Portrait of a ‘Vulnerable Victim’.
We’ve been here before. Confident young woman makes a name for herself in the nightclub scene. Is thrilled to bits when a relative stranger offers her and her friend expensive plane tickets to an unlikely holiday destination which just happens to be one of the well known drug capitals of the world. He is so keen that she should partake of this free holiday that he offers her several thousand pounds on her return. As she leaves to return home she fails to notice that her suitcase is several kilos heavier than it was when she arrived. Never mind, she struggles manfully through customs with her heavy load but is gobsmacked when someone finally looks to see why her suitcase is so much heavier (it not having occurred to her to do so).
In the blink of an eye, she is transformed into tearful vulnerable victim, for lo! it appears that the nasty swarthy foreigner who had given her those tins of cheap foreign sweets and garish shampoo had actually packed the containers full of Cocaine! The evil brute. The thought of being within a 100 miles of Cocaine had never ever occurred to our vestal vulnerable victim; she had danced away the night in clubs full of drug fuelled ravers, attended parties with coked up footballers, accepted £1,000 handbags from total strangers, tottered around in her freebie Manolo Blahniks, all the while remaining an innocent ‘child’ who helped old ladies across the road, had never given her parents one moment of worry, and deserved the full weight of the British media and/or the Prime Minister to save her from those terrible foreigners who wanted to execute/lock her up for life.
In the 1990s it was Patricia Cahill and Karyn Smith, ‘innocent chubby faced teenagers’ from a Birmingham suburb who had been delighted by the free tickets to Bangkok (ironically shortly after the film ‘Bangkok Hilton’ had been storming through the country’s cinemas, surely enough to put anyone off visiting Bangkok for a while). But no, they were duly gobsmacked when customs searched their bags and found them to be heavier by some 32 kg of Heroin that they had no idea was there…try lifting a 25kg bag of cement, a mere three quarters of that weight, and tell me you wouldn’t notice it in your suitcase!
Journalists did their duty and filled column inches with tales of the corruption amongst the Thai police, how that much heroin couldn’t possibly have been found in their luggage, how the whole thing was a stitch up to claim a reward; the Prime MInister grovelled in front of the King of Thailand and pleaded for these ‘children’ to be allowed to return to Britain.
Only after their return was it revealed that the tip off had come from British Customs, who had witnessed and recorded the size of the haul through their outpost in Bangkok and that actually the girls were known associates of a midlands based drugs gang which was why they were being tailed on their surprise trip to Bangkok, and subsequently to drug central aka Chang Mai, in the first place…
‘We only suspected the girls were carrying drugs initially because of their routing. They had tickets from London to Amsterdam, to Bangkok, to Amsterdam, to Conakry, Guinea, West Africa and onto Banjul, Gambia.
These girls had only acquired their first British passports a few days before. One would expect for their first holiday they would travel to somewhere a bit closer like Spain!
Today it is Melissa Reid and Michaella McCollum Connolly who weep their innocence into the TV cameras. Only arrested last Tuesday, they are already ‘starving themselves’ in Lima’s ‘living Hell’ of Santa Monica prison.
Miss Connolly may appear to be a confident dominatrix from her publicity photographs, but in real life she is apparently an innocent ‘missing child’ whose parents were not overly concerned at the prospect of her earning a living as a night-club hostess in the drug fuelled party capital of Ibiza, nor her prior career as a ‘lingerie model’, but who are obviously deeply worried and turning to their MP for assistance now that they know she has been ‘forced to carry’ 16 envelopes containing edible products of cocaine alkaloid GVWR weighing 5.810kg by some unscrupulous foreigner.
Neither of the girls, despite their life in Ibiza nightclubs, had any idea that Peru is the single largest producer and exporter of cocaine in the world, producing 325 tons each year from nearly 140,000 acres of land planted with coca, accounting for 36% of the world’s cocaine.
They were just delighted when the nice man offered them free tickets to visit Lima and £8,000 spending money to enjoy ‘his country’. No doubt when he asked them to take 12lb of Don Lucho crisps back to his friend in Ibiza, it seemed rude to refuse.
