One of the more curious aspects of ‘child care’ by the State, a state of being lauded by those on the left wing, is the utter abruptness with which you become an adult.

In normal life, by which I am old fashioned enough to mean a life in which you are brought up by both your Mother and the very same man who fathered you, admittedly a near forgotten concept today, adulthood is a gradual process; a process subject to many discussions, arguments even, an ongoing process.

An entire forest has been consumed writing about the way in which ‘children’ morph into ‘adults’ aided, abetted and sometimes comprehensively derailed by parents. We agonise over a generation ‘still living at home at 25′; the soap opera genre fills endless hours with the ‘you’re not going out in that’ – ‘I’m seventeen Dad, it’s my life’ conversation. Memoirs wail over lost opportunities ‘I had to stay and look after Mother’; jobs lost because ‘Australia was too far away’. Biographies detail the sexual inclinations kept hidden until parents were safely six foot under; career paths thrown overboard in the 30s when Father was no longer around to whine piteously that the son who should have been a lawyer was growing his hair and surfing on Bondi Beach.

It is a world entirely unknown to those who have been in care. ‘In care’ means that the day you are 16, the State washes its hands of you. Utterly, totally, completely. Not only washes its hands of you, but has rules and regulations in place to ensure that you do not keep up any of the tenuous connections you might have formed with your temporary – shall we call them ‘Statents’?

Nobody will comment on what you wear at 17. There is no Sunday lunch bubbling on the stove that you can drag an unwilling boyfriend to, in order that his flaws can be exposed under the unrelenting familial gaze. No occasional ‘hand-out’ with a harrumph from the bank of Dad. You can’t join in with the communal moan as friends complain that they could be having fun at Christmas, but they ‘have to go home’. No one to blame but yourself for job opportunities lost. Your sexuality is entirely free to go in whatever direction it choses. You can’t blame your Mother for ‘making me homosexual’.

Personally I looked on these ‘handicaps’ as a huge advantage in life – but that is my personality. I prefer to focus on the positive – that doesn’t mean that I have forgotten the sheer terror of waking up in a small ground floor room in Brixton and realising that from now on, I was  unremittingly my own responsibility. I was 16. I had – I remember it only too well – a pair of jeans, a polo neck jumper, a pair of black walking shoes, a bright green skirt ‘with braces’ (yeah, well, there was no one to form my fashion sense either!) all bought for me after much deliberation by Miss Grey in Staines. It had taken me half a day to figure out how far I could make the £20 go…it included a length of fabric from which I made myself a ghastly turquoise and yellow mini dress. Really the only possession I have that dates before June 1st 1966 is a photograph of me in that bloody dress outside that little room in Brixton. That and a cigarette case that belonged to Ginny – I still have it if you are reading this Ginny!

‘Adulthood’ occurs overnight if you are in care. It is not just a birthday. It is a statement of fact. If you want someone to remember your birthday next year – you had better start making friends fast. If you want to eat, you’d better start learning to cook – fast. It is the deep end of the swimming pool of life, in the freezing mid winter. Some people never do make it to the surface.

One such person was ‘Suzi’ who appears in the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children report. Suzi was one of the girls abused in Rochdale. Groomed. By grooming, they seem to mean that Suzi had learnt that sex was a useful currency to obtain food – and drink. Rather too much drink in Suzi’s case. And drugs. Probably clothes too, because we all need them. And eventually, a baby.

The ‘Social’ stayed in touch with Suzi. Surprised? Didn’t I say they let go completely at 16? I did, but if you are surprised, you skipped over a sentence. There was a child involved. The baby. Suzi might be an adult, expected to figure out life for herself, but there was a bawling, squalling, real life child for the child protection team to tick boxes over and hold meetings about.  The box they ticked was ‘at risk‘. That was their job description: dealing with children ‘at risk’. So they warned Suzi that they might have to take the baby away from her, if she didn’t ‘grow up’ overnight.

Suzi told two separate agencies that she was being sexually abused when she was 15. Frequently. Nobody took her seriously. It was a lifestyle choice. The Police did make enquiries with the fast food outlet that she alleged was part of a ring abusing her – that led to repercussions from the less than impressed adults who were abusing her. Suzi drank more than ever, and took to self harming. A waste of time because no one cared that she was slashing herself – but they did care that she might be neglecting her baby. They were worried about all those male visitors to the house…

Child protection processes were instigated in respect of the baby. Such a cold phrase.

Today, we have yet another report. It purports to detail what went wrong with Suzi and her young friends. It is careful to give a right to reply to anyone it even mildly chastises. It is full of platitudes. Lessons will be learnt. Investigations identified 12 members of staff, including social workers and senior managers, whose conduct was culpable. Five have already left the authority – to work in the same job in another authority? We are not told. Seven await their fate. It will be mild, we can be sure of that.

We have endless column inches consuming more dead trees than Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement but with scarcely concealed racism, dancing around the fact that eight of the nine offenders were of Pakistani origin. It locks into the Colonial myth of dark foreigners abusing our white girls. It suits the political agenda of the moment regarding immigration. It gives everyone a chance to say what they really think of the Pakistani’s.

We have more column inches devoted to the question of the future employment of the various heads of department. ‘Heads should roll’ cry the British public.

South Yorkshire Police are throwing £500,000 into a pot to pay for an analyst to work across the force ‘understanding’ the exploitation issue. A crown prosecutor dedicated to child sex cases in the force area, whose diary will be controlled by officers to prioritise the most urgent cases. Terrific, we can expect more prosecutions in cases like this. Sadly we will only get ‘more prosecutions’ if more young girls are hauled through the courts to describe in graphic detail exactly how the nasty man forced his penis on her.

What we DON’T have, what nobody is even suggesting, not even tentatively, is that we have a programme to make sure that the horse doesn’t feel the need to bolt from the stable.

A family isn’t just a place where you have a roof over your head and one or two meals a day. It is not a technical statement of fact. It is a support network that you throw off gradually, as you feel competent to do so. It is the one door in the entire nation that you can knock on, unexpectedly, on Christmas Day; and for all the rows, the arguments, the bitterness, have that door opened by someone with a look of delight on their face – not a ‘Good God, what are you doing here’.

Until such time as State care recognises that people need that anchor, that one door they can always turn to; that they don’t grow up overnight just because it’s September the 27th, or April the 14th, then girls like Suzi will find themselves someone, anyone, who will pay attention to them when they are feeling low and scared, and since they start their adult life with sod all except their bodies, then they will trade those bodies.

Prosecuting the offenders, hounding every Pakistani taxi driver out of the country who might be involved:

The report notes that some progress has been made in removing the operational licences of taxi drivers and fast-food outlets that have come under suspicion. An off-licence was also closed.

Rolling heads from one authority to another:

Ms Eastwood was allowed to take early retirement in July last year and Mr Garner resigned three months later.

Is only so much sticking plaster to appease the knee jerk public. Girls like Suzi will still be kicked out of care at 16 with no one to turn to.

I’d be more impressed if that half million had been put into a fund to send them a birthday card every year, phone them up once a month and check they are wearing their vest, tell them they’ve got too thin and moan about the washing they’ve brought with them…

That’s what they really need. If we’ve got the money to fund Ms Eastwood’s early retirement, or pay for an analyst to figure out why the taxi drivers weren’t prosecuted, then we had the money to do that…

I’ve just heard from Barnardos for the second time in 49 years, they’ve sent me a tick box questionnaire wanting to know whether ‘the service met my expectation’ and if ‘my cultural and ethnic backgrounds were respected by staff’. They’ve given me two lines to fill in ‘what would have improved your experience’. I couldn’t fit this blog post into two lines so I’ve torn the questionnaire up.

What is terrorism? As the old adage goes, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. But, in truth, that implies a certain degree of moral relativism which is a cop-out. In the end, there is a right and a wrong. Terrorism is the calculated use of extreme violence by any means, against anybody, outside the peculiar forum of the rules of war followed by “civilised” nations, and in the pursuit of ideological goals. I appreciate that it is quite proper to form the view that all war is by definition uncivilised, but you take the point.

The theory of terrorism is well-known and understood. On the one hand there is the role of terror itself. As the well-known saying goes, kill one, frighten a thousand. On the other hand Marxist-Leninist theory always emphasised the usefulness of acts of terror in provoking over reaction from the established government, thus creating resentment amongst the governed which could in turn be exploited in the revolutionary cause.

Yesterday we had our own “terrorist incident” in the appalling events in Greenwich in which a soldier was, it appears, first run down, and then hacked to pieces, possibly beheaded.

I have seen the video footage of one of the (alleged) perpetrators taken shortly after he had dragged his unfortunate victim into the middle of the road. Machete and carving knife in blood soaked hand, he voiced his world view in a decidedly jumbled London patios:

“We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.”

With this profound statement made, he shambled back across the road towards the wrecked and eviscerated body of his victim, to engage in further badinage with some rather brave passers-by. For reasons which seem obscure, and somewhat inconsistent with his previously expressed concern for the fairer sex, he was apparently quite insistent that no one other than women would be allowed to be near the body.

It seems a little ironic then that when the armed response team turned up, the officer who slotted him with a slug or two of lead was a woman.

I hope that the Met made sure that she was wearing a Burkha in order to avoid impinging on his cultural sensitivities. I expect that even as we speak, his no win, no fee, lawyers will be preparing a case for the enormous damages award for the infringement of his human rights caused by shooting him with a non halal bullet.

• Is he a terrorist? Watching him, he made a pretty piss poor one. I understand that he is believed to be of Nigerian birth, having come to this country some years ago. Having thus nested in his generous host, he set about butchering one of its fine young people in a cowardly attack (running an unsuspecting victim down with a car before two of you set on him with weapons is, in my view, cowardly).

Why? A structured, simple, moral code, embracing and welcoming, giving the comfort which is the essential of all who commit ultimate atrocities, absolute and complete moral certainty, and hence complete disconnection with reality. Our lands? I suspect he had never been east of Peckham since arriving in our green and pleasant land. Our women? How revealing that he should see women as chattels of some unspecified master race.

In one sense, having weighed up this moronic, brutal, no-mark, I found it hard to grant him the status of “terrorist”. It seemed that “nutter” might be a better label. However, that is not quite accurate.

Listening the BBC this morning, one has the usual fare. Since the Beeb itself is said to be non political, it cannot take an overt political line. But what it can do is set up a barrage of interviews with “authorities” and “community leaders” who all more or less peddle the same Establishment line:

• No judgments yet, please, we don’t know all the facts.
• This is not a manifestation of Islam at all anyway.
• Don’t get emotional about this!

However, thanks to the wonders of modern social networking, and perhaps rather to the Establishment’s consternation, I think we all rather do know what happened. And in this response there is an element of putting one’s head in the sand.

One of the things that what I call the liberal or intellectual Establishment cannot get its head around is that there are people in the world who are unutterably and unspeakably evil, and opposed to every aspect of democratic civil society as we have come to understand it after about 2,000 years of troubled, and often bloody and cruel, European history. This concept is very difficult for the liberal Establishment to understand, because it involves a degree of moral compass, based on Judeo-Christian principles, and suggests that there is a limit to moral relativism which the intellectual elite have championed.

