has been read about them over the years.

[hugh]

Nobody really knew who hit the driver. ... Dont suppose we will ever know.

Does it matter, they were all accomplised !?

He suffered "a black eye and facial bruising". Do we really want to hang 15 people for that?

Oh, I know he suffered "trauma". But that was only after his shop steward and his union's lawyers had a word with him.

[bakbjerg]

He suffered "a black eye and facial bruising". Do we really want to hang 15 people for that?

Oh, I know he suffered "trauma". But that was only after his shop steward and his union's lawyers had a word with him.

I don't recall anyone mentioning hanging here. Just don't turn justice around and victimise the criminals on behalf of the victims

[hugh]

Just satirising other people's sense of perspective. There is an eighty year old man, with probably only weeks to live, being let out of jail because it no longer serves any purpose to keep him in there. But because someone suffered a black eye and facial bruising, which Biggs probably didn't even inflict, some people think this should be denied him? That's not justice, that's vindictiveness.

[gizmo]

Am I the only person in the country that thinks Old Biggsy is pulling another fast one. £5 of my hard earned cash says he will have the quickest recovery since Lazarus and will be charging for autographed pictures before the end of the month.

[EMDEE]

Am I the only person in the country that thinks Old Biggsy is pulling another fast one. £5 of my hard earned cash says he will have the quickest recovery since Lazarus and will be charging for autographed pictures before the end of the month.

A cynical view, but one that is understandable given the history of this individual. Time will tell.

[bakbjerg]

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/letters/display.var.2524439.0.Lockerbie_bomber_deserves_the_same_compassion_as_Ronnie_Biggs.php

[hugh]

Am I the only person in the country that thinks Old Biggsy is pulling another fast one. £5 of my hard earned cash says he will have the quickest recovery since Lazarus and will be charging for autographed pictures before the end of the month.

You know when they were supposedly playing monopoly with real money at that farmhouse/hideaway? I bet Biggs had all the "get out of jail free" cards tucked up his sleeve.

[bakbjerg]

I find this comment from the Telegraph quite acurate, Biggs will be laughing all the way to his grave:

It is little wonder our country is in the mess it is when we are governed by people who appear to be either congenital idiots, or morally bankrupt, or quite possibly both. A month ago, Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, made what appeared to be the quite sensible decision that Ronnie Biggs, one of the Great Train Robbers, should die in jail. On Thursday, he reversed this on the grounds that Biggs – who is 80 today – was about to die. Some of us thought that was the point.
So Biggs, who apparently cannot leave his hospital bed in Norwich, is technically a free man. The full compassion of the state has been exercised to his benefit. No doubt many of the self-righteous are wallowing in the warm bath of sentiment provoked by this exercise of mercy. I am afraid I find it contemptible.
Let us leave to one side the fact that Biggs chose a career as a common criminal, preying on the vulnerability of others in order to make a living. We all make mistakes (though, happily, few of us make mistakes of such unpleasantness or gravity as that). Two other things dictate that he had to be made an example of, for the good of our criminal justice system.
First, he chose to escape from prison. Had he not done so, he would have been out of jail 30 years ago, and not even a footnote in history. Second, as Mr Straw said when refusing parole a month ago, he has never shown remorse for his crimes. I am all for paroling people who repent seriously, apologise for what they have done and understand that they should not do it again. Biggs did not even bother to make a pretence of that. He is a thoroughly repulsive and amoral old man.
Contrast his treatment, whereby everything that possibly can be done to ease his last weeks on earth (if indeed that is what they are) has been done, with that of another elderly person.
I was alerted yesterday by a human rights lawyer to the case of one of her clients, a 105-year-old lady in a care home in Wolverhampton. The local authority has decided to close the home. Never mind the extreme trauma this brings upon its most vulnerable residents, who it has decreed must be moved. An expert witness – a psychiatrist – has given warning of an increased risk of early death if she is moved because she suffers from confusion, incontinence and poor mobility. The council couldn't care less, and wishes instead to proceed with "the orderly closure of the home". What a pity this particular old lady, and her fellow residents, didn't think to rob a train.
In this, and in so many other ways, the Biggs case exemplifies the moral destitution of our society. The difference between right and wrong is now so blurred as to be incomprehensible. No one seems to remember the rights of the innocent – whether they be harmless elderly people who lack Biggs's quite disgusting celebrity status, or the poor train driver, Jack Mills, who was hit on the head by one of the robbers and whose early death was attributed to the incident.
What a pity that, in making his odious decision to bow to sentimentality and free Biggs, Mr Straw did not take into consideration not merely the plight of Mr Mills and his family but the plights of so many victims of crime whose assailants will be cheered by this foul old criminal getting away with it in the end. We should have no more care that he is so ill than he had for the victims of his many crimes.
All over Britain, criminals will be laughing at Mr Straw's weakness. And the rest of us should be weeping at what he has done to the rule of law.