John Brown's belly rumbling is small beer, writes Gary Keown, it's officials who can't tell when the ball's over the line that we really need to talk about
John Brown made a Horlicks of it. Let's be honest. No one in their right mind can possibly be happy with the overall standard of officiating in this country, but, when you're doing the commentary on a club TV station, you're on a hiding to nothing when you brand a decision 'corrupt'. No matter how unfathomable it may be.
He landed Rangers a three-grand fine under the SFAs disciplinary code. The Ibrox outfit, as is their right, have insisted that every comment made on official club media outlets will now have to be scrutinised intently. Of course, it's going to turn next season into a demented cavalcade of whataboutery and tit-for-tat skirmishing, but what's new?
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Necton runner 'didn't expect to win Britain's most brutal race'
A man who started ultrarunning during the pandemic said he was in "disbelief" after winning a 268-mile Morgan, from Necton, near Swaffham, Norfolk, finished first in the Montane Summer Spine men's race across the Pennine Way, in 91 hours and 45 endurance race from Edale in Derbyshire to Kirk Yetholm on the Scottish Borders has been nicknamed "Britain's most brutal race" by Morgan, 37, said: "I can't really believe what happened... I aimed for a decent finish but I didn't think there was a chance I'd get the top spot." On the women's leaderboard, London-based Anna Troup came first with a time of 84 hours and 56 the race is unassisted, there are five checkpoints where competitors can get a hot meal and nearly four days in the race, Mr Morgan said he slept for just an hour. "I'm terrible at sleeping, so it was just as and when," he said."It's weird – you can be so tired that you can barely keep your eyes open but then you lay down and you're buzzing and want to be out there... Mostly it's just a case of keeping moving." The Summer Spine is known for its mountainous route, with a total ascent of more than 35,000ft (about 11km).Due to Norfolk's famously flat geography, Mr Morgan had to train for the uphill landscape on a treadmill."I've done a few 200-mile plus races, but this was definitely a lot harder because of the elevation," he said. "I find downhill much harder... You can train your muscles, but you can't train for the technical terrain." 'Disbelief and pressure' Mr Morgan said there were "quite a few really low points" during the race."Your mind goes, and you realise you don't want to be there or you can't remember why you're there," he said."I had my wife on the end of the phone, so I'd give her a call and she'd coach me through it and tell me to keep going."Mr Morgan said he kept a track of his position in the race, and felt "disbelief and pressure" when he took the lead."It's one of those things where I wasn't expecting to win," he said. Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
The murder of John 'Goldfinger' Palmer in Essex still unsolved
In June 2015, John "Goldfinger" Palmer was shot six times in the garden of his secluded woodland mansion in Essex. But due to an oversight in the police response, the 65-year-old's death was put down to natural causes - until a murder investigation was eventually launched six days later. Ten years on, detectives are still hunting whoever killed the man once described as Britain's richest criminal. Palmer earned his nickname following the audacious 1983 Brink's-Mat men disguised in security uniforms stumbled upon £26m worth of gold, diamonds and cash in a warehouse just outside London Heathrow dealer Palmer was accused of melting down the gold in a shed in the garden of his mansion near years later, on 24 June 2015, he was gunned down as he was burning documents in the garden of his home in South Weald near prosecutors had charged him a month earlier with fraud, firearms possession and money laundering. At about 17:30 BST, a suspect believed to be a contract killer scaled his garden fence having seemingly watched him through a carved-out was killed in the only part of the garden not covered by was found unconscious by his son's girlfriend. Two police officers attended at about 19:20 and had assessed his death as "non-suspicious" on account of an operation wound from recent gall bladder surgery. A week later, a post-mortem examination revealed he was, in fact, shot in the chest, abdomen, arm, elbow, back and kidneys. "It's definitely not something I'm going to hide behind; we did make mistakes," said Det Supt Stephen Jennings of Essex Police, speaking to the BBC's Gangster podcast series in 2022."We didn't do enough background checks on John."Had we done that, the officers would have realised he had quite a substantial criminal background."They didn't really check the body well enough to discount any third-party involvement." Roy Ramm, former commander of specialist operations at New Scotland Yard, said it was a "very serious error"."You talk about the golden hour in investigations - that was lost, the day was lost, several days were lost - and I do not envy the senior investigating officer who picked up the case