Idiot or Hero?

More than 1,000 socialnetwork's visitors have spared their point of view on this escaped criminal, who taunts police on Facebook as he enjoys Christmas on the run , some saying he's a hero, others argueing he's a perfect idiot!

By Daily Mail ReporterLast updated at 4:53 PM on 28th December 2009

"An escaped prisoner has celebrated his first Christmas on the run by taunting police with photos of himself on Facebook.
On Christmas Day, Craig 'Lazie' Lynch, 28, even posted a photo of himself adorned in tinsel, making a rude gesture and holding a turkey.
Lynch has been on the run from Suffolk's Hollesley Bay Prison since September but rather than hide from police he has regularly updated them on his movements via the social networking service.
Enlarge
Taunt: Craig Lynch, who has been on the run since September, posted this photo of himself on Facebook on Christmas Day
Below the Christmas Day photo he wrote 'If any of you was doubtin my freedom. Here's proof. How the f*** could i get my hands on a bird like this in jail. ha ha.'
The same day he said: 'Wow it really is xmas ha ha i cant beleive i made it f*** tha police.'

More...
Escaped prisoner taunts police on Facebook, boasting his home is 'warmer than the Caribbean'
'Burglars welcome here': Home Office's bizarre new warning against thieves
'YES YES i f***in made it to Xmas i beat their f***n system and i love it. I love you all my family my friends my lovers and all my supporters and fans i love the whole lot of you x x your the best merry xmas merry xmas merry xmas ho ho ho.'
But Lynch also revealed that at one point he heard sirens in the early hours outside his house and assumed he was about to be arrested.
He wrote an update, saying: 'Oh No sirens!! Its happening.'
However, it emerged the noise came from an ambulance helping an elderly woman across the street from his hideout.
Enlarge
Craig Lynch has developed a strong following on his Facebook page as he continues to taunt police
In an update on Sunday he said: 'It is freezin out there. I wonder if i can take the right p*** and stay out til the summertime ha ha.'
Lynch was nearing the end of a seven year sentence for aggravated burglary when he escaped from the open prison on September 23.
Last week it was revealed that he had bragged about relaxing on a sunbed, eating 12lb steaks and making plans to attend a New Year's Eve party in Lowestoft, Suffolk.
He boasted about staying one step ahead of police who were monitoring his Facebook page for any clues to his whereabouts.
Lynch revealed that he was planning to go to the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent to take his 'little princess' to meet Santa.
Later he updates his site to say that he was walking through the centre with a 4ft tall Winnie The Pooh.
His life on the run has attracted a 1,247 following on Facebook.
Fans have been adding messages of support from his site, but others have posted messages describing him as an idiot and have set up an opposition page called Craig 'Lazie' Lynch is a LOSER!
One follower wrote: 'How stupid can people be egging this idiot on? How can people think that this guy is a hero when we've got lads risking their lives every day in Afgan, they are the real heroes.'
Lynch is said to have connections to the Edgware area of Middlesex and North-East London. He has claimed he is travelling around to avoid police.
Last week Suffolk Police said his details had been logged on the Police National Computer and that routine checks were regularly performed at his known addresses.
A police spokeswoman said officers were also working "

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1238920/Escaped-criminal-taunts-police-Facebook-enjoys-Christmas-run.html#ixzz0b3PpzAQf

It happened five years ago

This is the story of Sally Gordon an Indian Ocean Tsunami's survival.

After loosing her best friends in the terrifying disaster, her husband left for Thailand leaving her lonely and sad.

Read the hole story from Daily Mail on line.

"I lost three best friends and almost died in the tsunami... how could my husband then walk out on me?
By Natasha Courtenay-Smith
Last updated at 9:33 AM on 24th December 2009
There are many survivors of the Boxing Day 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami who speak of the terrifying roar of the wave as it approached.
But the only sound that Sally Gordon can recall as the nine-metre wall of water engulfed her and carried her for one mile through the Thai village of Khao Lak is total silence, followed by the strangled sound of her own body as she was finally able to gasp for air.
'I was taken under water through buildings, trees and electricity pylons,' says Sally. 'I was hitting debris and at one stage I was trapped underneath a floating car. In the end, I knew I was drowning and I just couldn't go on any longer.

