We hear of more and more incidents like this :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1226106/Mother-blinded-asking-drunken-yob-stop-swearing-13-year-old-daughter.html   ,     and this :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1225776/Mother-dies-trying-save-bullied-son-blaze-firework-pushed-letterbox.html   ,   and . . .
http://www.macclesfield-express.co.uk/news/barlow/s/1178393_will_we_do_anoything_about_plague_of_thuggery

And this : http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8341000/8341162.stm

There is an underclass of young men , and a few young women in Britain who are out of control , and think they have the right to viciously attack , if not murder anyone who challenges them over their behaviour , if not attack or kill anyone just for fun .

And the cautions or absurdly light sentences they get if they are caught are all too often not only unforgiveably insulting to their victims , also laughably undeterrent to them and others .
When I was in my teens , angry young men ( not me ) were more likely to vandalise phone-boxes .

And no I don't want us to regress 100 years into resuming birching ten year olds , but proportionately long , and uncomfortably basic and unpleasantly restrictive deterrent sentences for the worst violent offenders is such an obviously good idea , that no Labour Minister would ever support it .

Although of course most young people are not troublemakers in any way  , the phenomenom of vile vicious arrogant sadistic thuggery has to be effectively tackled  , including harsh sentences for those who sadistically abuse animals , which is known to usually be a precursor to attacks on other humans .

The £200M a month spent on employing our brave and heroic soldiers to keep fighting a futile , counter-productively losing battle in Afghanistan could be far better spent fighting the currently losing battle against yobs and thugs who are allowed to keep making other peoples lives a misery , at home , not abroad .

I discovered today that there's a glacier named after my family surname .
But  I'm not cold , and I know that some violent criminals have had awful upbringings , but that the liberalism of recent years has done nothing to halt the spread of much behaviour that should never be tolerated . By Anyone . Ever .
Understood :Yes , but sometimes all there is to understand is that they will not change unless they are they are appropiately persuaded to , and that some crimes are so shocking that they merit punishment first , understanding later . 

I went to Lowestoft this afternoon , which is always such an uninspiring place . . Not great for shopping , though much better than this town , and , no great selling points , except it being the most Easterly point in Britain . As in any large-ish town or city plenty of pretty young women , but also plenty of scruffily , unpleasantly dirty looking older folk there . .

And lots of khaki-clad boys , and 'Dad's Army' blokes selling poppies . I've made my annual contribution to the British Legion appeal , but I choose not to wear a poppy , as , I have no military connections ( though my Dad was in the RAF in WW2 ) , and to walk about with one in my button-hole would to me feel like an embarrassing attempt to seem sanctimoniously 'goody goody' .

On the bus on the way home a teenage boy kept loudly manically laughing , and was telling his friends that his Psychiatrist says that he's prone to unpredictable violence . Oh dear . .

I found a woman , on the internet ( not on this site ) who seemed to me interesting and just maybe very compatable with me : I sent her a message , and she replied with her email address , which is either not her email address or she'd blocked my email address that I'd sent her , because my friendly note to her bounced back . . . I know that's only a small thing , and of no real consequence , but , still , how pathetic . . . If she'd ignored me I'd not have contacted her again , or she could have just said ' thanks , but I've already found someone and am no longer looking' . .

It seems like almost everything that ever seems new and positively promising in my life almost always dies a sudden death , before having a chance to blossom into anything special . Sometimes in the past that's been partly my fault , though not as regards anything at all recent .  ____________________________________________________________________________

I always naively assumed that all Vicars , Priests etc . , and all people who bleat on about being 'spiritual' must be nice , decent , well-meaning folk . ( Which no doubt many of them are ) .

And that all Psychiatrists must be exceedingly mentally healthy , despite Basil Fawlty , in Fawlty Towers , having said they are " all as mad as march hares "  ______________________________________________________________

I very much like this post : http://racytracy.blog.co.uk/2009/11/06/encouragement-7291368/

Yes , we all need to hear positive words of encouragement , and it doesn't take much effort to try to nurturingly encourage and praise other people .

Something peculiar about this site tonight . . .

I'm following the breaking news of shootings at the Fort Hood army base in Texas .

I tried watching the 2006 movie World Trade Centre , on film4 tonight , which I couldn't get into at all , and for me it doesn't work as a drama or an action film or anything . But director Oliver Stone ( not that I like many if any of his films ) knows what he's doing , and I suspect that's deliberate , as it would no doubt have been considered grossly improper to have tried to turn the terrible events of 9/11/01 into movie-entertainment .

In a way , the public outrage at Sheffield Hallam University student Phil Laing having peed on a war memorial , whilst out of his head on insane amounts of booze , during the professionally orchestrated , profit-making Carnage event a couple of weeks ago , shows the decent side of Britain : How could any decent person not feel outraged by his drunken defilement of a tribute to brave military personnel who died in action ?