and tried to make progress with it," he told the BBC. "It was nigh on impossible."The two young police officers later faced disciplinary action. Humble beginnings Born in Solihull near Birmingham, Palmer was one of seven children raised in a poor single-parent was a serial truant and left school at 15 without learning to read or teenager worked in roofing but moved on to street trading, which included selling paraffin off the back of a moved to Bedminster in Bristol and made his first £100,000 (£2m in today's money) from a jewellery set up Scadlynn, a company trading precious scrap business partner Gareth Chappell was later jailed for 10 years for conspiring to handle stolen goods in connection with the Brink's-Mat raid. The gold When Palmer was identified as a Brink's-Mat suspect, he accused the Met Police of "overreacting"."I'm completely innocent of anything to do with this so-called 'Mats-Brink' bullion raid," he said, sitting beside a hotel pool in Tenerife in 1985, after being tracked down by BBC war reporter Kate continued to deliberately - or mistakenly - confuse the Brink's-Mat name when he stood trial at the Old Bailey in 1987, and it blew kisses to jurors after they found him not guilty of conspiring to handle stolen gold Brink's-Mat heist, and the cat-and-mouse chases that followed, have been dramatised in BBC One TV series The the final episode, which aired earlier this month, the fictional detective, played by Hugh Bonneville, signs off with: "It's Brink's-Mat - it's never over."Palmer seemed unable to shake off the spectre of the 1983 raid. Timeshare empire Instead of going to ground, Palmer became one of the biggest landowners in Ramm, who oversaw investigations into Palmer and the laundering of the Brink's-Mat gold in the 1990s, said his team was "convinced" he invested earnings from the robbery into the amassed an estimated fortune of £300m which he used to buy a West Country mansion, a French chateau with its own golf course, a jet, turboprop-powered helicopters, a £750,000 yacht, and a classic car collection including Porsches and and Elizabeth II were jointly ranked 105th in the Sunday Times Rich prosecutors accused him of masterminding a timeshare fraud which involved 16,000 victims who were scammed out of more than £ found him guilty of conspiracy to defraud at the Old Bailey and he was jailed for eight years in 2001. David Farrer KC, the lead prosecution counsel, described Palmer as the "biggest shark" in the timeshare waters - a quote that was rekindled for the final episode of The Palmer defended himself, Mr Farrer spent hours liaising with his opposite number in private."He could be quite pleasant and charming," said the retired barrister."That was invariably when he thought the case was going well for him. I've no doubt whatever of his potential violence. "If I had been anything other than prosecuting counsel he would have clouted me a few times."Mr Farrer recalled how during the trial, Palmer wore body armour and was shadowed by Special Branch officers because they were concerned a north London gang had put a contract out on him because he owed them served half his sentence, and in 2009, he moved in with partner Christina Ketley and their son at South Weald. Contract killer Speaking to the BBC's Crimewatch in 2016, Det Supt Jennings said the Spanish fraud prosecution - announced at the end of May 2015 - was the most likely motive for his was complicated when considering his links to the men behind the Hatton Garden heist of April 2015, the detective said, and because of recent "law enforcement intervention with organised crime families"."It was an opportunity for any one of those individuals at any subsequent trial to blame John for what took place and obviously he would not be in a position to answer that or refute it," said Det Supt Jennings. On the evening Essex Police revealed Palmer was murdered, Mr Farrer received an unexpected call from a Scotland Yard detective he had worked with more than 13 years earlier."I asked him, was it the Russians who did it?" Mr Farrer recalled."He said they thought it was much more likely this gang in north London, the Adams, and they certainly didn't think that it was directly anything to do with timeshare - in other words, the same people that caused Palmer to wear body armour during his trial."The Mail on Sunday singled out the Adams crime family as the brains behind the killing in a 2016 "Patsy" Adams, of Finsbury, north London, was jailed later that year for shooting an associate, and other members of the syndicate have received prison time in recent McCunn is more veteran lawyer led civil action against Palmer in the mid-1990s on behalf of insurers acting for the Brink's-Mat business."It could be linked to any number of activities he was known to be involved with," he told the BBC. 