From The Times of London:

“The price of dying as a direct result of the violence of Northern Ireland’s Troubles has been fixed at £12,000 by two former churchmen designated by the Government to come up with a solution to dealing with the province’s conflict-riven past.

“Lord Robin Eames, a former head of the Church of Ireland, and Denis Bradley, a former Catholic priest, have briefed Gordon Brown on their conclusions that families of every single victim of the Troubles, regardless of their status of civilian, member of the security forces or terrorist, should be given a ‘recognition’ payment of £12,000.

“If the Prime Minister accepts the recommendation by the Consultative Group on the Past it will mean that the family of the IRA member Thomas Begley—the ‘Shankill Bomber’ who blew himself up while planting a bomb inside a busy fishmongers store in Belfast in October 1993—would receive exactly the same sum as the nine innocent civilians he murdered in the attack.

“It would also mean that the same ‘recognition’ would go to the family of another notorious murder, Lenny Murphy, the so-called Shankill Butcher, who ran a loyalist gang that abducted dozens of innocent Catholic civilians from the streets of Belfast and tortured them before murdering them.”

Read the whole thing.