Should this tale be on the national curriculum, to avoid any more of our children being ‘set up’ by these ghastly foreigners?
Discuss.
Edited to add: Just as a reminder to our excitable media, I add this quote from Patricia Cahill on the subject of ‘support from campaigners back home’.
Cahill went as far as to say in an interview this week: ‘We were not set up by the Thai police. It’s a load of rubbish. The problem with so-called do-gooders back home is that they won’t believe the obvious. Please ask these silly people in England to shut up. Have they any idea what it is doing to our case?’
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August 15, 2013 at 11:02 -
I think the 2 of them have done this before.
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August 15, 2013 at 10:10 -
Of course there’s a simple solution to such cases.
Decriminalise the sale and possession of all substances people might want to put in their bodies and permit free movement of such across international borders.
No more gangsters or smugglers.
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August 14, 2013 at 15:54 -
Greed and stupidity, nothing else to say really.
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August 14, 2013 at 08:51 -
“Groomed” Of course, why didn’t I think of that.
Dear Mummy and Daddy, I’ve been offered a free holiday in Peru. Really, Darling, How nice. Or don’t they tell their parents anything these days?-
August 14, 2013 at 12:01 -
Elena ‘andcart
Re: ” “Groomed” Of course, why didn’t I think of that.Dear Mummy and Daddy, I’ve been offered a free holiday in Peru. Really, Darling, How nice. Or don’t they tell their parents anything these days?”
Well if some people are that susceptible to being ‘groomed’ at the ages of 19 or 20 your really can’t help but wonder if their parents have did their jobs properly, lol
To think one of these women has kids of her own.
Were they really offered £8000 for this? If so who offers someone £8000 for absolutely nothing, especially if they’ve just met?
I think they knew fine what they were doing, but have been stupid in not assessing the risks of getting caught/punishment etc before they agreed to do it…
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August 13, 2013 at 22:00 -
Here’s the link to the article, and pay attention that one of the fathers states that his daughter may have been “groomed”. That explains all.
It should also be noted that when women from the Dominican Republic go to Spain to work as night club hostesses, they usually fall under the heading of “human trafficking for purposes of prostitution” in popular press lingo. Not sure if this terminology applies to night club hostesses originating in the UK and Ireland.
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August 13, 2013 at 21:39 -
So for the typos!
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August 13, 2013 at 21:39 -
So the latest line is “forced at gunpoint.” Really? Forced at gunpoint all the way through the airport, through customs and searches etc etc – one might have thought the airport security would have noticed…Well, it did happen in Johhny Foreigner Land, so anything is possible, isnt it. Not that that would be a tad “wacist”.
No opportunity to tell the police they were being forced to board the plane carrying drugs at gun point then? Oh, I see…of course not. l
And if I had been shoved somewhere at gunpoint carrying 20 plus pounds of Bolivian Marching Powder (or whatever the argot is) then arrested I would have been BURSTING to tell the authorities about it in the interview before they locked me up, not sitting there like some rabbit in the headlights of a 4 x 4. I wouldn’t have waited to issue a press release to make the claim.
It is just a pity these poor innocent lambs have to endure foreign justice, not our perfect, legal aid to Strasburg omnibus system.
Can I just add – have they tried the “Aaspeger’s and Attention Deficits Syndrome” tack yet? I hear ii is all the rage -
August 13, 2013 at 21:08 -
Well, I for one think they are unfortunate victims.
Had they timed their exploit when david dim-moron was on holiday, then their fate would be decided by cleggy-who would swallow this tale of woe hook-line-and-sinker and put the full force of the the Foreign Office into play, bowing, scraping, promising future development funds and a visit by Kate and baby to Peru.
Girl power, that amazing get-out-of-jail-free, flash yer union jack panties, do whatever enters your head with no consequences way of life recently propounded to all dim-wit female Britons of a certain generation does not seem to extend beyond the Isle of Wight. Did nobody tell them?
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August 13, 2013 at 21:33 -
If Cleggy had been in charge, he’d have ordered a couple of dozen llamas to be impounded by HM Government as bargaining counters.
“Release our citizens, or the llamas will be burgers….”
You can hear the hysterical laughter from Peru even in Downing Street.
