Moors Murderer Ian Brady is marking the 10th anniversary of his record-breaking "hunger-strike" at Ashworth Hosptial on Merseyside.
It is a decade since the period in October 1999 when doctors initiated a programme of "re-feeding" of Brady, who claims he is "a 71-year-old skeleton".
In a letter to his solicitor, copied to a news agency, the serial killer re-affirms his wish to die, and highlights the staggering expense to the public purse of prolonging his life.
It is estimated that it has cost the public purse more than £10m to keep brady alive for the last ten years.
In his letter Brady condemns what he sees as a waste of public money at Ashworth Hospital where he is held and fires a new broadside at the Mersey Care NHS Trust, responsible for operating the establishment.
Brady also shows that he harbours a deep hatred for the staff at Ashworth, especially members of the Prison Officers Association.
He claims POA staff broke his wrist in September 1999 when a groupe entered his room clad in riot gear and pinned him down for more than an hour while a search was carried out, before he was forcibly moved to a different ward. It was this incident that triggered his hunger strike.
In his letter Brady writes: "I request and expect nothing from the vermin here, except a coffin, and am politically force-fed as they can't leech a living from dead bodies."
Brady goes on to highlight the large sums of money expended on keeping patients at Ashworth, the high security hospital at Maghull, where he is incarcerated.
He also lambasts Ashworth staff who are members of the Prison Officers Association, claiming that they obtain university degrees with the sole intention of gaining higher pay grades, without delivering any improvement in the service to patients.
He said: "Degrees not only do not improve anything, but instead turn a once productive Ashworth Hospital into a regressive, zero-productive, stagnant prison overnight.
"The moral, professional and mental bankruptcy of Ashworth, where corrupt over-manning and continued fake employment of redundants means it now costs over £300,000 to store a tramp, immigrant or minor thief, per annum."
"Yet MPs pretend to be mystified as to why the NHS is collapsing under greed-motivated Trusts and prison wardens."
Brady is kept alive thanks to a liquid nutrition mix which is fed into his stomach through a nasal tube, in an operation carried out twice daily by medics and guards.
He spends most of his day in a room where he has a bed table and bookshelf. He has a radio and is an avid listener to BBC Radio 4.
He drinks only black coffee and since a smoking ban was introduced in July 2007 has abandoned his 40 a day cigarette habit.
Reports that food is sneaked into him - including chocolates - have been rubished by Ashworth insiders.
A rota of guards maintain a permanent suicide watch vigil on Brady with his cell door constantly kept open 24 hours a day.
In his letter Brady adds: "I had better conditions, company, and trust in the Durham Special Security Wing back in the 1960's, along with the Krays, and train robbers, than I've ever had, or ever will have, in this pigs-trough for substandard prison wardens and clerks, costing six times the per capita of an honest prison.
"In 'Trashworth', I am the only high-profile prisoner they possess to demonise the population in general, and fool the public with a seventy-year-old skeleton, with over ten years on force-fed hungerstrike.
"Yet another demonstration of the mentality here."
Considered to be one of the most horrific crimes in British history, Brady was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1966. At the time, the judge described him as "Wicked beyond belief, with no reasonable chance of reform".
Brady has staged a six-year legal battle with the Ashworth Authorities for a Mental Health Review Tribunal, which he wants held "in public" with media present.
If he could win a ruling that he is no longer insane, Brady could be returned to a regular prison, where he would have the right to refuse force-feeding and starve himself to death.
Earlier this year Brady said he was abandoning that legal battle and was resigned to the fact that he would remain at Ashworth.
Ashworth chiefs declined to confirm the cost-per-head of keeping a patient the hospital.
A spokesman for Mersey Care NHS Trust said: "It is not possible, or appropriate, to break down the cost of an individual patient's care.
"Ashworth Hospital is run by Mersey Care NHS Trust and operates within strict NHS guidelines and national legislation in terms of the care it provides, its security arrangements and financial management.
"It is wrong to suggest that nursing and other staff employed by the NHS seek qualifications for purely monetary reasons; many of the staff at Ashworth Hospital have dedicated most of their working lives to caring for the patients who are detained there under the Mental Health Act.
"Furthermore, we reiterate that Ashworth Hospital is part of the NHS, is not a prison and as such does not have guards, inmates or cells."
Andrew Inglis, St. Albans around 1 year, 4 months ago