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Newsquest

Several Newsquest editorials call for return of capital punishment

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

August 19, 2011 | 2 min read

Several Newsquest local newspapers have posted an anonymous editorial suggesting that bringing back corporal and capital punishment is the way to deal with the looters.

The article (see image gallery) also calls for parents to be allowed ‘to discipline their offspring as they need to’, and suggests pensioners should be armed with a handgun on the day they receive their bus pass. The unknown author suggests that while arming the elderly could make those queuing in a post office ‘a bit more jumpy’, it would lead to more respect for elders.

The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade notes that the editor’s comment; which appeared in newspapers such as the Croydon Guardian, Sutton Guardian, Wandsworth Guardian, Sutton Comet, Lewisham & Greenwich News Shopper, Waltham Forest Guardian and Watford Observer; was also published in the letters’ pages of the Wimbledon Guardian and the Streatham Guardian.

It has since been reported that London group editor Andrew Parkes called the article "just a bit of fun" to journalism.co.uk following Greenslade's article.

Updated:

Newsquest has responded to Greenslade's article by contacting The Drum with the following message;

"You mention that the Croydon Guardian, Sutton Guardian and Sutton Comet have carried this editorial. They have not. Could you amend this immediately. Also the Sutton Comet does not even exist highlighting the innacuracies in Greenslade's story."

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