Remember how the soon to be installed CEO of “The New York Times” said he knew nothing about widespread long lived rumours of the sexual abuse of underage children committed by one of the BBC’s biggest stars, some of the abuse taking place on BBC premises?

Even when an item on a BBC current affairs programme investigating these rumours was pulled at the last minute…

Even when the go ahead was given a few days later to air a TV special celebrating the star’s life and saying what a wonderful wonderful guy he was…

Well, the plot thickens….

But yesterday Lord Patten – who said he himself first heard about the Savile allegations less than two weeks ago when he read about them in a newspaper – insisted Mr Thompson had been made aware of the Newsnight investigation last December by director of news Helen Boaden.
When asked to confirm that the former director-general knew about the investigation, he said: ‘Yes’.
His comments were later retracted by the BBC Trust, which said he ‘misspoke’ on the matter.

I wonder if any of those brilliant, sophisticated, right on, politically correct lovers of investigative journalism at the NYT will want to have a quiet word with Mr Thompson next time they are sipping their dry martinis?

To understand one of the main reasons why, despite massive spending, British secondary school students are under achieving in comparison with their peers in Eastern Europe and East Asia, look no further than this report in the UK Daily Mail.

Mother hauled before a court for taking her son, 13, out of school to attend her Caribbean wedding
• Frances White refused to pay town hall fine for her son’s 11-day absence
• She had asked Marple Hall School for permission a year in advance
• When headteacher refused, she took her son to St Lucia wedding anyway
• The 31-year-old is due to appear before magistrates next week

An eleven day Caribbean wedding – just one example of how bloated the wedding industry has become. Once, of course, second weddings were fairly discreet affairs, quietly despatched in modest registry offices with no bridal gown or over populated reception. Even first weddings were generally organised within a limited budget so that the balance could help furnish the first home.

But no more of that – modern brides want the gowns and the beanfeast and the furniture and the exotic honeymoon for every one of their weddings and a gargantuan industry has grown to feed those wishes – strange, really, at a time when more than half the couples living together are not married….marriage is dying but weddings are big business…

So Frances wanted her big exotic wedding and she wanted her thirteen year old son to give her away and to create a memorable moment for all involved then she wanted him as part of the honeymoon….want, want, want, want….. then the school had to spoil her dream by pointing out that she could have chosen to get married some time during the thirteen weeks the school was closed.

But, she sobbed, that would be too expensive and it would spoil her dream….so she took her two sons out of school for the eleven days and immediately sent a signal to us all that education is a low priority in her world.

Of course, one can say, the world (especially the UK it seems) is full of people who prefer their gratification instant rather than deferred, so why make a fuss?

The fuss, my friends, is not to do with Frances White who, in every other way, is probably a loving and caring parent – it’s to do with a) the attitude of the Daily Mail and b) the views of those readers who commented.

The Mail reported Frances White as a woman wronged by a jobsworth bureaucracy, a view, unfortunately echoed by the majority of the commentators. If DM readers are representative of Middle England (as it frequently claims) then Middle England puts education fairly low on the agenda when faced with weddings and holidays….in other words, schooling must not interfere with our social life, no way, matey….

The Daily Mail has always been drooling with delight at any report of indiscipline in schools or falling standards of attainment – yet whenever a head excludes a pupil for wearing jewellery or not ignoring proper uniform they publish a picture of some little scrote pretending to be downcast plus “parents” who often look like escapees from the cast of “Shameless”. Anybody with half a brain would realise that the exclusion is the final act of a farce that has been going on for months, a deliberate pushing against the boundaries by families who see education not as the key to aspiration but as a drag on their tribal mores.

Interestingly the DM highlighted this in their piece on the OECD Report

British children’s poor reading skills are said to be partly because they spend too much time on computers rather than reading books, but are also a tragic reflection of the education they have received.
Nor has it helped that the UK has a relatively low proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. And having some of the world’s ‘best-educated’ parents has not improved the standards of Britain’s children – raising serious questions about the effective role of parents in UK schools.

