Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Kid’s higgledy Miggeldy over President quiz
Worboys ‘still potentially dangerous’
POLITICS is a difficult game – especially when you’re a child.
And an Irish schoolkid caused a stir after getting the President of Ireland’s name spectaculary wrong.
In a test the confused youngster wrote that it was “Miggeldy Higens”.
But it was put online the post earned thousands of likes and retweets.
Twitter user helllolucy posted the image and wrote: “Lads I’m f***ing howling – my neighbour is a primary school teacher and just put this on his insta story.
“For anybody that isn’t Irish, and doesn’t know, our President’s name is Michael D Higgins. Now known as Miggeldy Higens.
“Aw stop, I actually love kids they’re so funny.” TAXI rapist John Worboys was cleared for release despite his own lawyer saying it would “take a brave parole panel” to consider him for more open conditions.
The decision was also made four months after a senior prison official said the category A prisoner was “still potentially highly dangerous to the public”.
Parole Board officials granted the release of Worboys, who now goes by the name John Radford, in January but two victims are challenging the decision.
Phillippa Kaufmann QC, for the women, said in documents lodged at the High Court: “The usual course for an indeterminate-sentence prisoner is for him to progress through the prison system before being released.
“Ind e ed , Mr R adford ’s s o licitor remarked that it would ‘take a brave parole panel to consider a category A prisoner for open conditions’.”
She said as recently as September, the director of the Long Term and High Security Prisons Group found Worboys “must still be regarded as potentially highly dangerous to the public and needed to be detained in the highest conditions of security”.
Ms Kaufmann added the decision came despite officials seeing his jail diaries, in which he wrote of “young, highly sexed women”.
Worboys, 60, was jailed indefinitely in 2009 with a minimum eight-year term for assaults on 12 women. In 2015 Mr Justice Green ruled in a civil case that Worboys committed “over 105 rapes and sexual assaults” between 2002 and 2008.
Parole Board officials say Worboys has been “open and honest”, despite only admitting the crimes he was convicted of. Last month the board’s Professor Nick Hardwick and Martin Jones gave evidence on making the release decision at the Justice Select Committee.
Wo r b o y s ’ lawyer Edward Fitzgerald QC yesterday urged High Court judges to “exercise the greatest care” when
FOR JOHN WORBOYS
Jconsidering overturning it. He added: “[Worboys] has completed his tariff and he is therefore entitled to be released if it is not necessary for the protection of the public that he be detained.
“The Parole Board directed his release, he was entitled on their direction to freedom and has had that taken away.”
Mr Fitzgerald said Worboys, watching via video link from jail, “readily accepted” tougher licence conditions.
The court also heard he will be banned from Greater London and Sussex. Ms Kaufmann said the stricter regime was “hardly a condition imposed on someone believed to be open and honest”.
Earlier, Parole Board lawyers said lags out on licence have “ongoing involvement” with the Probation Service.
Judges barred Worboys’ release pending their decision, which was reserved until a date to be fixed.