Wednesday 30 May 2018

When a British party leader tried to have his ex-lover murdered

When a British party leader tried to have his ex-lover murdered

The Liberal Party leader's attempt to have his former gay lover assassinated descended into farce
Did you know that Norman Scott was married to Terry-Thomas’s sister-in-law? Most people today will have only a fuzzy idea who Terry-Thomas was, just as they will be vague about the Jeremy Thorpe affair, but this revelation was perhaps the key moment in the second part of A Very English Scandal.
The drama comes over as farce, indeed black comedy, coming to a climax with the failed shooting on Exmoor. One didn’t even feel sorry for the dog, Rinka, the one harmless and perhaps purely likeable character in the whole story.
The creators of the television drama had little choice but to go down the comic route, and make of their series a beautiful realisation of the world of Terry-Thomas and Carry On. How else could one have remained faithful to the facts? For the facts of the matter are so bizarre, so outlandish, so simply mad, that they can’t be given completely serious treatment – or rather their seriousness best emerges through the medium of comedy.
I was a schoolboy when the Thorpe affair unfolded, and I followed it closely, having been a keen supporter of the Liberal Party since 1974. (I was 11 in that year of two elections, but I took to politics early, just as some take to football.) I was pretty convinced that Thorpe stood a chance of becoming Prime Minister, and Thorpe himself evidently thought the same.
When it came to the trial in the spring of 1979, I suppose I was not the only one to see the duel between Scott and Thorpe as being not a contest of equals: an establishment grandee versus an archetypal outsider; nor could I have been the only one whose instinctive sympathy was with the grandee. In fact, Mr Justice Cantley, whose summing up was so favourable to Thorpe, became something of a national hero after the trial. And George Carman, who was the defence lawyer, became Britain’s most famous barrister. The underdog, Norman Scott, was widely scorned and derided. But, as we now know, and should have realised then (perhaps we did, but not consciously) Scott was not a liar. But we wanted him to be a liar, I think. Scott was seen as a threat, not just to Thorpe, but to the society as a whole.
All that has now changed. Norman Scott (happily still with us, the only main player still alive) today would no longer be cast as a dangerous outsider, a threat to national stability. Indeed, so much has Britain changed that anything like the Thorpe affair is now impossible.
But there is one thing that continues to make the affair memorable, and that is the way Thorpe conspired to have Scott murdered in so very amateurish and incompetent a way; indeed that Thorpe thought of having Scott murdered in the first place. The whole plan, the whole idea, strikes one as completely mad. Was Thorpe off his rocker, to put it in ordinary terms? Were his actions the actions of a sane and balanced man? If not, and one can hardly see how they could have been, how was it that Thorpe was so plausible for so long?
One possible conclusion is that the leading men of the sixties (and they were all men) really did think they could get away with anything. Thorpe took terrible risks, given the mores of the time. So did people like Lord Boothby and Tom Driberg. But in those days newspapers did not publish scandalous material about politicians, even if it was true. This remained the case until the late 1970s and the time of the Thorpe trial. Thorpe could pose as the innocent victim of a blackmailer. In fact, as Hugh Grant’s brilliant interpretation of his character makes clear, Thorpe was a bounder and a cad, though a charming one.
It all makes for great television: but such wonderful viewing does raise questions of just how divorced from reality and morality someone like Thorpe was. There is underlying seriousness in A Very English Scandal: we all need to treat each other with more kindness.

Monday 28 May 2018

Oops! It seems I have made an appalling faux pas!

 Oops! It seems I have made an appalling faux pas!

Yesterday I posted:

'A couple of years back the Irish voted to accept gay marriage (sic). So far as I know not a single gay marriage has taken place in Ireland and none ever will'

Well, I stand corrected. It seems that there have been approaching 500 gay marriages (sic) in the Emerald Isle since that referendum.

In these situation we ask ourselves: "How could I have got it so wrong?" Well, in this case I had not read of any gay marriages (sic)  in Ireland so I assumed that there had been none.

Mea Culpa

GENE

Sunday 27 May 2018

GREETINGS FROM WHITLEY BAY...

GREETINGS FROM WHITLEY BAY...

 Image result for Whitley Bay

Just a quick update folks. We are in Whitley Bay and all is more than fine. Heading out shortly to an Italian restaurant for dinner.

The journey here was so easy. Virgin train from Kings Cross (Yes the famous Kings Cross of the DUKE OF YORK pub of yesteryear) to Newcastle and out to Whitley Bay via the Metro line. Must say I'm impressed by this Metro line - well-maintained and regular trains. At a station named Jesmond a busker got on - or maybe he was just a drunk. An aging Eric Burdon lookalike, he sang The Black Velvet Band. Nobody took any notice. We were in Whitley Bay in a jiffey. Lovely hotel and great stretches of sandy beach.