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August 14, 2013 at 00:06 -
Cleggy could not organize a Llama round-up in a zoo enclosure, and if sent to do the job himself would return with six hamsters.
With some trepidation (because the Engineers comments are always so well thought out) I say -No sir! It is limp-dem policy to kill humans to save nature, not the reverse. (I cite their windmill policy, which is demonstrably killing poor pensioners).
However I have to agree, whatever policy the UK government adopts will undoubtedly result in gales of laughter from Peru. That of course assumes hague can be diverted for five seconds from his Syria invasion plans.
Dave dim-moron’s big society as far as it exists seems to be a collection of fantastic ministerial under-achievers, blundering from one policy disaster to the next.I look forward to the government’s comments on these two unfortunate girls who never did nuffink wrong cept go to British schools and be told how special they are.
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August 13, 2013 at 20:34 -
The Daily Mail has now revealed that these two children were kidnapped at gunpoint in Ibiza by a gang of half a dozen Colombians and taken to Morocco, and then probably to Spain to board a flight to Peru. Lucky they weren’t raped, really, or forced to take cocaine. Imagine being marched through airport and onto planes at gunpoint and unable to say a thing to the flight crew. They probably thought they were headed for Guantanamo Bay.
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August 13, 2013 at 21:15 -
If that’s the best they can come up with they’d best prepare for a long stay at the Peruvian Government’s expense. There are enough gullible people who carry packages willingly, though wilfully blind to the contents, and enough greedy people willing to take a risk for a high reward for the drug syndicates to take advantage of without resorting to such tactics as gunpoint kidnap.
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August 13, 2013 at 19:58 -
I know it’s a cliché, but I find the stupidity and arrogance of many young people today staggering. They have plenty to say and much attitude but not a brain cell of common sense. Their lack of immaturity isn’t matched by the big opinion the have of themselves and they seem to truly feel that they are indestructible and that everyone owes them. I sadly see this type of behaviour on a daily basis; my grandmother would have termed these kids as having too much of what the cat licks his a*se with. Many young people don’t seem to have any boundary’s. They don’t understand the concept that no means no. I can only assume that is because they have never been guided or told no. It used to be that the young never had to be told no because they knew not to ask. If boundary’s aren’t set it’s little wonder that young people have no concept of what is acceptable within society. I’m sure that many believe they are invincible. Now that 2 girls have been caught banged to rights with 32 kg’s of dope the papers are crying ‘poor darlings’. These two grown women are well over the age of culpability and I feel they knew what was going down, and so they should take the punishment metered out to them. Like Ho Hum said though; these girls were probably sacrificed for a bigger haul to get through – suckers!
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August 13, 2013 at 20:40 -
I find them soulless & artless in the main – thoroughly uninspiring. No connections, and all ‘emotion’ false and phony. One-dimensional brain-dead hedonism.
http://chrisbarratt.wordpress.com/
http://retardedkingdom.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-idiot-factory.html-
August 13, 2013 at 22:00 -
I became so sick of apprentices leading me a merry dance. It go so that I hated going into work each morning and I owned the business. It’s not surprising that I don’t run an apprenticeship programme any longer. I was totally fed up with these girl’s lame excuses; The dog shat on my work clothes, I had period pains, my parents kept me awake all night arguing. I tied one on and got lashed out of my head? never, never tell the truth. My hands are tied by employment law and my insurance will do any thing to get out of giving me a dismissal code in case they have to pay for a subsequent tribunal case. The law frowns on employers dismissing apprentices because they feel their education has been compromised even though they have hardly attended the course or done any work towards the completion of it. I cannot even begin to tell you how adept these girls are at lying barefaced. In a tribunal most employers lose and the college lecturers just don’t offer back up, and often help the dismissed girl get another job rather than lose the funding for the student. I was told by one apprentice that she wasn’t there to sweep hair from the floor and that I should provide a vacuum. She announced that it wasn’t her job to clean up after me! I asked another why she had replaced dirty cups in the cupboard? She told me it was because she couldn’t find the dish washer. I still don’t know if she was serious or taking the piss. To be honest I have recently employed a couple of Saturday assistants and so far so good. They both want a career in hair and beauty when school is over. They seem pretty normal to me; just turning up for work is a bonus and it’s a pleasure so far working with them. My biggest coup was when one apprentice moaned about ‘Pick of the Pops’ that was playing one Saturday afternoon. Well, I make no excuses, I happen to like listening to the programme because I know all lyrics to most of the stuff played. The girl said she wanted to hear something more lively ‘wiv a dance beat.’ So I put a Charley Bird Parker CD on and asked if that was lively enough!
