‘Be thankful that one great scourge of society is gone’

In response to the News of the World: Life after death article, Charles Norrie says Raymond Snoddy ought to be ashamed of himself…

“Unlike Mr Snoddy, I rejoiced at the end of the News of the World, only marred by the sickening display of its editor and staff when the last paper was produced.

This paper had fed off the lives, hopes, aspirations and desires of innocent victims it seems for decades (ever since the 1960s) to feed a thin gruel of tit tat and titivation, gossip and celebrity chasing, scratch cards and other rubbish.

Its campaigns were ludicrous and cruel. Child pornographers are sick people and in general the issue will never be addressed by the naming and shaming of single offenders, but by creating a more sensible approach to sex, lust and its consequences than can be achieved by filling the paper full of nearly prepubescent and unnatural nudity.

You realise that the NotW was the favourite paper in British jails – not something NI liked to boast about.

It appealed to the lowest intelligences, its line taken from the most puritan and prurient stance served up to serve pure filth.

Remember a NotW article led to the hounding of a paediatrician, simply because its readers could not spell, an event predicted in advance by Private Eye.

Brookes shamefully remains unrepentant and on the payroll. A dozen years in the slammer will clear her of of that and the Murdochs too. A life of crime is never redeemed simply by the fact of being old and rich.

You ought, Mr Snoddy, to be ashamed of yourself for writing such a piece. Just be thankful that one great scourge of society is gone.”