Blah Blah Flowers

Mary Bell granted lifelong anonymity. The relatives of her victims aren't happy but at least they are just disappointed that the court didn't ban Bell from making money from her crimes (one book over some thirty years, written by someone else who interviewed her, she's not exactly Frankie Fraser here). It's not like Ralph Bulger threatening and inciting people to track down the killers of his son and kill them. Maybe I'm just a bleeding heart liberal who has been fortunate to never lose a friend or relative to violent crime, but in that case there was a legal process which was followed and those two boys were released at the end of it. You can argue until the sun grows cold about whether that was right or wrong but it was done and they have to live the rest of their lives with the knowledge of what they did and the decade or so they spent inside for it. It's ironic that the papers and people that tend to call for exceptions to be made so that 'really nasty' people can be killed and who claim that prison isn't a punishment, are the ones that back up the rest of the system when demonstrators march through London against the War or against Capitalism. When Ralph Bulger wants his sons killers killed, what he's really saying is "fuck the rest of you, I want special treatment!"

Like I said before, I'm glad that the relatives of Mary Bell's victims aren't disputing her right to be out now that she's done her time (or at least not talking about that at the moment).