Sunday, October 14, 2012

'Whatever is said after I’m gone is irrelevant'…Jimmy Savile


IN THE EARLY 1960's I was walking across Great Yarmouth’s market place to pay another instalment on my bike at Halfords. I stopped at a crossing waiting for the traffic lights to change to green. I turned my head, as did all of those waiting with me, to a (I believe it was an open top model)Rolls Royce that the amber light still ordered to wait. The driver was none other than Jimmy Savile, who sat there with the obligatory cigar in his mouth beaming out at his public. As the light went from amber to green we crossed, still fascinated by the man and his car. He waived; we waived.            
         It was the first and last time I would ever see (at that time) the popular Radio One disc jockey in person. In the years that followed the name Jimmy Savile became as much a part of my life as the Beatles and dozens of other groups of the kind that people, like myself, now in their 60s still buy to re-engage with their youth.            
       Even then Savile seemed odd to me. Just from that brief encounter, the ebullient white -haired disc jockey had a strange unnatural demeanour (I do not mean sexually). I felt that there was something fraudulent about him. I became prejudiced toward him; and when in the years that followed this first encounter, his progress to the very heights of the BBC via Radio One, Savile’s Travels, and Jim’ll Fix It; he still left me distrustful of him.            
       Then, during the 1970s-1980s, the perversion that at the time, dared not speak its name, began to enter my thoughts. When I saw him on Jim’ll Fix It, I began to warm to him. For how could one not remain emotionally unaffected by a child with cancer requesting its last ambition in this world - and Jim fixing it for them?            
      When he turned up at St. James Hospital in Leeds as a volunteer porter wheeling young people to and from surgery, or when he visited young people on his ‘ward rounds’ bringing a smile (recorded by the BBC) to many a young face, did we know what his true intent was; and what misery it must have brought to young patients.            
     His true intent was to hide his repugnant desires behind his charitable work, which would make him invulnerable to any accusation from his victims, if they dared report him to the police.

SAVILE REIGNED SUPREME. He was the master of his own particular universe; he remained, in his own words “untouchable”. He was a national institution that even his main employer, the BBC, dared not turn upon. He was a monster created by the BBC and they remained loyal to him because of his ratings, and the national popularism that would have taken his word at the time against the BBC’s. Savile knew this and fulfilled his lusts upon young girls without any prospect of his victims being believed or those employing him (despite the rumours) taking any action.            
        What has been coming out over the past two weeks in the press about Savile, is beginning to sounds like the reign of a contemporary Caligula, but within the BBC. Savile may not have appointed a horse as a God, but he certainly mastered the technique of denial within the BBC’s portals, the more popular he became; and, it appears, the greater the denial he felt would be accepted because of his power over the then BBC.   
         Jimmy Savile gave almost 90 per cent of his income to the various charities he associated himself with. This in itself should provide sufficient evidence for his paedophilia. For he used his own wealth to shield his behaviour.     
       Savile’s lusts, for this is what they were, were shielded by his charity work. The very work that led to his knighthood which cannot be taken from him without an act of parliament.
       What Savile calculated, was that the fulfilment of personal desire was worth his wealth. A mere touch of a young patient’s breast or the massaging of a thigh would be  worth the financial cost in terms of his contributions to charity. Savile would use his wealth to shield his lusts. After all, what was it he said? Whatever is said after I'm gone is irrelevant”.    
        He knew what would be said of him after his death and cared little, because he knew he had fulfilled his lusts and whatever the afterlife deemed inappropriate , he was fully prepared to meet.            Jimmy Savile lived only for himself and his sexual desire, which he relieved through acts of paedophilia; which he kept from the public scrutiny through good charitable works that involved the forfeiting of 90 per cent of his income.              