Went to not only the Catholic church (beautiful) today but also the Anglican (run down) and the Baptist (quite impressive). All are constructed from brown stone - sandstone?

Not too excited by the much-heralded Dome. More on that later.


The Irish referendum on abortion: am I bothered? Not really. It's all hot air. A couple of years back the Irish voted to accept gay marriage (sic). So far as I know not a single gay marriage has taken place in Ireland and none ever will. It will be the same with abortion. No abortions will ever take place mark my words. 

GENE

PS        I upset one of Marianne's friends last night with my views on abortion.

Friday 25 May 2018

WHITLEY BAY HERE I COME...

WHITLEY BAY HERE I COME...

Well, Marianne and I are just getting ready to set off for Whitley Bay. Sensibly we are going by train.  Marianne has planned a reunion with two of her friends for the Whitsun bank holiday and I have been invited along.We are coming back on Tuesday so I will have time to visit Lindisfarne. Also of course a visit to Gateshead to see the Angel of the North. 

I have never been to the north east before, so new experiences  coming up. I am very much looking forward to seeing this Whitely Bay Dome - the Geordie Taj Mahal I guess.

Maybe I could meet you and Delia over the weekend Detters? Just email me and I'll arrange.
 
What do you say bonnie lad?

GENE


https://www.newsguardian.co.uk/news/what-were-they-thinking-1-6581072

 Spanish City Dome

What were they thinking?  What the hell were the council thinking of when they came up with the stupid catchphrase which adorns the new £1m pavement in front of the Spanish City? ‘Aaahh - the dome - it was the Taj Mahal to us.’ They might as well have put up a giant headstone reading: ‘Aaahhh - remember how good the Spanish City was before we wasted millions letting it die.’ Renovation time: don’t move, improve! How to make the most of the space you have, without breaking the bank. Read More Promoted by Delaval And Hartley Glaziers And Ceramics Ltd As a teenager in the 1970s, I worked in the Spanish City dome. Over the years, I have watched with sadness as the building and surrounding area have slowly dropped to bits, while the council has wasted millions on consultants. This merely rubs salt into the wounds.Nigel Green Whitley Bay

Thursday 24 May 2018

Ex-Vatican doctrine czar calls homophobia a ‘hoax’, ‘psycho-terrorism’ Is he right? Or is he right?

Ex-Vatican doctrine czar calls homophobia a ‘hoax’, ‘psycho-terrorism’  Is he right? Or is he right?

Ex-Vatican doctrine czar calls homophobia a ‘hoax’, ‘psycho-terrorism’
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a Nov. 19, 2014, file photo. (Credit: Paul Haring/CNS.)
“The reality is, there’s just man and woman,” said German Cardinal Gerhard Müller. “There are two sexes, that’s the reality, and everything else is an interpretation.”
In the wake of the May 17 World Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, the Vatican’s former top doctrinal official, German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, has declared that homophobia “simply doesn’t exist” and is “an invention, an instrument of totalitarian dominion over the minds of others.”
“The homosexual movement doesn’t have scientific arguments, so it’s constructed an ideology that wants to dominate, seeking to construct its own reality. It’s the Marxist scheme, according to which it’s not reality that builds thought, it’s thought that builds reality,” Müller said.
“Whoever doesn’t accept this thought is considered sick, as if, among other things, illness could be treated with police and courts,” the 70-year-old cardinal said.
“In the Soviet Union, Christians were put into insane asylums, which are the means of totalitarian regimes such as National Socialism and Communism,” Müller said. “Today in North Korea, the same fate awaits anyone who doesn’t accept the dominant thinking.”
Müller’s comments came in a conversation with Italian blogger Costanza Miriano.
Müller served as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 2012 until June 2017, when he stepped down and was replaced by Spanish Archbishop, now Cardinal-designate, Luis Ladaria, who belongs to Pope Francis’s own Jesuit order.
Though Müller never openly broke with Francis, nevertheless his ambivalence over some of the pontiff’s moves, including his cautious opening to Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics in Amoris Laetitia, was always clear.
In the interview, Miriano asked Müller for his reaction to bishops who promote prayer vigils or other events around the World Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.
“Some bishops today don’t have the courage to speak the truth, and allow themselves to be intimidated,” he said. “They don’t understand that homophobia is a hoax that serves to threaten people.”
“Today, people are being scared by psycho-terrorism, taking advantage of their ignorance,” Müller said.
Müller acknowledged that Christians are called to love all persons, including those with a same-sex attraction, but added, “It has to be clear that loving someone doesn’t mean obedience to gender ideology.”
“The reality is, there’s just man and woman,” he said. “There are two sexes, that’s the reality, and everything else is an interpretation.”
Inevitably, Müller addressed Francis’s reputation for being open and accepting of gay persons, famously expressed in the 2013 sound bite, “Who am I to judge?”
“The pope just said the same thing that’s in the Catechism: Every person merits respect because he or she is made in the image of God, and we can’t use a person for any reason,” he said.
“Yet in the same moment, Francis also spoke of a ‘gay lobby,’ and unfortunately that’s true,” he said. Müller cited the case of Father Krzysztof Charamsa, a Polish theologian and former official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who “came out” in October 2015 just as the pope’s second Synod of Bishops on the family was set to open.
“He never requested either help or accompaniment,” Müller said of Charamsa.
In the interview, Müller also addressed rumors about a possible “revisiting” of Humanae Vitae, the landmark 1968 encyclical by Blessed Pope Paul VI that reaffirmed the Church’s traditional ban on artificial birth control.
“I compare those who want to revisit Humanae Vitae in order to please the masses with those who made compromises during the totalitarian regimes,” he said.
“You can’t make compromises with wolves, even for the sake of saving a few sheep,” he said. “It’s an illusion to think you can save a few sheep, when you’ll lose the whole flock.”
“That’s not the logic of Jesus,” Müller said. “In order to not lose even a single sheep, he sacrificed himself, not the sheep.”
Müller suggested that those who want to see Humanae Vitae weakened often begin with the hardest cases, in order to play on emotions.
“The trick of theologians and bishops who attack doctrine is to play on emotions,” he said. “For instance, they start to talk about a father with four kids who’s lost his job and a mother who’s sick … and they end up with a discussion riding a wave of emotion based on a single case.”
“That’s not a serious way to face the question,” he said

