Monday, December 15, 2008

The letter that should be sent.

Dear Mr and Mrs De Menezes.

I would like to apologise to you for the accidental shooting of your son. At the time the police officers involved, normal human beings with normal human failings, were under intense pressure due to terrorists setting off a series of bombs and killing several innocent men women and children. These pressures were added to by the fact that in today's society whatever decisions they made could be considered the wrong ones and that any action they took would be scrutinised in minute detail by lawyers looking to earn a fast buck and newspaper editors looking for headlines. For a salary of around £20,000 a year these police officers are expected to be perfect, never make mistakes and be able to recognise a terrorist at 200 paces.

However I would like to also point out that your son had previously enetered into a contract with the people of the United Kingdom. We had allowed him to come here and study on the condition that he returned home to Brazil when his visa expired. He chose not to honour this contract and to stay here illegally.

Yes our police officers made a mistake however had your son chosen to meet his legal obligation to return home rather than abusing our hospitality then he would not have been there to get shot and it would have been impossible for the police officers to have made a mistake.

I understand your grief and I am sorry for your loss and I feel the best thing for all involved is that we draw a line under the matter and move on. If you could please send us two cheques, one for £20 Million to cover the cost of the enquiry and one for £19.99 to cover the cost of the bullets then we will consider this matter closed.

Yours Sincerely

Gordon Brown

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