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August 13, 2013 at 18:09 -
What I find most incredible about this is not that dumbed down young people keep falling for the same trick but the number of supposedly cunning, ruthless drug runners who managed to pick as their mules the kind of half witted air heads who can’t help drawing attention to themselves.
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August 13, 2013 at 18:37 -
The main stash was probably being carried by someone else
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August 13, 2013 at 16:11 -
If someone you vaguely knew from a nightclub approached you and offered you, out of the blue, an all-expenses paid trip (with generous pocket money) to an exotic foreign location would you:
a) assume they’d mistaken you for an MP,
b) jump at the opportunity, giving thanks for the generosity of strangers,
or
c) run like hell, reflecting that something that seems too good to be true very probably may be.It makes you think that there’s more to it than just taking a free holiday. Was blackmail involved, or some other form of coercion? Is there a pattern to the recruitment of mules by traffickers? Can anything be done to make youngsters more aware of what to avoid? (Apart from taking sleazy jobs in dodgy nightclubs, that is, an accepting expensive ‘holidays’ from strangers.)
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August 13, 2013 at 16:36 -
d) jump at the opportunity, figuring the generosity of strangers must have a motive, but what the hell, girls just wanna have fun and you only live once and besides I’ll be with my mate so we’ll look after one another.
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August 13, 2013 at 16:41 -
Seriously, that generation have, by and large, had the common sense bred out of them.
Girls who think “Urban Guerillas” are primates trained to murder people. The girl with a Travel & Tourism qualification who thought Denmark was “down south, next to Cornwall”. A group of 5 University graduates (!!) who concluded, after a five minute discussion, that Belgium was a part of France not a country.
There are just three examples that sprang to mind-
August 13, 2013 at 17:01 -
My daughter had a friend who took up with a “gangster” when she was aged 18. He went to prison for around a year and she got to look after his penthouse flat until he came out, so that got her out from under mum’s thumb, then she broke it all off when he was released, and he let her keep the convertible she’d bought while he was away, because he didn’t want it anyway……..
Women can look after themselves….
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August 13, 2013 at 17:13 -
The philosophy student who wrote a essay on the famous philosopher Dave Carter
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August 13, 2013 at 20:36 -
YOLO, mate!!
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August 13, 2013 at 15:12 -
Were those the best photographs of them? Jesus, the look twice their age and about as ‘innocent’ as they’re ‘gawjus’.
“Energy Advisor” – she was one of those Scottish girls that call just as you’re sitting down for tea from British Gas to convince you to switch to them…-
August 13, 2013 at 20:34 -
Hanging’s too good for her!
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August 13, 2013 at 14:45 -
As with Simon Hall ( see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-23619227 ) what still amazes me, but shouldn’t is how quickly a protestation of innocence immediately gets heavy weight support, irrespective of the evidence. Simon Hall was a man with ‘previous’ who claimed he hadn’t murdered a pensioner. He was supported by two MPs (who curiously the media now do not name) and the BBC as well as a pro bono outfit running out of Bristol University. Even after he admitted his guilt, I heard one of his supporters on the BBC saying that his conviction was unsafe.
The automatic assumption by some appears to be that the authorities are either incompetent or corrupt or both. However, this applies only to some crimes, e.g. murder, robbery, drug trafficking, speeding. With other crimes, the automatic assumption is of guilt, e.g. being the parent of an abducted child, any sex related crime etc.
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August 13, 2013 at 19:46 -
Jeremy Bamber has the support of Mark Williams-Thomas. Not sure he counts as ‘heavyweight’, mind you.