Tuesday 22 May 2018

Cardinal Brandmüller: those who call for women priests are ‘heretics’ and ‘excommunicated’

Cardinal Brandmüller: those who call for women priests are ‘heretics’ and ‘excommunicated’

The Cardinal was responding to German politician Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who called for female ordination


Those who push for the ordination of women to the priesthood “fulfil the elements of heresy” and effectively incur excommunication, Cardinal Walter Brandmüller has said.
Cardinal Brandmüller, who is one of the four “dubia” cardinals, strongly criticised Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the General Secretary of Germany’s governing CDU party, after she called for the Catholic Church to ordain women priests.
Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is widely regarded as the frontrunner to succeed Angela Merkel as German Chancellor, said in an interview with Die Zeit: “It is very clear: women have to take positions of leadership in the Church.”
She added that she would like to see female priests, but for now the Church should concentrate on “a more realistic goal, the female diaconate.”
However, Cardinal Brandmüller said the idea of female ordination had been definitively ruled out by St John Paul II, and therefore anyone who insists on promoting the idea has “left the foundation of the Catholic faith” and “fulfils the elements of heresy which has, as its consequence, the exclusion from the Church – excommunication.”
The cardinal added that the Church is not a “human institution”, but lives according to the “forms, structures, and laws as given to her by her Divine Founder about which no man has power [to change] – also no pope and no council.”
He said it was “astonishing” that certain themes were being kept alive within the German Church. They are “always the same: female priesthood, celibacy, intercommunion, remarriage after divorce. Just recently there has been added the Church’s ‘yes’ to homosexuality.”
Recently, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also waded into a doctrinal debate, calling for the Catholic Church to ‘share’ Communion with Protestants.
“Let us seek ways of expressing the common Christian faith by sharing in the Last Supper and Communion. I am sure: Thousands of Christians in interdenominational marriages are hoping for this,” he said.

Saturday 19 May 2018

Guernsey rejects assisted suicide ... HURRAH!!!


Guernsey rejects assisted suicide ... HURRAH!!!


The island's legislature voted down a proposal to look into legalising the practice
The legislature on the island of Guernsey has rejected legalising assisted suicide after a two-and-a-half-day debate.
The States of Guernsey voted to reject a requête (proposal) to look into legalising the practice, and will instead investigate “measures necessary to improve quality of life and health outcomes for all islanders towards the end of their lives”.
Last week, the most senior committee in the States – as the island’s legislature in known – voted unanimously not to support the proposal, saying it did not conform to their priorities and the complex legal issues would likely drain resources from other areas.
Disability groups and religious leaders had also criticised the proposal. Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth, whose diocese covers the island, was outspoken in condemning it. “It would be an intolerable and utterly immoral demand to ask medical staff, doctors and nurses, dedicated to preserving life, to extinguish the life of another human person,” he said.
“Assisting someone to die prematurely or assisting someone to commit suicide, even when they earnestly request it, can never ever be a compassionate action. It is a grave sin.”

Had the legislation passed, Guernsey could have become the first jurisdiction in the British Isles to introduce assisted suicide. In 2015, the British House of Commons voted by a wide margin to reject a similar proposal for the United Kingdom.