In one sense, the cruel, vicious and utterly inhumane perpetrators of yesterday’s event are the product of the prevailing post-war intellectual view that anything goes, that “multi-culturalism” is not merely something which has to be carefully managed, but is actually to be positively encouraged. It is an intellectual system which invokes its own forms of terrorism, demonising and shouting down anyone who voiced concerns about the direction of travel as “racist”.

I am not going to do the “Religion of Peace” jibe, at least not in that back-handed way. However, what is clear is that within Islam there is a particular strain of ideology which is utterly inimical to what I will call, in shorthand, civilised values. It is rooted in the philosophy of Wahhabism, fundamentalist and strident Islam which emerged in Saudi Arabia in the eighteenth century, and which is the corner stone of al Qaeda ideology. It counts amongst its goals the creation of a single and unified Caliphate across the “Islamic” world of the Middle East and Asian sub-continent, although there are plainly some adherents within this country who take the view that the Islamic world should include everyone, and that the black flag of Islam should fly over Downing Street. This is a strain of ideology which has strong roots in many Middle Eastern and Pakistani communities, and it appears to me that its trade marks include fanaticism, total intolerance of anything other than the pure interpretation of holy law as understood by its adherents, a strange and cultish fascination with death and causing death, the more gruesome the better – hence this love of beheadings and mass killings – and also an attitude to women which would make a medieval catholic bishop look like Germaine Greer. It is hugely anti Semitic and paranoid.

I have often considered that it is a curious ideology which denounces and despises everything the western world stands for, but ironically has a particularly loving fascination with the internet and mobile phones, Semtex, the Kalashnikov and international travel. It is the ideology which justifies ritual beheadings of unarmed prisoners, or putting a bullet in the bullet in the head of a 14 year old girl, Malala Yousafzai, because she had dared to campaign for education for girls. That sort of thing. Its default position is death. Death to the Unbeliever, of Kafir, and glorious martyrdom. It is a cult of death.

In 1996 the academic Samuel Huntington published a book called “The Clash of Civilisations” in which he argued that the primary cause of conflict in the post Cold War world would be the clash of cultural and religious identities. Whilst I am not a total historical determinist, I can see the force in his thesis, but would rename it: the Clash of Civilisation against the Uncivilised.

It is not without moral ambiguity. The forays into Iraq and Afghanistan have been ill thought through, even disastrous. And “we” are busily assassinating people in Pakistan and elsewhere with drones. All of these are morally complex issues, and there are paradoxes concerning all of them. These two animals are in some ways a response. They are moronic animals, devoid of conscience and morality. In themselves they are insignificant, and could best be described as insane. But that is not quite adequate. In a sense they are also manifestation of a strain of ideology which I believe is a real threat to civilisation as we recognise it, and which will seek out confrontation with all who do not bow before it. That is an uncomfortable thought for the intellectual Establishment, which has for so long been intrinsically hostile to the values which millions have died to uphold. We might begin by getting our own house in order, and politely asking those who seek refuge in this country if they espouse views which would destroy its freedoms – to leave.

The intellectual Establishment, particularly many in the judiciary, would chide me for having double standards, for being a threat to human rights, for cultural intolerance, so forth. I would perhaps agree, but refer them to the blood on the streets of Woolwich. Whether these perpetrators are terrorists or psychotics might be debated. I would prefer to call them straws in the wind.

Can I pose a question to you? When you go to fill up your car, do you search out the most expensive petrol to buy? No?

Surely you have a moral duty to do so? You earn your money in the UK, yes? Then surely just because the law currently allows you to shop around for the cheapest place to buy your petrol that is no excuse for taking advantage of the law? If you live near the southern ports, do you think it reasonable to cross the channel to buy cigarettes and wine in France?

Are you not exhibiting signs of tax avoidance by shopping around, since certainly VAT increases in direct proportion to the base price – the more you pay for fuel, the more VAT the government recovers? Wouldn’t that be behaving like our MPs who claimed that maximising their expenses was ‘allowed’ by the rules? 

So do you think that perhaps you have a moral duty to pay as much into the exchequer as possible, or do you think the government should pass laws that stop you shopping around for the cheapest fuel, forcing you to pay the maximum for fuel that you could, out of the money you earn in the UK?

Or does size matter? Do you only have this moral duty when you reach a certain income bracket? Can morality be adjusted to ‘fit’ like a pair of too long trousers?

I’m sure you have twigged why I am asking – the spectacle of first Google in the UK, and now Apple in the US being forced to take the ‘perps’ walk and be hauled in front of the nation like naughty schoolboys to have their bottom smacked for shopping around and finding the cheapest place to pay their taxes – as allowed by the laws passed by those very same MPs? If they do have a moral duty to pay more than the law says they should, then we need to be told where the cut off point is; shall we have jobs advertised in the Guardian – a vacancy arrives for a new Director of Social Services: Pay scale – ‘off the wall’, morality laws apply! Should Lottery tickets carry a warning that ‘morality laws may apply if this is a winning ticket’. Will we see afternoon TV adverts asking whether ‘you were told or understood’ that morality laws could apply to you if your sister bought you a winning lottery ticket?

Just asking like. Because we seem to be entering a whole new world of laws that only apply in certain emotive circumstances, according to the result of the latest focus group. Pinch a bottom in Gateshead when you are a nonentity and you are a cheeky chappy, pinch a bottom 40 years ago and then become famous, and you are a paedophile. Have sex with 14 Pakistani’s and you are exercising a ‘lifestyle choice’; refuse to have sex with one geriatric entertainer and you are a traumatised victim for life. Shop around for where to pay your fag tax and you are a hard pressed working man, shop around for where to pay your corporation tax and you are an evil conglomerate.

It is not just in the land of law that the victimal hierarchy applies; we have a classic example in the world of hand outs. Specifically hand-outs in respect of sex. This is not to be confused with prostitution, I know both of them involve a payment for sex, but this is totally different. It is understandable if you are confused. One is a voluntary payment made by the purchaser to a hard pressed ‘sex worker’ honestly toiling her way through the beds – or back seats – of the nation’s menfolk; the other is a retrospective payment for ‘closure’ made by the nation’s tax payers 40 years later to people who were too scared to put their hand out up at the time.

We have had Mssrs Pannone & Co complaining that Savile’s estate which had been left to several charities for the benefit of unknown victims of something or other was ‘being stripped out. It’s as if they’ve thought they can make money out of this, as if they’ve viewed the whole thing as a gravy train’.

Wow! We can’t have victims of say quadriplegia viewing Savile’s estate as a gravy train – that money should be going to proper victims.  Real victims of groping and pinching and serious stuff like that.

Except that not everybody agrees. A surprising ‘not everybody’. Like The National Association for People Abused in Childhood.

They have ‘concerns about large amounts of money being given directly to victims‘. They think ‘It’s not always helpful to dole money out to individual survivors’, in fact their Chief Executive says: ’I know from personal experience that for vulnerable people, receiving large sums of money is not always the best thing. Money should always come with an offer of help and support. We think survivor organisations are better placed to manage that.’

Or put another way – they think they should be in the first carriage of the gravy train, quite who should be in the second carriage is not clear – the quadriplegics or the gluteus maximus tāctumii?

They’ll be lucky if there’s even standing room – the lawyers are already in the window seats, full English breakfast and an ironed copy of the Times on order. Leafing through their Latin phrasebook to find a suitable term for ‘me first’!

Will the ‘morality laws’ apply to the winners when the train finally comes to rest?

LETTER FROM THE PRIME MINISTER, THE RT.HON. DAVID CAMERON, TO THE NATION

Dear Swivel eyed loons, closet racists, fruitcakes, bigots, homophobes, NIMBYs, BANANAs, NUMBPYDs and other taxpayers,

As you all realise, my carefully selected metrosexual inner circle and I are absolutely right in everything we do and we feel intensely relaxed about our decision to roll out an ambitious, nationwide programme of name-calling and offence-giving.

As I have said before, “We are all in this together”. What this actually means is quite simple. On the one hand you unposh and poor people are “in this”, meaning in a big pile of doo doo and consequently have to suffer the pain of higher taxes, pay freezes, failing pensions, job losses, higher living costs, mass immigration and failing public services.

Meanwhile, we of the gilded classes in the Politics/Intergovernmental/Media/Public sectors (PIMPS) will continue to get pay increases, lavish expenses, generous pensions, job security and/or guarantee of reemployment. We of course are the “together” part of that phrase by which of course I mean that we are together in our enjoyment of these advantages that you idiot taxpayers provide for us.

But, of course, this is insufficient for our modern 21st century politics, so we have decided to add to your pain by insulting most of you, especially those who actually contribute to society.

Our nudge-units and policy wonks have used all of the expensive, specialised training that they received at public school and from their Politics, Philosophy and Economics degrees to construct and deliver an impressive series of insults to you all.

We are hurling verbal insults at you, insulting your sensibilities by imposing eye-wateringly mad policies and insulting your intelligence by everything we do and say.

This is the right thing to do and I am confident that you will remember this and thank us at the next election.

Yours sincerely,

David Cameron

*NIMBY = Not in My Back Yard
BANANA = Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything
NUMBPYD = Not up my back passage you don’t

© Daedalus X. Parrot

The Crymlyn Bog is one of the less salubrious parts of Wales. The Romans avoided it, the Welsh had no wish to live in it, and until a wealthy Victorian businessman hired local labour to spend their days up to their armpits in its foul peat water and construct the Tennant canal, it was a place avoided by all sensible human beings. The Tennant canal brought coal from the Neath valley, covering the area in coal dust; eventually the railways moved in and built the Dan y Graig depot where they cleaned and repaired the steam trains; the Luftwaffe bombed it senseless, until finally it housed the first municipal cemetery – the dead had no choice in resting there. You don’t want to go there. Hah! I almost forgot to mention the riveting Tir John landfill site, where the rest of Swansea dumps its rubbish.

Some have little choice in the matter; the vulnerable, the mentally ill, the inadequate, the flotsam and jetsam of modern life, the ‘work in progress’ of the nation’s caring, sharing social workers. It is a popular place to ‘place in accommodation’ as housing someone in a damp, dingy, ex-miners cottage is euphemistically known and leaving them to figure out how to sustain body and soul with only a cemetery for company and neither sight nor sound of a shop. There is a park and ride into central Swansea, I know it well, I often used it. Dismal place, the only excitement is betting on how much of your car will still be left in its parking spot when you return.

No doubt young Kirsty used the bus from the park and ride when she went into town to meet her social worker. We don’t know a lot about Kirsty. We know she has three children. We know she is 22 now. We know she has ‘mental health issues’ as it is described these days. That state of constant anger at her lot in life. We don’t know exactly what she is angry about – do her children still live with her full time? We shall not be allowed that information. The Family courts operate in secrecy, when they remove children to a ‘place of safety’, they do so behind closed doors.  Was Kirsty herself in care? We don’t know that either. All we know is that a roof over her head in the unlovely Dan y Graig road overlooking the cemetery and a Social Worker are the key points in her life. We can surmise though.

Kirsty went to see her Social Worker last year. She was angry, once again. Had her children been removed? A promise to rehouse broken? Who knows! All we do know is that the outcome of that meeting was that she tipped a jug of water over the head of the Social Worker, no explanation was given by this caring professional, the ‘adult’ in Kirsty’s life – now morphed into ”upset and shocked victim”. If the Social Worker did support Kirsty in court and explain what it was that had gone so wrong in her young life, it was not reported. The Social Worker was there purely as ‘victim’. 

