04-05-08 -

KILLER WAS BAD NOT MAD

A face and a name come back unexpectedly and unwantedly from the murky past; especially the face – leering, arrogant and unquestionably evil. It was the face of a man who murdered for the perverse pleasure of knowing he held the power of life and death over innocent people.

Having looked on the face of Peter Manuel for weeks on end, there is no doubt in my mind that he was bad and not mad. Now, fifty years later, the memory is being revived for the worst of reasons: pointless curiosity and to stir up a mildly melodramatic controversy where there was none.

PAYING THE PRICE

OF OUR OWN GREED

EVERYONE remembers Gordon Gecko’s rant in the film Wall Street: “Greed – for lack of a better word – is good …” But most forget how it goes on as a perverse paean of praise for selfishness and avarice: “Greed is right. Greed works. Greed, in all of its forms - greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge - has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

That was 1987, when those who could afford and many who couldn’t bought into the Gecko (and Thatcherite) philosophy of materialism, acquiring possessions, property, cars and the fancy goods and fripperies of the ‘good life’. In 2008, we are all paying the price – and griping and girning about it.