                       

AND THE WINNER IS…


WHEN IT COMES to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s choice of winner; it leaves many a sane and rational observer with the surreal feeling of being in the twilight zone. The committee members have, over the years, turned this award into the kind of  fantastic  nonsense that compares with the Turner Prize in the world of art – indeed, it would not surprise many of us detractors to see a pickled shark craned in to receive the award at some future date.
            This year’s winner was not an individual or an institution, but a whole continent, would you believe? Yes, the EU was this year’s recipient. Despite social unrest on the streets of Athens, Madrid, and Rome; the committee still thought that the continent deserved a peace award.
            The euro fiasco was ignored, just as Henry Kissinger’s record in Vietnam was ignored in 1973, Fredrick Willem De Klerk in 1993, Yasser Arafat in 1994.
            More than a few eyebrows have been raised over the years with regard to this particular prize. But to presume that the EU is a suitable candidate for what is supposed to be a most prestigious honour is lamentable and risible, and leaves this award with little credibility and no respect. The trouble is, unlike the sciences and literature; the peace prize allows for political prejudice and sentiment among the committee members.
            The EU is no more worthy of an award than Wall Street or the City of London. Yet these… what can I call them?… These members of the European tribe; these bureaucrats who drink and dine with the European political elites… elites that the Nobel Peace Committee are glued too like Siamese twins.
Was this award to the EU merely a sop; an expression of “solidarity” (that odious European idiom) at a time when the continent has been brought ever nearer to the abyss by those architects of a United States of Europe? I think so; for, despite the language of the committee’s statement; all this award amounts to is a meagre contribution of £1 million in prize money, to help out the European deficits.

THE EUROPEAN UNION IS in a mess of its own creation; a mess that does not deserve any kind of award; for in such a case, the award would merit the same regard as lead, rather than some precious and deserving emblem made from gold.
            Like the Turner Prize Committee, the Nobel Committee courted controversy. But in the case of the Turner Prize, such controversy amounts to the kind of publicity that guarantees the awards’ success, in terms of the hullaballoo it creates. Whereas, the only thing such a controversy guarantees for the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, is to have it taken far less seriously than the organisers would have wished. 
            This award belittles the continents difficulties and will, in the future, demand from historians, the significance and importance of its presentation to a continent at a time when the continent of Europe was in decline - as well as a European Union in  desperation to complete its congealment at whatever cost to the people of Europe by forcing through political and monetary union.
            Once more we see the Nobel Peace Prize being used politically; in this case to help keep afloat the European ideal, which has always been the model of political and monetary union…or , to use its correct title, a Federal Europe.
THIS AWARD HAS represented nothing short of a disgrace for the Nobel Peace Committee. This particular part of the Nobel franchise should have its license rescinded. It is easily manipulated by prejudice and a bureaucratic compass that points in all directions toward the European Union.
            The Nobel Peace Prize should take a holiday from the Nobel categories and await a more deserving moment in human history before showing its ugly head once more.
             Yes, I agree, this would be unfair, if not unreasonable. So, in the mean time, the Nobel Peace Committee may continue to award individuals, but only individuals, and certainly not institutions or whole continents, with the Nobel Peace Prize. Such a format can only lead to questions of political bias among the Nobel Committee.
            The European Union is becoming unravelled by the experiment, orchestrated by politicians, of the single currency. It was a mad-cap idea warned against at the time by what were considered by the Europhiles as swivel eyed Eurosceptics. But these ‘demented’ sceptics are being proven right by the unfolding events.
YET DESPITE THESE unfolding events, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee still sees fit to award such failure with a £1 million cheque. What a disgrace it is to the founder Alfred Nobel that such an award should go to such a winner of such ill-repute as the European Union.
            Alfred Nobel sought to flower the best in ideas, whether scientific, artistic, literary, or philosophically. I hope that the peace prize was an addendum added by those who came after him. If this was not the case, then Alfred Nobel deserves the misspending of his fortune today on such unachievable aims as world peace; or even peace within a single family.
            A peace award was, and never was intended to be put within the Nobel franchise. Or if it was then controversy and ridicule would soon follow its introduction. The Nobel Peace Prize has become the most discredited award treated with cynicism and disparagement.
            Part of the reason for awarding it to the EU, is said to be because the EU has kept the peace of Europe for 60 years, due solely to its formation; when in fact it was the Cold War that kept Europe at peace thanks largely to the USA. But I cannot see the Nobel Committee ever acknowledging this and awarding the peace prize to America; so they create this fiction about the European Union being responsible for peace in our time.
            This whole circus has been  a conspiracy against historical reality in post war Europe. The EU model was meant to end European conflict, yet with the ever deeper euro crises and the paradigm of austerity causing social unrest; and with ideologically driven European statesmen determined at all cost to keep the 17 euro members together out of nothing more than bravado, and an almost dogmatic and blinkered view of reality; it seems that the sinking ship is being kept afloat by nothing more than the Nobel Committee.
                         