Kirsty was given an 18 month conditional discharge, ordered to pay £150 compensation to the ‘victim’, £85 court costs and a £15 ‘victim’ surcharge. Presumably out of her benefits, for there is no mention of a job.

I am sure that spending your working hours ‘supporting’ the Kirsty’s of this world is deeply challenging. Infuriating. Wearing. Depressing even. That is why you get paid around five times young Kirsty’s benefits, and you can afford not to live in Dan y Graig road. I know that when I emerged from similar households I would sometimes go and park in the nearest ‘safe’ car park and just hold my head in my hands. Sometimes it become unbearable. I don’t believe that I ever lost sight of the fact that the inhabitants of Dan y Graig road were the victims, not me. I got to drive home at the end of the day. There was no escape for them.

Three months later, it was time for Kirsty’s next interview with her Social Worker. Same one? Who knows, they are nameless unattributable figures these days. If it wasn’t the same one, this one had the same instincts…

Kirsty reported that she had lost the keys to her ‘home’ on Dan y Graig road. Two weeks beforehand. God knows where she had been sleeping in the meantime. Boyfriend? Shop doorway? Where were the children? With a neighbour?

What do you think the Social Worker did for her? Phoned a locksmith? Arranged for duplicate keys from the Housing Manager? Checked that the children were all right? We don’t know. If she did, it made no difference to Kirsty – once again she left the office angry and upset.

What we do know is that the Social Worker remembered that Kirsty had a Guinea Pig – so she phoned the RSPCA. They got into Kirsty’s flat for her. Got a warrant and everything to do so. Whether they thought to let Kirsty back in is not recorded, because all they were interested in was the Guinea Pig. They looked through the window and saw it – four furry feet in the air – patently a potential resident of the cemetery opposite.

They took Kirsty to court; now the Guinea Pig was a ‘victim’.

The prosecution followed a tip-off from a social worker, last October, that the 22-year-old, of Dan y Graig Road, Port Tenant, had abandoned the animal.

Prosecutor John Tarrant told the court: “A social worker learnt that she had lost the keys to her house a fortnight ago and was aware that she had a guinea pig.

“An inspector went to the address and he could see through a window and saw the body of a white and brown guinea pig.”

The inspector, Neill Manley, then took some photographs before setting about acquiring a warrant to enter the house.

Mr Tarrant told magistrates what Mr Manley discovered saying: “He recorded a strong decomposing smell and found the guinea pig laying dead with an empty water bottle, no food and a cage full of faeces.

“The type of cage was not suitable for anything other than short term. While there were some toys inside it was far too small.”

A postmortem was carried out on the animal which revealed the cause of death as being starvation.

In mitigation David James pointed to the fact that his client, a mother of three, had “mental health issues”. The prosecution did not accept the mitigation.

Kirsty will be back in court on May 28th to find out what her punishment is this time. The Social Worker does not appear to have said anything in her favour in court, yet again.

I doubt that Kirsty is a particularly loveable character. I daresay she displays what is euphemistically known as ‘challenging behaviour’. She may well be one of those characters who 50 years ago would have lived within the confines of a community hospital. Possibly carefully protected from getting pregnant in the first place. Nowadays we have ‘care in the community’ and an army of highly paid professionals to organise the life of the Kirsty’s of this world.

Works well doesn’t it?

Purely my personal opinion, but it seems to me that Kirsty might be a lot better off without a social worker…

h/t The sharp eyed Edna – yet again!

1,466 new laws were introduced in the last year, compared with 1,355 in 2011, every last one of them by a government that pledged to ‘cut red tape’.

1,466 new ways in which you could be criminalised.

Social Workers want the Government to give them right of entry to your home even though you are not a ‘vulnerable person’ under any definition.

Rules of evidence have been changed so that ‘allegations’ become ‘proof’ as elderly Britons are denounced as criminals after death by senior policemen.

The country is mired in debt – and yet has voted into power a government that is borrowing more than the last government.

- and finally the British public rose up and become politically aware…

Why? Because some swivel-eyed loon in the Conservative party has called other swivel-eyed loons in the Conservative party, er, “swivel eyed loons”.

And the public leapt to their iPhones as one man, and er, cracked jokes…

And then went back to sleep.

]]> http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/by-the-light-of-the-swivel-eyed-loon/feed/ 25 http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/by-the-light-of-the-swivel-eyed-loon/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/V87kFC4DT1w/ http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/a-stickler-for-the-truth/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 11:14:48 +0000 Anna Raccoon http://www.annaraccoon.com/?p=29966

The BBC programme Newsnight and its ability to truthfully portray events has been of interest to Raccoonistas for some time now. It is fair to say that we have a distinctly jaundiced view of its agenda.

We formed that opinion back in the days when ‘someone’ mysteriously leaked to a number of journalists that a programme had been suppressed ‘from up on high’ (that old conspiracy chestnut) – the original Meirion Jones ‘story any journalist would want’ on Jimmy Savile. Equally mysteriously, information gleaned for that programme, which was later proved to have been correctly decided by Peter Rippon to have been of a lower standard than you should if not could expect from the BBC, found its way to ITV and the result was the ‘Exposure’ programme made by Mark Williams-Thomas, which thankfully was overlooked for its expected BAFTA award, leaving poor Mark ‘gutted’……

Newsnight was not finished in its spirited attempt to ruin the reputation of the BBC, a month later they commissioned Angus Stickler of the laughable ‘Bureau of Investigative Journalism’ to make the appalling documentary which resulted in Lord McAlpine returning from his sojourn in Italy to the beat of the lawyer’s drum.

You might have thought, after the undignified belly-flop performed by the dyed in the wool Labour supporting Bureau of Investigative Churnalism – landing wallet up in front of Lord McAlpine’s lawyers – that we might have heard the last of them. But no! After costing the BBC £185,000 plus undisclosed costs, Angus ‘I’m a Stickler for the Truth’  has succeeded in wounding the BBC once more.

Yesterday, the BBC was forced to apologise to the military charity Help for Heroes, after yet another programme made by Angus ’I'm a Stickler for the Truth’ was shown to be somewhat short on the old veracity. Indeed, the internal investigation discovered that “there was no evidence to back Newsnight’s claim about Help for Heroes”.

The BBC portrayed criticisms about overall support by a number of agencies as specific criticisms of Help for Heroes. This unfair impression was reinforced by our coverage of the story in other outlets.

“In addition, the Newsnight report contained interviews with two contributors which were edited in a way which misrepresented their views.”

So, the BBC has put its hands up and accepted the blame for yet another programme made by Angus Stickler! Why were they so enamoured of this journalist whose coverage of the original North Wales Children’s Home ‘abuse’ had already been comprehensively rubbished.  His impeccable left-wing credentials may have been partly to blame.

It is with some relief that we note that Newsnight now has a new Editor. Ian Katz. Will we now see more balanced reporting?

Hmmm. Ian Katz was formerly Deputy Editor of….er, The Guardian. Not looking good is it? There he displayed the left-wing dislike of Republican politicians to amusing effect:

Clark County

In August 2004, for the US presidential election, the daily G2 supplement launched an experimental letter-writing campaign in Clark County, Ohio, an average-sized county in a swing state.

G2 editor Ian Katz bought a voter list from the county for $25 and asked readers to write to people listed as undecided in the election, giving them an impression of the international view and the importance of voting against US President George W. Bush.

The paper scrapped “Operation Clark County” on 21 October 2004 after first publishing a column of responses – nearly all of them outraged – to the campaign under the headline “Dear Limey assholes”.

The public backlash against the campaign likely contributed to Bush’s victory in Clark County.

That went well! One American writer who railed against this ‘Guardian initiative’, memorably described the Guardian readers who responded as ’stupid, yellow-toothed pansies‘. I must remember that one!

20 years editing the Guardian? Does that give you the expertise to stand up to reporters who want to produce badly researched and evidenced programmes because they have a ‘thing’ about the subject? We shall see.

Ian is a typical left wing luvvy from the Islington set. He lives in a ‘handsome town house in Islington’ with his ‘tall and athletic-looking, with great hair – blonde, thick, blow-dried’ wife. (It’s her hair that is thick, not her!) How do I know? Well because Justine was part of the ‘Klondyke rush to pitch a stake in cyberspace [which] led otherwise perfectly sensible people to resign from their jobs in a frenzy of e-Commerce excitement only to come a-cropper after the millions failed to materialise from the ether. Justine, however, had young children and was motivated by a desire to achieve that most elusive Fata Morgana of modern motherhood: a work-life balance.’

And she did. With Mumsnet, that den of patronising online conversations about cracked nipples, the merits of cloth versus disposable nappies, and why little Tarquin won’t eat his organic carrot bake. The spiritual home of the phrase ‘baby dancing’ as shorthand for sex…Sheesh!

I fear Newsnight will continue going to the dogs, hounded headed by Katz.

Johann Hari was a stickler for the truth too….

Status symbols are always a fascination for me. In parts of famine afflicted Africa, your wife having a huge backside is considered a desirable asset for the ambitious young man; in France it is the size of your potager and its ability to nourish your youngsters that counts. England, a country which neither knows famine nor that a diet of coke and crisps leads to obese youngsters, status symbols reflect your ability to spend twice as much as anyone else on basic products.

Thus the precise shade of your front door tells passers-by that either you are the sort of person who bought a tin of Tesco Basic ‘Blue’, or even a cut price tin from Poundland – or that you paid three times the price for a hand mixed pot of Farrow and Blue ‘Mansion House Blue’. It matters; you won’t find the bank managers wife sporting Tesco’s basic ‘Blue’ on her Cotswold pile.

One of the more endearing status symbols is that of personal number plates for your car. RH 1 on the back plate of your car is a signal to the hoi poloi that it is worth bursting a couple of valves and speeding up to peer in the tinted windows and speculate on the identity of the occupant. In any other country a number plate is just the way the police identify you when you sit outside the bank with four masked men in the back seat; it is purely functional.

In Britain, it is symbol of your importance, and therefore you must pay dearly for it. Some believe that it is an investment, and in a few years another hairy lady will come along and offer you more than you paid for DI KES…which is surely the reason why Nick Clegg is rumoured to be hanging onto TW4 T 1 for grim death. Some one else will surely come along for whom that number would be just perfect – now is not the moment for Lib-Dems to be selling out!

Unfortunately for Andrew Duffield, now is not the time to find a willing buyer for L16 DEM. He has already sold out, jumping ship to the Labour Party after twice unsuccessfully bidding for MPdom as a Lib-Dem. The number plate is an embarrassment for this new Labourite, and he is looking for £500 for it……(willing to part ex-for TW4T 1…).

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Back to other status symbols – where you shop! Poundland, having courted the upper classes by accepting American Express credit cards (No! Really!) is now going downmarket, and reducing itself to 97p Land. The upstart 99p Land is gaining ground on it as austerity bites, and not being the full pound is the way to combat this…’I can’t believe it’s not a pound’ is the cry in the aisles. They must know what they’re doing, they posted record profits last year.