Friday 18 May 2018

Tom Wolfe – the Evelyn Waugh of Wall Street





Tom Wolfe – the Evelyn Waugh of Wall Street


Wolfe drew on a tradition of conservative satire and politically incorrect social criticism
Tom Wolfe, who immortalised the phrase “Master of the Universe” in Bonfire of the Vanities 30 years ago, lives in exactly the sort of apartment owned by the book’s bond-trader protagonist Sherman McCoy: “One of those apartments the mere thought of which ignites flames of greed and covetousness under people all over New York, and for that matter, the world.”
The moment, in 1998, when I stepped inside the curiously dark lobby of Wolfe’s apartment co-op, I was interrogated by a doorman who was wearing a Prussian-looking green uniform with gold epaulettes. He scowled disdainfully at the ripped shopping bag clutched under my right arm. Inside were the 742-page galleys of Wolfe’s second novel, A Man in Full, which I’d read in 26 hours flat – an experience I hadn’t repeated since I was an undergraduate at Cambridge in 1987 and first got my hands on Bonfire, which I had read through the night fuelled by takeaway pizza and dreams of one day working in America.
After reading Wolfe’s tale of the money-crazed world of 1980s New York, and then all his other “New Journalism” books, I wrote a 15,000-word thesis as part of my English finals on his satire, full of obtuse references to Swift and Juvenal. I brazenly sent Wolfe a copy, asking to interview him. He politely wrote back in a typed letter, signed with a florid 18th-century signature, thanking me for the thesis on his work:
I might add that since you mention me in the same breath with Evelyn Waugh, Thackeray and Wyndham Lewis – you’ll notice I say the same breath and not the same league – I now feel positively historic. But alas, I have been forced to put my feet in the stocks to compel myself to complete a book against a ferocious deadline. Once that’s out of the way, you’re on.
The letter (with triple-spaced hyphens) had been sent to the old Times offices in Wapping, where I worked, and was dated January 31, 1991 – more than seven years before we finally met. That’s how long it took him to write his follow-up novel.
As the mahogany-panelled elevator jerked to a stop on the 14th floor, I was greeted by a distinguished dandy, with lank, greying Eton Flop hair, standing in the polished marble hallway. Wolfe was decked out in an Edwardian three-piece, double-breasted, off-white suit. Beneath that he wore a starched white shirt with dark claret stripes, fitted with a dangerous-looking high-rise stiff white collar.
As I pulled the ripped bag behind me, using one of its broken faux-gold handles, Wolfe’s strobic blue eyes zoned in on the unsightly object sliding across his marble hallway floor. I explained that the manuscript was so large it would not fit in my briefcase.
When I asked Wolfe why his second novel had taken so long, he replied: “Mr Cash, I find it hard to write if I have any money in my bank account.” His advance when he signed his contract in 1989 was $7.5 million.
There are two things that people forget about Wolfe. First, judging himself by his contemporaries – who included John Updike and Norman Mailer – he was positively historic to be publishing his first novel at the ripe literary age of 56. Wolfe found this almost an embarrassment. He told me that the trepidation of being a debutante novelist at such an age had caused him to retire to bed with chronic back pain in the weeks before Bonfire hit the shelves in New York. The pains immediately subsided once the (mostly) roaring reviews and sales figures came in.
Wolfe’s skewering of the white plump meat of American capitalism came out just as Wall Street suffered the greatest single-day loss since the Crash of 1929. Bonfire was number one on the New York Times bestseller list for two months and sold more than 800,000 copies in hardcover. The phrase “Master of the Universe” came to sum up the aspirations of a generation of would-be Gordon Gekkos in the red-braces world of Wall Street in the late 1980s.
Bonfire drew on a tradition of conservative satire harking back to Evelyn Waugh. Wolfe’s brand of politically incorrect social criticism remains so important in a world where the Left seems to have an ever-increasing cultural monopoly, from the theatre to the BBC, news, arts, film, publishing and, most blatantly, the well-manicured groves of academia.
In the present political climate, it is possible that Bonfire would be regarded as so racially inflammatory that some publishers would “pass” rather that risk the Twitter wrath of the Left. Certainly the way Wolfe eagerly flame-grilled the ethnic, racial and religious tensions simmering below the surface of New York would outrage today’s liberal thought police.
Wolfe is essentially a moralist in the tradition of Mark Twain. His novels suggest the inversion of our modern age by describing inanimate objects in animalistic terms. In Bonfire, every time a train enters the New York subway “there was an agonised squeal, as if some huge skeleton was being pried apart by a level of incomprehensible power”. For Wolfe, that “incomprehensible power” is the force of society pressing down on individuals stopping in “the billion-footed city”.
Thirty years ago, Wolfe gave the reader a rollercoaster ride from the co-ops of Park Avenue to the holding pens of the Bronx.
By looking at the extremity of wealth in New York, and the lengths that the financial classes would go to attain money and keep it, he exposed the darker side of how we define ourselves as winners and losers.
William Cash is editor-in-chief of Spear’s
This article first appeared in the November 17, 2017 issue of the Catholic Herald

Thursday 10 May 2018

Will GK Chesterton be canonised as a saint?

