Megrahi, the Scottish National Party's downfall.

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I wrote months ago of my anger at the Scottish National Party being mostly responsible for the release of the convicted mass murderer Aboelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, or the "Lockerbie bomber" in case any of you are in any doubt of who this killer is, so I thought I would update you on the situation since it is at least six months since his date of release on the grounds of having only THREE months to live.

I came across this piece when I googled his name and much to my disgust, and anyone else who has taken the same interest, I found, just as I thought would happen at the time of his release, that he is living a life of luxury, instead of rotting behind bars where he should have finished the life sentences handed out to him after his trial, and upheld after his feeble appeal.

I said at the time that the SNP would suffer at the elections, and suffer they did, and if there was any doubt in their minds that the Scottish people strongly disapproved of this deed, it will become even clearer at the elections next year once the votes have been counted to decide the Scottish Parliament.

Labour, in my mind had their input to this travesty of justice too, and was a factor in their defeat at the polls, but even so, the downfall of these two parties will be no consolation to the bereaved, especially when they read the progress report of the convicted mass murderer in the story below.

I hope all persons responsible for this disgrace will feel some kind of remorse, and as each day this slaughterer of innocent lives survives over his THREE months, they feel more and more a wrench of the guilt that should be burning inside them.

Then again, as we all know, Politicians HAVE no guilt, or Megrahi would not be living a life of luxury, and being treated as a hero in Lybia now.

Lets hope the likes of Kenny MacAskill, the "EX" Minister of Justice for Scotland and his buddies are never allowed to disgrace the Scottish Nation in this way again and will be stuck in the shadows of the back benches where they belong, keeping their heads and opinions as low as their morals are.




Libya

Lockerbie bomber Megrahi living in luxury villa six months after being at 'death's door'
The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is living with his family in a luxury villa in Libya six months after he was released from jail on compassionate grounds because he had less than three months to live.


By Andrew Alderson and Robert Mendick
Published: 9:00PM GMT 20 Feb 2010
Megrahi: Lockerbie bomber Megrahi living in luxury villa six months after being at 'death's door'
Megrahi: The latest disclosure will incense many of the relatives of those who died in the bomb blast in December 1988 Photo: AFP

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, no longer receives hospital treatment after ending the course of chemotherapy that he had been given after returning to his homeland last August.

Professor Karol Sikora, the London-based doctor who examined Megrahi and predicted he would be dead by last October, admitted this weekend that the fact the bomber is still alive might be "difficult" for the families of the 270 victims of the attack.



The latest disclosure will incense many of the relatives of those who died in the bomb blast in December 1988 when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded in mid air over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 243 passengers, 16 crew and 11 people on the ground.

Most did not want Megrahi released and they suspected he would live longer than the predicted three months.

The Sunday Telegraph revealed last September that the Libyan government had paid for the medical evidence which helped Megrahi, 57, to be released. The Libyans had encouraged doctors to say he had only three months to live.

The life expectancy of Megrahi was crucial because, under Scottish rules, prisoners can be freed on compassionate grounds only if they are considered to have this amount of time, or less, to live.

Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary, ruled last August that Megrahi should be freed. Megrahi's release came after Libyan leaders warned that lucrative oil and trade deals with Britain would be cancelled if the bomber died in jail.

One leading prostate cancer specialist cast serious doubt yesterday on the wisdom of predicting that Megrahi had only three months to live – when a patient still had to undergo chemotherapy. Dr Chris Parker said it was extremely difficult to give an accurate prognosis for individual patients. "Studies show experts are very poor at trying to predict how long an individual patient will live for," he warned.

Megrahi received the chemotherapy drug Docetaxel – trade name Taxotere – shortly after returning to Libya.

Dr Parker, who is with the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital, said: "The average prognosis for survival after Docetaxel would be 12 months.

"It can vary enormously but it would be very unusual to live beyond two years."

Doctors in Libya supply monthly medical reports to Scottish authorities who can speak to Megrahi whenever they want. The conditions of his early release stipulate he must not leave Libya.

