Category: Sparrow Chat

For weeks now the media has been full of sordid tales, initially connected to the billionaire film producer, Harvey Weinstein, but more recently and thanks to a Twitter ‘campaign’, to almost anyone who is famous and/or holding a position of power. While any attempt by an individual to force their attentions (sexual, or otherwise) on another person is totally unacceptable, the media hysteria created by such revelations draws many ‘from the closet’ whose accusations are either frivolous, or intended to cause harm.

Take the case of Julia Hartley-Brewer and the ex-defence minister, Michael Fallon. Hartley-Brewer has accused Fallon of repeatedly touching her on the knee while at a dinner party in 2002. Okay, he’s a total pratt, was an utterly useless defence minister who wasted tax payer’s money on two new aircraft carriers and renewal of the Trident nuclear submarine deterrent, while leaving the army short of men, the air force desperately short of planes, and the navy with insufficient sailors to man the new aircraft carriers, which aren’t due to go into service before 2025, by which time they’ll be obsolete anyway.

It’s not the first time Sparrow Chat has been forced to call Michael Fallon a total pratt. There was that occasion earlier this year when he made prattish remarks about the Russian carrier, ‘Admiral Kuznetsov’, returning to its home port via the English Channel ^[1].

As a defence secretary he sucked, and it’s better for us all that he’s gone. But one has to question why Hartley-Brewer (k)need-ed to publicly recount her tale of woe after fifteen years? Was it, perhaps, a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to the media attention surrounding Weinstein, or merely an opportunity to settle a grudge she’d been harbouring for a decade and a half?

If we can believe a report in the U.K.’s ‘Sun’ newspaper (and that’s debatable):

Mr Fallon confessed that he was the minister who Julia threatened to punch for repeatedly putting his hand on her knee.
He has now resigned.
Julia told how a Cabinet Minister had “repeatedly put his hand on my knee during a party conference dinner”.
She added: “I calmly and politely explained to him that, if he did it again, I would punch him in the face. He withdrew his hand and that was the end of the matter.”
Julia said she did not feel like she was a victim of a sexual assault, and found the incident nothing more than “mildly amusing”.^[2]

If she did not consider herself sexually assaulted, and found the incident ‘mildly amusing’, why did she jump on the media’s ‘sexual assault/harassment’ bandwagon? Or, was she simply gunning to make a little publicity for herself, and to hell with its effects on Michael Fallon?

Perhaps Ms Hartley-Brewer, and those others of her ilk prepared to jump on a media bandwagon without just cause, simply to gain attention, might do better using their positions and voices to attack the Indian government over the real problems suffered by women and girls in that country, that the authorities seem largely unable to address:

The scale of abuse in India:
A child under 16 is raped every 155 minutes, a child under 10 every 13 hours

More than 10,000 children were raped in 2015

240 million women living in India were married before they turned 18

53.22% of children who participated in a government study reported some form of sexual abuse

50% of abusers are known to the child or are “persons in trust and care-givers” ^[2]

Sexual harassment can be a traumatic experience for the victim, but the phrase covers a multitude of sins, some heinous, others less so. It’s time it was defined more clearly, and not left to the media (of which, the BBC and other U.K. TV news stations share guilt) to broadcast all claims to ‘sexual harassment’ as though equally heinous.

Perhaps Julia_Hartley-Brewer should spend some time observing what’s happening to women and girls in the more rural areas of India, and also Pakistan:

Pakistani police have arrested eight men for marching a 14-year-old girl naked through a village in revenge for her brother allegedly tarnishing their family honour.

It is the latest incident of Pakistani village councils using women to settle family disputes, bypassing the official judiciary system with parallel tribal rule that sentences hundreds of women to death each year in so-called “honour” killings.

According to police in Dera Islami Khan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the incident occurred, the girl’s brother had developed a romantic relationship with a woman outside marriage. A village council ruled that the woman’s family could retaliate by disrespecting his sister.

On the morning on 27 October, as the girl was fetching water, a group of men accosted her, stripped her and dragged her along the ground before making her walk around naked for an hour, the police report stated.

