The British public - or large sections of it anyway - have a curious attitude to professional villains. The Kray twins, two psychopathic headcases and at least one a serial rapist and paedophile are almost beatified by some people, mostly those who never knew them and a gaggle of rather stupid people from the entertainment world. "They only hurt their own kind", is a common excuse for them as if their own kind didn't matter. And of course if you had something they wanted...
It's the same with the train robbers, a bunch of thieving parasites who contributed nothing to society throughout their lives, cost a lot of decent people small fortunes and were mostly of the type no sane person would want to live next door to. Yet they became folk heroes within a short time of their major crime, "It's only money" being the justification (Tell that to Jack Mills family, or the Post Office staff on the train who were terrorised and assaulted) often put forward by those who spend time writing to the Guardian railing about some hard working soul cleverly and legally avoiding tax.
Most strange.
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