Will GK Chesterton be canonised as a saint?

The decision is now in the hands of Rome
The current effort to canonise Chesterton has a background which is both curious and multi-national.  
On Sunday morning November 28, 1986, Cardinal Emmet Carter, the Archbishop of Toronto, preached a sermon in the chapel of St Basil’s College at the conclusion of a Chesterton Institute conference marking the fiftieth anniversary of Chesterton’s death. In the sermon, the Cardinal expressed his regret that there were not more canonised lay people. Although he drew attention to Chesterton’s prophetic role within the Church, he said that he had no intention of promoting the cause for his canonisation. And yet the effect of his sermon was an important factor in doing exactly that.
Here is how it happened. When Professor J.J. Scarisbrick, the well-known Tudor historian, read the sermon, which was published in The Chesterton Review, he wrote a letter to the Review, challenging the Cardinal’s view: 
“Candidate for Canonisation?”
Despite what Cardinal Carter said in his address, I wonder whether there are not good grounds for considering Gilbert Keith Chesterton for canonisation?
We all know that he was an enormously good man as well as an enormous one. My point is that he was more than that. There was a special integrity and blamelessness about him, a special devotion to the good and to justice, a special capacity for friendship and for winning the awed respect of an astonishingly diverse range of people and a special memorableness (as so many have testified). Above all, there was that breathtaking, intuitive (almost angelic) possession of the Truth and awareness of the supernatural, which only a truly holy person can enjoy. This was the gift of heroic intelligence and understanding—and of heroic prophecy. He was a giant, spiritually as well as physically. Has there ever been anyone quite like him in Catholic history?
And to those who say that there is no cult of the man, I would reply: you are wrong. Chesterton enjoys a special place of honour throughout the English-speaking world. And I suggest that those who contribute and read The Chesterton Review are animated by something deeper than the pietas which informs the ordinary literary journal.
There is a cause here to be considered.
The Professor’s answer to the Cardinal’s sermon prompted a group of prominent Argentineans to write directly to him, enquiring whether they could do anything to support the canonisation. The Cardinal answered that if they were to appeal to Rome, he would second their appeal. This was done, and when the Roman authorities turned down their request on the grounds that there was no evidence of Chesterton’s heroic sanctity, Cardinal Carter replied that Chesterton’s voluminous writings were themselves convincing evidence of such sanctity.
Nothing further happened until 2013 when the bishop of Chesterton’s home diocese of Northampton appointed Father John Udris, a priest of the diocese, to introduce the Cause. Somewhat surprisingly perhaps his efforts were not endorsed by the Chesterton Review, which made the point that canonisation would have the unintended effect of limiting Chesterton’s appeal. After all, Protestant Christians who might be willing to accept Catholic truths presented by a Gilbert Chesterton would be less likely to do so if they were presented by a St Gilbert Chesterton.
Here is a final thought. Many years have passed since Cardinal Carter preached his sermon and Professor Scarisbrick challenged it. Now that the matter has been entrusted officially to Rome, it will be decided by Rome. Until that decision is made, perhaps the wisest advice for those who support the canonisation and for those who oppose is the advice Gamaliel once gave to the Sanhedrin: “If this enterprise, this movement of theirs, is of human origin, it will break up of its own accord; but if it does in fact come from God you will not only be unable to destroy them, but you might find yourselves fighting against God.” (Acts: 5:38). And yet how one would like to see Chesterton recognised as the patron saint of journalists without anyone having to go to the tedious trouble of first making him a saint.
Father Ian Boyd, C. S. B., is the President and Founder of the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture at Seton Hall University and is Editor of the Institute’s journal “The Chesterton Review.” For more information please visit: www.shu.edu/go/chesterton  or email: chestertoninstitute@shu.edu

And all this makes me wonder: will there be one day a move to put forward Gene to be canonised as a saint?

Monday 7 May 2018

Gene, I do hope you won't mind me contacting you like this. We haven't actually met but you are friends with my uncle...

Gene, I do hope you won't mind me contacting you like this. We haven't actually met but you are friends with my uncle...


It is an uneventful October afternoon in the school staffroom - lunchtime break. Some arguments going on as I had been stirring things up. It is a few days after Bob Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and I am taking full advantage of this news. I had been saying for years that Bob should get the award. When I first started saying this many years ago people laughed at me. But as usual I did know what I was talking about and now here it was and I am certainly making capital of the event.