Village councils, called panchayat or jirga, are illegal but widespread in rural areas where the justice system is out of reach or perceived to be untrustworthy.

Three months ago, a 26-man council near Multan in Punjab province ordered a 17-year-old girl to be raped as punishment for a sexual assault allegedly committed by her brother. ^[3]

So he touched you on the knee, Julia? Oh, please!

While trolling through Google images seeking suitable material for this blog post I was inundated with images like this in the ‘sexual harassment’ section:

These, obviously, carefully staged images are from a law firm touting for business and a website entitled, “womenstribe.com”.

I find this offensive, as I’m sure other decent men do. When I was a general manager I would occasionally think nothing of placing a hand on a colleague’s shoulder, while looking at work on their desk or computer screen. I don’t believe anyone, male or female, found it offensive, or ‘harassing’. Since when has the shoulder become a sexual object? Apparently, only when used for marketing purposes, or by extremist feminist websites.

Let’s learn to define the difference between a friendly action, and that of a predator, before we all become paranoid about what is acceptable and what isn’t. The 21st century is becoming the era of rapidly disappearing humanity from our human species. Our politicians don’t help as they work to tribalise us more and more in their self-centred efforts to gain more votes.

In a recent BBC documentary on the Balfour Declaration and its long term effects on the Israeli/Palestinian situation, the reporter was travelling in a ‘self-drive’ car with the CEO of the Israeli company manufacturing it. She pointed out that, while Israel was a modern and wealthy state the Palestinians were living mostly in abject poverty. He shrugged and responded that it was a ‘zero-sum-game’ situation^[4] and that was the way of the world now.

When did our world become that way? Why should one person, or one group of people, have to lose so another can win? Are we really incapable of treating life as anything other than a football game? Even in sport there is still the occasional draw. I wonder if that Israeli CEO would have been quite so keen on his ‘zero-sum-game’ had he been sufficiently unfortunate to be born Palestinian?

Tribalism, combined with that old adage of, “Stuff you, I’m alright Jack,” is becoming endemic in our societies. Are we really going to let the extremists, and the politically motivated feminists like Julia Hartley-Brewer, dig moats between the sexes until all trust between them is stifled? Men and woman are all human beings together, whatever their sexuality. It’s vitally important that law and order is upheld and crimes of a sexual nature properly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice, but it’s equally important that a man or woman can offer a friendly touch to a colleague without fear of being labelled a ‘predator’.

Harvey Weinstein was a known sexual predator. He was also a bully and a tyrant with an overly expansive ego. He was very powerful within his industry. We have another man just like him heading the White House right now. Neither are a good example to the rest of the world and the sooner they’re removed to where they belong the better it will be for the human race.

The Weinstein’s of this world are very much in the minority. Most men, certainly in the ‘civilised’ world, are decent law-abiding, women-respecting, individuals, yet by its actions and sensationalist reporting the media taints them all to some degree as potential ‘Weinstein’s.”

In a sense, the media is akin to the Israeli CEO with his ‘zero-sum-game’. Each news channel wants to be the most sensationalist to draw in viewers, or readers. That’s fine until one realises there are always losers in these sensationalist games. And when the game sets women against men, blacks against whites, or heterosexuals against gays, the media has the power to determine who should win and who should lose.

The overall result is a loss of humanity. Tribalism rears its ugliness. Unless we reverse the trend and bring basic humanity back into our societies the future will prove bleak indeed.

^{[1] “Question: How Many Total Prats Can You Get In A Government?” Sparrow Chat, January 26th 2017}

^{“India uncles get life for raping niece, aged 10” BBC, November 2nd 2017}

^{[3] “Pakistani police arrest men for marching girl naked through village” Guardian, November 2nd 2017}

^{[4] zero-sum-game: In game theory and economic theory, a zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which each participant’s gain or loss of utility is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the utility of the other participants. If the total gains of the participants are added up and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero.}

This is a tale of two men. The first of these men was brutally murdered. He was a good man who helped people. The second man cares nothing for others. He is egotistical, loud-mouthed, and uncaring of anything but enhancing his own power and success.