In Venezuela, the ‘to die for’ status symbol is a roll of toilet paper in the smallest room. All the fault of the media apparently – not printing enough newspapers?

Russia, the land of dour babushkas and never ending queues for a miserable slice of bread, is now being touted in expensive TV adverts as the destination of choice for the discerning austerity escapee. Get a healthy glow in Chernobyl, escape global warming in Siberia, endure the wonders of the Moscow theatre, relive the Cuban crisis in Severomorsk, now there’s a status symbol to brag to the neighbours about.

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All this talk of status symbols have reminded Ms Raccoon that she is shortly to join the movers and shakers within striking range of Bergerac, well at least those who can afford the 50 Euro fare, and journey to Marrakech. Not wishing to appear out of kilter with the jet set, can anyone advise of the latest portable status symbol that I could strike a pose with? What should I be touting about my person to let any other English people know that I am not one of your ornery types, but up there with the best of them? Someone suggested one diamond earring, but that always looks as though you’ve just lost the other one to me, and besides, its a bit last year isn’t it?

What is this year’s clue to the cognoscenti of high born status? (Can’t weigh more than 10kg, I am flying Ryanair…)

You cannot avoid the Angelina Jolie story this morning, it is spread across every media outlet. A chance to have a gawp at her breasts – but it’s all in a good cause…

In case you missed it – you can’t have done, surely! – Angelina has opted to have both the breasts you lusted over in ‘Gia’ surgically removed. A ‘absolutely heroic’ action according to her husband,  undertaken to avoid getting breast cancer. Angelina’s Mother died of Ovarian cancer, and she carries the same BRCA1 defective gene – so she opted to have her breasts removed.

“Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimise the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy.

“I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex.

Presumably she will now go on to have her Ovaries removed as well? Why not a full hysterectomy to remove the risk of uterine cancer? Then a Colostomy to reduce the risk of bowel cancer, and maybe Brad will consider a Bi-Lateral Orchiectomy to help ensure he doesn’t get testicular cancer? We could end up with the first totally risk averse bionic couple in show business.

There might be some point in all this self mutilation if there was any guarantee that it worked, and an extra guarantee that you wouldn’t get run over by a double decker bus on your way to the clinic.

“I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.”

Which statement from Ms Jolie raises the question as to why her children were ‘fearing’ that they might lose her to breast cancer in the first place. What sort of bed-time story are these children being told?

“I lost my mum to cancer at 56… my kids won’t.”

They still might, sorry to disappoint you Ms Jolie. 

Myra Biblowit, President of The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, has been out on the airwaves urging other women to do the same thing – she has apparently discovered a ‘surgery that has no risks’. 

“They can ask themselves if they would rather face breast cancer or face recovering from a surgery that has no risks. If they decide to have the preventative surgery (at a time that is appropriate for them) they can remove this terror from hanging over their heads.” 

Deaths occur in the UK in approximately one in every 200,000 anaesthetics administered. So unless you are planning to have your tits lopped off without the benefit of anaesthetic (and I wouldn’t recommend this!) no surgery is risk free.

Nor will you have ‘removed’ the terror of breast cancer from hanging over your head! It will still be there, just minimised. Any surgery will leave stray cells floating about in your body, should they be breast tissue cells, and be inclined to become cancerous, they still will, even if they have lodged themselves in your big toe for want of another resting place.

Just for the record, 40 years ago, Ms Raccoon had a hysterectomy, not by choice. It was the result of mistaken identity in the operating theatre, when I was 23 – unfortunately long before one could sue the NHS, otherwise Ms Raccoon would have been several hundred thousand pounds richer than she is – and having not had a uterus for the past 40 years, I still have cancer of the uterus and have had for the past two years. Yep, those few stray cells that everyone is overlooking this morning as the media marvel at Ms Jolie’s heroic actions and encourage other women to do the same, managed to lodge themselves on my one remaining ovary and do what they had always intended to do, were programmed to do – turn into cancer.

What is with this modern obsession about removing all risk? Nothing is more certain, as they say, than death, taxes and taxidermy by your government. To listen to the commentators this morning, one could imagine that it was possible to live forever, just by following their advice.

Don’t smoke, don’t drink, live on liquidised wheat grass, lop your tits off – for all your miserable life of self-denial, I have bad news for you. You will still die.

Try getting up in the morning and marvelling at what you do have, instead of fretting about the bad things that might happen in the future. Do things that make you happy. Take advantage of the positive in life. You will still die.

But you’ll have been happy in the meantime.

Go forth and enjoy yourself folks!

We need to ‘gird our loins’ and go to battle folks, I need your assistance on this one! Please retweet this post to anyone you think might pay attention, and kick into action those who you think will continue dozing. I know its easier to continue playing solitaire – but you could put your computer to better use this morning, trust me.

I shall explain.

A year ago, I wrote of a worrying case where Social Workers went to the High Court for permission to enter the home of a person of sound mind because ‘it was thought’ that possibly they were making decisions as a result of ‘undue influence’ by their son who lived with them. No one actually knew whether they were or not, but on the basis that they might be – such permission was granted. Fair enough, a judge had listened to the arguments from ‘a’ social worker – we are not allowed to know who – and a document was drawn up delineating what subjects the son was allowed to speak of to his parents in their own home…in particular, he should not discuss with his parents any arrangements for securing the family home. What happened to the home in which he and his parents lived was to be entirely a matter for the local authority to decide if and when they thought it should be sold…..presumably if and when the parents became vulnerable through mental incapacity.

Social Workers were outraged – why should they have to grovel before a judge and explain themselves before they could enter a home and decide the basis on which family relations should be conducted? The fact that they wanted to do so should be perfectly sufficient!  They lobbied hard to be given an automatic right of entry to any household they wished, irregardless of whether the occupants were vulnerable for any reason…in order to dole out health advice or dictate how individuals conducted their family affairs.

The Government agreed to consult on the matter. Raccoon readers were kind enough to make a magnificent response to the survey! The results of that consultation were published a few days ago. The Government were not minded to give that power to Social Workers:

We believe it is highly significant that members of the public were far more strongly against the proposal compared to health and social care professionals [...] it is clear that some people perceive themselves at greater risk of unwarranted intervention by social workers than of abuse in their home.

The Social Workers have thrown a hissy fit! We, the public, don’t understand! Nanny knows best! We have to be encouraged to eat our ‘five a day’, and Social Workers are the people to do it… no sooner was the Government’s conclusion to the survey announced than the Social Workers flounced into print:

A survey of social workers carried out by the College during the consultation had found overwhelming support for the power, with practitioners citing cases where they would have used it had it been available. Walker said:

“It seems that the weighting [the government has] given to individuals’ responses doesn’t reflect the evidence or the professional view.”

They are mobilising ‘the professional view’ to lobby the Government before the second reading on the 21st May of the Bill that would give them this power. This is becoming a battle of wills. Nobody is objecting to them going to court if they really believe that there is a specific problem in a specific household - but that is a world away from all Social Workers having the power to enter any house at any time and dictate how the occupants live! 

Remember that Social Workers do not have to be publicly named, nor do the local authority have to be publicly named – There have been 358 applications from Bristol City Council, South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and Bath & North East Somerset councils in the last 3 years alone demanding the right to take control of households, their finances and the welfare of the occupants. Just in one relatively small area!

Newcastle MP Paul Farrelly has written to the Lord Chancellor demanding to know why Stoke on Trent City Council has requested that some families be imprisoned for challenging orders governing the welfare of their loved ones. (No public record exists of Judge Cardinal’s ruling on Miss Maddocks and secrecy rules forbade anyone to name Stoke on Trent City Council who had requested that Miss Maddocks be imprisoned.  The social worker who gave evidence against her could not be named either.)

Kingswood MP Chris Skidmore said:

‘It cannot be right that local authorities and council bureaucrats should run roughshod over the lives of individuals and their families. At the centre of elderly care must be the concept that families and loved ones must have a right to care and look after the best interests of patients, whatever their condition’.”

I have spoken to John Hemmings MP on this matter, and he told me this morning, quoting yet another case:

‘Although the senior judiciary have now moved to stop secret imprisonments for contempt of court, it remains that we have a number of other secret prisoners where there is no public accountability as to why people have their liberty denied. I have passed the Rachel Pullen case to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (RP v The United Kingdom). The key to this case is that as with many others in fact she does have capacity.  It is simply that the courts have ignored all the evidence that she has capacity and only taken into account the single expert that says she doesn’t. I have provided examples of a number of cases where the capacity assessment is plainly wrong.

In England we allow a single social worker to imprison someone by claiming that they don’t have capacity – and the Courts will accept this. That is basically wrong.’

They are misusing the power they have at present, a power that they argued was essential to protect the vulnerable, the young, the elderly, the mentally incapacitated. Now they seek to extend that power to all of us, at any time, under any circumstances, just because they think they should – and they don’t want a nosy judge overseeing how they use that power.

They don’t like the fact that the Government listened to the public in that consultation – they want our voices to be overruled. What do we know, ignoramuses that we are?

Lord Reid once said:

“English law goes to great lengths to protect a person of full age and capacity from interference with his personal liberty. We have too often seen freedom disappear in other countries not only by coups d’état but by gradual erosion: and often it is the first step that counts. So it would be unwise to make even minor concessions.”

Please help to reinforce the will of those in parliament who are listening, and will try to protect our freedom. Lord Howe will be introducing the ‘Care Bill’ into the House of Lords for its second reading on May 21st 2013. Make sure he doesn’t think the public’s response to the consultation was a ‘fluke’ – and drown out the voices of the professionals!

Its in your ‘best interests’. You can e-mail Lord Howe via this link. Tell him that you do want your voice to be heard!

It must be that time of the month again, you know, the full moon. Either that or the magic mushroom harvest has been particularly plentiful this year.

The fifth edition of the American Psychiatry Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is due out in a few days – the bible of those who would seek to categorise us all under a suitable ‘mental health’ label. This bible was responsible for categorising ‘nicotine deprivation’ as category 292.0 prompting my post warning that nuclear submarines were about to go to sea with a crew comprised of 40% officially suffering from a ‘mental illness’ – a comforting thought!

From the 1^st January, 40% of the crew of those sleek and secretive nuclear submarines roaming our seas that we are assured are our best protection against the ‘madmen’ in North Korea and Iran, who, we are told, are ‘not to be trusted with nuclear weapons’, will themselves, be comprised of those who may be, at any one time, suffering from one or all of DSM-III-R’s list of side effects of category 292.0.

From the 1^st January, the crews on board the US nuclear arsenal are forbidden to smoke whilst submerged. Personally, the bath is the one place I never smoke, the end gets all soggy, but that is by the by. These boys (and girls) are submerged for 60 days at a time.

They are forbidden to use an E-Cigarette – too likely that the cartridge will be replaced by one filled with crack cocaine apparently. They must fall back on the tender embrace of the pharmaceutical replacement – now proven to cause hallucinations, a belief that God is talking to you, suicidal thoughts that have led to almost 5,000 serious psychotic episodes and over a 100 suicides – or alternatively, they can go ‘cold turkey’ and suffer from the side effects of 292.0 which include – temper tantrums, feelings of despondency, mental confusion, vagueness, anxiety and depression.