           
           
             
           
             


  
            

Monday, October 8, 2012

ABORTION YET AGAIN








THE HEALTH SECRETARY, JEREMY HUNT, has said he would like to see a 12 week limit on
 abortion: and, oh dear! As a consequence he has been castigated by the wilder fringes of the feminist lobby who assume for themselves the mantle of all womanhood: who see all men as misogynistic brutes; and the women’s body as inviolate and beyond the realm of any male viewpoint regarding abortion, including speaking up for the foetus; which is not, biologically speaking, part of a women’s anatomy; unlike the heart or lungs; but merely an incumbent tenant, whose residency is limited to nine months, and is therefore as much of a legitimate concern to men as women.
            From conception, a women is harbouring a new life; a life which will bring to it either sadness, happiness, greatness, or villainy. A life which may bring a cure for all types of cancers including those of the breast; a life that may transform the world of modern ideas, as the literary and philosophical greats succeeded in doing in the past. A life means all of this; it also means artistic, literary, medical and scientific advancement; and as such should not be so easily disposed of as these rampant feminists see it as their right to so do.
            It is not only a religious question, morally speaking, but a humanitarian one equal in its consideration to the starving children of Africa, who are cared for by the efforts of charities such as Oxfam and Christian Aid. But who speaks for the unborn? Only those few who dare put their head above the parapet and defy the ranting feminists who consider them religious fanatics or even worse … men!
            Medical science will dance on the head of a pin if required to so do by any current zeitgeist. Which means that within our hospitals there exists a contradictory (some would say hypocritical) attitude toward the unborn. Take any NHS hospital within the land. The medical profession at all levels will be giving out incongruous  information to pregnant women.
            In one part of the hospital where pregnant mothers attend a pre-natal clinic; they are told that from conception, they are having a baby, and are treated as such throughout their trimesters until the third and final one.
            However, within another part of the same hospital where abortion (effectively) on demand is carried out; the nomenclature changes, and both the embryo and the foetus (up to 23 weeks) is regarded as an accumulation of tissue, without purpose or function, that can be disregarded within this legal time spell as being none human; without the mother needing to fear she is destroying a human being.