Bob Dylan
BOB DYLAN   ...   winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
Enough stirring accomplished I head upstairs to the sanctuary of my Sixth Form office...

I open up my emails. I delete the rubbish (in other words anything about UCAS. Tee! Hee! Hee!) and am almost deleting the email titled 'Gene, I hope you won't mind me contacting you like this. We haven't actually met but you are friends with my uncle...'  when  on a sixth sense I open it. Boy am I glad I did! 

...


All that afternoon the contents of that email kept running through my head. So much so that when I was on the phone ordering copies of NUTSHELLS CONTRACT LAW by Robert Duxbury I said Robert Detterling causing momentary confusion.

In the end I phoned Tony of the big saloon and arranged to talk to him about the email after work. We don't teach in the same school so I arranged that we meet up in the Harris & Hoole coffee bar in Uxbridge High Street at 5.00pm. I arrived at the coffee bar early. They do wonderful hand-roasted coffee here. I sat at a table looking out towards Uxbridge Underground Station. Just love that sculpture by Anita Lafford in front of the station. Entitled 'Anticipation' it is quite conventional but has a definite charm. I love the way families often congregate around it.



Image result for anita lafford anticipation uxbridge









ANTICIPATION by Anita Lafford



I took out my mobile smart phone which has FM radio, plugged in my earpiece, and listened to the PM programme on Radio 4. Serendipitously there was a feature broadcast about Bob Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize. It seems that Bob has so far not made any acknowledgement of being awarded the prize and it's not known if he will attend the award ceremonies - or even if he will accept the prize. Some nobody from the Swedish Academy is calling Bob's silence extremely rude. Good old Bob!

I was so engrossed in the radio that I didn't see Tony arrive. I went to the counter and bought Tony a chocolate muffin and a cappuccino and had another black coffee myself.

"Well, in a nutshell Tony, I have had an email from Detterling's ginger nephew. He has had a major rift for some years with his uncle and seems to feel that I may be in a position to help heal things."

"You sure the email is kosher?" Tony responded. "Oh yes. No question. Some details about my correspondence with his uncle only he could have known," I assured him.



Tony replied,"Gene you have always been known to lend a helping hand to those in need. I guess you will do the same here."

I hesitated a little and said, "Yes, I have had much correspondence with Detterling for almost twelve years now. However I have not had intercourse with his nephew. I wonder if I am the right man for the task."

"If Detterling's nephew has taken the trouble of contacting you then he must be confident you can help. I'm sure he will bend over backwards to make sure everything will pan out," ventured Tony.

...




Despite Tony's reassurance I remained in Hamlet-like indecision all evening. Should I reply to that email? I couldn't sleep. I got out of bed and knocked on Marianne's bedroom door. (Since the children have left home we have separate bedrooms. It's ideal really and saves Marianne a lot of discomfort when I arrive home from the Good Yarn Friday nights semi-plastered after six pints of Tuborg and maybe a couple of Jameson's Irish whiskies.)

I talked to Marianne about my dilemma over the email from Detterling's nephew. (She never reads my blog by the way.)

Marianne didn't want to know and asked me to close the door quietly behind me on the way out.

I got up again about half past four in the morning and went to my study, switched on the computer and replied to the email from Detterling's nephew. What had I unleashed?

Next day in school I kept checking my emails. (I have to do this surreptitiously as there was an issue some time back about me using social media in directed time. As always I brushed the matter aside. I think the young Deputy Head who was detailed to speak to me about this was totally overawed by me and my reputation.) Still, better be careful. I don't want anything blotting my copybook in my final months of teaching.

Nothing throughout the day. That evening the first proper intimations of approaching winter fell. It was a dark and stormy night. The wind howled and the heavy rain lashed up the drive sweeping over my exposed Nissan and the front windows of Chez Vincent.

About 9.30 I went into my study to put the finishing touches on my Sixth Form assembly talk and to do some further research on the ramifications of the case of Peter and Hazel Bull which I am working through with my Year 12 'A' Level Law cohort.


Peter and Hazel Bull


Ping! and lo and behold there it was on the screen; a reply from Detterling's gay nephew to my email. I was beside myself.

The email began:

Hi Gene,


Thank you so much for responding to me. I think something good will come out of this for all parties.

