I don't get it. Who is the John Connolly you are referring to?

Could you at least post a photo of the letter? For those of us who don't have LRM.  James
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Sloppy editorial. Editors in years gone by would have been sacked for less. Again, printers (compositors and readers) may well have picked this up before being printed, but in the age of desktop printing, these safe guards have been removed.

Dad worked in local papers all his life (now retired). Some of the stories he has told me are quite cringe inducing.

Not in this case, but the worst problems used to be when serious or upsetting stories had inappropriate adverts placed beside them. I expect you can imagine. Journalistic and advertising content were two different departments so this was where problems arose.

Not making excuses, but I expect LRM is produced by a couple of people with a couple of Macs in a small office.

Let us know what kind of response you get, Joe. I am guessing that you will find your email will be ignored. I am kind of hoping they don't as damage limitation is somewhat critical in this scenario. I'm just hoping that no one reading either this or the publication has been affected by theses crimes (even if the writer of the letter isn't who we believe it to be). It's not something you would want to be reminded of.

I guess if you have read the letter it would be easier to understand, can anyone print it here? Being a sewage diver at least I know how deep the 💩 will be at work today.
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Google John Connolly Warrington.

We may have got this completely wrong but it seems a coincidence that someone of the same name now lives in a prison? He gives his age in the letter and it tallies with the reports on the internet.

Apart from giving his age and telling the readers that he is locked up in prison, there is nothing noteworthy about the letter.

Thank goodness the prize for letter of the month wasn't a battery powered jigsaw.

Sulisuli wrote:

I guess if you have read the letter it would be easier to understand, can anyone print it here?

Click image to enlarge

Best read on it's side

If this is not right to put this on here, please take it of Martin. 1996 Golf Blue 300Tdi 110 Pick up. Keeper.

Clayton.

It will be interesting to hear LRM reply. Perhaps they don't know the awful crimes he committed. Being a sewage diver at least I know how deep the 💩 will be at work today.
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I'll keep you posted. But really, as it only takes a few minutes to find out what he did, they should have picked it up in the first place and not printed his letter.

Interesting thread.

So the view is that someone who has committed crimes that are unspeakable should be prevented from writing letters on completely unrelated subjects to the press? Doesn't this smack of censorship?

If he'd committed a less despicable crime, for example insurance fraud, would it be OK for him to write to the press?

Don't misunderstand me, I am not defending the man, and I understand that decent people may not want to hear his views on any subject (I certainly don't), but I can imagine that there'd be just a big a fuss about civil liberties and the right to freedom of speech if it came out that his letter had been discarded simply because of who and what he is.

Interesting point, blackwolf - and as you say, very interesting thread.

Firstly, we are assuming that the said person writing this letter is the same person that has committed the crime we have found on Google. There is a chance that we have it wrong (I heard of a bloke in Worcestershire a couple of weeks ago, my age and had the same name as me).

As to the civil liberties, if I had been wronged by someone (especially in the way we think this Guy has done), and who was locked up in jail for that crime, I wouldn't expect to see a magazine publishing, quite frankly, an irrelevant letter with personal details of the offender in black and white on a magazine page. Why did he have to tell us his age and that he was locked up inside? What relevance has that got to Land Rovers? I wouldn't finish a letter to a magazine telling everyone my age and that I lived in a bungalow, terrace house, maisonette, five bedroom mansion with each bedroom having an ensuite?

Look at it from another way, God forbid, but if my relation had been murdered by Ian Bradey or Myra Hindley (I have purposefully chosen persons who are deceased before this is pointed out), I would be quite outraged to see them penning letters to newspapers or magazines that I read.

Jail is for punishment and also, not forgetting this, for rehabilitation also. Writing self gratuitous letters to a magazine doesn't fit in with either of those purposes. Well that is my view and opinion.

An entirely valid view in my opinion too, and I agree with you, but the general subject does raise interesting questions.

Personally I feel that there has been a major editorial failing in this case, since, as you rightly point out, the personal circumstances contained in the letter are utterly irrelevant to the context (as, in fact, is the name and address of the writer), and I feel that the editor should have exercised his right to edit the letter prior to publication, if indeed it was considered worthy of publication at all. Since it is also a very uninteresting letter I question the decision to publish it irrespective of the author, and certainly the decision to make it "letter of the month", however that is more a symptom of the general shoddy standard of modern periodicals.

It is a crashingly dull letter, so regardless of who wrote it there is no justification for it being in a magazine, let alone letter of the month. A bumbling ramble of unconnected half stories does not constitute a letter worthy of publication.

Strikes me that both parties here sought self-promotion: the writer with his "they keep me going", and the mag being "inclusive" for posting it.

I suspect the mag weren't being inclusive, they simply didn't bother to check and consequently have dropped a clanger.