[Closed] Mark "Chopper" Read has died

[i]Umm, no. You'll be murdered.[/i]

Such pedantry

I'm confused now. so if I watch a film about a gangster, say goodfellas, i can't complain if my bike gets nicked?

If I watch a film about a murderer, can I complain if i get murdered?

maybe you are thinking too much.

Such pedantry

I was feeling left out.

I'm sure much much poorer nowadays though.

The film is well worth a watch if you haven't seen it. Eric Bana's performance is outstanding. Based on that film he's a great actor its a shame he doesn't seem to have been in a role he's been able to get his teeth into in the same way since.

whinge, whinge, fackin whinge!

loddrik - Member
And what. Doesn't change the face that criminals and gangsters are the role models of choice for most poor urban kids, that'll never change. Regardless of their backgrounds. Be they from the 'toughest' (s****s...) parts of a city or not.

Really?
Why do you think that is?
Surely family influence has more to do with the choice of role models than external media pressure?

And I didn't say 'toughest'. I said 'roughest'.
Perhaps 'poorest' wouldn't have offended your pride quite as much?

I was taught right from wrong, came from a good family but I chose a criminal career for a long time, I looked up to people for whatever reason. Didn't make me a bad person and I still, believe it or not, had pretty strong morals.

I was taught right from wrong, came from a good family but I chose a criminal career for a long time, I looked up to people for whatever reason. Didn't make me a bad person

erm, yes it did. If you chose a criminal "career" then I would suggest that you were a bad person.

Depends on your definition of what a bad person I guess. I will accept that my morals were 'selectively' good though rather than good. It's been 7 years since I changed my life so I can safely consign that part of my life to the history books.

As for Chopper Reid, I'd love to know what was fact from fiction, just as with Richard Kuklinski, there's no doubt that huge amounts of nefarious deeds were commited, but probably no where near as much as claimed. And just as with Kuklinski, we'll probably never know.

Hi is this the right place for the pissing contest?

Which pissing contest is that then?

Is it OK if you use drugs but pay for them with money earned through standard 9-5 working?

Hi is this the right place for the pissing contest?

I managed to wee on my shoes

Is it OK if you use drugs but pay for them with money earned through standard 9-5 working?

best ask your mum

lots of column inches when Ronnie Biggs died but what about Jack Mills the train driver

I was a bit surprised when I read that so I checked, and as far as I can figure out Ronnie Biggs is still alive.

I reckon reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated, how ever many column inches have been devoted to it.

Maybe it was wishful thinking 🙄
The other non-crim involved David Whitby was fairly traumatised after the event and died 9 years after the robbery aged just 34.

Ronnie Biggs
[img] [/img]

Awesome trolling

you just can't think hard enough to understand can you

I am not sure it requires much hard thinking to see a difference between nelson Mandela and chopper.

No one is this stupid they cannot see the difference.

Neville flamin' Bartoss

I didn't know who Mark Read was, had to google it. 😳

However, I am intrigued as to what criminal activities are available for a good person, as they are likely to be lucrative and I'm all for a bit of extra cash if it's morally defensible and hurts no-one.

However, I am intrigued as to what criminal activities are available for a good person, as they are likely to be lucrative and I'm all for a bit of extra cash if it's morally defensible and hurts no-one.

You never watched Hustle? We were meant to think they were 'good people'. As a bonus you get to knock around with Jaime Murray which is never a bad thing.

Mr Smith.
I'm not defending the train robbers, but it does sound a bit like you are blaming them for two deaths, that happened years after the event, one died of leukaemia six years later, and the other of a heart attack nine years later.

They are hardly connected are they ?

I'm not, it's more about the column inches/public perception.

I they the broader point [ poorly expressed] is the driver never fully recovered and these lovable roques were amoral crims who should not be held up as some sort of folk heroes.

He was good in that film

when we were growing up

Didn't say I'd finished doing so..

Good luck with that.

Haha there are some cracking wannabe gangsters on here aren't there!

A question loddrick.....what evidence have you got that these gangster types are role models for youths that grow up in deprived areas?

