Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

privatisation of the railways?

Princess Diana

Falklands/Iraq

Railway Privitisation  - no.

Princess Diana (Death, I assume). Probably not, but in the Top 20.

Falklands - good spot, I missed that compoletely. Deffo in Top Ten, probably at # 2.

Iraq. No, because of the shame I feel about it. (As a Brit).

[tikay]

The Great Train Robbery itself remains engraved upon my mind.

Leatherslade Farm, (Bucks) where they all hid for a week, Bridego Bridge, where the Mail Train was stopped, & the characters themselves.

The Gang was 2 Gangs really - The South West (London) & South East Gangs.

Bruce Reynolds was the architect & leader, but there were about 12 in all - Reynolds, Douglas "Goody", "Buster" Edwards, Charlkie Wilson (my favourite), Roy "The Weasel" James (a motor-racing driver), Jim Hussey, Roger Cordrey, Tom Wisbey, a few others, &, of course, Biggs, who was in fact a low-level Gang member. One guy - I forget which one - later had a flower-stall at Waterloo Statioin.

They bungled it really - lack of attention to detail. In Letherslade Farm, they wiled away the days playing Monopoly, but the geezer who was supposed to "clean up" the Farmhouse messed up, & the fingerprints of them all were on the Monopoly money, & also on a ketchup bottle. Bizarrely, the guy who owned the Monopoly Set got off, on the grounds that his fingerprints were entitled to be on the Monopoly set!

The story ran in The London Evening News - this was when The Evening Standard was not London's main evening paper - for ages, with daily revelations of bags of money being found in telephone bioxes, left luggage lockers, under park benches, all sorts.

One by one the gang all got arrested. It took 8 days to catch the first, but the rest all followed sharpish. Most got 30 years, & most did it, but Biggs became the face of the Great Train Robbery because of his exploits later.

They all went to Prison before England won the World Cup, Mobile Phones had not been invented, nor had the Internet, Walkmans, MP3's, I-Pods, MSN, Teletext, Colour Telly, Freezers, Automatic Gearboxes, or Online Poker.

Amazing how things change so quickly.

I'm not sure if i have mentioned this before but I met Charlie Wilson a couple of times around 1980/81.

He was a partner in a South London spieler called Whitegates where I used to go and play poker occasionally back in the days when my main game was stripped-deck five-card stud. Charlie had a great deal of charisma although he didn't seem to talk a lot, well not to me anyhow. Tall and distinguished-looking and always wearing an expensive smart suit he somehow exuded power and control in a very quiet and low-key manner like only real bona-fide villains can without working at it in the slightest. There was never ever going to be any bad behaviour or trouble there.

I must admit that it saddened me a little when he got hit in Marbella as he was the train-robber that I knew although only slightly, and I had actually liked and respected him as a bloke.

Superb wordage Ralph, & as I said, Charlie was my favourite Train-Robber. Proper Villain, him. I'd love to have met him.

[TightEnd]

Rwanda?

Darfur?

Pol Pot and the Killing Fields in Cambodia?

[TightEnd]

Aids/HIV?

[tikay]

Rwanda?

Darfur?

Pol Pot and the Killing Fields in Cambodia?

Well they SHOULD be, but they were all badly reported, & even now, we don't know the real story, because the Newspaspers & Media were pre-occupied with Paris Hilton, Jade Goody, The McCanns, etc.

Pol Pot was astonishing, ditto Rwanda, & a shame on the human race. But somehow it all happened under the radar, & nobody cared.

Darfur - like most of us, I don't know enough about it. I should though. Now I feel bad, damn you.

[tikay]

Aids/HIV?

That would go in the same category as the "evolving stories" - Invention of PC's, Mobile Phones, Thatcher Years, etc. If selected.

AIDS sort of "misses" my conscience. I don't care. I should, but I don't. I wish I knew why.

[Woodsey]

Rwanda?

Darfur?

Pol Pot and the Killing Fields in Cambodia?

Going there in a few weeks, should be interesting.......

[nirvana]

I need to jot down - for later discussion/wordage - something I've been mulling over for a while - the Top Ten News Stories of my time, which the GTR reminds me to do.

My first stab at my Top Ten News Stories (of my age) is here - in no particular order.

Aberfan

The Great Train Robbery

John F Kennedy's Assassination.

The Clinton-Lewinsky debacle.

Robert Maxwell

John Stonehouse

The "Troubles" in Northern Ireland

Watergate. (Will deffo be the top of my final List).

The Thatcher Years

On the "might be" list are....

The '66 World Cup

Vietnam War.

The fall of the Berlin Wall.

Munich Air Disaster

9/11

I'm pretty sure I've missed a few I should have remembered. I'll amend as & wehen.

What would your Tiop Ten news Stories be?

Germany invading Poland ?

[boldie]

Rwanda?

Darfur?

Pol Pot and the Killing Fields in Cambodia?

Going there in a few weeks, should be interesting.......

Very..VERY humbling and depressing.

[77dave]

Moon landing

Global Warming

[bolt pp]

the stand out one for me was quite recent actually, it was about a cat that dissapeard for an hour at the same time everyday and the owner found out it was going on a bus, doing the full journey and getting off, same time everyday, it was in a country village somewhere and the bus was quiet and the regulars got to know the cat and the driver thought it was amusing to let him ride and it became a daily thing so fuck pol pot.

[tikay]

From "The Times", Friday.

"Online betting charge.

US authorities have made a fresh strike at online gambling, charging Douglas Rennick, who is alleged to have processed $350 million (£208 million) of payments for operators such as Pokersatars & Full Tilt, with fraud, money laundering and illergal gambling offences. The indictment seeks the forfeiture of $566 million......"

[Dingdell]

privatisation of the railways?

Princess Diana

Falklands/Iraq

Railway Privitisation  - no.

Princess Diana (Death, I assume). Probably not, but in the Top 20.

Falklands - good spot, I missed that compoletely. Deffo in Top Ten, probably at # 2.

Iraq. No, because of the shame I feel about it. (As a Brit).

The sense of shame is an interesting one. On a slight tangent.....

I was recently researching support for the troops for a potential project of mine and I was astonished to find that there are several organisations in the US supporting the troops, schools, church groups, individuals with web sites etc for them to send letters of support to soldiers they had never met as well as sending over supplies, food, letters of support from school children etc etc.

I'm not sure if this is some sort of conscious effort on their part to undo some of the negative response that their troops had after the Vietnam War but it far exceeds what we do as a nation for our guys and gals.

I wondered if this was because we have the sense of shame Tikay talks about? I may not be enamoured with some of the things our troops have to do but they are,in other ways,defending us on a national level and I am grateful that there are men and women out there who are prepared to put their lives on the line for me even if I don't agree with where they are now or what they are doing.  I have never acknowledged that to them - should I?

Is there a place in the UK for providing moral support for our troops through letters/parcels? Do we not do it because we are ashamed or are we too British to become all rarara like the Americans? The Sun recently launched the help for heros campaign (I think it was called) but I'm not sure what response that's had.

Our forces are just doing their job, but they are still human. Should we be pulling together to show our support? I'm on the fence on this one at the moment - I would be interested in others views.

[gatso]

Is there a place in the UK for providing moral support for our troops through letters/parcels? Do we not do it because we are ashamed or are we too British to become all rarara like the Americans?

personally I don't do it because I don't really care. why should I send a care parcel to someone who's doing a job that they chose to do? there are many, many, many more worthy causes for me to spend my time/money on

[thetank]

I'd rather send care packages to Afghani civilians than their rapists.

They get paid already.