Having just read more on the subject on the Internet, it appears that the number had increased to to almost 40,000 but that the page has now been removed from Facebook, apparently by Siobhan O’Dowd, the woman who created it. I have not seen the actual page as I cancelled my Facebook membership several weeks ago and do not wish to rejoin. It seems, however, from other sources, that the majority of the more recent postings were either critical of Moat or of his supporters. Thank goodness for that, but it still horrifies me that thousands of people consider him to have been a hero deserving of legend status.

Raoul Moat had a history of violence against his female partners. Very shortly after being released from prison, after serving a short sentence for assaulting a child, he shot and seriously injured his ex-girlfriend,  Samantha Stobbart, who was also the mother of one of his children; he shot and killed her current boyfriend, Chris Brown; and he shot, at point-blank range, PC Rathband who was unarmed and merely sitting in his patrol car. He then fled and went into hiding for several days before shooting himself after being confronted by the police.

How can any rational person consider such a man to be the subject of hero worship? The examples of comments from Moat supporters that I have read indicate a lack of both intelligence and literacy. In that regard, I found the You Tube clip of a radio interview of Ms O’Dowd on Talksport particularly illuminating. It is very worrying that so many people share her views. How can they be uncritical of his actions or blame them on Samantha Stobbart or the police? Do they not have any sympathy for his victims or their families? What value do they place on human life?

I have already written on the Broken Society (blog of 24.2.2010). It seems to me that the Raoul Moat fan club confirms that our society is not only broken but sick too.

So England are out of the World Cup. What remains of the much-heralded “golden generation” has failed in a major tournament yet again. Their performances this time were so abject that even the most biased supporter cannot sensibly argue that the team did not get what it deserved. After the humiliating defeat by Germany, my dominant emotion was anger rather than disappointment. I didn’t really expect them to prosper in the tournament, but nor did I think they would be quite so awful. At least I am now free to support Holland and Spain.

If this sounds unpatriotic, I can assure you that I am not. I fervently support England in other sports, particularly cricket and rugby union; Great Britain at the Olympics; and Europe in the Ryder Cup. I used to be a big England soccer fan but not for the past few years. The present crop of England footballers is, in my opinion, obscenely over-remunerated, seriously over-rated, under-skilled compared with many other international teams and, with few exceptions, generally lacking in articulacy, charm and charisma. Frankly, many of them are simply not even likeable. They compare very unfavourably with their counterparts in the England cricket and rugby union teams.

The Football Association may well sack the England manager, Fabio Capello. That is the sport’s usual response to an unsuccessful team. I doubt if that will solve the problem. The words “bricks” and “straw” come to mind.

The conversation apparently took place about two weeks before the story appeared and, in the interim, Miss Jacobs had, it is now alleged, tried to sell the story to one or more other newspapers and had also retained the services of Max Clifford, the publicist. It has been reported that The Mail on Sunday paid her £75,000. The paper maintains that it had not set up the “sting” and only learned of the conversation after the event.

As a consequence of the newspaper story, Lord Triesman resigned his two football posts and English hopes of staging the 2018 World Cup have been damaged, possibly fatally.

I have considerable sympathy for Lord Triesman. His remarks were made in what he believed was a private conversation with a friend. They were not intended for a wider audience. He was naturally embarrassed by their subsequent publication and he had no real alternative but to do the honourable thing and resign. His position would have been untenable if he had remained as leader of the World Cup bid. 

The behaviour of Melissa Jacobs appears despicable. It is unclear why she behaved in the way she did. She may have been a woman scorned, simply motivated by money or both. She has been vilified in the Press and on the Web. Her victory in damaging Lord Triesman appears to have been Pyrrhic.

It is unsurprising, but nevertheless gratifying, that The Mail on Sunday has also been widely vilified. It has tried to justify its publication of the story on the basis that “The public is clearly entitled to know about such allegations”. Now there’s a surprise. It is highly debatable whether the public is entitled to the information in the disgraceful circumstances in which it was obtained. I have read that an abortive attempt was made to prevent the newspaper from publishing the story. This indicates that the law was unable to assist. Surely there should now be a coherent law of privacy upon which reliance can be placed in situations such as these. In the meantime, the  Triesmans of the world are reliant on the judgement of people such as the editor of  The Mail on Sunday. God help them. I think the vast majority of Englishmen will not think that the article was in the public interest. Indeed, quite the reverse if the country’s hopes of hosting the World Cup have been seriously jeopardised. It would serve the newspaper right if the football fans among its readers switched allegiance to another publication. 