I AM AN ATHEIST. My guidance is not the Bible, or its morality. Although much of its morality makes sense to a life worth living. But we are faced with 250,000 abortions each year, a third of which are repeat abortions. This suggests that human beings are being sacrificed on the altar of contraception; and an aborted foetus is being given the same status as a sperm filled condom, or the pill, or the morning after pill.
            These  feminists that demand their abortion rights have the right to so do. But to pretend (for a pretence is what is) to speak on behalf of the whole female gender, which the name feminist suggests, is arrogance taken to the extreme. It is a metropolitan elitist and reactionary stance to make.
            The 1970s model feminist is still sadly with us, proclaiming abortion as their right and weaving their nostrums into the whole of female culture - from the Pregnancy Advisory Council, to the very politics of the Left within all the main parties.
Abortion need not be used as a form of contraception as it so widely is. The many other none intrusive methods have, thanks to modern science, been introduced.     
Methods of contraception such as: an unrolled male latex condom; a polyurethane female condom, a diaphragm vaginal-cervical barrier: a contraceptive sponge; three varieties of birth control pills; a trans dermal contraceptive patch; a NuvaRing vaginal ring; an unrolled male latex condom; a polyurethane female condom; a diaphragm vaginal-cervical barrier; a contraceptive sponge; three varieties of birth control pills; a contraceptive patch; a vaginal ring; a hormonal intrauterine device (IUD); a split dose of two emergency contraceptive pills (morning after); and a  hormonal intrauterine device.
            Why oh why, do women resort to preventing the birth of a fellow human being? This I cannot, and wish not to be able to understand. The 1970’s brand of feminism (with its inbuilt animosity to all men) is being clung on to by so many modern feminists. It is about time they rebelled on behalf of the foetus. Modern scientific techniques regarding the imaging of the foetus, it is being said, has resulted in the a changing attitude to abortion among women.
            I hope this is true, but I doubt it. I will only believe the reality of such a suggested attitude, if there is a very large decline in the yearly abortion rate of 250,000 lost opportunities.
            When it was first introduced into law by David Steel; his Abortion Act of 1967, meant  that the legalisation of abortion, was meant to undermine and dispose of the freelance abortionists whose methods were primitive and cruel to many women.
            It was promised at the time that only a limited number of state abortions would be considered necessary; because there were a limited number of abortionists practicing their nefarious and cruel practices at the time, and the intervention of the state would end such practices, which it did – but at what cost? On top of which, people’s attitude toward such unwanted pregnancies changed.
            It is said that the road to ruin is paved with good intentions; and David Steel’s abortion legalisation proved the saying right. He did not envisage the viral nature of his Act. It has lead to abortion becoming another form of contraception in over a third of  the 250,000 cases of abortion presented yearly.
Abortion is a wicked practice that demeans humanity by, possibly, ridding it of its best minds in order to preserve a human vanity that wishes to sweep aside such a human encumbrance in order to allow it to pursue easy selfish options. Such options have become the preferred alternative for modern humanity, as the Abortion Act of 1967,  has allowed to happen, with abortion on demand.
I believe that in the decades and years to come, abortion will meet with the same distaste as slavery…especially among women! There will be a female Wilberforce who will take issue with the cruel practice of abortion.
Unlike Jeremy Hunt, I want to see this vile practice brought to an end; but I know it will never happen in my life-time, so, in the mean time, I would settle for Hunt’s 12 week limit and regard his announcement as nothing short of brave, considering the climate of the times.

           

           
            

Thursday, October 4, 2012

The Three Tenors, Sorry, Marxists


THERE WERE THREE  masterful intellects that drove the Left forward during the 1960s and 1970s, and whose impact on generations of students is still with us today and has been, in no small way, responsible for this country’s decline into left wing hegemony, which now  grips our cultural and political establishments.
            These three Marxists were E P Thompson, Ralph Milliband, and Eric Hobsbawm. They were, to all of those who indulged themselves in revolutionary politics, and believed in the damnation of capitalism - the master players.
            Now, the last remaining member of this triumphrate has died. That Eric Hobsbawm (95)was a great historian there is little doubt, and a general consensus among modern historians would support such view.
As a Marxist myself during the late 1960s to the late 1970s, I read two of the volumes of his great trilogy, The Age of Revolution, and The Age of Empire. Both volumes removed the fog of dialectical materialism from the eyes of a prole without any academic understanding of philosophy. The Hobsbawm curse was that he turned what had been a romantic belief and shallow understanding of Marxism into a comprehensive one; but it still left me with the naivety associated with class politics, and the nastiness of the underlying envy that accompanies such naivety.
I cannot judge Hobsbawm as a historian, only as a Marxist; and one which, when the end came, and the whole hideous experiment failed, he still remained supportive of the system that the historical materialism was meant to bring about.
To have admitted failure would have admitted a failed life. So he at times, truculently, and obdurately tried to defend the indefensible. He praised, right to the end, Stalin, whose many murderous impulses equalled or surpassed those of Hitler. To quote from his Daily Telegraph’s obituary: In a television interview, Hobsbawm was asked whether, for such an accomplishment to take place[communism in the Soviet Union], ‘the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?’
“ ‘Yes’, replied Hobsbawm”.
Such a riposte gives the true measure of the man. That he could see any kind of humanitarian impulse within such a totalitarian regime, is truly undermined by the above quote. Yet today politicians have paid their respects to Eric, including Ralph’s son, Ed Milliband, the leader of the Labour Party.

