Tory Compassion? Yes for billionaire fraudsters but no for dubiously convicted dying terrorist

Baron Forsyth of Drumlean. (You remember him? No? He was Secretary of State for Scotland for a very short time during John Major’s premiership, a service for which he went to the English House Lords.) He's has been on the telly (see Scot Goes Pop) bumping his gums about the scandalous release of Abdelbaset Ali Al Megrahi. That's him, the baldy one, pictured on the left.

He was concerned that Megrahi who was released on compassionate grounds because he was apparently about to die, has lasted for eleven months so far. He is convinced it seems that oil interests in Libya had a lot to do with the release. So he is condemning both the SNP and Labour for apparently pandering to big business interests and subverting the rule of law and the justice system to that end. So far so good and pretty scandalous if true. The Tories would never subvert justice to the ends of big business or those rich gnomes who may or may not fund their party. Would they?

But wait a minute is the gracious Baron not a stunning hypocrite? He was Minister of State for Scotland in the Tory government of John Major which allowed the release of one Ernest Saunders. You will all remember him as the convicted fraudster, one of the Guinness four who made a shed load of money in the 1980s through dubious financial dealings and was sent to clink for 5 years for it. However, that is not his main claim to fame, that rather comes in the fact that he made medical history by being the first and only person ever to recover from Alzheimers, a condition he was diagnosed as having while in prison and which on medical evidence supplied at that time was deemed to be incurable. So he was released by a Tory Home Secretary one Kenneth Baker (him who is only remembered as being portrayed in Spitting Image as a slimy slug) after only serving ten months. But guess what he made a medically unbelievable full recovery and has so far lasted 19 years. Thats him pictured.

At least Mr Megrahi is having the decency to actually die even if the best medical treatment that Colonel Ghadaffi could buy did lengthen his life by months, he is currently still on his death bed in Tripoli. Ernest however has sufficiently recovered to be back in business acting as a consultant to Seed International Ltd, a company based in the Cayman Islands. Seed offered investments in a variety of fields including wine, property, oil and gas exploration.

Now justice ought to be blind and so should the compassion that comes with it. So no matter whether Mr Megrahi did blow up an airliner while Mr Saunders only stole a few billion and defrauded a few people here and there the compassion shown ought to be the same. The point here is Baron Forsyth is a politicking hypocrite for spouting odious verbiage like that on prime time TV when he knows full well that his own party whizzed a googly passed the justice system in not a shocking travesty of justice but a shocking travesty of compassion.