I read today that Gary Lineker had resigned as a columnist for The Mail on Sunday because of  the  publication of the story. It is not clear to me whether that was as a matter of protest or because he felt that he had a conflict of interests on account of his role as an ambassador for the 2018 bid. Whatever the reason, he has done the right thing.

Nature or nurture?
The nature or nurture debate has apparently existed for centuries. Is a person’s non-physical attributes such as behaviour, personality or talents, derived principally from their genes (nature) or from the way they are brought up or experience life (nurture)? The extraordinary item and photograph from The Times of 28th January 2010, which you will see by clicking on to the link below, provides strong support for the nurture side of the argument. It also has a great aah! factor.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7005440.ece
 

Difficulty in hearing dialogue on DVDs
I watch a lot of DVDs  and it seems that I am increasingly having difficulty in hearing some of the dialogue. This results in my having to hit the replay button or even having to use subtitles. As far as I am aware, I am not losing my hearing or, at least, not significantly. My wife has the same difficulty. It is not the case with all films and, interestingly, it appears to occur with newer rather than older ones. I also do not have the problem to anything like the same extent at the cinema. This tends to suggest that the original sound recording is not at fault. The problem thus appears to arise either in the process of recording a film to DVD or in the quality of our television speakers. I doubt that it is the latter because I do not have the same difficulty with TV programmes. Does anyone know the cause?

As usual, I listened to part of the consistently excellent Today programme on Radio Four. There were two items that particularly caught my ear. One was about a report being published today by an organisation called Race on the Agenda (ROTA) on the subject of girls being involved in gang crime in London and elsewhere. The crime appears to be largely related to drugs and is often violent. Some of this violence is sexual in nature. Reference was made to female members of gangs being raped as a punishment by rival gangs. The author of the report referred to rape “as a weapon of choice”. One female gang member, interviewed by the BBC, admitted to smoking and dealing in cannabis from the age of 13. She started selling class A drugs on leaving school. She had beaten up people and been beaten up herself and also admitted to handling a gun for a fellow gang member.

The second Today item was a debate on the effect of immigrant workers on the UK economy. One conclusion seemed to be that foreigners were happy to do work over here that British workers were not prepared to undertake. One of the participants in the debate was Frank Field, the Labour MP for Birkenhead. He mentioned that, in his constituency, about half of young people do not attain the minimum school leaving requirements and are destined for a lifetime of unemployment. Some young people in Birkenhead have told their MP that they have no intention of working unless a job offers something like three times their benefits level.

There were then two pieces in The Times that caught my attention.The first was that, despite a ten-year Government strategy costing millions of pounds, Britain still has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in western Europe. The second was about a London gang member who was involved, as a lookout, in the murder of a shop manager, whilst on police bail for murdering a youth for his mobile phone. (He was on bail because the police did not have sufficient evidence at the time to have him put in custody pending trial.)

These are just four items of news on the same morning. How can any sensible person deny the existence of an underclass in this country or that we are living in a broken society?

Solicitors
In the finance section of a recent weekend edition of a “quality” newspaper there was a reference to “solicitors, lawyers and accountants”. This was not the first time I have seen this error. There are two principal branches of the legal profession in the UK: solicitors and barristers. Both are lawyers. The journalist should either have referred to “lawyers and accountants” or to “solicitors, barristers and accountants”. Her implication, hopefully inadvertent, was that solicitors are not qualified lawyers. I wonder if she would object to a distinction being drawn between “writers and journalists”?

Police
I was walking along our road the other day when a police car drove past me going in the opposite direction. As he approached, the driver gave me a cheery wave. I found this surprising gesture rather uplifting and it occurs to me that a friendly approach from the police could do wonders for their public image. Having said that, although it seems to me that they often have a bad press, I personally have always found them helpful and courteous. This was even the case when, many years ago, I was giving a witness statement and used the term “I was proceeding along…”. The officer taking the statement suggested that I should use different wording. I suspect he thought I was taking the piss. I wasn’t. It was simply that, having been indoctrinated by Dixon of Dock Green, I thought that was the correct term to use. Honest, guv.