HOBSBAWN MAY RIGHTLY, after his death, have his literary output praised. But as an ideologue favouring the most cruel of dystopian arrangements (even in hindsight of its historical failure), he can be openly targeted and criticised. If he had had the good grace to admit that the Marxist gospel that he clung to, out of faith, proved a failure; then at least he would be remembered for his scholarship.
            Under the rule of the communist tsars, covering 0ver 70 years, Russia became the modern backdrop for Dante’s Divine Comedy, whose rubric fitted neatly into Soviet society; and Hobsbawm must have known this, but, like many who have been gripped by such idealism, he thought the pain and suffering was merited in order to fulfil the final synthesis that was to be the communist society.
            Eric Hobsbawm was an unrepentant sinner and should be treated as such by those who believe in democracy, which Hobsbawm obviously treated with contempt, except as a vehicle for his published works. He was a supporter of Stalin. There are no ifs or buts. You cannot blame the failure of his ‘utopian’ belief on his dogmatic attitude toward the disappointment he must have felt when Gorbachev said enough was enough and lifted the iron curtain and,  as a consequence, pulled down the Berlin Wall.
            What must have been going through our historian’s mind when these events unfolded? My guess is defiance: and that defiance asserted itself in belligerence and boldness toward any suggestion of the failure of Marxism. The rest is all down to the cruelty of old age and its ability to prove, through time, how mistaken a life spent believing in a particular nostrum can only bring bitterness and mulishness.

ALONG WITH HOBSBAWM, the historian E P Thompson’s History of the British Working Class also weaved its magic; as did Ralph Milliband, who wrote copiously for the New Left Review in the 1970s, and lectured at the London School of Economics (LSE) and sent, no doubt,  scientology-like, many young students out into the world to spread the Marxist virus throughout our schools and universities, as well as, many of our other cultural establishments.
While the Three Tenors brought nothing more than pure joy to the opera loving public; the Three Marxists weaved their nostrums into young minds, along with the ‘tolerant’ nature of ‘progressive’ politics; and, of course, the removal of the capitalist profit making eyesore from their lives.
So, in whatever profession they take, the LSE, as well as many red brick[1] students; from the 1960s and 1970s, will have been sent forth to remerge as left/liberals, and as such, as open minded left of centre types who have deemed, in class conscious terms, the Conservatives Party as the enemy of their collectivism. These students will have fallen fowl of such a liberal culture and welcomed it because of their parent’s own ‘progressive’ impulses.
On the evening of Hobsbawm’s death, the BBC decided to run a one hour tribute to the old Stalinist; while the Guardian lead with the story and used copious amounts of text to pay the same tribute. Page after page of Pravda-like accolades , of the kind that would appear on the death of a Soviet president, found their way into the liberal intelligentsia’s favourite tabloid.
Hobsbawm’s death hopefully brings to an end the insane worship which I and many of my generation once indulged in. The worship of a mechanical process that was, meant to predict the inevitable overthrow of the free market system, and bring into being the sunny uplands of communism; where human nature, as it has been recognised for over 200 millennia, is at last constrained by a stateless brotherhood working for the greater good of society.
In believing this, those who still do so, deserve the lifelong disappointment that Eric Hobsbawm so bitterly felt when his Sin City collapsed around him, and the cruel experiment was finally ended.





[1] Red brick universities were, in the 1970s, the covens of Marxist rebellion whose members were from both the middle and working classes.