Megrahi, is now living in a spacious two-storey villa with his wife and their five grown-up children in a prosperous suburb of Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

The property has a spacious garden and an area where the family erects a large tent to entertain visitors for celebrations.

The property has a security gate and there is often a uniformed police officer sitting on a white chair outside.

The Megrahis, who are part of a prominent tribe, are well off and it is understood that his family was paid substantial compensation by the Libyan Government after he was jailed for life.

They are known to have urged Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, to get Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent, freed from his jail.

Prof Sikora, one of the examining doctors who was paid a consultancy fee last July to examine Megrahi, told The Sunday Telegraph this weekend: "My information from Tripoli is that it's not going to be long [before Megrahi dies].

"They stopped any active treatment in December and he has just been going downhill very slowly at home. He is on high doses of morphine [a painkiller] and it's any day now."

Prof Sikora said that he suspected that Megrahi was still alive because he had received a "psychological" boost from returning to his homeland and being reunited with his family.

"It's stimulated him to have a remarkable [short-term] recovery," he said. "It's difficult. The choice offered by the letter of the law was either three months to live, or nothing. You couldn't have a sliding scale."

Some prostate cancer patients have lived for years longer that their doctors predicted.

Prof Sikora said it was just possible that Megrahi would be alive in several years time but added: "It's highly unlikely. There is a 90 per cent chance he will die in the next few weeks.

"He is relatively young and has very aggressive, fast-moving disease."

Megrahi has always denied any involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. He withdrew his second appeal against conviction just two days before he was allowed to return to Libya.

Those close to him say he did so reluctantly because he was convinced it would improve his chances of being freed from a Scottish jail.

Megrahi could have been released on compassionate grounds without dropping his appeal – but he could not have been freed under a prisoner exchange programme if legal action was ongoing.

Until the last moment, the authorities made it clear they were considering both options.

Professor Sikora had a message to the relatives of the Lockerbie tragedy who are angered by Megrahi's release: "The quality of his life is not good – he is a dying man.

"Quite frankly, as an act of mercy, it is better that he dies at home rather than in prison."

However, one source involved in monitoring Megrahi's health suggested the bomber's condition has got no worse in the past six months.

The source said: "Megrahi is still the same as ever. His condition has not deteriorated. There is no sign of him dying any time yet but who knows? It's totally unpredictable."

I, Donald Swarbrick would like to thank the persons involved in the research, and printing of this article, on behalf of all those who care.

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World mysteries.

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The letter to Gordon Brown that I posted in this blog was the second letter I sent to him, and having received a reply to the first a couple of weeks later, from him, or more likely his secretary's secretary, I expected another this time.

Maybe it was the fact that the election was taking up his time and he, or his secretary never had time to act on it, but whatever reason, I never got a reply this time, and as he has just taken the steps I suggested in the said letter, by packing his bags and leaving number ten Downing Street, resigning his post as leader of the Labour party and Prime Minister of Britain, I am beginning to think he at least read it.

The first letter I composed to him was inflamed by the elimination of the ten pence tax rate, and other prominent moves that would make the poor of this country poorer, and the rich richer (more of a Tory policy) or basically getting the poorest of the taxpayers to bail the country out of it's crisis rather than the more well off.

Refusal to tighten the country's expenditure while forcing US to tighten our belts, going ahead with the costly ID cards, and replacing our nuclear weapons system at a cost of billions of pounds was also mentioned in the letter (although seemingly we can still afford that, regardless of which party gets in or how much more debt it puts us in) to which each subject was touched on, albeit lightly, but not to my satisfaction.

He did reimburse the lost money from the tax rate for that year, but only for that year, never reinstating it, and whether my letter had anything to do with it or not, I will never really know, as most of the country was up in arms over it, but I would like to think I had played my part.

As for the other subjects, he stubbornly stood by HIS beliefs, a fact that led to his downfall, one of the many other issues I warned him in my letter that would lead to his eviction from Downing Street, a fault, I pointed out to him, other Prime Ministers before him had also made.
It is all very well being stubborn in your beliefs, as long as it is in agreement with the electorate, but as we all know the biggest mistake politicians make is ignoring the people who put them there, and regardless of which party they represent, when they do this they are rejected.
It wasn't very difficult predicting the demise of Brown with all the blunders he and his party made, the problem we face now is that none of the present candidates are much better, that is why we have a hung parliament, NOT because we were disillusioned with any one party, but because we are disillusioned with them all.

