Barbara Ellen in CiF:
Who couldn't feel pity for Melissa Reid and Michaella McCollum Connolly, the Scottish and Irish 20-year-olds currently detained in a Peruvian jail, accused of smuggling £1.5m-worth of cocaine?
*sighs* I guess I have to haul this out again:
...it is imperative that these girls are viewed as what they are (young individuals in trouble in a foreign country) and not unfairly portrayed as convenient totems of greedy, gormless "broken Britain".
Your generation broke it, Barbara. So I can understand why you don't want to see the results...
Are they guilty? I don't know.
ReplyDeleteTheir behaviour in Ibiza was poor but not out of line with most of the young mob who go there.
So maybe they are getting a rough press but I suspect it is deserved.
Meanwhile the comment in the article that made me snort was "I'm sure most of us can just about remember what 20 felt like and it sure wasn't mature and responsible." And the Guardianistas want to lower the voting age further?
They have the vote. Lads younger than them die for their country. They are adult, get over it Barbara.
Babs excusing these women as children who didn't know what they were doing and so are to be forgiven their sins, let off with a slapped wrist.
ReplyDeleteBut if she was writing about a couple of 20 year old men, they're not children you know, baiting and abusing feminists on line, well then such men should be locked up for a very long time. Feminists, equality, pah!
'My similarly aged daughter recently returned from holidaying with friends, with a case full of sand-strewn laundry and eyes screaming "hangover!" I'm sure they were out having fun every night. Which is the point – there's nothing remotely relevant or damning about Reid and Connolly's behaviour, up until their arrest. It was bog-standard for their age. [...]
ReplyDeleteHowever, innocent or otherwise, they are only representing themselves, not something that's gone wrong generally with our youth.'
So, it is something gone wrong generally with our youth, in other words?
I can recall being 20 very clearly. At no time would I have ever thought about smuggling drugs - either deliberately or unintentionally. I always packed my own bags and didn't let them out of sight.
ReplyDeleteTypical CiF garbage. Until they have been tried, they are innocent until proven guilty, but the "we have all been there" is bollocks. we have not and for good reason, some of us had the good sense to realise what the consequences are.
there is the heartbreaking list of items the girls asked a family member to buy for them, which included Nutella, Pringles, Oreos, a sports bra, hair removal cream, strawberry jam and a pack of cards. It's an upsetting list, reeking as it does of a mixture of naive, entirely misplaced self-consciousness about appearance and an almost babyish terror
ReplyDeleteIf they'd have asked for a Guardian, it would have exposed them as juvenile nimwads like Barbara Ellen.
Either that, or they didn't want people stealing their lavatory paper. Unlike Bronco or Andrex, though, the Guardian is only suited for running excrement into the person using it.
Wait til 16 year olds get the vote
ReplyDeleteMy chum at Uni got banged up for 3 years for making speed in the chemistry labs with a street value of about £5k. These admitedly innocent until proven lasses were wandering about with £1.5 million of class A marching powder - wtf are we supposed to think? Oh girls, you are a pair of bounders arentcha, arentcha? Go on, off with you, ya scamps!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Babs that it's not representative of broken Britain, like my buddy, it's representative of them being blithering ejeets and getting caught - that's kind of the way crime, policing and punishment works. Uuuurrggghh.
I buy the Observer every week (I know, I know) and Babs is definately terrible but I think it could be David Mitchell who takes the title for most pointless columnist. Catherine Bennett is even more lefty than Babs but there's an extreme wuckfittery that adds comedic value.
Don't start me on this.
ReplyDeleteI am a retired Police Officer, ex-Royal Hong Kong Police. I have seen and dealt with drugs mules and they are most certainly not the 'innocents' that the press tries to portray.
ReplyDeleteThe mules are doing the dangerous bit of the drugs transportation for money; they know how much they are going to make if the drugs transportation is successful. They only plead ignorance, victimisation or blackmail when they are caught. They are taught how to plead 'innocence'.
There two lasses knew exactly what they were involved in, and they became involved quite voluntarily, thinking that they were going to make a mint not only on this occasion but also on subsequent trips.
Sympathy have I none. Let them suffer the consequences of their folly. It's not going to be pleasant.
I could understand getting caught with a couple of wraps or something, ("Someone must've slipped it in me pocket Squire") but 2 fucking great cement bags full of the stuff?
ReplyDeleteIt always amuses me on these border control programs on the telly, and some smarmy git of a customs officer wipes someones suitcase, then squirts some stuff on it, and comes out with "Your luggage has tested positive for cocaine". Well no shit, it's just spent the last 14 hours being thrown about by baggage handling monkeys and been sat in a cargo hold of a plane that plies it's trade going from here and back to Latin America. I'd be highly surprised if it didn't.
"I am a retired Police Officer, ex-Royal Hong Kong Police. I have seen and dealt with drugs mules and they are most certainly not the 'innocents' that the press tries to portray."
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid my experience is limited to watching shows like 'Banged Up Abroad' but the lessons are the same. Countless examples of folk chancing their luck, getting caught, pleading ignorance/innocence and then the candid admission to camera that they knew what they were doing all along... a confession coming after months/years spent in some tropical hell hole prison.