Lucky to be alive: Sally Gordon hit unimaginable disaster when the tsunami hit Thailand in 2004
'My last memory of being in the water was saying prayers for my four sons. As my own life ebbed from me, I prayed for my children to survive.'
But then, as quickly as the wave had submerged her, Sally was deposited a mile inland, completely naked, the clothes having been torn from her body by the force of the water.
It was an ordeal that lasted just a few minutes, but the ramifications have continued to this very day. She lost her three best friends in that tidal wave: Melanie Clough, 46; Jane Holland, the 49-year-old daughter of film director Richard Attenborough; and Pippa Rae, 40.
'In the months that followed, I felt mentally numb,' says Sally. 'I had lost three of my closest friends, and close friends lost their children too.

'Melanie and I had been best friends since we were two, we'd been to school together and were godparents to each other's children.
'I'd met Jane through Melanie, and Pippa was another close friend. We all regularly met for lunches and to go shopping, and over the previous 12 months, had holidayed in the Caribbean and Turkey together.
'I have a photo of Jane, Melanie and me which I treasure. It's the three of us standing on a beach in the Caribbean looking very windswept. I still look at the photo every day and ask myself why I'm alive and they are both gone.'
What happened to her sons that day still arouses a different kind of disbelief.
And in the wake of the huge emotional fallout from the tsunami, Sally's husband left her, a fact that even now feels raw.
The trip to Khao Lak was meant to be Christmas in paradise, says Sally, 52, from Emsworth in Hampshire.
She and her husband Chris, who together had built up and sold the luxury sailing holiday company Sunsail, had joined Jane and her husband Mike, and Melanie and her husband Simon and another couple in buying a plot of land in Khao Lak, an hour north of Puket.

Submerged: A boat passes by a damaged hotel at Ton Sai Bay on Phi Phi Island, Thailand, looking for survivors of the giant wave
Simon had then overseen the building of four five-bedroom villas on the beachfront.
With the villas completed, they'd travelled to the area for Christmas, in a party of 34 adults and children.
Sally hasn't spoken about her experiences before, but as the fifth anniversary arrives, finally feels ready to reflect on what she and her family suffered and to pay tribute to her lost friends.
'We'd all been so happy on the day the tsunami struck,' says Sally, who has four sons, Alex, 23, Tom, 22, Charles, 19 and Sebastian, 15.
'The villas really were beautiful, each had their own pool and they all looked straight out over the sea.'
Sally was on the beach close to her villa with her sons Alex and Charles when they saw the first signs of the devastation that was about to occur.
'We would normally have still been asleep but Alex had arrived the day earlier and got everyone up as he was jetlagged,' says Sally. 'We were walking to get some breakfast, when we noticed everyone was looking at the sea, and that our brand new powerboat, which was anchored in front of the villa, had run aground.'
Looking at the horizon, Sally and her sons could see a wall of water. She recalls: 'I rang my husband, who was playing golf with our two other sons and some friends, and said: "The boat's gone aground."
In a matter of seconds, the nine-metre wave went straight over our heads, washing the villas completely away
He said that wasn't possible as it was anchored really well. 'Then I said: "Well, this is strange because there's a big wave coming."
'I remember saying to him that it was really weird, but all the water had gone out to sea, and there were fish jumping off the sand.'
Sally was joined on the beach by Jane and Melanie, who had come out of their villas to see what was happening.
'We had no idea what this wave was, but we weren't hugely frightened,' says Sally. 'We decided it was some sort of tidal wave, and concluded it might come right up the beach. It seems ridiculous now, but I remember we said we should shut the windows and that we might get a bit wet from spray from the wave.
'Melanie and Jane went back inside their villas, my sons were heading to a nearby hotel and I ran behind our villa and got inside a large storage cupboard there. My only thought at the time was that I didn't want my camera to get wet.
'I was in this cupboard for quite a few minutes when suddenly it filled up with water to about knee level and the lights went off,' recalls Sally.
'I thought this was the wave, and had no idea it was in fact a surge of water with the main wave following directly behind. I opened the door to take a photo as I thought my husband wouldn't believe the water had come in so far, when a matter of seconds later, the nine-metre wave went straight over our heads, washing the villas completely away.
'My oldest son, Alex, was by now on the roof of a nearby hotel and watched as the water engulfed our villas.
'Fifteen minutes later, when it receded, he realised the villas were completely gone.
'He also saw the wave directly hit my third son Charles, who was still standing on the beach.'

