Ok this has REALLY rubbed me up the wrong way!

I am a current student of Napier university and I dont appreciate being unnotified about a murderer who is still currently in jail being let out of said jail and into the area where I am studying.
He is getting paid for his education while those like me and many other students are practically penniless. He is allowed free education, wait sorry it isnt free its the tax payers money!
I am getting into thousands of pounds worth of debt while he gets his education paid for by innocent people!
It is appalling and I would argue to the end that it isnt acceptable

Read this and see what you think:

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Savage-k...e-to.4977737.jp

I'm glad im not on that campus but sadly I have many friends who are and I dont appreciate them having to be around him. I bet if parents knew this was going to happen they would never have let there students come to napier they would have gone somewhere else.

TT would be mad if he was here.

Why should he get paid for it? He has done the worse thing possible, murder. And yet he is getting a nice way to restart a life, even he owes one.

Lynch time rach?

The worst thing about it is the fact that none of us knew about it until it hit the news!

Where in the article does it say he's getting paid for studying?


Maybe i'm being picky, but you have no idea what other fellow students have done before going to this uni either. And if you wanted to be notified, what would you have done about it?

Murder is a unforgiveable sin. So in comparison murderers should be sorted first.

I think when someone is currently in jail and has been jailed for murder i shouldnt no know he's there. He's still in jail for crying out loud! and he's not even paying the tuition! I have to pay for it now thats not exactly fair is it. Maybe when he's out of jail and if he pays for it himself then thats different but otherwise I dont like it

So now you dont want to be "notified" of his presence? Earlier, you did

Where does it say in that article that he's getting the tuition for free? Although yeah he probably is, as part of the rehab thing.

And what have other fellow students got up to in the past that you dont know about? I reckon thats more scary

No I do if he's still in jail because he's still serving his sentence, once he's released it becomes different because he has served his sentence and is therefore a free man again.

oops haha I got the money part from another article lol oops link for this is below:

http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/ho...icle2233143.ece

I dont reckon that what other students did IS scary because after the sentence things change, they should have learnt a lesson if they have been jailed in the past and if they were still considered a danger then they should still be behind bars

No what i said is that in my opinion, its the not knowing thats scary. You say that after sentances, things change, not always. And for all you know, there could be people out there with you who have commited crimes but not been caught

And if this bloke is being let out regularly then he cant be considered that much of a danger I bet if you found out this bloke had been done for murder, but had done his time, you'd still be outraged

maybe but I wouldnt be abe to discriminate because he'd done his time and therefore only then do i believe i should give them a second chance, I think this guy should pay for his own education and only once he has served his full jail time

Looking at it from a different perspective, there are so many people being jailed time & time again. The re offending rate in this country is huge & it costs millions to keep putting these people in jail.
If giving this man an education & chance of a productive life after finishing his time, it would seem to me to be money well spent & probably cheaper in the long run.

cheaper for the tax payer? im sorry but i dont agree if hes gonna do it again a good education wont change that, if he wants it he should pay just like evry other student does, maybe i shud become a criminal and have my tuition payed for, have food and life free for a bit thats the impression it sends to me

You said



Now you're saying (regarding rehabilitation)



What happened to giving him a chance after he's done his time?

I could be wrong here but surely not all students actually pay tuition fees, do they? Students whose parents are on low incomes are exempt & certain courses are free of fees, i've read.

A simple hanging would have solved the problem from the start and saved the country thousands of pounds. And the scum would never murder again

No student is exempt from paying tuition fees apart from 2 ways:

scholarship
or being scottish and going to a scottish uni

Rich or poor, you pay tuition, you have a student loan that covers it and then you get into more debt by needing a loan to survive and pay for accomodation and living.
Worst of all my boyfriends loan is shocking. His parents earn £25,000 a year to support 3 children he gets only £500 more than me on loan. My family earns £48,000 a year. He gets low loan because his parents are still together and his parents cant pay uni for him. Money wise he's better off if his parents split up then he gets a £2000 grant. He currently has no money for his next accomodation payment as his loan wouldnt cover it and is forced to find a job as his parents have no money to give him. He cant find a job and is now getting an overdraft just so he can pay rent. Yea right fair system

Very true.

drop out from that school dude

theres no point dropping out id be in £6000 of debt for no reason plus I like my course and I dont work at the campus he's at but my friends do which was why I was annoyed

like i sed IF he is going to do it again education wont change it if he's not he's not but I'm not prepared to give him that second chance until he has served his time, it had already been brought down from 16 years to 12 years why let him get an education early and why let everyone else in the country pay for him?

