Ways of making money!

Here is a story I came across in one of the papers the other day:-

“A man has been arrested after a cash machine was blown up in Glasgow.

Police said on Saturday that a 48-year-old man was being held in custody in connection with the incident. It happened on Thursday night outside a row of shops on Glasgow Road in Clydebank. A 51-year-old man who was found at the scene remains in a critical condition at Queen Elizabeth University hospital. A spokesman for Police Scotland said a report would be submitted to the procurator fiscal.

In October thieves blew up a cash machine in a kiosk outside a Matalan store in Darlington. The explosion shook homes more than two miles away and sent debris, including anti-ram raid bollards, flying across the car park. The thieves escaped with an unspecified amount of cash from the machine.

Last April, a gang of seven men who caused explosions at cash machines around England and Scotland were jailed for a total of 92 years. The group had stolen more than £550,000 and caused more than £160,000 worth of damage in attacks on ATMs at 13 banks and supermarkets, Merseyside police said.”

It reminded me of a film I have seen, or perhaps a book I have read, in which a gang of reprobates planned to dislodge a cash machine from its place in the wall and carry it away on a fork-lift truck. Needless to say, the whole thing went haywire. I have been racking my brains trying to remember which film or book it occurred in.

It’s almost as farfetched as the story of a government which kept on giving contracts to a company that was clearly failing. Actually you seem to have a better chance of getting away with a load of cash if you are a top executive in a failing company than if you are an ordinary, common or garden thief. Here’s a quote from a report:-
 “While Carillion’s private sector staff face uncertainty over their pay, the company’s former chief executive Richard Howson is still currently entitled to a £660,000 salary, even though he quit in July over the company’s dismal performance.”

Surely there is something wrong with a system in which a person can go on being paid for a job that he has left and which he did not even seem to be doing well in the first place.

Or am I just being naive?