Miraculous stories of survival: Sally with her four sons (from left) Sebastian, Tom, Charles and Alex who all survived the tsunami
One can only imagine the horror that went through Alex's mind as he watched what seemed to be his family being wiped out.
Sally's next completely clear memory is of finding herself a mile inland, naked. For the next hour, she lapsed in and out of consciousness until she was found, along with Melanie's daughter Clemmie, now 19, by some locals.
Fearing another wave was coming, they carried Sally and Clemmie up a nearby hillside, where they spent the night out in the open in a forest.
'By this stage, I was delirious,' says Sally, who was provided with some covering for her battered, naked body.
'As a result of my organs and tissues absorbing water through my lungs, my body had swollen up - I looked like the Michelin man. All the time I kept saying: "My children, my children, they were on the beach."
'The people who rescued us were mouthing to each other that my children were dead.'
In fact, every member of Sally's family had their own miraculous tale of survival. The
call Sally had made in fact saved the lives of her husband and sons Tom and Sebastian.
I was so bruised and battered my family didn't recognise me
Diverted from their game, they ran to the edge of the golf course and saw the wave on the horizon.
Thanks to this early warning, her husband, her youngest son Sebastian and other members of their party were able to scramble on to the roof of the golf club, from where they watched the wave pass underneath them.
Her second son Tom, meanwhile, ran a mile inland and survived by shimmying barefoot up a palm tree and clinging on.
Alex was safe on the roof of the next door hotel and Charles, who was hit directly by the wall of water, was saved by a Swedish boy who pulled him up a tree.
When that tree fell down, they survived by clinging on to dead bodies and electricity pylons until the water receded.
The next day, locals bought Sally down from the hillside, and she was taken to a cottage hospital in Thai Muang, 30km south.
By this point, the rest of her family had found each other and were frantically searching for her, and any other survivors in their party.
In hospital, Sally was too unwell even to confirm her identity - she was later told by a doctor that she had been just two seconds from death.
'My husband turned up at the hospital I was at with my second son Tom,' says Sally. 'I was so bruised and battered that they didn't recognise me and were about to leave, when Tom pointed at me and said "Daddy, do you think this might be Mummy?"
'I was in such shock and so out of it I almost didn't know who I was, but my husband looked at me, and shook me, and I was able to speak. That was the first time I realised my family were still alive.'

