The daylight robber... and Ronnie Biggs
Two striking images of defiance leapt out of the pages of yesterday’s Daily Mail. The first was that of banker Rich Ricci, who celebrated Budget Day with an £18 million shares windfall.
Ricci was pictured in the winner’s enclosure at Cheltenham with his racehorse, the aptly named Champagne Fever. He is raising a single finger in salute to the cameras, indicating that he’s Mister Numero Uno.
The second image was that of a shrivelled, 83-year-old Ronnie Biggs giving a pathetic V-sign to photographers at the funeral of fellow Great Train Robber Bruce Reynolds.
Two striking images of defiance leapt out of the pages of yesterday’s Daily Mail. The first was that of banker Rich Ricci, the second was that of Ronnie Biggs giving a pathetic V-sign. But are they really all that different?
Ricci won’t thank me for making the comparison, but are they really all that different?
OK, so Biggs is an unrepentant small-time crook without a pot to spit in, living out his final days in a wheelchair after spending half his life evading justice. He was a bit-part player in a big-time heist, but he milked his notoriety to the max.
Had it not been for his involvement in the 1963 mail train robbery, Biggs would have eked out a meagre living holding up sub-post offices and thieving from gas meters. The nearest he’d have got to the winner’s enclosure at Cheltenham would have been the Guinness tent.
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For all his dubious celebrity, what was left of Biggs’s share of the £2.6 million haul by the time he washed up in Brazil soon dissolved into the sands of the Copacabana. Though he describes his life as a fugitive as an ‘adventure’, I wonder if he really thinks it was all worth it.
Ricci, on the other hand, is an unrepentant Master of the Universe, to appropriate Tom Wolfe’s description of the wizards of Wall Street. He is reported to have amassed a personal fortune of £57 million, travels everywhere by private jet and has a string of 30 thoroughbred racehorses.
This week he was one of nine Barclays Bank executives who shared in an astonishing £40 million bonus pay-out. The news was slipped out under the radar as the Chancellor of the Exchequer was on his hind legs in the House of Commons outlining his latest austerity Budget.
For all his dubious celebrity, what was left of Biggs's share of the £2.6 million haul by the time he washed up in Brazil soon dissolved into the sands of the Copacabana. I wonder if he really thinks it was all worth it
Ricci, on the other hand (pictured with Jockey Paul Townend), is reported to have amassed a personal fortune of £57 million, travels everywhere by private jet and has a string of 30 thoroughbred racehorses
For once it is impossible to disagree with hardline Left-winger Len McCluskey, leader of Britain’s biggest trades union, who accused Barclays of making ‘a complete mockery of any claims that banks are cleaning up their acts’.
He said: ‘On the day the Chancellor cruelly demands more austerity from working people, to pay for an economic crisis caused by bank bosses, Barclays bury the news that senior bankers are pocketing millions.’
Even if you strip away the political rhetoric and overlook the reckless culpability of McCluskey’s Labour Party buddies Gordon Brown, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband in creating the crash, most people reading his remarks would say: ‘Amen to that.’
Ricci epitomises the arrogance of the men who stole the world, flaunting their wealth while the victims of their excess suffer financial ruin, ill-health and worse.
Left-winger Len McCluskey, leader of Britain's biggest trades union, accused Barclays of making 'a complete mockery of any claims that banks are cleaning up their acts'
In the photo published yesterday he might just as well be sticking up his middle finger and inviting the rest of us to swivel on it.
Ricci may sound like an underboss in the Gambino crime family, but no doubt he would argue that he’s a respectable businessman.
That’s the refrain of every petty crook down the ages. ‘Me, a villain? You’ve got it all wrong, Mr Chisholm. I’m a respectable businessman.’
Ricci was a key lieutenant of disgraced Barclays boss Bob Diamond and was in charge of the bank's investment division when it was fined £290 million for rigging Libor interest rates last summer
But let’s not forget that Ricci was a key lieutenant of disgraced Barclays boss Bob Diamond and was in charge of the bank’s investment division when it was fined £290 million for rigging Libor interest rates last summer.
Heaven knows how he managed to cling on to his job.
Barclays admitted acting illegally, so why hasn’t anyone responsible ever been charged?