Labour turning more Conservative, conservatives turning any way they could as long as it was to try and get away from the Labour policies, which meant no solid manifesto, and the Lib-Dems coming up with ideas that both the other two parties tried to cash in on was also a contributory factor.

We have a hung parliament because, not one of the parties installed enough faith in the public to give any of them a clear victory, and until one of them comes up with a sure and definite solution to the financial problems we now face, without it costing "US" the taxpayer who bailed out the banks too much deprivation, then we will be no further forward.

We the public, should never have been put in this position in the first place, and we should not be expected to use our hard earned cash to bail out the cities of the world, AGAIN!

Its time the banks took some responsibility, and paid back some of the money LOANED to them by US, from the profits they are now making, which would ease the burden on the public, a burden that they caused in the first place.
ALL PARTIES TAKE NOTE!

One consolation that has come out of all this is the end of Peter Mandelson's influence on the Prime Minister's decisions, another reason for Brown's downfall, as by introducing this arrogant clown into politics for a third dismal spell was no better than putting the noose around his own neck.

As I have asked before, where did all the money disappear to in the first place?
One year the banks were making big profits, the next, the world banking system goes into meltdown and all the money in the world vanishes, EXCEPT, THAT IS, all this money that is suddenly appearing to reimburse the world funds.

If every country was hit by the banking crisis, and all countries are in debt to the tune of BILLIONS, where did the trillions come from that we have all borrowed, and to whom are we paying these loans to, plus interest of course.

There is a lot more to this than meets the eye, trillions do not just disappear, and reappear into new and mysterious hands overnight, and as David Cameron takes over as the new Prime Minister (with the help of Nick Clegg's Lib-Dems) that is the answer I am more interested in at the moment, rather than who is going to lead us through the mess left by these mysterious hands.

WHO may I ask is in the position, or is willing to answer that question?

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The horseless carriage.

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It's high time governments and councils accepted the fact that the public have come to rely on the automobile, once known as the horseless carriage.
I use the term "horseless carriage" because it seems to me, that the authorities in this country still have the notion that we should be driving with a man walking in front of us waving a red flag, as they did in days of yore.

Speed bumps in unnecessary places, the failure to provide ample parking spaces, overcharging at the few parking facilities that are available, failing to maintain the road systems, failing to provide roads that can accommodate the volume of cars that now use our antiquated road structures, redirecting the money paid in road taxes to other sources when this money was supposed to go towards the upkeep of our roads, trying to push us into using the public transport that is just as antiquated as our roads and provides no privacy, a requirement the people of today prefer, (and why should they not?)are to name but a few things that should be taken into consideration.

The government in one hand needs the taxes paid by the motorist through road tax, tax on petrol, purchase tax, the new con of green taxes on some vehicles, and any other way they can think of extorting money from them.

As for councils, they gain by overcharging for car parks, paying to enter some cities or charge for the use of roads we have already paid for.

When you add up the amount of money extorted from the motorist by the authorities, and that the motorist prefers to pay rather than walk or use public transport, you have to wonder why they cannot accept the fact that the horseless carriage is here to stay, and provide for it rather that try to constrict it.

Provide large car parks with decent charges (preferably no charges at all) in and around our towns and cities which would save the congestion they are all worried about.
Realise that it is through their denial of the fact that the horseless carriage is here to stay and its their failure to provide for it that causes the congestion, also realise that they too are included as motorists, and are as guilty as the next person who prefers their privacy when traveling.

Another thing to consider is the fact that we have so many people employed in one way or another with these new horseless carriages, through manufacturing to selling and repairing them, that it would leave a big gap in the unemployment system if we were to stop using them, not to mention the deficit it would leave in the coffers of the country.

GOVERNMENTS AND COUNCILS ALIKE, TAKE HEED!

Horseless carriages are here to stay, make provisions for them, and make life easier for one and all.

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