Serious questions indeed – and the lack of parental concern in 21st century Britain is buttressed by the Daily Mail which seeks to undermine any attempt by schools to inculcate into parental minds that, unless we publicly value the process of education we shall slip further and further behind countries like China where parents will make every sacrifice to install a love and respect for learning in their children.

Shame on you, Frances White, for sending a message to your sons that schooling should never be allowed to interfere with social pleasures – and a curse on the morons at the Daily Mai – and it’s readers – for proclaiming Frances White as a martyr.

Much talk this week about London Mayor Boris Johnson’s impact on the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham and speculation about a possible tilt at the leadership some time in the future.

Prime Minister David Cameron is playing a dual game on this. “Friends” are saying that Cameron is extremely “relaxed” about Boris while other political and media surrogates are peddling the line of Boris being great for a laugh but being essentially a “buffoon” no real substance.

Looking at our current collection of so called political “leaders” at present – Cameron, Osborne, Clegg, Milliband, Balls – one might be tempted to paraphrase George II’s alleged remark about General James Wolfe…

“Buffoon is he? Then I hope he will bite some of my other politicians”…….

hhhhmmmm….former BBC Director General Mark Thompson, soon to take up his new job as CEO of the New York Times has just been asked a rather awkward question – how much did he know about the pulling of a BBC programme that investigated allegations that a top BBC star, Jimmy Savile, who died in 2011, was a serial abuser of underage girls.

Although the BBC pulled the programme their rivals at ITV aired a more extensive exposure a few days ago which has forced the BBC onto the back foot.
Thompson claims he had nothing to do with cancelling the Newsnight piece and was totally unaware of the rumours about Savile that had been circulating around the BBC for many years.

After Savile died on October 29 last year, Newsnight spent six weeks investigating allegations that he abused pupils from Duncroft school in Surrey at the height of his fame in the 1970s.
BBC journalists spoke to ten women who claimed they had been abused or had knowledge of abuse at the school, which shut in 1980.
But the investigation was never aired after Peter Rippon, editor of Newsnight, decided to abandon the broadcast in December, shortly before the BBC broadcast three tributes to Savile over Christmas.
After it was dropped, an angry BBC journalist is said to have cornered Mr Thompson at a Christmas drinks party in London to complain.

Thompson got the job at the NYT because of his reputation as a smooth operator with his finger on the pulse of his organisation – yet he claims to be totally oblivious of the implications for the BBC of the Savile programme being pulled.

That’s OK then…..

Sombre words of warning from the former Auditor General of Scotland, Bob Black and, more surprisingly, from the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Johann Lamont. Although addressed to Alex Salmond and his SNP government in Scotland the message they convey should resonate not only across the border with England but even further afield in Europe and the USA.

Black called for a debate ‘as a society’ on spending plans for universal services, which in Scotland include free prescriptions and a council tax freeze. ‘We do have to revisit it. Every pound that goes on free services, such as bus passes for well-off older people, is not there to do other things,’ he said.

Lamont followed the same path

‘someone always pays in the end’ for universal services. She added: ‘I believe our resources must go to those in greatest need.

‘If we wish to continue some policies as they are then they come with a cost which has to be paid for either through increased taxation, direct charges or cuts elsewhere. If we do not confront these hard decisions soon, then the choice will be taken from us when we will be left with little options.’

In other words this is a debate that must be held at an adult level.

‘We need to get to a place where we can talk about these things quite frankly and openly, tolerate differences of opinion being expressed, and then allow the politicians to absorb that information, take it forward and develop the policies.

This would be a bitter pill for Salmond and the SNP tp swallow because their chip on the shoulder nationalist rhetoric has never been rooted in economic reality. Instead they have encouraged Scots to fall for the oldest confidence trick in the book – the free lunch.

Not that the Cameron/Clegg coalition in England is much better. For all the talk of “cuts” the fact is that government expenditure in the UK is increasing and will continue to increase over the next few years – but the increase will be a tad less than it would have been if Labour had been re-elected in 2010.

Moreover, although budgets have been reduced across several areas, Cameron has ring fenced spending in the NHS – the biggest “universal free service” of all – as well as pleasing the Guardianistas by protecting the overseas aid budget. In addition, of course, he and his government have dared not grasp the nettle of free bus passes and heating allowances for all old age pensioners, including those who holiday with Saga and overcrowd weekday golf courses.