First let me say that I and my partner **** are big, big fans of you blog. We just loved your 'Sweeney' pastiche THEY LOOK A BIT GINGER TO ME GUV. Hilarious! In many ways you appear to be the new Jeffrey Bernard, Uxbridge the new Soho, and The Good Yarn the new Coach & Horses. We wish you every blessing with your fulltime writing career. Any publishing deals yet?

https://www.thefix.com/sites/default/files/styles/article/public/jeffreybernard.jpg

' I enjoy doing nothing.'  Jeffrey Bernard

    



Now I have begun this correspondence because I feel you are just the man to broker a peace in this long-standing rift between Uncle Detterling and myself. Yes, while it was very wrong of him to publish on your blog that I had committed suicide I must try to forgive him. He has posted to you that he may not have very long more in this Vale of Tears so I must act before it gets too late. 


I replied immediately:


Hi ****

So good to hear from you. I'm so glad to hear that you and your partner **** enjoy reading my blog. It's the first time my writing has been compared with that of Jeffrey Bernard. Usually the comparisons are to James Joyce, Albert Camus and Ernest Hemingway. Nevertheless I regard the Jeffrey Bernard comparison as a compliment. By the way your uncle Detterling's writing has often been compared with that of Melvyn Bragg. Tee! Hee! Hee! Oh! well. Maybe Melvyn Bragg is one of his literary heroes?

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01917/melv_1917542b.jpg
Melvyn Bragg  ...   Detterling's literary hero?


By the way I have often thought that the young Jeffrey Bernard bears a remarkable resemblance to the young David Essex.

Image result for jeffrey bernard
The young Jeffrey Bernard



Yes, I may well be the man to broker a peace in this  feud between you and your uncle Detters. I have got to know Detters quite well over the years and figure I have a good handle on his psychology.

Yours etc

GENE

[By the way from this point onwards in this narrative I shall, in the interests of preserving their anonymity but giving them actual names, be referring to Detterling's nephew and his nephew's partner as Cosmas and Damian. I did toy with the idea of calling them David and Jonathan and then Sandy and Julian but no: Cosmas and Damian, two saints names always linked together, really fits the bill. Cosmas Detterling's nephew and Damian his partner.]


https://www.panoramitalia.com/images/arts-culture/extra-pictures/large/749-twin-saints-cosmas-damian.jpg

COSMAS and DAMIAN


To this email I had the following swift reply from Cosmas:



Hi Gene,

Yes you have indeed a good handle on Uncle Detters' psychology - in fact I remember a psychological profile of him that you compiled.  He is of course the archetypal pinko liberal Guardian-reading pseud that you depict him  - but there is more. Can I recount an episode from his youth that may be of interest to understanding his fragile psychological make up and his contradictory and often hypocritical stance on sexual matters?



The incident I want to describe dates back to when Detters was a Sixth Former. So I guess it must have been around the time of the Butler Education Act (Tee! Hee! Hee! as you would comment Gene.) Anyhow he was observed by his fellow students to be in possession of a then rather risqué publication entitled HEALTH & EFFICIENCY. He was hauled up to appear before a meeting of the Sixth Form students' council to explain himself. His explanation was that the magazine was not his but that he had bought it for an elderly house-bound neighbour. He was asked to wait outside while the council deliberated.






Eventually the chairman of the council appeared and read out to Detterling a prepared statement:



'Detterling we do not accept your explanation for being in possession of this publication. We believe that you have been using HEALTH & EFFICIENCY as an aide-memoir to masturbation. We therefore instruct all Sixth Formers to ostracise you forthwith.'


The chairman went on to say:

"And off the record Detterling let me say that you are displaying the subtle undertones of sexual abnormality which if left unchecked will curdle into pathology."

The student council chairman was gay and thereafter Uncle Detterling harboured a deep-seated subliminal resentment to gays.

Hope this is helpful Gene.

All the best,

COSMAS







Well, well, well. How interesting. The youthful Detterling sent to Coventry accused of engaging in the Sin of Onan. I wrote straight back to Cosmas:



Hi Cosmas,



Thank you so much for this. It gives me another angle on your uncle's tangled psychology. Maybe some insights here into his persistent anger and ever-present misanthropy?

 This was a strange incident indeed but I have one of equal strangeness and much more recent involving the old boy. 

I know that you and Damian have been following Detters' exploits over the years on the TES website. You remember a poster named Middlemarch? She was  a Headteacher and a very capable and well-informed lady. We formed quite a friendship over the years. Anyhow she told me that she once attended a TES meet - I think it was in Leeds - and had a close encounter with the canting old phony. It seems he approached her crooning: "I believe in miracles. Where you from? You sexy thing?" How corny. But it gets worse. He then came up with the most bizarre pick-up lines in the history of the universe. He leered at her in a most suggestive manner and said: "My dear has anyone ever mentioned that you look the spit image of Fanny Burney? Spankest thou? Hast thou ever been spanked? Wouldst thou spanketh me my dear?"

Image result for fanny burney
Fanny Burney

Needless to say faced with such weirdness Middlemarch got out  of there mucho pronto.