On the other hand , some of the responses ( not anything I've read on this site ) , for example saying he should be hung , beaten up , birched , put in stocks in Sheffield city center and peed on by 'decent' members of the public , etc . demonstrate something of the nasty , vindictive , scapegoating , compassionless side of modern Britain .

If it were proven that Phil Laing pre-meditatedly intended to desecrate the memory of men far braver than he has ever been or is ever likely to be , then his disgusting drunken behaviour would certainly merit at least a community service order , though bearing in mind that he's already presumably suffered significantly through the publicity , and not forgetting the harm that's likely to have been done to his future prospects  .

If , as I would tend to imagine , he was so drunk that he barely knew where he was or what he was doing , then he should certainly be fined , and treated much more harshly in the surely unlikely event of him ever doing anything remotely similar again .

It's easy to turn 19 year old Mr Laing into a  socialy cohesive common-enemy , or hate-figure , but most people have done things they would'nt want to be made public , quite possibly whilst under the influence of drink and/or drugs , and I feel wary of partaking in the scapegoating of anyone unless we know for sure that they have knowingly and deliberately caused significantly real and lasting harm .

For nostalgic escapism only I've begun watching :

Which I never saw all of , but , yeah , I sort of love it : Powerful melodrama but which you can't help smiling at , the ultimate character who you can't help but love to hate , and the escapist fantasy of having unlimited money . . .

I don't know much but I predict that next years UK general election campaign will be exhausting , bitter and brutal .
Gordon Brown genuinely dislikes David Cameron , and is desperate to try to hang on to his Prime-Ministership , which he zealously coveted for so long .
Mr Cameron knows that his Conservative party is strongly expected to prevail - the bookies odds are still 1/14 Conservative , and 13/2 Labour - which they may well do , but I can't see it being quite as straightforward a task as those figures suggest .

The televised 'three party leaders' debates ( why bother with the lib-dems ; surely irrelevant until when , in never-never-land , they eventually get their 'holy grail' of a hung-parliment ) seem to promise to be compellingly awful to watch .

For the next six months we seem destined to remain languishing in a 'no mans land' of in-denial Brown's constant craving to be voted back in , and his delusional imagininings that he can keep trying to buy popularity by continuing borrowing money to avoid biting spending cuts , and David Cameron and his old-etonian chums gleefully revelling in the power they seem destined to win .

I expect that Cameron will try to take advantage of the unexpected muddle that Labour find themselves in as regards official advice about legal and illegal drugs , during this weeks PMQ's .
When David Cameron became leader of his party there was a temporary fuss about whether he had ever snorted cocaine .
I suspect that we can expect that to quite possibly rear its head again , in five months time .

And isn't it slightly insulting to the British electorate to assume that only pleasant looking , well dressed , young-ish Blair-Clones can win elections as party leaders ?

I don't know who should take over from G/Brown , but , before labour lose a general election , no one is going to , and in the apparently unlikely event of the Conservative's losing , next year , will their next leader have to be yet another Blair-Clone ?

And Heaven Help Us if Bliar does become President of Europe - A CIA stooge in Brussels as opposed to in Downing Street - And one reason why he wants to be may be that in that position he may have immunity from being prosecuted as the lying war-criminal he undoubtedly is .

If you are irresistably drawn to farmers markets on Saturday mornings , passionate about recycling , boringly knowledgable about obscure cheeses , adore organic-food shops , and Apple products ( ipods , etc ) , conscientious about offsetting your carbon emissions . . .

And if you love fresh coffee , practice yoga , own dogs ,  a Toyota Prius car , and an expensive non-mountain-bike style bicycle , eat sushi , collect dvd box-sets and think that 'The Wire' is the best show on television , then  , congratulations , hooray ! - You are quintessentially Middle-Class ! !

Extracted from excerpts in yesterday's 'Mail from the book : Stuff white people like : The Definitive Guide to the Unique taste of Millions , by Christan Lander .

Only one or two of those apply to me , which goes to show how 'common as muck' I am !
( Silly generalisations , I know . )
And I've never seen 'The Wire' , and don't know anything about it .

So , How Middle Class are you ?

p.s : I'm not meaning to denigrate the 'middle classes' at all : And , to identify myself with that social grouping is pretty-much what I aspire to , if not quite what I am . I just find articles like the one I wrote about rather silly , and the apparent element of truth in it about some people trying rather too hard to imitate one another .

I just watched the 2008 film The Secret Life Of Bees , from the bestselling novel by Sue Monk KIdd , set in South Carolina  , in the summer of 1964 .
Lily , played by Dakota Fanning , escapes from her horrible father ( Paul Bettany ) with their black maid Rosaleen ( Jennifer Hudson ) , and ends up living with a family of black sisters , played by Queen Latifah , Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo ,  who live in a house painted pink , with spacious land ,  who keep bees , and sell honey .

