Morning music
Battles past
Thought for the Day
I see that the “BBC presenter” story is still rolling. A couple of things strike me about the story and also about the reaction to it.
Firstly, the sheer hysteria. It seems that the girl involved was 17 at the time, assuming that there is any substance to the story. It is one of the oddities of the English law at present (as I understand it— I admit to being not very au fait with it now, having not practised at the Bar since 2008) that the unnamed BBC presenter could actually have had full sexual relations with the girl (or any girl of 17, or indeed 16) without being in peril of the law, yet if he paid for nude photographs of her (even though she may have taken them herself, and willingly) he might actually be at risk of imprisonment: see https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jul/09/bbc-presenter-accused-of-paying-teenager-for-photos-could-face-jail-term-if-guilty.
To my mind, this makes a mockery of the law. The “photographs” law should surely be in line with the law on sexual relations, and so the age reduced to 16 years.
I am unsure about whether a “photographs” law of that kind was or is necessary at all, or if it is, whether the relevant age should be 16 or lower, as with some provisions of, eg, the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Sexual Offences Act 1956.
The Protection of Children Act 1978, the present “photographs” law, does not (as far as I know) specify an age, but refers only to “children“.
This was never the kind of law I did when at the Bar, so I may be out of my depth on the detail here but, to my mind, that 1978 “photographs” law (which I have never read in full) seems to be on the face of it yet another badly-drafted law of the past half-century. There are several others, including the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 and the Communications Act 2003, s. 127. Both of those have been superseded or are about to be superseded by newer laws.
I find it strange that the 1978 “photographs” law was thought to be necessary at all. It was brought in 20 years before the Internet was widely available for public use and, after all, photography itself has been around for about 200 years if you include its earlier modern manifestations such as the daguerrotype. Photographs as such have certainly existed since the 1860s, yet only in 1978 did Parliament consider that such a penal law was desirable, or at all necessary. Very odd.
Leaving all that aside, there seems to be a strange dissonance now— UK and general Western society almost eliminating real childhood and/or childhood “innocence”, and yet going mad if someone, especially anyone famous (such as George Osborne), has sexual relations, even if completely lawfully (in Osborne’s case, that is disputed), with a teenage girl of 16 or 17, or if such a person (as alleged of the unnamed BBC presenter) pays a girl of 16 or 17 for some risque photographs.
Well, there it is. To my mind, this “BBC presenter” story is a bit of a storm in a teacup anyway, looking at the challenges our country and society face at present. There are bigger issues.
The other aspect which I find striking about the “BBC presenter” story is that the unnamed defaulter has such a high level of income that he can, and apparently is willing to, pay out £35,000 for photographs of some girl.
The BBC gets almost all of its money from the outdated tax misleadingly called a “licence fee”. Radio licences, dog licences etc have passed into history, but the BBC licence fee marches on. Not only that, but enforced by criminal sanction. There are many people (mostly women) actually in prison because of having not had a TV licence, and then unable or unwilling to comply with the order of a court: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tv-licence-fee-women-convictions-b1763192.html.
Out of the huge revenues thus raised, the BBC pays its staff well, often very well, and in some cases far too well. Gary Lineker, that loudmouth ignoramus, is paid a million a year to shoot the breeze about football. Alan Shearer, another ex-footballer, gets about half a million. Zoe Ball apparently gets about a million. A number are getting around £400,000. Looking at them, most are, frankly, overpaid.
Why should the public subsidize what is increasingly, “Soviet” TV and radio output, largely unwatchable and unlistenable?
My final thought about this nonsense is that George Osborne must be loving it. The notorious email about his own peccadilloes is now already all but forgotten. I suppose, though, that despite his former, though fairly brief, political prominence, Osborne is now yesterday’s news…just not very interesting to most people.
From the newspapers
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/11/900000-older-people-ae-lack-of-nhs-care-at-home
“It’s deeply worrying that many older people are ending up in hospital due to lack of the right sort of services in the community. No one wants to be in hospital but for older people all too often it can lead to an avoidable deterioration in their health,” said Caroline Abrahams, Age UK’s charity director.
Prof Adam Gordon, the president of the British Geriatrics Society, said the report “makes grim reading [and] rightly identifies that older people are currently being let down by NHS and social care services”.”
[The Guardian]
This has been a scandal (and a massive waste of money) for years, certainly since 2010 and probably long before. No care at home means more demand at hospitals. District nurses were once ubiquitous; now they seem hardly to exist at all. I was told by one, a decade ago, that she was fed up with NHS mismanagement, and so was emigrating to Australia, where she would also be paid far more.
As with so many areas of life in England, Government and Opposition talk a good game, but fail to deliver for the people.
“Nearly 10,000 small-boat migrants who reached Britain in the past four months were last night handed an ‘amnesty’ from the Government’s tough new immigration measures.“
[Daily Mail]
More treachery.
10,000 more deadbeats, criminals, potential terrorists, and/or useless millstones round the neck of the British people.
However bad and (at best) useless Starmer-Labour will be, this “Conservative” Party misgovernment really has failed on every metric. It has to go, and I hope that almost all of its MPs will be dumped by the voters. Then a new fight will begin, against the “Labour” version of the System…
Tweets seen
Migration invasion.
Terrible, particularly in France, the UK, Spain, but also in Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium and, oddly, Bulgaria.
Migration-invasion does not only mean small boats crossing the Channel, but also “legal” migration and, often forgotten, “invasion by births”.
Having encountered a couple of Dutch doctors, this does not at all surprise me…
Well, there it is. The Poles are sensible after all…
and “Labour”, under Starmer, Rachel Reeves, and Yvette Cooper, will be saying, in effect, “vote for us…we can make workhouses run more efficiently, and more fairly, and with full implementation of any anti-racist, anti-sexist, pro-LGBTQXYZ measures you can imagine“…
…yet System talking heads on TV and radio worry that British people now hate “their” MPs, and are always asking why…
Late tweets
I recommend tweeter @wayotworld.
2%, though? Surely that (((group))) is more like 0.5% of the population?
A horrible woman, and completely out of her depth when Prime Minister. I suspect part-Jewish. She strengthened the bad law of Communications Act 2003, s.127 by introducing a 3-year longstop limitation period in place of the formerly-existing 6-month one, which change has emboldened evil little cabals such as the “Campaign Against Antisemitism”, which use “lawfare” (abuse of our legal and justice systems) to repress British people.
If that is a genuine photograph, it is really telling.
Look at that old Jewess kowtowing.
Maybe, as with Biden, those telephones have reached the end of their normal-functioning life.
Unless NATO forces join in the war (as the Zelensky cabal wants), the Kiev regime has no prospect even of recovering Donetsk and Lugansk regions, let alone Crimea.
If NATO forces were to join in the war, directly, a major conflagration would start across Central and Eastern Europe, maybe even into Western Europe. It might then go nuclear.
“One picture is worth a thousand words“…
Well, I myself have never been a mental patient, but here are a few interesting stories (some featuring “Dr. Dim”):
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 