Devastation: A tourist looks at the damage on Khoa Lak beach in Patong, the area where Sally and her group were staying
The fact that only six members of their party died in a village where more than 5,000 people were killed is, says Sally, thanks to amazing coincidences.
'On a normal day, everyone would have been on the beach or in bed at the time the wave hit,' she says. 'The only reason everyone was up and out of the house was because Alex had woken everyone up, and a number of people had arranged to play golf.
'It was lucky I phoned the golf course, or my husband wouldn't have looked out to sea. It's lucky that I opened the door of that cupboard to take a picture, or I would have been trapped inside by the water pressure.'
The next day, Sally was taken to hospital in Bangkok.
'I was attached to all sorts of drips and could hardly think straight. I was in a state of total shock, but I do remember watching Sky News and seeing all the devastation.
WHO KNEW?
Tsunamis used to be called ‘tidal waves’, but the term has fallen out of use, as they have nothing to do with tides but are usually caused by earthquakes
'But really, it was too big to get my head around. I still feel that way now sometimes.'
On her return to the UK, Sally was put under the care of lung specialist and a tropical disease specialist.
'I was unwell for a long time,' she says. 'I'd inhaled so much mud and silt that my lung function was massively impaired and every breath I took hurt. I was still coughing up mud and silt six months later.
'I also had to have an operation on my sinus and ear canals to clear them of silt.
'I was suffering from bacterial infections too and was on a cocktail of about 15 drugs.
'And every day, all I could think about was Melanie, Jane, Pippa and my friend Sally, who had lost her daughter Holly, who was 21.
'Jane's daughter Lucy had died too - she was only 15 - along with her mother-in-law. I felt desperate for the families left behind.
'My mind churned over what had happened again and again, and was full of what-ifs. I found it very hard for weeks to even eat. I just got up, did what I was told to do and went to bed again.
'I remember I just used to sit at the kitchen table and stare at the wall. My mother pretty much moved in to look after me.'
The following March, the family made an emotional return to Khao Lak on the advice of Sally's doctor.

New life: Sally's husband, Chris, left, walked out on her to found a charity in Thailand
Through going back, they hoped to try and understand what had happened to them and say goodbye to those they had lost. They also visited the tree Tom had clung to.
But shortly after they returned from the sad pilgrimage, Sally's world was again devastated when her husband left her.
'Chris literally got up one day and announced he was going to live in Thailand,' says Sally. 'It was a bolt out of the blue. I was still very unwell and felt completely destroyed.
'To this day, I don't really understand what happened and neither does Chris, but his departure was caused by the emotional fallout from the tsunami.
'Whenever I ask why he left, he simply says he wasn't thinking straight. With the benefit of time, I think we were all suffering from survivor's guilt and all incredibly traumatised.
'We'd realised how fragile life was, and I think he felt he really wanted to live in Thailand.
'But at the time, I was devastated. Our marriage had been a happy one. I'd been so thankful that our family had survived in one piece where so many others hadn't. We'd been given another chance, and now he was destroying it.
'With the tsunami, then Chris leaving, I don't think I was able to think straight for an entire year. I don't think I would have coped without the support of my friends and family, and therapy.
'I felt very angry, angry that friends' lives had been lost, angry I'd had to fight so hard for my own life and angry that Chris had gone.'
Chris founded a charity called the Khao Lak Community Appeal. In the first ten months, he raised a million pounds to help local children and build a new school in the memory of the friends they'd lost.
Although Chris still lives in Thailand, where he now has a new partner, who is Thai, he and Sally have stayed friends and Chris is spending Christmas in Hampshire with Sally and their sons.
Boxing Day, which marks the five-year anniversary of the tsunami, will be, says Sally, a time for quiet reflection.
'What happened has changed our lives, but we've all learned that you're only here once. My family and I were saved that day, and even now we have no idea why.
'Without a doubt we were given a second chance, and we're determined to make the most of it.' Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1238134/I-lost-best-friends-died-tsunami--husband-walk-me.html#ixzz0asAhmRPJ

Nice Christmas

I wish everybody a very nice Christmas and a Happy New Year!

At least parking

Well, at least parking we can say are better than women! According to a recent scientist research male's boasting on much skill driving seems to be right!

Read more by daily mail sunday reporter Tom Harper.