In 2004 I wrote a short story entitled, “The Room.”** It was, perhaps, the most harrowing piece of writing I have ever attempted. It was a work of fiction, but was inspired by the plight of a British man in Iraq.

Kenneth Bigley, alongside two American colleagues, was working there as a civilian soon after the U.S./U.K. invasion, when Saddam Hussein was toppled from power and al Qaeda moved into the country.

Bigley and his colleagues were captured by al Qaeda. The two Americans were beheaded soon after falling into their hands, but Ken Bigley was held in an al Qaeda hideout for weeks, in hideous conditions, while his captors tried to elicit concessions from the British government.

With its usual arrogant stance of never negotiating with terrorists, the British government failed to save Bigley’s life. Eventually, after three weeks of mental and physical torture, he was beheaded and his body buried in a ditch from whence it has never been recovered. He left behind a young Thai wife. They’d been married for seven years. It was to be Bigley’s last job before retirement. They’d planned to live in Thailand.

Ken Bigley didn’t deserve to die. He didn’t deserve to be abandoned by the country he came from. He went to Iraq to help the Iraqis through their trauma. He was a Liverpool man, and courageous. He needed every ounce of that courage during his imprisonment by the fanatical jihadists who held him, and who eventually took his life in the most brutal manner. Most British people were incensed that so little was done to try and save him. ^[1]

The other man in this tale used to be the editor of the British newspaper, ‘The Spectator’. He went on to become the Mayor of London. He’s now the British Foreign Secretary in Theresa May’s government. His name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

He comes from a family that would be called, “distinguished.” He married into another “distinguished” family. During that marriage he had a number of extra-marital affairs and in 2012 fathered a child to one of his paramours, Helen McIntyre, an arts consultant. He tried to gain an injunction to prevent the matter being made public, but three judges refused, stating:

“The core information in this story, namely that the father had an adulterous affair with the mother, deceiving both his wife and the mother’s partner and that the claimant, born about nine months later, was likely to be the father’s child, was a public interest matter which the electorate was entitled to know when considering his fitness for high public office.” ^[2]

Boris Johnson is keen to be the next British prime minister. Some consider him a likeable clown, a buffoon. He’s neither; it’s all an act. In October 2004, just days after Ken Bigley’s brutal murder, Boris Johnson the then paper’s editor, published this editorial in the The Spectator:

“The extreme reaction to Mr Bigley’s murder is fed by the fact that he was a Liverpudlian. Liverpool is a handsome city with a tribal sense of community. A combination of economic misfortune — its docks were, fundamentally, on the wrong side of England when Britain entered what is now the European Union — and an excessive predilection for welfarism have created a peculiar, and deeply unattractive, psyche among many Liverpudlians. They see themselves whenever possible as victims, and resent their victim status; yet at the same time they wallow in it. Part of this flawed psychological state is that they cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it, thereby deepening their sense of shared tribal grievance against the rest of society. The deaths of more than 50 Liverpool football supporters at Hillsborough in 1989 was undeniably a greater tragedy than the single death, however horrible, of Mr Bigley; but that is no excuse for Liverpool’s failure to acknowledge, even to this day, the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground that Saturday afternoon. The police became a convenient scapegoat, and the Sun newspaper a whipping-boy for daring, albeit in a tasteless fashion, to hint at the wider causes of the incident.”^[3]

(The Hillsborough tragedy referred to in this quote occurred at the Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, on October 15th 1989. The venue was chosen to host a football match between Liverpool Football Club and Nottingham Forest F.C.. It was the worst disaster in British sporting history. Ninety-six people died and over seven hundred were injured. An inquest found “…that the supporters were unlawfully killed due to grossly negligent failures by police and ambulance services to fulfil their duty of care to the supporters. The inquest also found that the design of the stadium contributed to the crush, and that supporters were not to blame for the dangerous conditions.”)

