ESCAPED British convict John Martin Scripps earned himself a grim paragraph in history today when he became the first westerner to be executed in Singapore for murder.

But it is far from likely that his fate will have earned him much sympathy back home as being the victim of a cruel, backward, ultimate punishment that is retained only by less-enlightened nations.

Quite the opposite, we believe.

The hanging of the evil Scripps - who killed and butchered a South African tourist and was implicated in two other murders in Thailand and another in Mexico - will be regarded by most people here as being just and fully deserved.

Furthermore, it will be viewed as a punishment that this country has been rash to terminate and it will be widely regretted that evil murderers like Ian Brady, Myra Hindley, Peter Sutcliffe and others who now dwell in prison at the public's expense did not meet the same just end that Scripps had in signally crime-free Singapore today.

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