VOICE FROM THE WILDERNESS

When Peter Cook passed away in 1995 at what now seems the ludicrously young age of 57, I recall the BBC putting together a fitting tribute programme not long after, one that included recollections of the great man from family and friends, many of whom are now also sadly no longer with us. Among those offering their remembrances was Cook’s partner-in-crime Dudley Moore, who outlived Cook by just seven years, dying aged 66 in 2002. In one of the most moving moments of the programme, Moore confessed the first thing he did after being told of Cook’s death was to ring his answer machine just to hear his old comrade’s voice one last time. The ‘ghost voices’ of the recently-departed that are now preserved in a digital rather than analogue format (often as social media Personal Messages) are always poignant testaments to the individual in question when they’ve just left us. I have one in my Twitter messages list today.

‘Thanks so much for taking the trouble to contact me,’ it says. ‘I’d be delighted to read your book.’ The message relates to a novel I published last year called ‘The Kamikaze Harvest’. The book fictionalises the odious virus of the false allegation, an insidious symptom of contemporary society that was facilitated in its legitimacy by the likes of Sir Keir Starmer in his role as DPP; that Starmer now seems odds-on to become the next leader of the Labour Party tells you everything you need to know about how this toxic trend has both shaped the twenty-first century narrative and infiltrated the thought processes of the ruling class, one wracked with guilt over the imagined crimes of its ancestors and desperate to be seen to right wrongs in a culture that prizes victimhood as an achievement.

After he had re-tweeted several posts from this here blog, one of the first people I contacted upon publishing ‘The Kamikaze Harvest’ was the author of the quoted message, Simon Warr, whose death at the age of 65 was announced yesterday. Having undergone an awful ordeal that far too many have experienced in recent years, I surmised Simon Warr might get a story that I didn’t see any mainstream writers too terrified to poke their heads above the parapet daring to tackle in the form of fiction. He was kind and courteous in his response and provided me with an address to dispatch said book to as he continued to regularly speak publicly on a subject whose genuine victims he had become a tireless campaigner on behalf of. But just a couple of days ago, he abruptly issued a final tweet that read ‘I have a serious health condition and am now receiving care in a hospice…I’d like to thank you all for your friendship and support’. His death from cancer was announced barely 24 hours later via his Twitter account.

A man with a long and distinguished career in teaching, Simon Warr first appeared on the wider public radar with the 2003 Channel 4 series, ‘That’ll Teach ‘em’, one of those sub-reality TV shows characteristic of the 2000s, in which present-day kids submitted to the typical regime of a 1950s boarding school. The success of the series brought with it the kind of attention that would eventually be exploited by despicable parasites capitalising on the post-Savile compensation climate of the 2010s. In 2012, Warr was the recipient of a dawn raid by the Tractor Gestapo…sorry, Suffolk Constabulary, who promptly arrested him on charges of Historical Child Abuse.

The allegations had been made by an ex-pupil of a school Warr had taught at thirty years previously, an ex-pupil who had never been a member of Warr’s class and who alleged he was abused during a lesson in a subject Warr hadn’t taken – PE. Not that such trivialities troubled a police force indoctrinated in the Starmer-sponsored ‘Believe the Victim’ mantra, in which traditional routes to justice such as corroborated evidence and the presumption of innocence re the accused were regarded as secondary to vindicating the ‘victim’ by whatever means; if that included canvassing other former pupils of St George’s in Suffolk, so be it. The boys in blue were determined to get their man and placed him on bail limbo for nine months as Warr was exposed to the joys of social media with his name and reputation dragged through the dirt whilst the police trawled yellowing school registers in a desperate attempt to persuade other ‘victims’ to come forward. They even approached the author of a disreputable website spreading similarly vile accusations about teachers in order to bolster their shaky case.

Two other ex-pupils eventually joined the fantasist chorus conducted by the Suffolk Constabulary and the case came to court as Warr was faced with little option but to take early retirement from the job he’d devoted his working life to – a job he’d been prevented from doing during his tenure on bail as he found himself socially blacklisted, as is customary for those branded with the ultimate career-destroying slur in which guilt is instantly presumed and promoted as fact. At his seven-day trial in 2014, Warr was found not guilty on all counts, with the jury taking less than 40 minutes to reach their verdict; he chronicled his horrific experience in a book, ‘Presumed Guilty: A Teacher’s Solitary Battle To Clear His Name’, and was able to establish a reputation in media circles as a respected voice of reason, often highlighting other cases of false allegations that the CPS were all-too eager to pursue.