But what if giving him an education stops him from re offending. What if he gets a good job, pays taxes, gets married & has kids, discovers a cure for cancer. With an education the possibilities are boundless. But you would rather he rots in prison, re offends & costs the tax payer hundreds of thousands of pounds. He may re offend in any case but with an education there's a better chance that he won't.

I dont see how education is going to help that, maybe i should kill someone then ill get freely educated too

But then you would have to spend years in prison & despite what people say about prison being a holiday camp, you still lose your freedom.
I don't know why you can't see that keeping someone in prison is expensive & it's the tax payer who pays it. £32,358 per prisoner, per year. http://www.sps.gov.uk/default.aspx?documen...50-0EE5A87924BD. So if you're paying for it anyway, you might as well try something that might break the cycle of re offending.

Here here Eric

Rach i'm 100 % behind you on this one
and a few other members will be thinking alone the same lines as you
i think Scorpio and Rederic should wake up
and smell the Coffee
I've worked in a prison and come face to face with
the likes of the man your all talking about
how about putting them to work for the people
put them work on the motorways and help build schools , hospitals , even prisons

So let tax payers give him an extra £3000 punds a year which probably wont make a difference, education doesnt make the difference, only the person can make the difference in their lives

Were you a prison officer or involved with rehabilitation?

I hate this expression, it's stupid.

I think you should wake up & visit the bathroom.

Now you're talking, this sounds like a really good idea. Take several thousand violent prisoners & give them heavy or very sharp tools, put them on a building site with inadequate supervision & wait for the result!

You don't work for the government, do you?

So where do i say anything about INADEQUATE SUPERVISION
Your a nutter if you think i would just put them all together in one place / job and where do you get numbers like several thousand from.
The dangerous prisoners would not be aloud out off secure areas
Do you not think there are prisoners that are joiners , brickies and the like oh and i never said anything about them working all the time.
when they are in prison you could set up a schedule depending on the crime they committed.
I'm sure if it was looked into properly you could come up with a finished scheme / plan.

So you werent a prison officer or worked in rehab then andy?


Isnt that what happens now? They do risk assessments etc on what they will be ok to do?

*yawns, stretches* Morning everyone, *sniff sniff* is that Kenco I can smell.

Okay firstly this individual is not a "SAVAGE KILLER". At one point he was a "SAVAGE KILLER" and that sadly led to the loss of another human being's life. If this individual was a threat to anyone (including himself) he would not be allowed out into general populace and given the opportunity to interact with others.

Secondly the view that justice is to take a person who commits a crime and (in the absence of the death penalty) lock them away from society forever, is medieval in thought and entirely one dimensional in practice. This person is not being let out any earlier, he is studying a subject that will give him a better chance in life than if society left him locked away with no hope of any future (and despite what he has done that is a right that should never be taken away from him) surrounded by others in exactly the same boat, interacting and socialising with only them and eventually upon release unable to cope with the "free" world and ergo more likely to re-offend. It is the responsibility of any criminal justice system to rehabilitate offenders wherever possible. Why do you think prisons are so overcrowded? It's not because society has become more criminal - it is because we have a penal system that lacks stimulus, encouragement and perseverance to properly tackle the roots of criminality.

Yes there are countless thousands of criminals inside and outside of the scales of justice that will never be rehabilitated. How many criminals looking to turn their life around looked at this story and thought "Bah what's the point?". You can't take people into prison to simply take a criminal off the street for a few years and then provide no means for them to choose whether or nor they leave as that very same criminal years later.



Agreed like wise there are lawyers, doctors, traffic wardens, ECONOMISTS, fishermen, IT Consultants, Lollipop ladies, teachers, sales people, postmen and prob every walk of life inside. Some never had a job or career and perhaps given the opportunity would never have been in jail. Releasing Nichol to study at university is the exact same principal as you offer Andy.

As for the angle of the people already at the university possibly having a criminal past, I agree. Also what about the ones in university who will possbily commit crimes in the future. Did anybody see Tim Kretschmer as a threat at Albertville secondary school in Gemrany this month? A boy with good reports from many if not all of his teachers returned tooled up and killed 9 pupils and 3 teachers and 3 passers by? Is Nichol more or less likely to re-offend than Tim Kretschmer had he lived, based purely on the fact that he has offended previously?

