Friday, February 20, 2015
PAPeople queue outside a Kensington bookshop to buy copies of in-demand Charlie Hebdo magazine
Non and non again.
It is a crude, vulgar, blasphemous and silly rag which did and does no credit to any of those who have produced or promoted it.
If from the above statement anybody deduces that I would deny the freedom to publish it or even that I must be equivocal towards the murderous rampage which erupted in France, then that person is exhibiting all the muddled thinking that has characterised reaction to the Charlie Hebdo tragedy.
The jihadists must have fewer brains than the birds that sing in my garden.
They boast that they were avenging the prophet.
Before their killing spree virtually nobody outside France had heard of this nasty little magazine and its circulation within that country was tiny.
After they had “avenged” their prophet, five million copies cartooning him were sold and that was only in France with a market suddenly opening across Europe and beyond.
So the revenge in question was to increase the ridicule by a factor of millions.
Do the dummies really think Allah would consider that a good day’s work?
Yet those five million copies also indicate confused thinking.
Believing in freedom to hold a particular view is not the same as having a duty actively to promote it or promulgate it.
Why perfectly polite people who would never set out to give offence for offence’s sake should queue up to buy that which normally they would reject is beyond me.
Doubtless they would call it defiance or solidarity but if I wanted to defend the right of, say, Dawkins to publish atheism I would not consider the best way to do it would be promulgating the writings of which I strongly disapprove.
There has been an equally muddled reaction to the judge in the case of the teacher who had sex with a 16-year-old pupil on a gym mat.
All judges give a narrative of their cases and her observation that he had given into temptation was a statement of fact not an excuse.
Similarly she was quite right to emphasise that he had not groomed the girl but that it was she who had stalked him.
To acknowledge that is not the same as saying that he did no wrong.
The cry goes up that he has got off scot-free.
He has not.
He has been shamed throughout the media, has lost not just his job but his entire teaching career, he has to sign the sex offenders’ register and he has been given a suspended sentence.
The impact on his family will have been huge.
So by now some reading this will think I am saying that the judge was right not to send him to jail.
Actually I would have given him at least a short sentence because he was the grown-up, not the girl.
That, however, does not contradict any of the above statements and anyone who thinks it does should go back to school and do comprehension and precis all over again.
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ALAMYQuality Street say toffee penny is the least popular sweet
As usual at this time of year I am staring at the remains of two tins of Quality Street, facing the fact that everybody took their favourites and what is left will not be eaten at all, will grow bloom and be thrown away.
My own favourite is the toffee penny.
I do wish Quality Street would produce them separately.
As it is, I open the tins before anybody else arrives and take out all the toffee pennies.
Fortunately I am the only one for whom they are a first choice so I need suffer no twinge of conscience but I always hope I might have missed one and poke mournfully around the remains.
According to online comments the makers say that it is not worth producing the toffee penny separately because it is the least popular.
I don’t believe it! Will anybody else vote for this wonderful, waist-expanding, tooth-destroying, delightfully chewy morsel?
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David Cameron is quite right about the election debates and the Greens.
Once a decision has been made to include minor parties there must be some rationale applied to deciding which ones will feature.
The Greens did get a candidate elected to Parliament at the last general election but Ukip did not.
On the other hand because of defections and by-elections Ukip now have two MPs to the Greens’ one.
But the Greens got more votes than even the Lib Dems at the last European elections which was also the last nationwide test of public opinion.
So where does all that leave us?
I scorn the Green agenda with its hideous wind farms and hopeless clinging to the much discredited predictions of global warming impact but if a minor party has a right to be included, then that one does.
However my firm preference would be for no TV debates at all.
We do not have a presidential system in this country and last time everybody agreed with Nick, who is now generally predicted to be facing disaster.
On that though I believe the pass to be already sold so maybe the electoral commission should propose some rules for selecting participants.
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So the story told by Alex Malarkey, a schoolboy who was in a coma for two months, about how he died and went to heaven is all rot.
He has now admitted that none of it happened.
At least he has been honest unlike the girls in the case of the Cottingley Fairies who fooled a lot of people and did not admit the deception until they were in their 80s.
Perhaps they were just being kind to the rest of the world.
After all, if people are daft enough to believe in fairies, why disillusion them with reality?
As for young Alex, if he made any money from his lying book, the reality should now be that it is all paid back.
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PAIs it wise for Kate to be wearing high heels whilst six months pregnant?
When I saw the photograph of the Duchess of Cambridge with one of her protection officers my eyes were drawn to the ladies’ shoes.
Is it really wise for a woman who is six months pregnant to be walking on teetering heels?
Put sense before fashion, Kate!
Even the bodyguard was wearing heels, though of course much lower ones.
I would feel happier if she was wearing something that looked better suited to running or tackling than a schoolgirl’s first departure from the flatties.
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A JP has been suspended because he said he thought a child needed a mum and dad rather than parents of the same sex.
As if that is not enough he has been told to undergo an equality training course if he wants reinstatement.
Re-education, eh?
The tool of the tyrant throughout the ages.
If somebody’s thoughts do not conform with state orthodoxy he must be taught how to change his thinking.
Inevitably all the controversy has been around the magistrate’s Christianity but many people who do not cleave to any religion believe that every child has the right to a mother and father when possible, that no puzzled six-year-old should have to ask “why haven’t I got a mummy?”, that role models for both sexes should be a natural part of growing up.
No, it may not always be possible but what is wrong with that as an aim?
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Kara Scott
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