Still, help is at hand. The British Psychological Society has declared war on the DSM and all its bastard children – including those who set their clock by it. War is possibly too mild a word to describe their first shot across its bows – they wish to see the entire basis on which mental illness is viewed, re-evaluated – and not as something that can be ‘treated’ by Psychiatrists using pharmaceuticals.

There is a major elephant in the room here – for our entire Mental Health law is based upon the idea that some mental illnesses can be treated and therefore it is reasonable to lock people up whilst they are treated, should they refuse to be treated voluntarily. Whether you agree with locking people up who are mentally ill or not, is not the issue here – for if you abandon the idea that people are treatable by pharmaceuticals, you are in effect abandoning our present Mental Health law. As it stands at present – if there is not a pill available for whatever ails you, then you can”t be locked up.

It may be wonderful in theory to talk of a land where no one is ever detained against their will, but trust me, remove the basis on which some seriously psychotic individuals are removed from society for a period to enable their medication to take effect, and the present chaotic situation in the UK will seem like the land of milk and honey.

Some of the Psychologists responsible for the statement issued by the British Psychological Society believe that mental illness stems from ‘bereavement and loss, poverty and discrimination, trauma and abuse’ and that sitting down with a psychologist to ‘talk about it’ would help more.

13 studies find that more than half of schizophrenics suffered childhood abuse. Another review of 23 studies shows that schizophrenics are at least three times more likely to have been abused than non-schizophrenics. It is becoming apparent that abuse is the major cause of psychoses.

For instance, a person with six or more personal debts is six times more likely to be mentally ill than someone with none, regardless of their social class: the more debts, the greater the risk.

That, apparently, to the psychologists, suggests that it is the debts that create the mental illness – one could easily argue that those with a mental illness are more likely to behave rashly and run up debts. What of those who suffered childhood abuse and didn’t become schizophrenic?

But just as psychologists bid to empty the mental hospitals of the world into their consulting rooms, along comes another renegade. Mental illness might not have a biological or physical dimension – but criminality? Now you are talking. (Careful where you are talking on this one – this theory was popular in Victorian times, and came to be associated with ‘bumps on the head’, eugenics and the Nazis.)

Adrian Raine is busy turning the theory of crime being caused by er, ’bereavement and loss, poverty and discrimination, trauma and abuse’ as the Victorians and liberals believed, on its head – and proving that is has a physical/biological basis. If he is right, then Psychiatrists could treat criminals with pharmaceuticals…..

“In the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, violence went up in America. What was causing that? Well, one hypothesis: It was the increase in environmental lead in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. You know, lead in gas, for example. So, in the 1950s, little toddlers were playing outside, putting their fingers in dirt, putting their fingers in their mouths and absorbing the lead. Twenty years later, they became the next generation of violent criminal offenders because violence peaks at about 19 or 20. Then what happens is in the 1990s violence begins to come down, as it’s been doing. What’s partly explaining that? The reduction in lead in the environment. In fact, if you map environmental lead levels over time like that and map it onto the change in violence over time, lead can explain 91% of those changes. And to me, it’s the only single cause that can both explain the precipitous rise in violence from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s and also the drop that we’ve been experiencing.”

I think I’ve got a handle on this now – Adrian is bidding to empty the prisons into the mental hospitals, and the Psychologists want to empty the mental hospitals into their consulting rooms, which leaves G4S free to stop running prisons and take over the police, painstakingly interviewing victims of long dead celebrities, and the nuclear submarines will be run by psychotic smokers talking to God?

There seems to be only one winner in this merry-go-round; the Pharmaceutical industry. If they’re not treating the mentally ill, they’re doping smokers or criminals. Can’t any of this lot do something useful – like find a way to evaluate the mental health of our politicians before we vote them into power and get their finger on the nuclear button?

Not a bad title, eh? I mean, it has got it all. Football, a touch of “The Da Vinci Code” and the promise of secret knowledge.

Football always gets a bit of a kicking on the Raccoon Blog (do you see what I did there?). But this week Sir Alex Ferguson retired after 26 years in charge of my club, Manchester United. By any standards it is an extraordinary achievement. 26 years at the helm of what, back in 1986, was a Miss Havisham of a club, trading on past glories, and is now a global “brand”, and a multibillion business.

I met Sir Alex once, when he was plain old Alex Ferguson, in about 1989. It was at one of those so called “sportsmen’s dinners” at which men who don’t play sport pay to have a roast dinner with men who used to play sport and to hear them tell jokey anecdotes. It was a small scale affair, not more than 70 people, at an old Victorian Hotel in the North West. All proceeds for charity, so it had a purpose. There were a couple of “celebs” in the form of actors from Coronation Street, and the now Sir Alex was there too, and about on a par with them in terms of celebrity. As in, he had been on the telly, and that is about it. I spoke briefly to him, but I cannot truthfully say what about. I do, however, recall going home afterwards and being asked what he was like. I have never forgotten my reply. “Ah well,” I said “he was very nice. Much too nice to succeed at United.”

36 trophies, including 13 Premier League and 2 Champions League titles later, he stands as a living statue to my error of judgment.

Ferguson is worthy of discussion and debate on this most august of blogs because, if for no other reason, the psychology of someone who achieves that level of achievement, and for so long is worth considering. As is well known, Ferguson is the latest in a cadre of super managers who come not just from Glasgow but from an extremely narrow area of Glasgow. Busby, Shankly, Paisley and others all hail from the coal mining and ship building working classes of Glasgow. All had a fierce work ethic, and I have to wonder if that is a product of Presbyterian fierceness or a Darwinian effect, in that only the most determined, the most driven to escape the dark mines and the shop floor would make it. There have been many tributes to Ferguson’s personal warmth and kindness this week, and as my own meeting illustrates, he undoubtedly had that side to him. But I think it would be impossible to deny that he had a darker streak, a ruthless and even malevolent side that players, press, and referees have all felt.

Ferguson was never, in my book, a master tactician. His teams were built on will power, desire, and drive more than managerial brilliance, although he has had many brilliant players under his command. At the European level he was often found out tactically, and his successes were won be sheer perseverance and grit. But perhaps the measure of Ferguson’s achievement can be thrown into perspective by yesterday’s dramatic FA Cup Final win by Wigan Athletic against a lacklustre Manchester City side. Ferguson creates a mentality within his players which has often been described as “us against the world”. Whatever name you put upon it, they are elite, highly paid professionals with a common cause. To take an analogy, they are like the Foreign Legion. They may all be from different backgrounds and with different issues, and fighting in the cause of a foreign country, but they are a cohesive whole with an independent esprit de corps and collective do or die ethic, who will go into battle for their general. Manchester City is a club comprised of elite, highly paid professionals who are mercenaries. It is subtly different.

Whilst one can ponder the psychology of Ferguson, it is also the case that his reign has provided the background or “soundtrack”, as it were, to my professional life, and his resignation has provoked me to look back and reflect. There were many memories in which there was a coincidence of a football event and a personal moment of significance. Some seem inconsequential. Watching a night game in my local with a quiet pint of Robinsons ale in a local pub as United played in their, then ground breaking, sinister all black kit was a moment of peace and gentle happiness I shall not forget. Then there was being with a woman I loved beyond words on the night of the Champions League final in 1999 and her feminine incomprehension as I danced and yelled at the dramatic last minute dénouement. And, more poignantly, shortly afterwards selling my beautiful house because of the travelling commitments seeing her incurred. On the night United paraded their treble of trophies through Manchester, I walked around the emptied house in which I had been so happy, and wept. Deep in my heart I know this was wrong, and the sale – just before house prices surged – was to have a disastrous effect on my financial fortunes.

And so the departure of Sir Alex has prompted me to reflect on what lessons I have learned over those 26 years. Many, but these are some.

First, that there are wicked people in the world, and they need to be dealt with very firmly, albeit not cruelly.

Second, that you must be very careful what you allow yourself to think about, dwell upon and speak about, because these things tend to be drawn into physical existence.

Next, trust your instincts.

There are in fact many things I have learned. I have learned that it is wise not to trust noisy, showy people. I have learned that it is wise to have a budget and stick to it and to have a nice tie and nice shoes. But above all, I think I have learned this. I have also learned how to make a fine casserole, and that is important. But more importantly, I am compelled by some inner instinct (see above) to write these words.

Your goal in life is to find peace. Your purpose in life is to express compassion. I nearly wrote “love” but the British in particular have a problem with that word, which seems a bit “gooey”. But if you bear both these matters in mind, and express true compassion in your work and in your life, things will be OK.

Here endeth the lesson.

Gildas the Monk

Back in the later half of last year, I rushed out an ‘emergency’ post, and asked for your help to publicise it.

‘Edna’ of this noble Raccoon Parish had drawn my attention to a Government consultation hidden away in the undergrowth which was more than alarming.

Social Workers were asking for the ‘power of entry’ to avoid the tiresome business of having to argue their case before a judge, when they wanted to barge their way into someone’s home uninvited.

Such a power, it might be argued, would be understandable if they were talking about homes inhabited by the mentally ill, the victims of violence, the victims of fraud, the victim of domestic violence, where there is a child at risk, or any of the other ‘vulnerable’ categories. I still think that such a power should only be granted on a case by case basis, but I could see how it might be argued that it was defensible.

But they weren’t. They were asking for a blanket power of entry! To anyone’s home, at any time, under any circumstances. Just because ‘they’ thought that the occupants weren’t followed approved ‘health advice’. Dear God! A Social Worker standing over you as you light the first cigarette of the day, proffering nicotine patches, decaffeinated watery coffee, and an invitation to attend their latest ‘safe sex’ seminar….

The Consultation’s aim was to determine the strength of the case for creating a new safeguarding power of entry. This issue is at the interface between issues of protection and civil liberties.

They advertised the consultation, on which the Government intended to make a decision, to the ‘Safeguarding Adults Advisory Group’, the ‘Care and Support Alliance’, and the ‘NHS workforce’, sat back and awaited their response. They expected ‘between a 100 and 150 responses’. It should have been a ‘slam dunk’ – ‘the Government, after consulting with interested parties have decided to grant’ etc…

Thanks to ‘Edna’ and the readers of this blog, it hasn’t worked out like that.

They got 212 responses.

An unexpected 88 were from people they hadn’t expected to hear from at all, at all….us, the public, they people against whom this power would have been used. (What idiot told them? That bloody Raccoon blog again!)

124 came from the Social Work emporiums that they had thought would respond.

We believe it is highly significant that members of the public were far more strongly against the proposal compared to health and social care professionals [...] it is clear that some people perceive themselves at greater risk of unwarranted intervention by social workers than of abuse in their home.

“Therefore we will not be adding a safeguarding power of entry to the Care and Support Bill” What can I say? Raise your glasses to Edna please Ladies and Gentlemen! She won’t be paying for drinks around here for a very long time!

And many thanks to all those who retweeted that post and responded to it. A small victory. The Government did listen, and backed away from the proposed legislation. I can only put this down to the readers of this blog and especially the sharp eyed Edna – for nobody in the main stream media so much as raised their pen in the direction of this story.

Some days it feels futile bashing away at this keyboard – and other days are like today!