But it’s not just politicians who have to face up to reality – it is also we the people. As Black has said there must be a “frank and open debate” with no histrionics, no bloody shrouds being waved by producer interest groups like doctors, teachers and local government workers, no sob stories commissioned by the BBC.

The tragedy is that none of the major UK political parties dares to ask the public to face the facts. Like the BBC over Jimmy Savile, our political elite prefers to pretend the problem doesn’t exist and, if they go ostrich, it will go away.

What an opportunity for UKIP to campaign on cold hard facts…..

Sorry but we can no longer afford to pay out so much money for benefits, “free” healthcare, protected public sector pensions, overseas aid, free bus passes for pensioners, arts subsidies etc etc. We believe it is immoral to pass on massive debts to our children and grandchildren. So this is what we promise. If you elect us we will reduce taxation but, in return, you must expect to pay a contribution for public services that were once “free”

I think such a manifesto might not be a political suicide note. Maybe, at last, we, the electorate, want to be treated, for the first time in decades , as adults….

Full marks to the NHS..The Lovely Mrs P slipped and fell while we were out hiking. Fortunately we were just starting out, 100 yds from the car park. A friend an I managed to lift her up but she couldn’t press with her right foot so we hobbled to the car.

Drove to East Surrey Hospital A&E…from arrival at emergency, initial assessment, further examination, X Ray, broken ankle diagnosed, leg plastered and leaving for home…all in just under 2 hours. Staff were efficient, caring, considerate and good humoured…just sayin’…..

Against the background of an irrelevant US Presidential “contest” between two men who mouth similar platitudes and promises on behalf of rival coalitions of nepostic, self serving party hacks only motivated by the desire to get their snouts in the taxpayer funded trough and a Europe becoming increasingly governed by and on behalf of an entrenched and self appointed oligarchy of bureaucrats it would be only too easy to sink into a miasma of hopelessness.

Don’t

The west is in crisis. Governments have grown too big, living beyond their means – and ours. The true costs of extra officialdom have been concealed. Parasitical politicians have been hopeless at holding to account the elites who now preside over us. As a result, Western nations are mired in debt and chronically misgoverned. Should we despair? Actually, no. Precisely because the West s Big Government model is bust, things are going to have to change. The West is on the cusp of dramatic changes driven by the failure of her elites, technology and maths. At the precise moment Big Government becomes unaffordable, the internet revolution makes it possible to do without it. Be optimistic. We are going to be able to manage without government – and thrive. The old political and economic order is about to give way to something vastly better.

Ploughing the same furrow as Prof Glenn Reynolds in his 2006 classic “An Army of Davids” Douglas Carswell, a British Tory MP, shows in his new book “The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy” how we, the little people, can use the internet to undermine and subvert the dreams and schemes of an elite that, until recently, controlled all the cultural engines of the state through their monopolies of communication and media.

Which is why, of course, the elites want to exert greater control of the internet.

As the Tea Party in the USA and UKIP in Britain will vouchsafe, the battle will be tough and remorseless – but fight we must if we are not to be bound by the soft chains of a decrepit and amoral lassitude, drugged into submission by the lies and baseless promises of the parasites who feed on the wealth created by our toil and sweat.

So – let’s fight back…find out more about the ITU Conference in December, publicise it and ask your local political parasites WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY GOING TO DO ABOUT IT….

An old cowboy went riding out one dark and windy day
Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way
When all at once a mighty herd of red eyed cows he saw
A-plowing through the ragged sky and up the cloudy draw

Their brands were still on fire and their hooves were made of steel
Their horns were black and shiny and their hot breath he could feel
A bolt of fear went through him as they thundered through the sky
For he saw the Riders coming hard and he heard their mournful cry

Their faces gaunt, their eyes were blurred, their shirts all soaked with sweat
He’s riding hard to catch that herd, but he ain’t caught ’em yet
‘Cause they’ve got to ride forever on that range up in the sky
On horses snorting fire As they ride on hear their cry

As the riders loped on by him he heard one call his name
If you want to save your soul from Hell a-riding on our range
Then cowboy change your ways today or with us you will ride
Trying to catch the Devil’s herd, across these endless skies

Would a song about the punishment for sin come out of the modern music industry? I doubt it but those terrifying lyrics have a resonance that might make even the most urbanised record company executive or Hollywood icon hesitate before snorting that next line of coke…

There are many versions of this classic cowboy song, written in 1948 by Stan Jones, working then as a Park Ranger in Death Valley. It took Jones into a prolific song writing career in Hollywood, a career sadly terminated by his untimely death in 1963, aged 49.

