Hatton Garden pensioners

But they didn't physically harm anyone! Pondering on what they might have done is stretching it! I can't believe so many of you are being so righteous about this when there are so many more serious crimes going on around the world!

Just because there are more serious crimes doesn't mean we can't comment on this one.

If these 'pensioners' are the culprits I bet they have records as long as your arm, going back decades. They haven't just developed a taste for excitement in their dotage.

I'm shedding no tears for wealthy diamond merchants but can't see how this crime is anything but very serious. Criminals involved in these type of things are often involved in high-level drug deals and violence.

Making moral judgements about how justifiable a crime is, is a slippery slope that can lead to so much argument. We live in a society that has rules (laws) its far better we all abide by them than not.
There is still a tendency to glamorise certain crimes...the Robin Hood effect if you will. What if someone was in the wrong place at the wrong time when this crime had taken place?
I very much doubt this theft was committed by a group of old men who met up down the pub and planned this as a one off event to fund their retirement - that's a Hollywood movie, that I'd probably watch!. Sadly however, this was much more about long service criminals who just happen to be a bit more mature than the usual culprits. We are all living longer and more active later lives so its logical that criminals will have longer 'working' lives.

I have complained formally to the BBC and await their reply.

I do not think the fact that no individual was hurt in the act of committing the crime is anyway of judging this crime.

There is no such thing as a victimless crime. This safe deposit was used by many of the diamond dealers and processors in Hatton Garden, they may have handled and traded diamonds worth millions in their work and may have lived comfortable lives but were not necessarilywealthy. It has been reported that because of the way the diamond market worked they could not insure their stock and many dealers have been left penniless and bankrupt after the thefts. No body hit on the head, but businesses destroyed and families penniless. No victim?

A heist like this will be the work of a team of experienced and hardened criminals. Their age is immaterial.

And so is the colour of their skin!

The victims of this crime were not pensioners salting away their nest eggs. Those who were interviewed after the event - and some were very reluctant to be identified - were jewellers/diamond merchants who kept valuable items there. And how could the thieves have managed to effect this very complex operation without information from someone with intimate knowledge of the building? It certainly wasn't a 'back of an envelope' scheme.

I understand that the boxes were better stocked than usual due to it being passover and the mainly Jewish diamond dealers had stored their stock in there as they would be shutting shop for a few days. Although it is easy to glamorise this as being a 'heist' the fact remains that many people, also elderly in some cases, have been left not just penniless, but owing money for the diamonds that were in their keeping but did not belong to them. My late DF was in the Met Police and worked on Kray and Richardson Brothers cases and he was first so say that there is nothing dashing and glamorous about these robbers so the comparisons being made in some areas of the media, showing these thieves as somehow relics of the good old glamorous days of the 60's are very far off the mark. Nobody may have been hurt physically, but many will have suffered financial ruin.
Agree with the comments regarding the radio and tv reporting, what relevance is their skin colour?

this is an interesting article (just the first bit - there other items on the page.

One police officer just after they reported the crime said some people were very upset because they could not say everything that was in their safe; family papers, family heirlooms. If you have ever been burgled (we have) it's sometimes days, weeks or even longer before you realise everything that's been taken. Last time, we didn't realise the car was also missing for a couple of hours after we got up in the morning and found the broken window. But what has been stolen and from whom is irrelevant, really. I think, going back to the OP, it's just typical of the trivialisation of news. Go for the human interest every time.