'Very dangerous people' A £100,000 reward was put up by Palmer's family and charity Crimestoppers in 2018 for information leading to a conviction - but that reward has Ramm said: "It is particularly important that this murder continues to be investigated because of who Palmer was, the role he played in the network of serious and organised criminals in the UK, in Spain - internationally."He offended and upset some very, very, dangerous people, and we need to know who they were." Palmer always maintained he did not know he had melted Brink's-Mat Ketley was due to stand trial in Madrid in 2019 in connection with the timeshare fraud, but the case against her was dropped. Other individuals were found guilty."Without doubt [Palmer] has made mistakes in his life; I believe he has paid for those mistakes," Ms Ketley told BBC Crimewatch."I was incredibly proud of the way he adjusted to a very normal life."She still owns the gated woodland property where Palmer was murdered. She did not respond to the BBC's approach for comment. A 43-year-old man from Rugby, Warwickshire, was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder in 2015, but was released without February 2017, detectives said a 50-year-old man from Tyneside, who lived in southern Spain, was questioned on suspicion of murder in what was a voluntary interview. He faced no further Police says it has taken hundreds of witness statements, pursued hundreds of lines of inquiries and examined thousands of pieces of the failures on the day Palmer was murdered, a force spokesperson said on Friday: "It is always best to secure and preserve crime scenes as soon as possible to achieve the best forensic evidence and regrettably that was not the case in this incident."However, outdoor crime scenes by their very nature have less forensic opportunities."We believe this murder was a professional contract killing and our experiences of similar cases such as this are that these types of murderers are forensically aware, limiting our opportunity to secure evidence." Mr Ramm thinks detectives will need an organised criminal to hand over key information as "leverage"."I think that's probably the only way it's going to be solved - someone on the inside becomes an informer." Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Aspinall upgraded to undisputed UFC champion as Jones retires
Manchester's Tom Aspinall has been upgraded to undisputed heavyweight champion as the UFC announced Jon Jones had officially decision, delivered by Dana White after a UFC Fight Night in Azerbaijan, brings to an end seven months of uncertainty in the heavyweight is just the third Briton to become a UFC champion and spent 19 months as interim champion."Jon Jones called us last night and retired," White said. "Jon Jones is officially retired. Tom Aspinall is the heavyweight champion of the UFC."Do I regret the time that I gave [Jones to decide]? Listen, if you look at what he's accomplished in the sport, no."Jones, 37, claimed the heavyweight title in March 2023 and fought Stipe Miocic last November, despite Aspinall claiming the interim belt the year campaigned for a fight with Jones but the American decided against accepting the UFC's is considered one of the best mixed martial artists of all time but will turn 38 in July and said previously fighting Aspinall wouldn't add to his "legacy".Aspinall reacted to the news on his social media, saying: "For you fans, it's time to get this heavyweight division going. An active undisputed champion."The Englishman is expected to defend the title this summer or early autumn and is likely to face number-one contender Ciryl has not fought since July 2024 and has spent just three minutes and 22 seconds in the octagon since 2023."I obviously feel bad for Tom that he lost all that time and obviously money, but we'll make it up to him," said White. "Tom Aspinall's a good guy. He's been incredible through this whole process. "He's been willing to do anything, fight him anywhere at any time and do this, and now he's like 'I'll fight anybody - you tell me who and I'll fight them'." Heavyweight uncertainty finally ends - analysis Aspinall goes down in history as the longest-reigning interim champion in the and desperate negotiations have left the division at a standstill for seven months and fans will be left wondering why the UFC let it go on for so November, White has insisted again and again the fight between Aspinall and Jones would be made. It wasn't until the last two weeks that the UFC president finally seemed to signal they weren't going to be able to convince such is the power of the star, 'Bones' Jones was permitted to keep the belt despite a lengthy injury absence and was allowed to fight Miocic, a retiring legend, instead of Aspinall on his allowances were understandable in many ways given the circumstances, but it is also true they happened because Jones has earned his right to even his power has a limit and the UFC has reached it. Now the heavyweight division will open a new chapter, with an Englishman at the is a seminal moment for UK MMA as Aspinall follows in the footsteps of Leon Edwards and Michael Bisping and becomes the first Briton to hold the UFC heavyweight title, arguably the most coveted title in Mancunian has played the devoted company man and should now be rewarded, although two-time title challenger Gane will not be an easy first will feel his reign as undisputed champion won't officially start until the next time his hand is raised in the octagon.