As an erudite individual who was able to articulate his ordeal in print and via broadcast mediums, Warr’s high profile brought much-needed attention to a shadowy netherworld of policing and dubious legal practices that hundreds of individuals and their families have been subjected to in recent years – the short and long-term ramifications of which can be unimaginably devastating for those it draws into its black hole. Whilst media outlets are rarely slow in promoting the allegations of those crying abuse, the accused tend to be cold-shouldered and excluded from the debate. This is why the likes of Simon Warr, Harvey Proctor and Paul Gambaccini are vital in presenting balance and acting as spokesmen for those who have no public voice as they undergo a trauma with the potential to span years.

Warr himself admitted he contemplated taking his own life in the immediate wake of his arrest, and it’s telling that one of the last examples of the tragic consequences of the CPS ruthlessly pursuing a case which Warr publicly spoke about was that of Caroline Flack. If it takes the suicide of a TV star to belatedly alert a public who had previously shown scant sympathy for the casualties of a legal body not fit for purpose, all well and good; but Simon Warr had already given invaluable support and hope to many in positions he himself had experienced – some of whom were not as fortunate when their respective cases came to court, and found themselves behind bars for something they didn’t do.

I don’t claim to have personally known Simon Warr, but I do mourn his passing. Having known people directly affected by the kind of ordeal he underwent, I understand how important his presence in the public eye was to them as they too were banished to the periphery of society by the malicious avarice and moral bankruptcy of that society; and he was kind enough to volunteer to read my book, something which mattered to me. One hopes his own book will serve as a memoir of madness to future generations who will look back at this insane era with rightful incredulity. He seems to have been a good, decent man who didn’t deserve the treatment he received at the hands of the police and the Clown Prosecution Service. Sadly, he wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last; but he made a difference.

© The Editor

STARMER CHAMELEON

I’ve always found ‘The Week in Westminster’ to be one of the more engaging political bastions of Radio 4; the programme being broadcast on a Saturday morning enables it to benefit from the breathing space denied the likes of ‘Today’ or ‘The World at One’, which are both designed to cater for the gut (and knee-jerk) reaction in the immediate aftermath of events. A gap of seven days rather than seven minutes certainly gives rise to a preferable perspective, particularly in our instant age, when a comment is required on the spot and (often) without the facts. MPs of all the major parties are usually represented, as are MPs of old, many of whom have invaluable hindsight that even elevation to the ermine slippers of the Lords hasn’t entirely blunted.

I had to laugh at the latest instalment, however, when the merits of Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary were being discussed – and some of the conclusions reached were so worryingly ludicrous that laughter seemed the only tonic. Sir Keir Starmer was seriously touted as a future Labour leader in the event of Jezza losing the next General Election. For those whose memories of this man stretch back to his insidious activities as Director of Public Prosecutions, this isn’t necessarily a welcome solution to the monopoly of the party by the hard left. Moreover, that a man so lacking in charisma and one in possession of an android-like demeanour that is actually quite chilling in its absence of recognisable human qualities could be considered as a Labour leader (and possible Prime Minister in the process) is yet another cause for concern in a time of many.

In order to justify the terrible pun in the title of this post, I suppose I could say the second most notable Keir in the history of the Labour Party has held onto his frontbench seat by effortlessly blending in to the Corbyn worldview when many of his true ideological allies in the party stormed off not long after Jezza’s election. Starmer has been able to do so because he appears to be so devoid of personality that few have noticed he doesn’t quite fit the Socialist suit that is otherwise a prerequisite for membership of Team Corbyn. He also confirmed long-held suspicions this week by eagerly embracing the Second Referendum option, promoting the People’s Vote as official Labour policy, a move that places him on the same wavelength as the Independent Group, meaning the Starmer Chameleon now has a foot in two Westminster camps, utterly befitting a man who appears to be a blank canvas that anyone can draw a cock and balls on.

Starmer’s background is in Law; he qualified as a barrister in 1987 and became a QC five years later. Within a decade, he was named as the DPP (and therefore head of the CPS) following the retirement of Sir Ken Macdonald. Starmer courted controversy just two years into the job when he announced the police officer Simon Harwood would not be prosecuted in relation to the death of London newsvendor Ian Tomlinson, despite video evidence of Harwood striking Tomlinson on the leg with his baton and then pushing him onto the pavement, allegedly mistaking him for an unlikely G-20 Summit protestor in 2009. The unprovoked assault led to Tomlinson collapsing and dying moments later. However, the initial CPS decision was later reversed and Harwood was tried for manslaughter in 2012, found not guilty.