]]> http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/hearty-congratulations-raccoonteurs/feed/ 31 http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/hearty-congratulations-raccoonteurs/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/936cRtLvH5w/ http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/an-important-advance-in-child-protection/#comments Fri, 10 May 2013 13:13:47 +0000 Anna Raccoon http://www.annaraccoon.com/?p=29889

Whilst we were all busy reading the West Yorkshire Police Inquiry Report this morning, which having earnestly reported that it was keen to ‘separate myth and rumour from fact’ went on to tell us (amidst gasps of amazement) that Savile ‘had duped millions’ of us into believing ‘that he was a genuine celebrity’. (He wasn’t? Can we have a refund on our licence fee now then, now then? All those fabulous wages paid to him on the grounds that he was a genuine celebrity! Fraud!) something important was quietly rustling in the undergrowth.

Hidden away in a part of the BBC web site that most of us probably rarely visit, someone was concerned, not with the alleged misdeeds of long dead celebrity, but the with real sex abuse occurring right here and now, and about which something could and would be done.

No! Don’t be daft, it wasn’t Mark Williams-Thomas, nor the NSPCC – they are far too busy chasing headlines, donations and possible documentaries.

The Islamic Society of Britain, and the ‘Hope not Hate’ campaigning organisation, have teamed up to form the ‘Community Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation’ (CAASE) with the aim of mobilising campaigns against the grooming of under-age vulnerable girls, producing training material for faith leaders and creating local groups to work on tackling street grooming in areas where it is a problem.

What is of particular interest here, she says, picking her words carefully, IF the various articles that have been written are truthful, is that the under-age girls who need protecting from this activity are NOT from the same community that is organising something to help protect them. It is as though the Cat Protection League had offered to make sure every Dickey-bird got home safely, for it is alleged that this problem stems from young Muslim men who treat young white girls as ‘easy meat’.

You might expect that the Muslim community would react with outrage at the idea that their young men are at fault.

You might expect that the white working class communities, from where these young girls are believed to originate, would have organised something themselves to protect their daughters and sisters.

You might expect that the multitude of organisations that claim to exist in order to further child protection might be busy organising something, making documentaries, tweeting merrily into the night, (and sending their followers pretty pictures of fluffy cats when it all became too upsetting to think about).

You would be wrong on all counts.

It is a coalition of Muslim organisations that has stepped into the breach to do something practical about the young white girls out alone late at night and susceptible to grooming and abuse. The coalition, which is being formally launched at the Manningham Mills Community Centre on Friday, also has backing from the Muslim Council of Britain, Muslim Youth Helpline, Christian Muslim Forum, City Sikhs and the Church of England.

Pretty stunning news would you not say? Obviously not stunning enough for the main stream media…

I am seriously impressed, and humbled. Thank God (and Allah) that someone is going to do something for those girls. It’s about time that we saw something resembling child protection in the UK.

I chanced upon a remark in my recent reading that struck me as so callous, so utterly devoid of empathy, that I stopped short. Who had made this remark? A Family Liaison Officer!

As is my wont, I immediately started researching the qualities needed to be a Family Liaison Officer, and the training involved. The first surprise was the apparently scant attention to training given back in the early 2000s when this particular officer was trained. Even in 2006 a mere three days initially, of ‘team building’ and general communication skills, followed by another four days to ensure that all participants were fully aware of the requirements of the ACPO (2003) Family Liaison Strategy Manual.

It is universally acknowledged that the Family Liaison Officer’s role is one of the most sensitive within the Police Force – you are dealing, on a very intimate daily basis with people who have found themselves in the maelstrom of traumatic events, generally involving the unexplained loss of someone very dear to them.  They are not only grieving, but may be the subject of unwanted media intrusion or worse, media speculation that they may have played some part in the events. As a policeman it is your duty to report any suspicions you may have of family members – you are still an investigating officer – but you are also there as a professional hand holder, to explain police procedures, to keep the family informed, even to deal with such mundane tasks as helping to cancel credit cards where appropriate, to make the tea if necessary and to have an ever ready supply of Kleenex.

As a human being, you must surely have empathy for the loss the family have suffered particularly where there is no question of suspicion of any member of the family, and to reassure them that the Police are doing everything possible to resolve the situation. That some officers do a magnificent juggling act with these demands is exemplified here. I would have thought that the very last thing you would do is publicly decry the efforts of the Police and say that there were ‘fundamental errors’ in the way the case was approached, ‘witnesses not approached’, ‘insufficient searching done’ nor that your force appeared to ‘not have a clue’. What could be more callous than to announce to the family that their missing loved one ‘could still be up there‘ – referring to the area where they disappeared?

Can you imagine if, God forbid, your daughter had gone missing, never to be found again, being told by the one Policeman you had been encouraged to trust and lean on in your time of need, that his force was effectively incompetent, and that your daughter might have been found? It must be heartbreaking. Sadly, to this day, the parents of Ruth Wilson still don’t know what happened to their daughter. She has never been found. However, and curiously, they don’t seem to share the view of this family liaison officer that the force was remiss in their approach to the search.

 ’Most police forces didn’t treat cases like this seriously and people like us had to do our own publicity. Surrey police were one of the most positive forces. They came out that very night with sniffer dogs and helicopters with heat-seeking equipment. But the phenomenon of missing youngsters wasn’t a big feature of life back then.’

But then the date of this Family Liaison Officer’s callous remarks are significant. 7 years after Ruth Wilson vanished one day, never to be seen again – and eighteen months after he left the force. He was seeking a new career, as celebrity investigator, the must-have talking head whenever there was a major crime. The man with an inexhaustible supply of ideas as to how to turn crime into entertainment…is that why:

‘The refusal of the Wilsons to make themselves the centre of the story has certainly contributed to the lower profile of the case – later on they refused to appear on a game show where the audience would have been given the chance to vote for the next course of action taken by the family in the search for their daughter.’

I have no idea, in fact I cannot begin to think who on earth could have imagined, that taking the misery of one benighted family and turning it into a game show was the way to help them. The mind boggles.

This particular family liaison officer was, of course, Mark Williams-Thomas, who now sees himself as the celebrity policeman du jour; you can go to him if you don’t feel able to or want to, go to our national police force. He has a long line of criticisms of various police forces and their ‘not a clue’ attitude to policing.  Now independent, Mark can be particularly vocal about current issues…

Mr Williams-Thomas, who acted as the Wilson family’s liaison officer, wrote an internal report criticising the methods used by the force to try to locate 16-year-old Ruth.

“The report went to the superintendent, but it was never signed to indicate that it had been seen. I got no actual response at all, other than the report being handed back to me. To the best of my knowledge, no action was taken.”

Not just Police forces, foreign and home grown, he criticises anyone who dares to comment on where his methods are taking our long established legal system. He demands their censure. 

What has sparked his censure of this respected barrister?

She has long been pointing out the dangers present in our Family courts which have adopted a ‘therapeutic jurisprudence’ approach, resulting in the restriction of the right to due process, the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, the right to be tried in public, the right to confront one’s accusers, and the right to ‘equality of arms’ (that is, not to be tried under significantly less advantageous conditions that those enjoyed by one’s opponent). Other protections, such as restrictions on the use of hearsay evidence, the right to consult the expert of one’s choice, and even the right to communicate in confidence with one’s lawyers or one’s MP, have been placed in second place to the sense that ‘neutral professionals’ were working in the best interests of the child and should not be hampered by outdated technicalities.

Those who have seen their families rent asunder, new born babies snatched from their Mother’s arms following allegations by those ‘neutral professionals’ made in secret courts, or seen loved ones secretly deprived of their liberty by the Court of Protection, have long hailed her a heroine. She is an expert in the field. Yesterday she penned a cogent and well argued article pointing out that this therapeutic jurisprudence was being applied to the field of historic sex abuse. She criticised the methods that those involved with the current Yewtree investigation – which of course includes Mark Williams-Thomas, are using. She pointed out the inherent dangers to our legal system.

Within hours the Press Officer for the NSPCC was demanding that her article be either reworded or removed. They threatened to ‘approach news desks’ (what with, we know not!). Other commenters were more graphic, calling for her ‘to be raped’ and ‘hunted into obscurity’. It is heretical to call into question the methods by which the modern moral crusaders attempt to define abuse.  Williams-Thomas himself called for her professional body to intervene – because she called for debate on where this new mode of justice is taking us?

I am reminded for some reason of Henry VIII. He was hugely critical of the Catholic church when they refused to reform themselves in line with his demands. He became hysterical with those who criticised him, denouncing them as heretics, demanding their heads roll, or sacking their homes and churches, as he rebuilt a ‘new’ church of which he was head, that developed new beliefs and rules and regulations.

However, it would be unfair to draw a comparison between the majestic figure of Henry VIII and Williams-Thomas; after all, he was but a pathological egotist whose only interest was in having his own way, achieving his own ends. He had no empathy with those whose lives he ruined along the way.

Now cut me some slack this morning, as they say. I am but a mere female, and I understand not that of which I speak…

I always understood the origins of football to lie in the mystic veneration with which a person’s head was held – it was somehow believed to contain the soul. Thus we gained the tradition of impaling that important part of the body on the pales of yon ancient fortress.  When you ran out of pales, the surplus heads of your enemies were given to the young men to kick around to further signify the contempt in which you held your enemies. ‘Head kicking’ being abandoned at some point (although still alive and well in parts of Glasgow and Liverpool, where the local police culture dictates that they must at minimum be still attached to the body) a pig’s bladder was substituted.

From which I deduce that taking the ‘head’, pig’s bladder, or modern ‘FIFA approved’ hand stitched ball, away from the enemy still contains elements of tribal warfare. The key to success still appears to be proving your superiority over the enemy. By proving your superiority, you effortlessly prove his inferiority. Was that not the reason the Fabian’s tried so hard to remove all competitive sports from schools? That they were essentially the art of humiliating the ‘other’?

What could each team’s supporters do to assist their gilded youth? No more than try to help distract/humiliate/demoralise the other team. I assume that even in medieval times the crowd would chant such helpful memes as ‘may all your cow’s be barren, you sheep shagging farriers’. Later, as the industrial age took hold, the cry would go up ‘you useless candle wick trimmers’, or ‘gerrit’orf’im you big girl’s smock’. Since everybody knew each other/was related to each other/shared the same moon-faced features, these references to occupation or known wimpish unwillingness to tackle that big bloke from the iron foundry, such reference to physical or psychological traits was essential so that the crowd knew who was being insulted. All part of the fun – and purpose – of the game.

Once the population begun to move around the country, and strangers from foreign lands impregnated local girls, more distinguishing features entered the picture, fortuitously as it happens, for by that time the ‘players’ were no longer usefully employed as candlewick trimmers or farriers, so only their physical characteristics or known wimpish unwillingness to tackle that big bloke from Real Madrid could be used to single them out. Thus the bloke with the big nose became ‘Shylock’, the one with the impossible surname to pronounce became ‘that sheep shagging Mother fu**er from the valleys’ and the poor blighter who had to shadow the big bloke from Real Madrid became ‘you big girl’s blouse’, smocks being a long forgotten item of apparel by this time.

Nobody ever suggested that referees should be placed amongst the crowds to ensure that all candlewick trimmers were not labelled as ‘useless’ nor that all farriers were being insulted by the suggestion that they were overly given to a sexual infatuation with mutton dressed as anything.