There are a few sad and shocking incidents , including portrayals of the appalling racism and enforced segregation of that place and time , but it's not a 'preachy' film , and it vividly and beautifully evokes a wonderfully loving and supportive atmosphere in a magical home environment .

Paul Bettany's character is one-dimensionally bitter , twisted ,  and bullying , but everyone else in it plays their part so sumptuously perceptively and believably .
It's a fine achievement , and a zillion times better than the other 2008 film I reviewed here the day before yesterday .

Why do some people have to hate  , bully , persecute and scapegoat  , and why do some believe the worst of others without giving them a chance ?
It may take a while but I certainly will get to the bottom of and respond appropiately to what's currently bothering me , not unduly .

At least we can celebrate the majority of USA voters having installed a black President .

Although consider this :
" . . President Obama has authorised more deadly strikes by remote-controlled , pilotless drones in Afghanistan in his first year of office - about one a week - than his predecessor G W Bush did in his last three . They've killed over 500 people - many of them , alas , innocent bystanders , including children .
Operators thousands of miles away watch their victims being blown to pieces by Hellfire missiles . 
Counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen warns : 'Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family , a new revenge fued , and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially . . . "

- From the 'ephraim hardcastle' column in today's 'Mail , and do put me right of you think that's incorrect . 

theme :

my theme ? : well it's called UFO ( !? ) .

A great track that I stumbled across whilst looking for something else . . . OMD , ( c ) Virgin/EMI .

Earlier I watched a programme about the rich and beautiful 'bright young things' , of London & the 'home counties' in the 1920's , deleriously immersed in their microcosm of partying and posing , and either entirely oblivious to the harshly biting poverty of many of their fellow citizens , or actually feeling that they were helping in some way , by being glamourously aspirational role-models .
And oh what fun they had , with their alcohol , cocaine and hashish fuelled revelries , and inventing increasingly outlandish themes for their frequent parties .

Then I watched the programme about Katie Piper , a model , who became involved with a man who , apparently because she was too tired to have sex with him , subjected her to violence for eight hours then somehow got another man to approach her outdoors , and throw sulphuric acid in her face .
She was lucky to be treated by the brilliant surgeon Dr Jawal , who first removed what was left of her face , then rebuilt it using synthetic skin , then skin grafts from her back , and though , living now with her lovely parents and sister , she's very understandably nervous of strangers , self-conscious in public , and often tearful , and , though she wears a see-through plastic mask over her face for 23 hours a day to help to flatten har facial scars , which are noticeable without make-up , she still looks and is lovely .
Her facially reconstructive surgery is still not complete , she's blind in one eye , and because the acid attack also damaged her throat , it was said in the programme that she has to be fed through a tube going into her stomach , which I hope will not always have to be the case .

She said that she wouldn't necessarily mind going out with a man who has facial scarring or other facial abnormalities , because she's learnt that what matters is the person behind that .

Whatever , I'm sure she will find a lovely , loving and loyal partner , and I wish her all the luck that she deserves in continuing to rebuild her cruelly shattered life .

Of course the prison sentences for her ex-boyfriend and his accomplice , though not insignificant , seem not enough .

In a notebook I was using I happened to unexpectedly find an example of my ex-partner Julie's handwriting , which is much neater , and better joined-up than mine .
After she left me I thought I'd exorcised all traces of her , but , it's okay , I'm more relaxed about it now .
What she'd written was : " the Ring , sort of a horror film really although it was not all " .
Indeed , and I still prefer the Hollywood remake to the Japanese original . 

Buying a dvd for £5 from play.com is cheaper than a trip to and from the cinema .
In fact there is a tiny cinema here , but they would'nt have shown Deadgirl ( 2008 ) , which I just watched , and which , from some reviews on play.com and amazon , I thought might have been enjoyably , darkly , interestingly and suspensefully entertaining  , with a bit more depth to it than any typical  hollywood 'teen movie' .

Two 17 year old boys take a day off school , and a few cans of beer , to an abandoned psychiatric hospital .
Chased by a scary dog they end up in an upstairs corridor leading to a locked room containing a naked and apparently dead woman , manacled to a table .
Except she's not dead . Except she is . 
The word 'zombie' is never mentioned , but that's pretty-much what she's meant to be , although how she became one is never explained .

So what do they do ? - Run away and dial 911 ?  -  Unchain her and take to hospital ?
No , they and another friend leave her there and use her for their gratification again and again , despite the reluctance of one of them .