On Starmer’s watch, the CPS also pursued a case against Paul Chambers in the so-called ‘Twitter Joke Trial’, following Chambers’ frustrated tweet in 2010 after a flight he had booked was cancelled due to bad weather and he jokingly threatened to blow Robin Hood Airport ‘sky high’. The farcical legal action became something of a cause célèbre for notable comedy figures such as Stephen Fry and Al Murray. Chambers eventually had his conviction quashed in 2012, though rumours emerged that the CPS were prepared to drop the case until Starmer intervened and overruled them; Paul Chambers’ MP at the time, Louise Mensch, called for an investigation into Starmer’s behaviour by a Commons committee, though blame for the decision to pursue the case was laid at the door of the crown court and Starmer evaded scrutiny.

Starmer’s most damaging legacy as DPP, however, was to vigorously push through the ‘victim’s law’, a legal code of practice especially aimed at tipping the balance in favour of complainants in cases relating to sexual abuse. As a highly vocal promoter of Operation Yewtree at the hysterical height of the celebrity witch-hunt in the wake of the Jimmy Savile ‘revelations’, Starmer’s proposals were to seriously undermine the rights of defendants in such cases, creating the corrosive climate whereby police forces would not only instantly assume any allegation of a sexual nature to be ‘credible and true’ (AKA ‘I Believe Her’), but would co-operate with the CPS drive to improve stats on rape convictions by deliberately withholding vital evidence from the defence in order to secure a guilty verdict.

Establishing the comfort blanket of video evidence exclusively for the complainant as the norm and thus only exposing the accused to the lion’s den of the courtroom, Starmer’s rejection of the traditional fair fight has given the green light to every vindictive fantasist and serial accuser ever since. One wonders how many innocent men (and their families) have suffered the trauma of an extended police investigation without even reaching court or are actually languishing behind bars as a consequence of Starmer’s seal of approval on dispensing with the age-old ‘innocent until proven guilty’ Golden Thread of British justice. I’m sure they’d all be ecstatic at the prospect of Starmer one day being the leader of their country.

Starmer had advised the Labour opposition on his proposals in the hope the party would return to government in 2015; it didn’t, but Starmer himself joined the party’s ranks at Westminster after winning the seat of Holborn and St Pancras at that year’s General Election. The shit sorcerer had already handed the reins of power at the CPS to his awful apprentice Alison Saunders, who built on Starmer’s blueprint by steering the reputation of the Law to such a calamitous low that Sir Keir must have imagined he was well out of it; but even though Saunders too has now vacated the post, she has left behind an almighty bloody mess for which her predecessor must take a great deal of the credit. And this is the man some are touting as a future occupant of No.10. Hah. And we think we’ve got it bad now.

© The Editor

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES

Better watch what you say in your comments today – disagree with me and I’ll be on the Hate Crime Hotline to PC PC; I’ll have you done for Petuniaphobia, and going by the new guidelines outlined by the Old Bill and their comrades-in-compassion the Clown Prosecution Service, anything can be interpreted as online abuse. Much as some find ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ the funniest thing since sliced Del Boys whilst others would rather be trapped in a lift with Kelvin McKenzie than watch it, definitions of what constitutes a cyber Hate Crime are subjective. Latest statistics reveal the CPS successfully prosecuted over 15,000 ‘Hate Crime incidents’ in 2015-16, though the Hate Crime category is so wide-ranging that it can encompass everything from a long-running vicious vendetta in which death threats are regularly tossed about to the guy who made a joke YT video whereby he manipulated his girlfriend’s dog into making a Hitler salute.

The latter not only highlights the ludicrousness of criminalising comedy (see Paul Gascoigne), but also seems to tie-in with the concerted clampdown on free speech that is well in advance of us on the other side of the Atlantic. An intended free speech rally in Boston at the weekend was gatecrashed by thousands of so-called ‘anti-fascist’ protestors, including the masked left-wing anarchists who go by the name of Antifa; following the heaven-sent Twitter comments of Mr President in response to the trouble in Charlottesville the week before, I wonder if the Donald pointed out that the violence this time round emanated not from both sides, but just the one – i.e. the anti-fascists?

Amongst numerous tasteless tactics in evidence was hijacking the death of Heather Heyer – the one fatality of the drive-in at Charlottesville; the protestors half-inched her image in the same way some here exploited the murder of Jo Cox for their own loathsome ends last year. Now the ‘movement’ has its first martyr, and even the picture of Heyer which was worn like a piece of corporate protest merchandise had a distinct look of the airbrushed Che Guevara photo that was de rigueur for late 60s student bedsits. Whatever she may have been in life, Heather Heyer has now been immortalised as a brand name for the Alt Left. Her family must be so proud.