The biggest selling version was by Vaughn Monroe in 1949 but it’s the voice of Johnny Cash that, to me, really brings out the true nature of the song as a warning of the consequences of not changing your ways – a message that probably always hit home to The Man in Black as he reflected on his own stormy life.

Actually it was Burl Ives who made the original recording but Monroe rushed to get his own version out first.

However, the Ives version has a more folksy intimate feel that seems better suited to the tale that Jones heard as a twelve year old in Arizona…..

An impressionable 12 year old rode to the top of an Arizona hill one afternoon with an old Cowboy friend to check a windmill. A big storm was building and they needed to lock the blades down before the wind hit. When finished, they paused to watch the clouds darken and spread across the sky. As lightning flashed, the Cowboy told the boy to watch closely and he would see the devil’s herd, their eyes red and hooves flashing, stampede ahead of phantom horsemen. The Cowboy warned the youth that if he didn’t watch himself, he would someday be up there with them, chasing steers for all eternity. The terrified boy jumped on his horse and took off for the the safety of home.

“they paused to watch the clouds darken and spread across the sky”……reminds me of my favourite Maynard Dixon painting…..

Victoria Cross and Bar

The Victoria Cross is the highest award for gallantry in battle for British and Commonwealth service personnel. It was introduced at the request of Queen Victoria in 1856 and it was her wish that it should be open to all ranks, not just officers. It is sparingly awarded for most conspicuous bravery or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy” It is usually presented to the recipient, or, in the case of a posthumous award, to a recipient’s family, by the monarch at a special ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

To be awarded the VC is a singular honour, recognition of courage above and beyond the call of duty – so to receive it twice is the mark of something extra special, so special that it has only happened three times in just over 150 years.

One such man was Arthur Martin-Leake (1874-1953) of Ware in Hertfordshire. He was a surgeon who volunteered to join the British army during the South African Wars. He was originally a trooper in the Imperial Yeomanry. After his year service was completed he stayed on in South Africa as a civil surgeon. A few months later he volunteered again, this time as a surgeon captain in the South African Constabulary attached to the 5th Field Ambulance.

He won his first VC during an action at Vlakfontein, on the 8th February, 1902. Surgeon-Captain Martin-Leake went up to a wounded man, and attended to him under a heavy fire from about 40 Boers at 100 yards range. He then went to the assistance of a wounded Officer, and, whilst trying to place him in a comfortable position, was shot three times, but would not give in till he rolled over thoroughly exhausted. All the eight men at this point were wounded, and while they were lying on the Veldt, Surgeon-Captain Martin-Leake refused water till every one else had been served.

In 1903 he left the army to work as a medical officer with a railway company in India but in 1912 he volunteered for the British Red Cross in Montenegro during the Balkan War and was awarded a medal by the Red Cross of Montenegro for his efforts. He returned to India but in 1914 he volunteered once more for the British Army, this time with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Belgium.

Within a few weeks he won a bar to his original VC for most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty throughout the campaign, especially during the period 29th October to 8th November, 1914, near Zonnebeke, in rescuing, whilst exposed to constant fire, a large number of the wounded who were lying close to the enemy’s trenches.

Later in the war he commanded a Field Ambulance unit and then a Casualty Clearing Station where he was once again commended for his conduct during action.

After the war he returned to his job in India until 1937 when he retired to his home in Hertfordshire but at the outbreak of WW2 he commanded a local ARP unit which was charged with organising safety and security during air raids.

He died in 1953 of lung cancer and his ashes are buried at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, High Cross, Near Ware, Hertfordshire.