Men ARE better than women at parking: Feminist scientists proves what sexist motorists have known all along
By Tom Harper, Mail on Sunday Reporter

Male drivers have long boasted they are superior to women, particularly when it comes to parking.
And now their claims have been borne out by the first scientific study into the subject.
Psychologists asked 65 volunteers to park a £23,000 Audi repeatedly in a sealed-off university car park.
Reverse psychology: Women drivers were slower and less accurate, tests found
The results, which are bound to reignite long-running arguments between couples, found that women took up to 20 seconds longer to park in the same space.
But although they were more cautious about edging into position, it did not make them any more accurate, and they tended to end up much closer to the edge of the bays than the male drivers.
Scientists from Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, found men were better at driving both head-on into the space and reversing into it.
However, the biggest difference was in parallel parking, where men were found to be five per cent better in their handling and positioning of the vehicle.
Researchers concluded the men had better co-ordination and spatial awareness because their brains could process the changing speed and position of the car more quickly.
Dr Claudia Wolf, who co-wrote the study, said she was prompted to investigate the subject after getting fed up with chauvinistic jokes about female drivers .
She told The Mail on Sunday: ‘These prejudices exist and as a scientist I decided to find out if they are true or based on myth.
‘I don't think that feminism or the cause of women is in any way set back by these findings. It only proves what previous studies about the spatial differences between men and women have shown.
Germaine Greer: 'You must remember women also have bosoms, which makes it very difficult to turn around'
‘Besides, it is not as if there was a massive failing by women. It is just about parking - not the triumph of men over women.'
The drivers - who had varying degrees of driving experience, but were of similar ages and intelligence - were asked to park an Audi A6 Limousine automatic, a large, family saloon, in a 15ft by 6ft space.
The scientists measured both the time between the car's first movement and the driver turning off the engine and how close the car ended up to the white tape marking out the bays. The more central the car ended up in the space, the better.
The psychologists admitted they were surprised that females' extra caution did not bring better results.
Their paper noted: ‘The marked difference in parking duration could be explained in terms of general driving habits. Several studies prove that men take greater driving risks.
‘However, a sex difference in riskassessment leading to women parking more cautiously, and thus more slowly, does not explain why women's final parking position was less accurate than men's, especially for parallel parking. Slower driving should lead to a better and not worse result.'
Last night, feminist author Germaine Greer admitted that men were better parkers than women, but criticisedthe scientists for undertaking the ‘pointless' study.
She said: ‘I can believe that men were proven to have a very insignificant advantage in spatial awareness when it comes to parking.
'My mum parked appallingly, but that's because my father did not let her drive very often and she was frightened in the car.
'You must remember that women also have bosoms which makes it very difficult to turn around.
‘However, did we really need to know this? Should we now stop women from parking? Of course not. These scientists were just trying to provoke people like me and it sounds like an extreme waste of resources.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1237236/Men-ARE-better-women-parking-Feminist-scientists-proves-sexist-motorists-known-along.html#ixzz0aDihxGVf

What a brave girl!

I'm happy to know, from daily mail's news, that Katie Piper , former brave acid attack victim , is to deliver Channel 4's Alternative Christmas Message

Read more of her story By Paul Revoir at http://www.dailymail.co.uk

The worst Christmas gifts

Don't you know what to present your partner for Christmas? Worried about Chistmas' gifts? Just joint through the following link the worst Christmas gifts! http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2009/dec/08/worst-christmas-gifts

How lucky we are

When I read such news, as this one showed below, from today's Guardian, by Ian Black, I think that we are really lucky on living in a western country, where all human rights are fully respected. Of course we will ask for more, in order to improve our democratic standard of life, but please, let us not forget unhappy brothers all over the world. Thanks to Amnesty International for highlighting such brutal reality in Iran.