I only ask as I have been teaching in schools that are in very deprived inner city areas for almost 10 years and also grew up in a pretty poor area myself. I'm not denying that some kids grow up wanting to emulate the local drug dealers etc, but I can state pretty categorically that they are an extremely small minority. Just because you grew up with selective good morals doesn't mean that others do.

[img] [/img]

Not where I'm from it isn't. Maybe it's because this is the poorest city in the UK with the highest unemployment and, coincidentally, the greatest propotion of 'high level' criminals etc and criminality so it is just accepted. Can't comment on where you teach, but I can say its like that for kids in large swathes of this city, and it was probably worse in the late '80s and early '90s when poverty and unemployment was far worse than it is now. Though people started to get rich quick on the back of the rave scene and the huge increase in recreational drugs.

But dont criticise Liverpool or he will have a go at you

Ps nottingham is the poorest and Glasgow has the most unemployed

the greatest propotion of 'high level' criminals

Nottingham is nowhere near, liverpool has been most deprived for decades now.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/mar/29/indices-multiple-deprivation-poverty-england

Thats too vague to test against reality.

There has been enough written and studies done on the national and international impact of liverpool criminal networks, and frankly this isn't a justification of Uk criminal league tables, but it explains why people look up to criminals rather than the working man.

And yes, Liverpool has it's social problems but I'll defend it to the hilt.

Your defence seems to consist of arguing its the poorest most unemployed criminal area of the UK...what would you say if you did not like it 😉

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22623964

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/glasgow-most-unemployed-households-uk-2251237
you are second to be fair.

Forgive me for using 2013 figures.
You may well be correct if it was 2010

Enough anyway it is certainly amongst the poorest and most deprived areas of the UK.

Darn it, I was certain he was from Norwich.

I'd have put money on it.

It's easy to find anything to support a race to the bottom on the internet....

http://money.aol.co.uk/2013/01/07/revealed-the-most-deprived-area-in-england/

Hmmm, who does that winky smiley remind me of JY? 😉
🙂
😉

Neville flamin' Bartoss

Class 😆

Brilliant film, some good you tube videos too like chopper airways 😆

I like the way Great British Bake Off uses music from Chopper. Kinda puts Chopper Reid and Mary Berry in the same room....

One of the schools that I currently teach at is in Runcorn, so just a short distance from your beloved criminal utopia of Liverpool!

Many many kids are from tough backgrounds....the vast majority are ace and certainly don't worship career criminals!

Maybe it was different 20-30 years ago, but it is not the case for the huge majority.

I know runcorn very well, it is nothing like Liverpool,

A similar example might be deprived parts of US cities, the people the kids look up to are either rappers and sports stars, or local criminals who've made it big, they don't see that they be able to better themselves through the education/career path, and most of them never will, so it's only natural that they aspire to something else.

Ah right....sounds like a pretty sorry situation in Liverpool then!

Very good thread 😆

Good film, and couldn't have been made without Marks amazing history. RIP fella.

People have always had an interest in the 'dark glamour' of criminal lives. When I was younger, I read anything I could find about the mafia, but I don't think I ever saw them as anything other than leeches. I was a biker for quite a few years as well, and spent a fair bit of time around patch clubs - again, superficially, they were ok, insofar as I never got on the wrong side of them, but you really don't have to dig too deep to discover the reality. And then we come to the public hero worship of people like the Krays, and Charlie Bronson. All I can say is, if you'd had to spend time in their company, you might have a different perception of them.

I guess that's what happens when rappers look up to thugs
And kids look up to rappers.

Like Barnsleymitch, I read everything that I could find on the mafia.. Unlike him though, I saw this as the real thinking man's career choice..

Leaving school at the end of the 80s, having grown up watching a steady diet of war, strikes and protest on the TV, yuppies on one side of the coin, unemployment queues at the other, criminality looked lime a very sensible way to get ahead..
A bit of nouse, a big dose of balls and the cut throat mentality taught to us by the tories could well see me making a meteoric rise up the career ladder if I played my cards right.. It was plain common sense..

while I was still apprentice tea boy though, I developed a very unhealthy appetite for the high life and didn't ever progress in the corporation..
I don't think it helped that my meagre cut throat aspirations were rather insubstantial for the task at hand..