Now I see that ‘You big girl’s blouse’ could be taken as an indication of derogatory comments towards a player who displays visible wimpishness, Like rolling on the ground clutching his leg because another player passed within six inches of him; since it is a derogatory comment, and identifies what might be seen as feminine characteristics now that women have taken to rolling on the ground clutching their lawyers phone number if another male passes within six inches of them, then it is obviously homophobic. This is akin to racism and ‘must be stamped out’ – by positioning additional referees in the crowd to ensure that players are not identified by anything which might offend them?

I’m baffled. A game that started with stamping on your opponents head ends with stamping on identifying your opponent verbally?

What is the point of football now? Can anyone explain?

*****************************************

Since you have your homework set for the day explaining the point of football, can I set an additional question for an extra ten points?

I speak as a dog owner. Well, it looks like a dog, but it talks rather than barks (for evidence, speak to any of my visitors, it does bloody talk!) and it is intelligent enough to have figured out that if you throw your head back when you have a ball in your mouth and you are facing a steep bank, and then let go, the ball will hit the bank and bounce back at you. You can then catch it again to multiple admiration – both for catching it, and for figuring out how to throw it without pestering the humans to get out of their deck chair and play ‘games’ with you. Apart from that it is bloody useless; I should know, I’ve been pouring dog food in one end and clearing the result from the other end off the lawn for years now.

Now I understand that the dog ownership game originated from something called a ‘guard-dog’ which was designed to bite anything that it didn’t recognise as having permission to access its can opener whilst the normal can opener operator was asleep. Some people, not I unfortunately, are lucky enough to own a direct genetic descendant of one of these guard-dogs.

They still play by the original rules. “I go to sleep, you bite anything that comes in the house”. Apparently the rules have been changed today. The dog has to be tied up to prevent it biting anything that goes bump in the night.

So for an additional ten points – what is the point of a dog that’s not allowed to bite burglars?

Blimey! If we ever doubted the veracity of the two statements in my headline, we have only to take a quick run through the media today. Even the various pictures of Nigel Evans MP that are selected by the different thundering organs of Canary Wharf tell a story.

Nigel Evans MP has been arrested and accused of various sexual offences concerning ‘vulnerable victims’. Not one paper describes him as ‘creepy’, nor goes on to interview a talking head discussing the ‘rumours which have circulated for years’. Instead a raft of the great and the good have been interviewed at length to tell us what a charming, delightful, ‘good, decent man’ he is. I’m sure he his.

The Sunday Times went with a ‘studio’ portrait of a youthful and blushing Nigel, holding his copy of the Green Book with the portcullis prominently displayed to emphasise his establishment position.  They still managed a sly ‘Deputy Speaker in rape arrest’ to tickle the fancy of the conspiriloons breathlessly waiting for news of arrests in the ‘Top Tory Paedophile ring’ that they lust after, before going onto to point out that this is an allegation of Gay rape.

The Sunday Times failed to mention that Evans was interviewed by the then Chief Opposition Whip, Patrick McLoughlin, now Transport Secretary, over claims of ‘inappropriate sexual behaviour’ in 2009, coincidentally the starting date of the offences of which he is now accused. Allegations which were dealt with without being referred to Police. Why ever would that be? The Sunday Times has been a forerunner in the ‘he could have been stopped earlier’ articles regarding Savile.  Ah, but Nigel Evans is alive and well! Fully entitled to a decent hearing to clear his name of heinous allegations. This is no time for ‘premature adjudication’, says the legal department.  Possibly why the ‘comments’ are permanently closed.

The Sun claims ‘an exclusive’ – despite the Mirror having broken the story, and the Police confining themselves to a discrete “A 55-year-old man from Pendleton in Lancashire, arrested on suspicion of rape and sexual assault has today, May 4, 2013, been released on police bail until June 19,  2013.”
They go for the full house: Tory+Deputy Speaker+Gay+Rape. Helpfully adding a picture of Nigel with David Cameron to emphasise his connections, though in Savile’s case, they were only too keen to show pictures of Savile with Margaret Thatcher or the Pope in order to emphasise how ‘protected’ he had been. No such suggestion in Nigel Evans’ case – they have given him column space to point out that his accusers ‘know each other’…

Mr Evans said: “Yesterday, I was interviewed by the police concerning two complaints, one of which dates back four years, made by two people who are well known to each other and until yesterday, I regarded as friends. “The complaints are completely false and I cannot understand why they have been made, especially as I have continued to socialise with one as recently as last week.

The Sun also hedges its bet by including pictures of Our Nige with Ed Miliband, and two scantily clad young ladies (not all in the same picture regrettably…!).

The Mirror, which originally broke this story,  must take the prize for the most bizarre sideways wipe at poor Nige, with their headline of “Rape accused Tory uses make-up to disguise forehead bruise as he faces cameras to deny claims” – accompanied by a close up shot of said bruise, but no explanation, even speculative, in the accompanying article. I guess you don’t need to lead with the ‘Gay rape’ line when you’ve pointed out that Nigel is using make-up? Was he beaten up by the Police? Spent the night banging his head on the head board? We need to know!

They do give space to fellow MP Mark Pritchard.

Mark Pritchard, Conservative MP for The Wrekin, Shropshire, said: “Nigel Evans is a very popular MP and has established himself as a first-rate Deputy Speaker. “These are shocking allegations – but they are allegations and not proven. Time will tell if they stand up to proper legal scrutiny.”

The Telegraph use exactly the same photo as the Mirror, credited to Reuters, but without the bizarre ‘make-up’ claim – but then are the only paper to dig into their memory bank and reveal that Nigel was questioned by Parliamentary staff in 2009 over ‘inappropriate sexual behaviour’, which was apparently, a misunderstanding and was never referred to Police. They also helpfully hint that Nigel had been threatened with blackmail in the past over his sexuality. Comments are not open, any more than they were in the Mirror. Are they not interested in what their readers think of this latest development in the war against ‘inappropriate sexual behaviour’? Seems not.

Nigel Evans feet had not ‘touched the ground’ after his arrest before there were calls for him to stand down as Deputy Speaker – presumably the sight of him in the Speaker’s chair would have potentially traumatised other vulnerable victims, had they been one of the handful of people that actually watch Prime Minister’s Question Time.  Not that ‘feet not touching the ground’ has been a handicap to sitting in the Speaker’s Chair in recent times…

The Guardian, who surprisingly, go for the most flattering and youthful picture of Nigel, with just a hint of a fey blush to his cheeks, find an MP who is ‘disturbed’ by news of the arrest:

Brian Binley, Tory MP for Northampton South and a friend of Evans, said: “I was just deeply disturbed and shocked.

“I’ve known him ever since I’ve been in parliament and I came in in 2005. I consider him to be a very good friend. I know him to be caring, compassionate and in no way would he inflict himself violently on any other person”.

Not a single word of empathy with the alleged ‘vulnerable victims’…no in-depth articles regarding the difficulties of ‘coming forward’ or ‘being believed’, not one.

Nor is anybody ‘giving a victims a voice’ via publishing an ‘anonymised’ account from a brave ‘victim’ who has come forward to spell out the details of the allegations against Mr Evans.

Nobody has even mentioned Savile, or ‘Savile Police’ not even in an html link. I checked!

Indeed, although Mr Evans has been bailed until the 19th June, ‘he hopes that these matters will have been cleared up long before then’. He has not been charged with any offence as yet.

A quite remarkable show of unified and dignified responsible reportage.

What could be the reason for the main stream media coming over all coy between the last celebrity arrest and the arrest of Nigel Evans MP?

It is a bank holiday weekend, and it is fitting that a certain amount of sitting about doing nothing should take place. I feel very strongly that a certain amount of disciplined, applied laziness is a very important skill, which should be applied to everyone’s life. In my own case this often involves a regular Americano and a seat in a café at a pleasant café in a little village in the Pennines, I also like watching films. With that in mind I had a look through my DVD collection this week, and I thought I might compile a list of 10 films which never really made it big, although they did alright, and you may not have seen, but would be fine Bank Holiday weekend viewing, accompanied with the obligatory curry/shiraz/Stella, or beverage of choice.

Now, don’t go expecting touchie-feelie, girly movies, the much hated “Rom Coms”. No, this will be a Jennifer Anniston free zone (in other circumstances I could happily express a different point of view on the lovely Jennifer, but we will leave that for another day)! There will be a surfeit of swords, action, and knights. If you want introspection and sensitivity ask my better half, Sister Eva Longoria! So, lights, camera, action! Here are ten to seek out:

1. Solomon Kane. A lowish budget action pic with the very able James Purefoy in the lead role of a 17th century freebooting pirate who commits every sin under the sun, only to have his soul claimed by the Devil and who tried to turn into a man of peace. Needless to say, things don’t quite work out as planned, and Solomon is ultimately forced to return to his death dealing ways to save a family and free the West Country from an evil sorcerer. Plenty of sword play, zombies, chases, wonky accents, the odd crucifixion and a big black hat. Oh, and a Puritan girl with beautiful eyes. Easy and undemanding, but great fun. “Fight evil with evil?” Yep, good tag line. Let the blood spill!

2. Looking for Eric. This is brilliant. The enigmatic French footballer turned actor Eric Cantona sends himself up and stars as himself as the mystic figure who steps out of a poster and into the world of another Eric, a downtrodden postman with a broken heart and a lost love.

Through his mystic but inspirational aphorisms, Eric 1 guides Eric 2 to a spiritual and personal redemption. And a violent drug dealer gets a kicking in the process. It is quirky, very funny and heart warming. The best line goes to Cantona himself. “I am not a man. I am … Cantona!” Pause. Then all collapses in laughter.

3. James Carpenter’s Vampires. As you will have guessed by now, we are not in “Brief Encounter” territory with this list. James Woods leads a team of cross bow and gun wielding vampire hunters against a hoard of all too reasonable vampires. Apart from the blood and gore, it features a nice turn from the rather lovely and sexy Sheryl Lee, who you may remember as Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks. James Carpenter’s 1998 take is slick, stylish and smart. And yes, her clothes come off.

4. Brotherhood of the Wolf. Aha! Just to show I am not a total Philistine, this is in French! In a remote French province something is eating the natives. Gregoire de Fronsac and his native American sidekick are sent to investigate. It is done with typical Gallic style, and involves mystery, martial arts, intrigue and a great deal of style.

The charismatic Vincent Cassels is in top form, as is his real life other half, the utterly beautiful Monica Bellucci, who plays a mysterious and highly dangerous courtesan, worth the watch in itself. A bit long, but worth it for the sheer panache, and Monica Bellucci taking her top off and doing naughty things with a knife.

5. Hanna. I went to see this 2011 offering at the cinema, and really liked it. Who is the mysterious young woman living with her father in the remote arctic, learning how to kill and about life via an encyclopedia? What is her mission and past? This is a strange but compelling film; it is Pippi Longstocking meets the Bourne Identity.

Saoirse Ronan plays the lead, and she is an incredible screen presence. Eric Bana plays her father and Cate Blanchett goes over the top as chief villain. There are silos, chases, gun fights, and the trendy middle class family from hell. And some quite bad stuff. Plus a driving, menacing soundtrack from The Chemical Brothers. Really compelling and quite dark at times.

