The electronic age is
wonderful. Through Friends Reunited, Facebook, ICQ, Yahoo, email and
the like I keep in touch with people I've known for years. There are
some people with whom I squabble daily, some not so often.
There is one old friend
from school with whom I've been in touch over the net for some years
now. Sometimes we message each other on a weekly basis. Sometimes
years go past between communications. He had a hankering to be an
actor; doing ghost walks in Hastings Old Town. He was in a Typhoo Tea
TV advert playing the part of a dancing train guard. And on stage he
actually has been the very model of a modern major-general.
Today that chap is the
subject of gossip on my old school's Facebook page. I couldn't
believe the news. He has gone
to prison for five years; having apparently defrauded a local
firm of the best part of a million quid. I remember the bloke in
question very well. Even as a teenager he was a true gentleman. In
many ways old before his time, he was a leading light in his local
community. He was on the committee of the social club my brother goes
to.
Surely that story
couldn't be true.
So I did a little finding
out. And saw that the damning report came from the police's own
website. And, as is always the case, to coin a phrase "quis
custodiet ipsos custodes." A more balanced report of
the whole sorry tale is given by the
local newspaper. My old mucker had done wrong. A little wrong. A
small wrong. He'd temporarily "borrowed money" from
his employer to help out a friend who was in difficulties; with every
intention of giving the money back. But people far more unscrupulous
than he found out what he had done, and blackmailed him into stealing
more money from that employer over a period of some years.
And so he got caught, and
he went to prison. Interestingly neither the local newspaper nor the
police website make any mention of what happened to the blackmailers.
I've blogged about
miscarriages of justice before.... I shall drop the chap a line.
Maybe not as often as I've written to prisons in the past; ink and
stamps aren't cheap in this new world order.
But I shall send him a
letter. And some stamps too. There's not much that I can do for him,
but I can do that much.....
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