Can't recall their names, but there was a similar case awhile ago involving two young Brits in Thailand. Spent years arguing their innocence, and were finally pardoned. Once back in the UK they did an about face and confessed they were fully aware of what they were doing.
And then we have the Brit grandmother in Bali - although this case has other dimensions - which in all likelihood will result in her meeting the hangman soon. And you know what? I for one won't shed a tear. The rules/laws are clear... very clear. Fly into a country like Malaysia and the first sign you see is: "The penalty for smuggling drugs is DEATH", followed by "Welcome to Malaysia". There are no excuses.
"Your luggage has tested positive for cocaine"
ReplyDeleteI've only ever been challenged a couple of times at the airport despite years of travel to places near and far, and likely ticking the 'suspicious' box. Notably, lots of travel to/from dodgy climes, young (although not so young now) and usually travelling alone.
I was once stripped searched at Jersey airport after flying in for 24 hours... Although they didn't probe any further fortunately, no rubber gloves or torches etc. The officer later apologised and explained my youth, itinerary, plus flying from Manchester were the suspicious factors.
The second time was a trip to Bali, again, flying in for little more than two days while travelling elsewhere in SE Asia. Ironically, this was just a few months before the Brit Grandmother mentioned in the above comment. This time, no in-depth searching of myself or luggage, but lots of questions. It took a while but eventually they said my short stay was the alarming issue - they were on high terrorist alert at the time too - once I explained I was also visiting other places and staying in Malaysia for 4 weeks they seemed satisfied and let me enter at 2am.
I did once get the swab treatment, or rather my camera equipment did, at Birmingham airport. While waiting for the machine to give a result I casually asked if they were looking for drugs... "No. Explosives." came the dry reply. I don't know why, but I suddenly felt really guilty even though there was no reason to be.
Budvar is right about those tests though. Wasn't there something about 80% of UK bank notes being contaminated with drugs not so long ago?
" Wasn't there something about 80% of UK bank notes being contaminated with drugs not so long ago? "
ReplyDeleteNo that was nicotine! I keep meaning to start stamping my bank notes again with "WARNING HANDLED BY A SMOKER.4th Hand Smoke Kills!" ...or something like that....I just have to find what remains of my John Bull Printing Set For Industrious British Boys after our recent 'down sizing'..
Returning to the topic, yep I did some really stupid shit at that age and some of it I could still do time for. The high point was waking up in a foreign police cell with the World's Worst Hangover to the World's Worst Coffee and a grim German peeler bearing the news that I was going down for life for 2 counts of murder...and some trifles like 'armed robbery',' carrying an offensive weapon'.
I don't recall The Guardian or any other tabloid mounting a "Free This Poor Misguided British Boy In Trouble" campaign on my behalf nor would I have wanted such. I fucked up, no one else (although, by dint of the murder charges, I "fucked up" several other people) You do the crime, you do the time. Ergo I have very little sympathy for the 2-in-Peru.
"And the Guardianistas want to lower the voting age further?"
ReplyDeleteOf course they do. People who are young and idealistic will vote more progressives into power!
"But if she was writing about a couple of 20 year old men..."
Oh, spot on!
"I always packed my own bags and didn't let them out of sight."
Indeed. And the extra weight might have been expected to ring alarm bells!
"If they'd have asked for a Guardian, it would have exposed them as juvenile nimwads like Barbara Ellen."
ReplyDeleteLOL!
"..Babs is definately terrible but I think it could be David Mitchell who takes the title for most pointless columnist."
It's one hell of a strong field...
"Sympathy have I none. Let them suffer the consequences of their folly. It's not going to be pleasant."
Oh, I think Dave will intervene, if he's not got his hands full with Syria... :/
"Budvar is right about those tests though. Wasn't there something about 80% of UK bank notes being contaminated with drugs not so long ago?"
ReplyDeleteHeh! I think that's a bit of an urban legend. If so, the quantities involved must be microscopic.
"You do the crime, you do the time. "
I think, for the progressives, it very much depends on the type of crime...
"not out of line with most of the young mob who go there"
ReplyDeleteWhat?
They're ALL smuggling cocaine out of Peru?
Must have missed that bit in the news.
Did anyone see the kids going to a fancy-dress party made up the same as these two drug smugglers?. Hilarious.
ReplyDeleteJaded
"Did anyone see the kids going to a fancy-dress party made up the same as these two drug smugglers? Hilarious."
ReplyDeleteHilarious? You might have smiled and winced were plod faculties up to the task of evaluating a scene engineered and exploited by adults, Jaded.
Back to the staring window Melvin, it's medication time.
ReplyDeleteYou lefty Liberals are all for free speech and having an opinion-as long it agrees with you.
Jaded
This is what the drug peddling gangs depend on - 'immature', 'young', 'unknowing' British girls having the British Establishment plead for their release or gentle punishment, and thus receiving a pardon or a very short term in jail. From quiote a few sources, these idiots had several opportunities to contact th4e authorities but failed/refused to do so. I have more concern for their parents and families than I have for these cretinous drug dealers.
ReplyDeletePenseivat