Teaching of  History
I have read criticism of the teaching of history in schools in that there is too much emphasis on the twentieth century. At least, I think I have but research on the Internet has failed to reveal my source! Anyway, whatever it was that I read has given me food for thought. My recollection of my own rather distant school days is that we suffered a surfeit of the Plantagenets and Tudors and the only time we touched on the twentieth century was when studying the events leading up to the First World War. My daughter, who is in her early thirties, has a similar recollection of her time at school.   We both wish we had had the opportunity to cover more recent history as that would have had greater relevance to the world in which we now live.

Whilst I have occasionally had the experience of dealing with Administration employees of banks, insurers and investment companies, those occasions have been spread over many years and so the frustration has been diluted. Over the past few years, however, I have had far more exposure to them as a result of having to manage my mother’s affairs under a power of attorney. Anyone who has been in a similar position will probably understand why I have sometimes been driven to rage by the crass incompetence to which I have been subjected. Some of the incidents may form the subject of future blogs but, this time, I want to recount a recent example which caused some amusement as well as irritation.

Last month, I had a minor accident when reversing my car out of the garage. I have done this thousands of times without mishap but, on this occasion, I clipped the offside front wing causing it to buckle. The damage was such that I decided to make an insurance claim and rang my broker’s Helpline to report the accident, as required under the motor policy. It was only on the fifth attempt that I managed to get through. The Helpline was operated not by the broker but by a company acting as its agent. The person to whom I spoke then noted all relevant details of the policy and the claim. This, I thought, was helpful as it saved me the trouble of having to complete a claim form. At that stage, however, I was transferred to the claims department of the insurers. The claims handler there started asking the same questions that had already been put to me by the broker’s agent. When I asked why this was necessary, I was informed that it was because “We will be paying for the repairs”. As a statement of the bleeding obvious, that could not be faulted but it was not a helpful response. Anyway, I took the view that there was no point in arguing as that would only prolong the process. Unfortunately, the claims handler was far from finished. She obviously had a claim form in front of her and was determined to go through it question by question, even though the application of a little common sense could have saved quite a lot of time. Part of the conversation went something like this:

Claims handler. – What was the purpose of your journey?

Me. – To get out of the garage.

Claims handler. – At what speed were you travelling?

Me. – Very slowly.

Claim handler. – Was anyone injured in the accident?

Me. – Only my pride.

Claims handler. – Were there any witnesses to the accident?

Me. – Unfortunately, yes. My wife.

Claims handler. – Were the police called?

Me. – (Hollow laughter.)

Following these conversations, I received a letter from the broker’s agent acknowledging notification of the incident and, among other things, asking me to ensure that any correspondence received from the “Third Parties” was forwarded to the agent immediately. There was, of course, no third party. The following day, the insurers wrote confirming that they had instructed their recommended repairer to carry out the work to the vehicle. Two days later my broker wrote to inform me that the insurers would be liaising with me regarding the repairs to the vehicle (this having already been done three days earlier) and requesting me to forward any correspondence received from “the third party involved”.

This minor accident involved three different organisations, at least one of which was unnecessary, and none of which covered itself in glory. Still, at least the matter was handled promptly, which is certainly not always the case, and I must say that the repair was carried out immaculately.

Whilst I do not know whether the opinions expressed by those interviewed were genuinely representative of the two generations, the News item clearly gave the impression that there is a significant divide between them as to (a) what is acceptable conduct by radio and television presenters and (b) what is actually funny. This difference of opinion is also apparent from other media reports.

There are, of course, many different types of humour and what one person finds funny, another will not. It is also the case that tastes in humour change, not only between the generations but also in individuals. My late father used to love Brian Rix farces whereas the rest of the family did not. My wife and I found Tommy Cooper painfully funny whereas our son, admittedly seeing him in a recording some time after the great man’s death, merely found him painful. I thought that the Peter Sellers’ film A Shot in the Dark was hilarious when I first saw it but was really disappointed when revisiting it a few years ago.

But God help us if society in this country has now reached the stage where a significant number of young adults find it acceptable and amusing for radio presenters publicly to pester and humiliate a dignified and harmless 78 year-old man by leaving several messages on his telephone answering machine informing him that one of them (Brand) had slept with his granddaughter (who was named). Ross was sufficiently coarse to say that Brand had “f****d” the girl.

The BBC, whilst condemning what happened, has made it clear that it does not want to sacrifice “edgy” humour. I accept this and would hate to lose programmes such as Have I Got News for You which is always irreverent, often vulgar but nevertheless very funny. The difference, however, between that programme and the offensive conduct of Brand and Ross is that the former has genuine wit and the latter was witless.