Will be back in touch soon Cosmas,

GENE


To this Cosmas replied:



Thanks Gene,

Another insight into the weirdness that is my Uncle Detters. In this Middlemarch interlude it sounds to me as if the old boy had been at the Wincarnis again.


And this business of his memoirs... you are sensibly taking that with a pinch of salt. It will never happen. Detterling has always entertained this delusion that he is a writer. I remember visiting him as a little boy and he had a designated writing room which he pretentiously called his 'studio'. My word was that 'studio' a desolate place? Spartan  and almost unfurnished with an Olivetti electric typewriter on a rickety trestle table and two pictures on the walls: framed photographs of Rock Hudson and Kathy Kirby.



Image result for Olivetti electric typewriter


http://nickwale.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Stars-shot.jpg
Kathy Kirby


Image result for rock hudson young
Rock Hudson



He always made a big deal about never being disturbed while he was working in the studio saying: "My boy, we writers are fickle creatures. The muse and our genius can desert us in a second's flash if we allow this world to intrude."

All the best Gene,

Cosmas



 To which I replied...


To be continued







Friday 4 May 2018

CONSERVATIVES HOLD UXBRIDGE SHOCK! (NOT)

CONSERVATIVES HOLD UXBRIDGE SHOCK! (NOT)
Ward Results for Uxbridge North
CandidatePartyVotes
GODDARD, Martin AlanCON2563ELECTED
GRAHAM, Raymond CharlesCON2415ELECTED
HOLYDAY, WilliamGRN312
MOONEY, AnnLAB936
MURPHY, Niall JamesGRN275
SIVARAMALINGAM , SivaGRN246
SMITH, Andrew RobertLAB901
SMITH, Jane MargaretLAB892
YARROW, David AnthonyCON2299ELECTED












Turnout
37.97%

Ward Results for Uxbridge South
CandidatePartyVotes
BEISHON, Jessica TimandraLAB1358
BOWMAN, John PaulGRN263
BURLES, TonyLAB1300
BURROWS, Keith EdwardCON1756ELECTED
CHOUBEDAR, FarhadCON1511ELECTED
COOPER, Judith VirginiaCON1770ELECTED
KEIR, Mark AlanGRN212
SHAH, NazLAB1129
WEST, ChrisGRN306












Turnout
39.86%
  • CON GAIN: +1, LAB -1
  • CON
  • CON HOLD
  • CON 3

Thursday 3 May 2018

Ireland’s young pro-lifers are confounding stereotypes

Ireland’s young pro-lifers are confounding stereotypes

In the campaign to protect the Eighth Amendment, the most visible pro-lifers are educated women
The mainstream media – British and overseas – is starting to report on Ireland’s referendum on May 25 to repeal, or retain, the Eighth Amendment to the Irish constitution, which protects the life – “where practicable” – of the unborn child. Such reporting tends to fall into predictable clichés about “modernising” liberals versus “conservative and Catholic” Ireland.
But in setting up this rather tired duality, it seems to me the media are missing a more interesting story – which is the increased prominence of an intelligent and articulate generation of Irishwomen who are defending the pro-life cause with poise and confidence.
Two younger pro-life women now often seen on Irish television are notably impressive: Maria Steen, 37, of the Iona Institute, and Wendy Grace, 31, a presenter on a Dublin Christian radio channel called Spirit Radio. Both are terrific speakers, fearless yet compassionate, and either of them could be candidates for a brilliant political career. As it happens, both are also pretty, which shouldn’t matter, but in a visual age appearance can bolster communication. Both are married and are mothers.
So while the overseas media relapses into tired old tropes about the declining power of the Catholic Church, the Church itself, while stating its position on life issues, is not so much to the fore in the current referendum campaign.
Instead, the most visible elements defending the pro-life cause are … women. Cora Sherlock, an accomplished lawyer, of the energetic Pro Life Campaign, and Dr Ruth Cullen, a clinical psychologist of Love Both (mother and baby), are equally remarkable. Caroline Simons is another clever and knowledgeable lawyer, who last weekend appeared on RTÉ’s The Late Late Show arguing the case against liberal abortion for Ireland.
Nobody would deny that there are difficult and anguishing cases – rape, incest and a diagnosis that the baby is so handicapped it cannot survive – and in public debates, these women have faced tough questioning. And it’s quite right that the public discourse should involve hard questions, addressing difficult cases.
But it’s time to recognise the political narrative here: it’s not the “conservative” power of the Catholic Church that is sustaining the campaign to protect the Eighth Amendment: it’s the driving force of a cohort of educated and motivated Irishwomen, who are bringing some of the fierceness of the maternal instinct to this serious constitutional matter.
This article first appeared in the May 4th 2018 issue of the Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here