6. Centurion. Another reasonable, mid budget, British effort, this has a top class cast including Micheal Fassbender and Dominic West as Roman legionaries who are on the run hunted by the Picts north of Hadrian’s Wall. Unrelenting pace and action, and the very beautiful Olga Kurylenko made a bit of a breakthrough I think as the chief huntress Pict; a totally silent part but she really carries it offf with great style and conviction, and she is becoming a big star now.

7. Haywire. Speaking of Micheal Fassbender, he pops up as a hit man in this 2011 Film, a vehicle for the really rather attractive real life mixed martial arts star Gina Carano to have a go on the silver screen, and you know what? She pulls it off really well as the on the run assassin who has been set up (I have just noticed the words “on the run”, “assassin” appear quite a lot in this piece … ).

It is a compelling chase movie and worth it for one fight scene featuring Carano and Fassbender alone. Very nasty.

8. Sideways Ha! Just to prove that not every choice involved sword wielding assassins, this gentle bitter sweet comedy involves a lot of … wine.

Two middle aged guys with not a lot going for them embark on a week long road trip in wine tasting country. It is gentle, thoughtful and moving and in the end there is redemption. Stand out performances from Paul Giamatti and the luminous Virginia Madsen.

9. The Right Stuff. This 1983 making of Tom Wolfe’s 1983 best seller about the test pilots who went on to become America’s first space men is compelling from start to finish and finely acted. Also, it features an Oscar winning score. Brilliant cast.

10. A Knight’s Tale. If there is one film on this list which you have to see on a Bank Holiday, it is this one. It is an off the wall take on medieval jousting which is played out to a soundtrack featuring Queen, and in some ways was regarded as Heath Ledger’s breakthrough role as the servant boy masquerading as a nobleman entitled to joust. But the stand out role is Paul Bettany as the “Geoff” Chaucer, a writer with a gambling problem, and there is a fantastic cast including Laura Fraser and Mark Addy. Rufus Sewell does another stand out as a villainous and cheating baron. There is humour, wit, romance and jousting, and a fair lady’s heart to be won. Oh, and a great soundtrack and some funky dancing. An original; and thoroughly charming film.

And with that, I bid you a happy bank holiday weekend, and the best wishes to our landlady, who regular readers will know, has been a bit under the weather for a while.

Gildas

The incumbent government is desperate to stop money haemorrhaging out of the Treasury.  They try to pick on some area of the economy where the potential recipients of funds are not too militant – they don’t want miners flame throwing Downing Street; not too likely to generate yards of ‘heartless Tory’ newsprint – no use trying to save money by refusing to service wheelchairs; not likely to vote Tory anyway – (they don’t worry about the Lib-Dems, they’re toast as it is); and hopefully no one will notice – or care – until it is too late.

The ‘Law and Order’ arena is a good hunting ground for them, you don’t notice the effect for a year or two, and then you can get brownie points before the next election by giving everyone a pay rise.

They’ve slashed the entry salary for Police Officers by 20% – not many ordinary people actually care how much Police Officers are paid, serving Police Officers are more concerned with their pension, those hoping to get a job in the Police force are hardly likely to start throwing Molotov cocktails in Downing Street, and with half the country out of work anyway, the newspapers aren’t inclined to campaign for a higher starting wage for those lucky enough to get a pensionable job. So far so good.

They’ve slashed the number of Police Stations drastically, threatening to put Police officers in Tardis type Police boxes rather than stations with canteens and somewhere to park your civvy clothes, and an office biscuit box…..they even toyed with the idea of making them stand at the end of the aisles in Tesco’s – report that historic sex attack whilst you’re waiting for the doughnut counter to be loaded up again – which generated a flood of ‘aisle be having you’ and ‘cell-by date’ jokes.

But Police patience can only be stretched so far, so now they have moved to the other end of the Law and Order scale. The ‘criminal defendant’. Note defendant. They could well yet be innocent, but that doesn’t matter in these days of celebrity policemen acting as judge and jury. They intend to save some 220 million a year by cutting legal aid to those ‘criminal defendants’. Who cares about them, they’re criminals aren’t they? Well, not until they’ve been tried and convicted actually, and it is long before that that they, and the totally innocent, need their legal aid, but most people won’t bother to separate the words criminal and defendant into their specific meaning.

The intention is to cut the number of firms that can offer legal aid advice from 1600 to 400, split into 42 different areas. Or 10 per area.

“This would mean current providers would need to grow their business on average by around 250% (or join with other providers to create sufficient resource to deliver the expected caseload),” the consultation said.

250%! A tough requirement in the current economic climate. They only want the ‘big boys’ to tender under this ‘price competitive tendering’ model.

They have removed the old requirement that you had to consult a solicitor, incurring his fees, before being allowed to consult a barrister. Solicitors were gate-keepers, rather like GPs. They listened to the long fangled whine regarding where your Aunt Minnie was last Thursday, and how it was the day you usually took the cat to the vet – extracted the essential information – that you had been done for speeding on your way to work, and fired you off in the direction of a barrister that specialised in speeding offences. 

Now you can go to a Barrister directly – but how are you supposed to know which Barrister specialises in speeding offences? He can’t afford expensive ads on afternoon TV, “Give us £2 a week and you could save a Barrister from penury” - and even more to the point, where is he supposed to find the time to listen to Aunt Minnie’s whereabouts for the past three months, and the likelihood of your cat surviving Christmas? He’s used to being given a précis form of important details, preferably at least ten minutes before he has to defend you, and then speed away to his next case leaving your solicitor to listen to your howls of anguish at finding yourself banned from driving for ten years. Barrister don’t all earn a fortune you know. Most of them spend their day roaring round the country on Virgin rail hoping to cover their train fare.

Hmmn, pondered the government – someone has to do the hand holding role, make sure you end up with the right sort of barrister, and dry your tears afterwards – but does it need to be an expensive solicitor? I don’t think so, said our current venerable Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling, and opened the field to all players. Actually it was Labour which started all this off.

The role of ABSs in legal aid work was foreshadowed in March 2009 by the then Labour Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw, in a major speech on the future of legal aid. He said: “For law firms to survive they will have to look to how they are structured and how they operate. The introduction of the Legal Services Act has meant that new opportunities are there for firms who are able to adapt to the changing demands of the new legal market-place.

“Currently, 80% of all legal aid is carried out by firms with fewer than four partners, and nearly a third is undertaken by sole practitioners. But no firm, large or small, will be able to stand still in the face of the innovation which new business models will be able to bring.”

Some remarkable players are in the running. Tescos, not surprisingly, they already aspire to have PC Plod stationed between the Turnips and the Toilet Cleaner. But what is this? Your friendly Eddie Stobart Lorry, with his well dressed drivers, unloading a fresh supply of flat packed Barristers to Liverpool Crown Court? They cannot be serious! They are. 

Stobart’s Group Legal Director was once the practice manager at a well known firm of solicitors, and reckons he knows how it all works well enough; he’s set up Stobarts Barristers and is chomping at the bit to bid for one of the franchises.

Beware the flat pack Barrister delivered to your home – it will arrive with a few screws missing, and an incomprehensible instruction sheet. Not that it really matters any more, the Police will already have pronounced you guilty. Still, most defendants will probably jump at the chance to get a Zimmer frame and a walk-in bath delivered at the same time…

You couldn’t make it up.

UKIP has acted as the Provisional Wing of the Pub Bore Society for some years. Seated on the far stool of political life, they have droned on endlessly about the failings of the big three parties. ‘They’re all the same as each other’, ‘nothing to chose between them’, ‘ a shower of professional bastards’.

The resident Landlord has tried to shut them up, calling them a ‘bunch of clowns’, and ‘fruitcake racists’.  It had no effect. They droned on. ‘Get us out of Europe’, ‘it’s them thar Europeans that is causing all the problems’, they said as they ordered another pint. A warm, cloudy, British pint.

‘UKIP if you want to’ said the Landlord, ‘nobody is listening to you anyway’.

This morning he found out that 14% of the population were listening. He sent his potman out with something akin to an apology.

“People have sent a message, we get it, we hear what people are saying, people are concerned that we get on with the big issues facing hard-working people in this country, like fixing the economy, sorting out the welfare system, helping hard-working people to get on.

“Ukip have done well, I don’t make any secret about that at all. We need to make sure that we are addressing the concerns of the public.”

Revolutionary stuff! ‘Addressing the concerns of the public’! That is a U-turn of megalithic proportions. When did the last politician even pay lip service to ‘addressing the concerns of the public’? We have a government that is so proud of the ‘nudge unit’, the department that seeks, not to address the concerns of, but to re-educate the public, that they are privatising it, convinced they can make money out of it. We had, for 13 years, a government that was solely concerned with re-educating the public. Can it really be true that the Pub Bore has succeeded in revolutionising government to the point that it might actually act as representatives of its various constituencies and ‘address their concerns’?

The big three parties (though the Lib-Dems seem to have a nasty dose of political anorexia, compared to the over-fed beasts of Labour and Conservative) have relied upon people not ‘kipping’, but ‘sleeping’ their way through the voting process. If they voted at all, it was as their Father had done. The public didn’t seem to get the rather obvious point that if you vote as your Father did, you are liable to end up with the same government that your Father did – an oxymoron, if ‘change’ was what you wanted.

UKIP have done well, most definitely. But are they the answer to Britain’s problems?

It seems to me that our problems are global ones. A global financial crisis, regardless of where it started or who did what. Global weather patterns changing (and no, I haven’t become a ‘ban all aerosols, fight climate change’ enthusiast, just aware that the jet stream is/has been a different position to the one we are used to, as it has been before…) and thus different crops will need to be grown in different parts of the world, and if people wish to keep eating the food they are used to, they might have to get it from somewhere else in the world. Religious affiliation changing, and with our modern inventions of air travel, and television, not to mention the Internet, we are becoming a more global society, with people committed to the eradication of ‘all infidels’ happily studying computer science in the universities of Infidel Central…

Global problems require global solutions. I don’t see how retreating into nationalism and brave little Britain ‘going it alone’ can possibly solve the problem. Nor does that make me a defender of the EU, too small a solution, based on an outdated political modus operandi. So while I sympathise with UKIPs anti-EU stance, I don’t think that they hold the answer.

What they have done is wake up those quietly kipping over their pint, that ‘something’ needs to be done, and not something that we have tried already.

We have to get out of this ‘Fort Little Rock’ mentality, the idea that those who are different are to be feared, outsiders. We are all the human family, and the sooner we stop squabbling amongst ourselves the better. It is a product of democracy, the idea that the majority ‘must’ win. Why must there be ‘winners’, black and white, good and bad, left and right? If we all took responsibility for ourselves and spent our spare time helping others, we would be a lot better off than struggling to make sure that ‘our man’ gets the controlling job.

For sure, someone will come along in the comments and tell me that human nature isn’t like that, that people are selfish, some will take more than others – but isn’t that a product of our conditioning? That if we just vote the right man, our man, into the top job, he will take care of us, his supporters, and we don’t need to think about it anymore? And if somehow the ‘other side’ manage to get their man into the top job, we just have to belly ache long enough and point out all his faults, and along will come another chance to get our man, our protector, into place.

And that is where all our energy goes to. Ridiculous.