The rally itself was intended to be unashamedly conservative with a small ‘c’, though everyone attending was naturally labelled ‘white supremacist/KKK/racist’ etc. If you’re not with us, you’re against us; there’s no moderate middle ground in this New World Order. And the world that existed before it actually didn’t exist at all; remove all physical traces of it and it never happened; get Google in on the act and cyberspace follows suit. Simple Ministry of Truth principles apply today. The intolerant McCarthyism of the SJWs has already polluted US campuses and rendered them uncomfortably reminiscent of Chinese universities during the Cultural Revolution, and this mindset has now spilled over into so many facets of American life that anyone daring to lift their head above the PC parapet is shot down in a way that would constitute a Hate Crime were it the other way round.

Back in Blighty, a naive notion of equality whereby cultural, racial and sexual differences are deemed an unnecessary weapon of division is the mantra of the moment, whereas the accompanying word is ‘fluidity’. Schools now generate the fallacy that we’re all the same – something that extends to the school sports day, whereby everyone who competes receives equal billing. Of course, the quality of education a child receives still being dependent on whether or not its parents can afford to pay for the best makes a mockery of this philosophy; and outlawing competition amongst pupils hardly prepares them for the world beyond the playground when it remains a crucial element of the rat-race. Parents that have repeatedly told their offspring how special they are have had such praise reinforced by teachers, yet the insulated Telly Tubby Land these pampered potentates are eventually released from is hardly the ideal training camp for the absence of gormless optimism that awaits them.

As recent as four or five years ago, I would’ve regarded myself as very much on the left, and while I’m a long way from the right (I remain contemptuous of IDS and Gideon), I do feel somewhat stranded at the moment – a bit like one of those athletes in the Olympics who fly under no flag. Politically, I’m stateless. The humourless, censorious finger-wagging serial banners that have taken control of the left are to me no different from the Whitehouse/Muggeridge/Longford collective that once operated from a similar standpoint on the right. It matters not to me which side of the political divide these attitudes inhabit; they go against so many of my core beliefs, and if it is the left that currently exercise these restrictions of freedom of thought and speech, f**k ‘em. I reserve the right to criticise whoever I want to, whichever party of whichever colour they represent. And I can do that without resorting to name-calling Hate Crime.

One of the unfortunate offshoots of being told what one cannot think or say is that it creates a vacuum for rational and sensible debate, one that is then filled by the egotistical gobshites and professional contrarians who love the sound of their own voices – the kind that don’t possess the intelligence or humour of a Christopher Hitchens. As these are then perceived as the only ones who express an alternative opinion to the consensus, anyone who harbours an alternative is inevitably lumped in with them. I detest Hopkins as much as I detest Abbott, so where do I go? I may have voted Lib Dem at the last two General Elections, but that was for a decent constituency MP rather than any party allegiance, and Old Mother Cable carping on about a rerun of the EU Referendum is about as relevant to me today as calling for a repeal of the Corn Laws.

Equality cuts both ways; it doesn’t mean usurping those who kept minorities oppressed and then oppressing the usurped. It should mean everyone – whatever their political persuasion – being on a level playing field and all voices being heard. But, politically, it doesn’t work that way anymore than the Tsar being ultimately superseded by Stalin meant the Romanov’s palaces were burned to the ground and the ruling class of Bolsheviks set up home in a community of garden sheds. The aphrodisiac of power is as appealing to those who don’t have it as those reluctant to let it go; and I’ll still be out in the wilderness whichever side grabs it. In 2017, however, I think the wilderness is the most interesting place to be.

© The Editor

THE PRESUMPTION OF GUILT

‘It was one of those immensely rare and exceptional cases where the decision to prosecute and thereafter to continue the prosecution was an unnecessary or improper act.’ So spoke His Honour Judge Martin Edmunds in his official verdict of a case he tried in which a jury cleared a deputy headmaster of raping a 14-year-old female pupil; he came to his conclusion in a written costs ruling that was published in last weekend’s Mail on Sunday. It’s hard to read the passage quoted without wondering where Judge Edmunds has been lately. ‘Immensely rare and exceptional’? Really? With an estimated half of cases brought before Crown Courts in England and Wales today being ‘sex cases’, the case His Honour commented upon seems a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the legal system and the insidious organisation spearheading its abuse known as the Crown Prosecution Service.