Abuse and show trials – Amnesty reports on Iran
Human rights group criticises increase in political repression in six months since reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Ian Black
The Guardian, Thursday 10 December 2009
Article history

Convicted men publicly hanged in Mashhad, north-west Iran, in 2007. The situation today is no better than 20 years ago, says Amnesty. Photograph: Halabisaz/AP
Human rights abuses in Iran are now as bad as at any time in the past 20 years, Amnesty International reports tomorrow in a survey marking six months since June's disputed presidential election.
Amnesty documents "patterns of abuse" by the Basij militia and revolutionary guards involving beatings, rape, death threats, forced confessions, intimidation and official cover-ups. Many detainees have been subjected to show trials and five have been sentenced to death.
"The authorities have resorted to exceptionally high levels of violence and arbitrary measures to stifle protest and dissent," says the 80-page report. "The courts have not been an instrument of justice to hold police, security forces and other state officials to account … or to protect the rights to freedom of expression, assembly, association and religion."
According to official figures, 36 people died in violence after the election, but the opposition puts the figure at more than 70. At least 4,000 people were arrested after the poll on 12 June and some 200 remain in jail. This week, 200 people were arrested during protests around university campuses on national students day.
Protests began when the sitting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claimed victory over the leading opposition candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, amid claims that the result had been rigged.
Amnesty quotes an unnamed former detainee who was held with 75 others for more than eight weeks in a container at the notorious Kahrizak detention centre in Tehran. He was told his son would be raped if he did not "confess" and was beaten unconscious with a baton .
Last month, Ramin Pourandarjani, a young doctor who had treated inmates at Kahrizak and had reportedly been forced to certify the death of at least one torture victim as resulting from meningitis, died in suspicious circumstances.
Ebrahim Mehtari, a 26-year-old student, described being held in a tiny cell, interrogated while blindfolded and accused of "working with Facebook networks" and tortured into making a confession. He said: "They frequently beat me on the face; I was burned with cigarettes under my eyes, on the neck, head. I was beaten all over … They threatened to execute me and they humiliated me."
An independent medical examination substantiated his claims. But all the relevant documents disappeared, the authorities refused to investigate and his family were warned not to talk about the case.
Amnesty says Iran refused to co-operate with its investigation and has denied the organisation entry into the country since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Many of the cases have been documented previously, but the cumulative effect of the data underlines what Amnesty calls "a clear pattern of systematic gross human rights violations by Iranian security forces condoned or even encouraged by powerful political and religious figures in Iran."
The report says government officials "have done their utmost to ensure that accounts of rape are discredited and not circulated further".
Amnesty has harsh words for the show trials of leading opposition figures. "The trials, broadcast to the nation, featured coerced 'confessions', 'apologies' and incrimination of others. Rather than bringing people to justice, the purpose was to validate the authorities' account of the post-election unrest and to make clear the severe consequences of opposing the authorities."

Where's the truth on Iraq's war affair?

I report from the Daily Mail on line the following news. I'm astonished and worried about knowing that such important politicians may lie on such involving matters.
Blair distorted the case for Iraq war, admits Sir John Scarlett
By Tim ShipmanLast updated at 12:30 AM on 09th December 2009

Former MI6 chief Sir John Scarlett
The spymaster behind the dodgy Iraq dossier yesterday made clear that Tony Blair 'sexed up' the strength of the intelligence with an 'overtly political' foreword making the case for war.
Sir John Scarlett said the then prime minister's claim that spies had 'established beyond doubt' that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was 'quite separate from the text of the dossier itself'.
Sir John, former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, admitted that the claim that Saddam could fire chemical weapons in 45 minutes was also 'lost in translation'.
He conceded that it would have been 'much better' if the dossier had spelt out that the claim referred only to battlefield 'munitions' rather than 'weapons' - which was taken to mean missiles capable of hitting British bases in Cyprus.
Sir John, who recently retired as head of MI6, also revealed that Mr Blair never bothered to ask him about new intelligence received just ten days before the outbreak of war, which made clear that Iraqi chemical weapons and missiles had been 'disassembled'.
'The intelligence reports went through to the Prime Minister and to senior ministers,' he said.
Asked repeatedly whether Mr Blair or any other senior minister had asked about the intelligence or demanded a new assessment before giving the green light for war, Sir John replied: 'No. No. No.'Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1234179/Iraq-inquiry-Sir-John-Scarlett-says-pressure-Number-10-dodgy-dossier.html#ixzz0ZAaLJiIi