The biggest threat here is not Nichol.

The biggest threat here is THE SCUM doing it's usual stereotype reporting purely to spread and breed fear to sell newspapers. What does it matter who is paying for his tuition fees? Personally if the man is in the prison system he is costing us all money so perhaps the best should be made of a bad job and some of our money put towards him making however small amends to society that he can.

Excellent post, AB! Dont you just love the sensationalism that the press use and the way that some people just dont think to think beyond what is written

It's a good job for Sean Hodgson that you two aren't Home Secretary!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/18/p...hed-miscarriage

actually he's being let out four years earlier than his original sentence

But my main point is if he gets free education, why cant other students? they're talking of increasing tuition to 5,000 maybe 7,000 some unis even want an unlimited tuition to pay and he'll get this free? I'm sorry but if I was paying tax I wouldnt be happy my money was going to him I'd rather it went to honest and innocent people

The money is going to him anyway cos he's in prison, using up tax payers money being rehabilitated.

my point is if he gets money for uni so should we, from a students perspective we worked out a*ses off to get into uni, half of us dont even get in and then we have to pay for it. He kills someone he gets free education fair enough get them to A level standard but giving them 'free' entry into uni when ive slaved all my life so far to get to isnt fair at all and i dont agree with it

How do you know that everybody at that uni has worked their arses off to get a place there? How do you know all students are honest and innocent of any crime already? Society simply doesnt function on the arbrtrary assumption that if you commit a crime you get nothing, no second chances - it confounds the problem to leave the likes of Nichol rotting in jail.

Also lets read this properly. This man has been in jail for ten years. Now I'm not putting a price on human life and I have full sympathy with his victim's family - but ten years is a long time in anyone's life. He is hardly being let off without punishment is he?

Where do society's wrongdoers go when the very means to better themselves are denied them? Straight back to square one. Maybe we would should do it the Scum's way - leave him to rot for his enitre sentence, come out exactly the same as when he went in and let some other poor bastard get stabbed by him and another family goes through all the pain and suffering again?

like i said, give him the standard education but dont give him an education that some people can't even dream of getting because they dont have the money and even if they have money they struggle

A levels (or advanced highers it would be in scotland) are fine by me, the students don't pay but in university i dont care what people say he should have to pay like the rest of us, get him a job for all i care i jus dont want him getting education without having to pay when everyone else does

But he isnt going to get a job is he? That's the point. In effect you are asking for aociety to turn it's back on him and give the privilege of higher education to someone more needy. I don't see how much more needy a man who had to resort to murder to expresss himself can be? He owns nothing, he has no social stimulus, no sense of community and no sense of belonging to anything other than the prison system. I would suggest that individuals unable to access higher education due to whatever turn of circumstance still have far greater opportunities open to them than this man does.

He commited a terrible crime - one that in many peoples minds cannot be recompensed for. But if he was such a savage killer he'd have killed someone else by now. Do you think he values the chance given to him any less than the next man? I am sure he recognises what a privilege it is to have this opportunity - hence why he makes the most of it and (up until the Scum's intervention) was using tax payer money to it's full potential and turning up for the courses. The supposed leaders of our country can't utilise our taxes properly so he already steals a march on them.

I don't think so. How old are you?

what I'm pointing out is that it isnt right he has free education and INNOCENT people don't. How can you justify that as fair?

and yes I have slaved my life at 18 I've worked as hard as possibly could to get to where I've wanted to be, I've wanted this course ever since I can remember and I worked my hardest to get there, he could've done that too he had the choice just like everyone else but he didn't did he? which is his own fault

You are right you cant justify someone getting a free education as being fair to anybody who doesnt. I didnt say it was fair, life isnt fair as you aspire to tell us here. Niether can you label anybody as being one thing for life and deny them the opportunity to change - that's just as unfair.

I've worked for 45yrs so far. I've paid my taxes & NI which pays for the Police, Fire Service, Coastguard & NHS for students who contribute very little. But I don't begrudge you or any of the thousands of students that me & many other tax payers have supported, a penny. I know that you & many like you will go on to live good, honest & productive lives. You may be paying tuition fees, but you're still being supported by the rest of us.

and i will be paying my taxes after this but i still dont think its fair he gets all his paid for and me only a little when i have donte nothing wrong and he has

My question is why a murderer is even allowed to live?

Y'know thats what i'av said quite a bit,

Surely we could have an Eye-for-an-Eye here.

Sharia law?