It’s rare that you get 2 news stories on the same day dealing with useless freeloading layabouts but preceeding the story of Obersturmfuehrer Harry a couple of months back was that of Mark Thatcher, son of the infamous Mrs. For Thatcher it was capricious timing because the story would have received considerably more coverage had it not been for the buffoon third in line to the throne wishing to dress up in the ancestral clothes.

So let’s start with the context shall we. There was a planned coup in Equatorial Guinea funded by foreigners and to be predominantly carried out by foreign mercenary forces

Mark Thatcher is a man at the heart of the British establishment. He is a hereditary baronet courtesy of his father. The most sucessful thing he has done is to have acquired maximum wealth and influence on minimum talent. He has married a Texan oil heiress, he has been involved in the arms trade, there have been innumerable investigations into his dealings in both Britain and South Africa for financial as well as ethical irregularities. Oh and he got lost in the desert some years ago whilst on some rally. The tosser!

Having pleaded guilty to the purchase of a helicopter with the inference that this was to be used in the coup attempt but not categorically underlined as being earmarked for the coup in the full knowledge of Mark Thatcher he has escaped by paying £265,000, which for a man with an estimated net worth of around £40 million is going to trouble him about as much as one of us getting fined for bunking the fare on the London Underground. Ah no you say I forgot he has agreed to turn State’s evidence in return for this leniency, yes I was coming to that. Pray tell me if he was not heavily involved in the coup attempt how would he have any information that is of use to the authorities? If he is contending that he bought this helicopter without knowing what it was for then this is hardly likely to be invaluable information. Looks to me like a case of the eel slips through the hands of justice and he is prepared to grass anyone up to save his skin. Puts the idea of honour among thieves to bed then!

The is a silver lining to this cloud, he attempted to go to America to live and they wouldn’t let him in ha ha ha. I mean that must be severe because they’ve even let me in before!

What vexes me the most is that there is this glass cellar for the Gary Glitterati (ie the rich criminal) where they can rely on the establishment protecting their own. You only have to look at Jeffrey Archer, still a Lord having served time for purgery. So we allow a convicted and congenital liar to continue to sit in the second legislature because he was mates with the former PM and gave the Tory party lots of money raised on the basis of his dubious literary talent? The man has proven time and again to be a fraud and a cheat and yet with the friends he has he’s like a social weeble, you can’t knock the fucker down so that he stays down. Then there’s Johnathon Aitken, the man who swore publically that he would “stamp out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism with the sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play” at his side

Then there’s Jacko, regardless of whether or not I think he’s guilty if you had put any other unknown black man in the same situation with the facts identical there is little question he would have not only been convicted but that there would be mass hysteria about whether to put such ‘monsters’ to death in the future. It’s not as if there isn’t precedent in both the US and the UK for this. The OJ Simpson example is obvious but let’s look at some other instances that may perhaps seem at first glance to have lesser impact. A particular bete-noir of mine is those who get off for driving offences on a technicality. David Beckham for example was stopped for speeding and claimed that it was to “escape the paparazzi” he was let off. The present Foreign Secretary Jack Straw whilst he was Home Secretary was stopped for speeding in a car driven by his chauffeur, there was no reason why he was breaking the speed limit it was not on important cabinet business or anything. Now, I have to declare a vested interest having been banned from driving before on account of suffering from an exuberance of the right foot. I wasn’t chuffed, but I was caught and suffered the consequences. I was fined quick a bit of money and forced to give up work for a month which I could ill afford. The only reason they did not fine me more was because it was first offence and I had a young dependent. So why is it that for those who can easily afford such a penalty they do not have to abide by the same rules as the rest of us riff-raff.

It seems that once you have achieved success, by which I mean material wealth, (their yardstick, not mine) no matter how you might have done so, there is this belief that you must be a decent person or perhaps just someone that can afford slick legal representation. You only have to look at the libel laws and such like to see that, big companies will often use their lawyers to bully people into their own way of thinking. By and large the man/woman in the street cannot afford to take on a business and is therefore at an immediate disadvantage should s/he ever need to do so. Most people grudgingly accept this as being the way things are, personally I think that is exactly what the companies want you to do, resign yourself to their over-arching power. Over my dead body!

Song Of The Day ~ A House – Why Me?

Original Comments:


Mark made this comment,
It was unfortunate that Thatcher managed to get rescued from the Sahara – best place for the bugger. His turning State’s evidence has shades of the Cretan liar paradox about it…
comment added :: {ts ‘2005-06-09 13:25:38’} GMT+01 :: http://longrider.blog-city.com