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August 13, 2013 at 20:07 -
I recall Bob Woffinden has been on both sides in his time.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1387438/I-wrong-Jeremy-Bamber-says-crime-writer.html -
August 13, 2013 at 20:33 -
He has my support too. Some very, very dodgy police goings-on in that case.
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August 13, 2013 at 14:37 -
In the light of further info, I hear that this alledwas one of those “all expenses paid trips”. In which case – frankly you know what you are getting into. Amazingly, as I write, the inevitable Yuman Rights Monkey from Fair Trials International is on the radio banging on about his concerns about how there was a lack of good English when they were interviewed, and how Peru’s jails are nasty and horrid etc etc
Right. First, I am not aware that any country’s law enforcment officers are obliged to speak English for the convenience of silly young women carrying heavily laden bags full of drugs. Allegedly.
Second, since the issue was brought up and said Monkey couldnt or wouldnt answer the question properly, being intellectually and morally slack – “do I feel sorry for them?” . Well, yes – in the sense that I feel sorry that two (possibly) stupid, selfish, young women have (possibly/allegedly) been so bloody stupid as to let themselves be dugs mules and expendable footsoldiers for the drugs barons, and thus have made a mess of the early years of their lives, and doubtless caused anguish to their families, and that is to be regretted – but not at all in the sense that they have to face the penalty of what they have (allegedly) done in the manner that country requires. That is the rules.-
August 13, 2013 at 14:45 -
” Peru’s jails are nasty and horrid etc etc”
Isn’t it strange how the Daily Mail ‘readers’ (and I use the verb ‘to read’ in its loosest..) suddenly forget their outrage at HM Prisons being ‘cushy’ and ‘hotels’ when it’s their own kids banged up in some foreign johnny’s putrid ‘peter’?
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August 13, 2013 at 14:55 -
Astute response Sir!
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August 15, 2013 at 09:39 -
Actually, I suspect that most Daily Mail readers don’t give a damn; although the newspaper has reported the comments of these gormless girls, all it is doing is giving them enough rope to hang themselves. I doubt that any reasonable person, having read these vague and contradictory accounts, gives them much credence.
I do hope that they were paying NI on their earnings as ‘nightclub hostesses’!
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August 13, 2013 at 12:51 -
I see that then image is now being softened by describing them as ”aspiring models”. Ah yes, that noble profession…..
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August 13, 2013 at 12:06 -
*taps Give-A-Fuck-Ometer*
Huh! Never got a negative reading before…
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August 13, 2013 at 12:14 -
“*taps Give-A-Fuck-Ometer*
Huh! Never got a negative reading before…”
You broked it! Should have bought a genuine I-(dont-give-a-fuck)-Ometer.
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August 13, 2013 at 11:49 -
I am willing to accept that this could well be a case of purblind stupidity being exploited by bad men, rather than ‘the girls’ being involved in the conspiracy from the start. However, the word ‘vulnerable’ has become cheapened. I don’t want to hear it again, unless it is being used in relation to people with psychotic mental illness or dementia.
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August 13, 2013 at 11:58 -
Hear, hear!
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August 13, 2013 at 12:17 -
Seconded!
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August 13, 2013 at 12:22 -
” used in relation to people with psychotic mental illness” -DD
Having lived the last two and a half decades at the side of a paranoid psychotic I can think of many words that might relate to her. The words “dangerous as fuck”, “scarey” , “Postal” and “away with the bloody fairies, over the madness horizon and accelerating hard ” being just the ones that spring to mind. “Vulnerable” is not a term I would use to describe a psychotic…
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August 13, 2013 at 13:03 -
I’ve worked with young people last year – they’re idiots but not “vulnerable”. And drugs are as common as a cup of coffee now.
Here’s a taste of life in a modern UK workplace
http://retardedkingdom.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-idiot-factory.html
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August 13, 2013 at 13:09 -
I prefer the technical term – “Greed”
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August 13, 2013 at 14:11 -
Or learning disabilities – real one’s not those fake versions wtruh I vrd’t spoll
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August 13, 2013 at 11:17 -
“…try lifting a 25kg bag of cement…” – I see you have been consulting Mr G, Anna. He’s absolutely right, though I have to confess I’d find the cement rather more useful than the cocaine, boring old fart that I am. I wouldn’t try smuggling it from Thailand, though.