Unlike the Great Train Robbery, no one has gone to prison. And Ricci and his partners in crime in the banking industry would argue that no one actually died in the great financial collapse.
The family of engine driver Jack Mills, who died of cancer seven years after the mail robbery, maintains his early death was brought about by being coshed on the head that night.
Of course, the bankers never did anything so barbaric as physical violence, perish the thought.
But how many lives have they ruined, how many people have been driven to an early grave because their savings have vanished, their business bankrupted?
These days you don’t have to hold up a mail train or run across the cobbles in a balaclava with a sawn-off Purdey. All it takes is one click of a mouse, a simple conspiracy to load one fraction of one per cent on the inter-bank lending rate and the kind of riches the Great Train Robbers could only dream about can be yours. It’s still daylight robbery.
Even at today’s prices, Rich Ricci is already worth personally twice as much as the train robbers hoped to share between them.
If he ever has it away to Rio, it will be on a private jet — still giving the world the finger.
The headline on Tuesday’s column about the Cyprus financial crisis was ‘Kebabbed by the Banko Kleftiko’.
This was a play on the succulent, slow-roast lamb shank dish that features on every fine Greek Cypriot restaurant menu.
'Stolen meat': According to legend, 'kleftiko' stems from a 19th-century gang of Cypriot freedom fighters called the Klefts who would descend from the mountains to steal sheep from the Turkish invaders
My fellow Spurs fan Nicos Anayiotos writes: ‘You do know, Richard, that “kleftiko” actually means “stolen meat”?’ Actually, I didn’t. According to legend, it stems from a 19th-century gang of Cypriot freedom fighters called the Klefts who would descend from the mountains to steal sheep from the Turkish invaders.
They’d then cook it in an airtight earthenware pot in a pit in the ground to seal in the steam and smell so it wouldn’t be detected by the Turks. That would explain why you never see kleftiko on the menu in a Turkish restaurant.
And, as Nicos says, ‘stolen meat’ just about sums up the plans to rob every bank account on Cyprus.
In future, the Cypriots would be safer keeping their savings in a hole in the ground.
Take your trousers off, she's from the Guardian
This week a diplomatic protection officer was sent to jail for going awol to have sex with his mistress. But does it really justify prosecution?
When they’re not nicking journalists and fading celebrities, the Old Bill seem to spend their time arresting each other.
This week a diplomatic protection officer was sent to jail for going awol to have sex with his mistress.
I can understand how that would warrant disciplinary action, but does it really justify prosecution?
If going over the side really is a criminal offence, half the Met would be banged up in Brixton by now.
No wonder there’s so much fear and loathing at the Yard these days.
The officer in question was charged under the infinitely flexible ‘misconduct in public office’ provision, which appears to cover a multitude of sins.
That’s the catch-all charge they are using to arrest police officers and journalists alike.
We’ve had a spate of coppers getting their collars felt for having the audacity to speak to reporters.
Two distinguished senior officers, from Ealing and the City of London, have been nicked for allegedly passing information to the Press, even though no money changed hands.
Another has just started a 15-month prison sentence for ringing up the now defunct News of the World to complain about the disproportionate number of officers working on the phone-hacking inquiry.
She was convicted of asking for payment, even though the evidence against her was flimsy.
So is every cop who talks to the Press likely to face criminal charges? That depends who they talk to.
If they ‘leak’ to the tabloids, it’s a case of: ‘Put your trousers on, you’re nicked.’
But this week we learned that an officer who passed on the names of those arrested as part of the phone-hacking inquiry to the Guardian is to avoid prosecution.
More than 500 contacts were logged between DC Peter Cripps and a Guardian reporter. But Scotland Yard say that because he’s now retired, no action can be taken against him.
For what it’s worth, I argued at the time that neither the police officer nor the Guardian reporter had done anything wrong.
But it’s an outrage, not to mention a miscarriage of justice, if there’s one rule for the wicked popular papers and another for the holier-than-thou Guardian.
One expert voice has been absent from the TV coverage of the Cyprus banking crisis. Until recently, she was the ubiquitous Go-To Gal, especially on economic matters Hellenic. Where, exactly, is Vicky Pryce when we need her?