So , is the film trying to explore complex and 'taboo' moral issues ?
If it had a 'message' it would be that all or most white american teenaged boys are so desperate to gratify their lustful urges that they don't care if it's with the decaying living dead .
No , it's just a low-grade , tacky attempt to be comercially controversial , with all the artful direction of a 1980's Wham! pop-video .

The 1982 film of Dennis Potter's 'banned' BBC play 'Brimstone and Treacle' deals with not entirely dissimilar issues , far more intelligently and coherently .

Back to reality , and how appalling that one of the torturers of 'Baby P' , Jason Owen , has been deemed 'no significant risk' and will be released in just two years time .

So there's to be a 'gay pride' ( homosexual male pride ) march in Norwich , and a 67 year old Christian lady who wrote to Norwich Council expressing her objections to it , in which she referred to male homosexuals as 'sodomites' , and claimed that their 'perverted practices' have led to 'the downfall of every empire' , has been visited by police , and threatened with prosecution for having commited a 'hate crime' . . .

It was a private letter , to the council who she pays taxes to . . .
Her eccentrically antiquated views may be understandably offensive to gay men , but , all the council had to do was to send her a tersely polite reply , assuring her that her comments had been noted .
If she turned up at the event and started swiping at the proud to be gay Norfolkers with her walking stick she would , of course , quite rightly be arrested and charged .

How come I suspect that if a Muslim had written to the council objecting on religious grounds to the planned gay march , they would have been dealt with more sensitively ?

My relative / friend reminded me that nearly all the ladies who post 'lonely hearts' ads in The Times , Sunday Times , Guardian etc. specify that they're seeking a man who is 'solvent' .

My dictionary's definition of that is 'able to solve or dissolve ; able to pay all debts ; a substance that dissolves another ; that component of a solution which is present in excess , or whose physical state is the same as that of the solution ; something which provides a solution' .

One can understand women hesitating to become too involved with a man who is insolvent , i.e bankrupt , in debt , and unable to pay those debts .

I'm sure there are relationships which are trade-offs between young women who know they are youthfully nice looking , and who may or may not be intelligent , witty , charming and 'classy' ,  and men who may not possess all of those attributes but who are 'comfortably off' financially .

My friend also pointed out that 'older' people are almost certainly going to carry 'emotional baggage' , from past relationships into future ones .

In a perfect world , all serious 'relationships' would begin on the basis of content of character , and compatability of interests and personality . . . ( Or would they ? )

I still don't think myself to be afflicted with aspergers syndrome , as after all I can be very empathic and intuitive , however plenty of things confuse me , including some people's sometime responses to me , and , though I know that the clocks went back an hour last night ,  'giving' us an extra hour , I still can't figure out if the time now , 23-30-ish , is an hour before or after what it would have been this time last night .( Perhaps I'm in need of a Conservative Government , made up of intellectually superior Old-Etonians , to de-confuse me ).

In Kings Langley in the 70's my Dad for a time went to a Rudolf Steiner , Anthroposophy study-group , though he never joined the Anth/Society . The man who led the group would bang his fist onto the table ,  loudly exclaiming 'Steiner Says . . . '

My Dad said he thought that when people become angrily fanatical in favour of a belief it can be a way of overcompensating for a part of themself , which they don't want to acknowledge , that actually doubts their chosen mindset .

To my knowledge Herr Steiner ( 1861 - 1925 ) said little if anything about sexual matters . It's a well-known psychological axiom that people who intensely dislike homosexuals are often hating a homosexually inclined part of themselves which they can't bear to acknowledge .

A more modern variant of that is that those who ostensibly see homosexuality as an equally valid alternative to heterosexuality ,  whose chosen value-system is governed by left-wing 'political correctness' and who become enraged by anyone they perceive as speaking or writing in a 'homophobic' manner may be externalisingly rebelling against part of themselves which feels uncomfortable about homosexuality .

The Daily Mail's Jan Moir , in her defence of her at least badly timed and insensitive piece about Stephen Gately , revealed that since its publication , the friday before last , her home-address has repeatedly been published on the internet  . . . The intention presumably having been to cowardly try to incite people to attack or harrass her and her family at their home , to avenge her unkind , unpleasant and ill-timed remarks about the late Stephen Gately , and her apparently assuming his sexuality to have played a part in his sad and untimely death .

No I'm not gay and yes I can partly understand why some people find the notion of gay male sex distasteful ( hardly anyone , nowadays , apart from lesbian and bisexual women , cares much one way or the other about lesbianism ) , but , as I've said before , and probably will again : Aren't there thousands of more apt things to worry about than what we imagine that some other adults legally and consensually do in private .

The only part of last thursday's BBC1 'Question Time' in which a few audience members became seriously , loudly angry with Herr Fuhrer Griffin was when he , in response to a question , said he finds it creepy to see men kissing in public . For a number of years , before he was married , NG lived with the openly gay National Front/BNP organiser Martin Webster .