I have had personal experience of the inhabitants of Liverpool. I worked in that city for five years, from 1963 to 1968. Even then it was a cosmopolitan city, a major port, and my interaction with people from all walks of life never failed to impress me. Their warmth, generosity, and kindness are, I believe, unmatched anywhere else in Britain. Johnson would never have known those sort of people where he came from – Oxford, North London, a family farm near Exmoor, upper class boarding school (Eton) from the age of eleven, before moving on to Oxford University (where else?).

The editorial in The Spectator wasn’t written by Johnson. He only passed it for publication. By so doing he signaled his approval of the content. The first draft was actually written by another sleazebag journalist, Simon Heffer, who like Johnson, writes to appeal to the minority ‘landed gentry’ rather than the ordinary folk who make our nations work.

But Heffer is just another puffed up, narcissistic, pseudo-intellectual, Oxbridge educated, right-wing Tory supporter, (he’s supported UKIP and Nigel Farage – but then it’s a known fact that rats run together) and deserves no more than a mention here due to his acrimoniously penned attack on Ken Bigley and the city he hailed from. Heffer will never be anything but an arse-crawler to the rich and powerful. Johnson, on the other hand, could become the premier politician in Britain.

This week marks the thirteenth anniversary of Ken Bigley’s death. Most will have forgotten him. If you were to ask Boris Johnson who he was, he’d probably look at you blankly. The people of Liverpool will remember – those who were around at the time. They’ll also remember the man who belittled his good name and libelled his city and its people.

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson wasn’t fit to lick Ken Bigley’s boots. He’s certainly not fit to be the next Prime Minister of Britain.

^{**The short story, ‘The Room’, can be accessed from the Sparrow Chat sidebar.}

^{[1] “Hostage Bigley murdered in Iraq” BBC, October 9th 2004}

^{[2] “Public has right to know Boris Johnson fathered child during affair, court rules” Guardian, May 21st 2013}

^{[3] “Wikipedia.}

In the wake of the slaughter in Las Vegas this week, the U.S. National Rifle Association is urging Congress to outlaw ‘bump-stocks’. A bump-stock basically turns a semi-automatic weapon into a fully-automatic weapon. The Las Vegas killer had twelve rifles fitted with bump-stocks in his hotel room.

The group [NRA] said: “Devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.”
Republicans have said they would consider banning the tool, despite years of resisting any gun control.
Lawmakers plan to hold hearings and consider a bill to outlaw the device.
The NRA called on Thursday for regulators to “immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law”.
“In the aftermath of the evil and senseless attack in Las Vegas, the American people are looking for answers as to how future tragedies can be prevented,” NRA chiefs Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox wrote in the statement…^[1]

Is this the voice of the Wayne LaPierre we all know and hate?

Well, at least those of us who respect the rights of citizens to live in safety, and without the fear of encountering a gun-toting madman while enjoying a music concert.

Yes, it is that same Wayne LaPierre, and the BBC report goes on to explain the twisted reasoning behind his ‘apparent’ change of attitude towards legal controls:

…In the same statement the NRA urged Congress to pass their longstanding pet proposal to expand gun rights nationwide, [the] so-called right-to-carry reciprocity.
The lobby group wants gun-owners with concealed-carry permits from one state to be allowed to take their weapons into any other US state, even if it has stricter firearms limits.

So, basically LaPierre is prepared to accept the legal outlawing of bump-stocks, if the U.S. government will pass legislation over-riding that of states sufficiently sane as to not allow their citizens to wander around in public with firearms concealed on their person.

LaPierre will never change his spots, even though he’s more reminiscent of a snake, than a leopard.

NOTE: Since the Las Vegas massacre, the BBC report that, Slide Fire, the company who manufacture bump-stocks:

… had sold out “due to extreme high demands” since the Las Vegas shooting.

There are some very, very, sick people in America.

^{[1] “Las Vegas shooting: NRA urges new rules for gun ‘bump-stocks'” BBC, October 5th 2017}