What a tale of sex and drugs. All it needs is some Rock’n\’Roll, though as the sweet, innocent young ladies worked as nightclub (cough) hostesses, I’d imagine there would be some of that, even if implied rather than explicitly stated.
I’m not surprised that customs stopped them. Even in the somewhat wild and laisse-faire atmosphere of Thailand, turning up at the airport dressed like that would be bound to raise an eyebrow or two. Though I suppose she could conceal a bit more ‘product’ under her hat. (She’d have to – her clothing would appear to be rather lacking in concealment opportunities otherwise.)
I hadn’t realised that Peru was such a drug centre. Can we now expect the Met to take Paddington Bear in for questioning?
On a slightly more serious note, one does wonder how people think they will get away with it. One can only conclude that working (and effectively living) in an environment such as that, in which drugs are not so much commonplace as pretty much compulsory, numbs the brain to the stark realities of wider society’s attitudes to illegal substances. They now have a quandary – tell all they know in the hope of leniency from officialdom and risk susequent ‘justice’ from their former associates, or keep schtum and spend the rest of their lives in an overseas gaol. The former associates won’t care much; they’ll just get another few mules from the ready supply available to them. Truly evil and cynical people.
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August 13, 2013 at 11:51 -
“I hadn’t realised that Peru was such a drug centre. Can we now expect the Met to take Paddington Bear in for questioning?”
Why would a bear from Peru randomly turn up in Britain? What do you think he had in his suitcase?
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August 13, 2013 at 11:54 -
Honey?
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August 13, 2013 at 12:10 -
Aunt Lucy was infact the poncho wearing, bowel hatted,cigar smoking El Jeffe of a major cartel of Marmalade Smugglers. You wouldn’t believe how nasty the gelatine and pectin haulage game can get. On forgetting Paddista’s 2nd birthday for the 2nd time, Mr Bown slept with goldfishes in the ornamental pond.
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August 13, 2013 at 13:26 -
Marmalade!
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August 13, 2013 at 13:59 -
Marmalade sandwiches!
No sympathy for the little bimbos, just another pair who thought that nice tits and a ready grin would get you through most things.-
August 13, 2013 at 18:34 -
Seconded.
This pair of dimwits do not appear to have an ounce of common sense between them, but ‘congenital stupidity’ is not, as far as I am aware, a valid defence to a charge of drug smuggling… or at least in Peru it shouldn’t be.
Do not pass go. Do not collect £200. Go straight to Jail.
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August 14, 2013 at 09:53 -
Marmalade.
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August 14, 2013 at 08:38 -
“Can we now expect the Met to take Paddington Bear in for questioning?”
I suspect that “marmalade” might become the druggy slang du jour.
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August 13, 2013 at 11:16 -
I note Indonesia has a policy which prevents ‘Repeat Offending’.
And as ‘innocent’ young things visiting risky destinations seems to attract attention, what better disguise than this:-
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August 13, 2013 at 11:24 -
[QUOTE] ‘I would never have become involved in something like this but the lives of my children were in danger [/quote]
The kiddy card still gets played… -
August 13, 2013 at 15:05 -
Moor Larkin,
Re: “I would never have become involved in something like this but the lives of my children were in danger”
As if the more she got involved the more she was putting her kids in danger – now look at the mess she’s in…
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August 13, 2013 at 11:03 -
A close friend of mine holidaying in such parts once became stupidly embroiled in a gambling scam, which he found to his terror also involved the local bobbies. He ended up fleeing in the night, criss-crossing his paths in anonymous trains and buses to ensure tracking him would be impossible. He said that whilst the criminals were scary, the bobbies frightened him far more because they could have killed him LEGALLY……
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August 13, 2013 at 10:28 -
Whilst one should not rush to judgment (see also Mathew, 7:1-3), however, I heard reports of these shy and retiring young ladies being forced to become drugs mules with a small pinch of salt. Surely, having been threatned etc, one could go to the police in the airport before boarding and say – help us, we have been blackmailed!? Or dump the stuff, get on the plane and never come back.
Perhaps I am over cynical, however.
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