If just one case was to be selected as representative of the corruption of the Law and the way in which it is enacted today, the sad story of Kato Harris appears to have it all. And at the dark heart of this sorry saga that left the career and reputation of an innocent man in tatters are (yet again) the toxic twins responsible for a growing trail of injustice and misery that has served to obliterate any lingering shreds of faith in this country’s upholders of fair play – the CPS and the Metropolitan Police Force.

The 35-year-old deputy head of the fee-paying St George’s School in Ascot, Kato Harris was regarded as an inspirational teacher and a popular one; however, his rapid rise through the ranks ground to a horrific halt when a girl he’d never even taught at his previous school accused him of raping her on three separate occasions. Adhering to the ‘she who must be believed’ edict issued to all police forces where sexual offence accusations are concerned, the boys in blue demonstrated their noted subtlety by turning up at Mr Harris’ school and bundling him away in full view of bemused pupils.

What followed over the next year-and-a-half was a nightmarish ordeal for Kato Harris familiar to hundreds of men in this country who have been at the mercy of a legal system that has overturned the ‘innocent till proven guilty’ foundation stone upon which English Law was built. Never imagining he’d actually be charged, the moment he was, Mr Harris’ world collapsed. Suspended from work, barred from his local church and cricket team, publicly named and shamed whilst his accuser enjoyed the luxury of anonymity, Kato Harris became an overnight outcast in the community he had been a prominent member of.

According to a teacher at her school, Mr Harris’ accuser (whose parents used to fly her to New York for weekly therapy) was engaged in a competition with a friend as to who could concoct the most audacious story, and it would seem the name of Kato Harris was plucked out of thin air with the nonchalance of a retired footballer extracting balls from the bag during the draw for the Third Round of the FA Cup. What gave her story clout, despite the inaccuracies in her flimsy evidence, were the deep pockets of her parents, who hired Sue Akers, ex-Deputy Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard and now working as a private detective. She was recruited via a legal firm known as Mishcon de Reya, along with her partner-in-crime Alison Levitt, who just happened to be a former legal adviser to the CPS.

Sue Akers played her part in the CPS’s decision to prosecute by renewing old contacts at the Met, supplying Scotland Yard detectives with a list of tasks that could secure a conviction. Working in tandem with Levitt, she recommended they contact all of Mr Harris’ former pupils and that they seize his computer for incriminating evidence (none was found); the relentless pressure from Akers and Levitt even annoyed senior detectives working on the case who were well aware of the gaping holes in the accuser’s tall tale; but they carried on lobbying.

When bombarding the CPS and Met with emails, Alison Levitt tellingly stooped to one including a statement from personality-free Labour MP Keir Starmer, her former mentor, who highlighted Levitt’s ‘findings’ in the DPP report into Jimmy Savile. If ever proof were needed to underline Ms Levitt’s chilling agenda, this email had it in spades. Yet, still the case went to trial.

Kato Harris was cleared of the charges by a jury in the space of fifteen minutes. Despite this, St George’s School declined to resume his employment there. He is currently unemployed and is understandably reluctant to return to teaching in any capacity; why would any man even enter the profession anymore? Judge Edmunds ruled that the CPS decision to prosecute was an ‘improper act’ and that they should now pay Mr Harris’ legal fees, though they have offered a paltry amount so far. The Met, meanwhile, claim that an independent review of their actions by the Greater Manchester Police said no evidence was found that the accuser’s representatives ‘were inappropriately given any physical access to information concerning the investigation’.

An innocent man on the scrapheap, branded for life and unwilling to re-enter the profession he was apparently extremely good at; a narcissistic fantasist endorsed by wealthy parents and a despicable law firm; legal reforms that encourage such malicious vendettas; the CPS and the Met once more joining forces on an immoral crusade to appease victims lobbyists without a care for those trampled underfoot – none of these factors are unique in 2017.

Kato Harris may not feel it, but he is a lucky man. He’s not behind bars for something he didn’t do. In the current climate, that in itself is a triumph. The easiest way to ruin anyone today is to simply point the finger and shout ‘Paedo!’ Job done.

© The Editor

THE CLASS CLOWN PROSECUTION SERVICE

It’s hard to think of a greater expression of sheer bilious venom to have ever been captured on disc than Bob Dylan’s 1965 top ten single, ‘Positively 4th Street’. ‘You’ve got a lot of nerve/to say you are my friend’ snarls Dylan in the opening line. ‘When I was down/you just stood there grinning’. Its lyrical target remains the subject of speculation, but at a time when Dylan was delving into more obscure and oblique lyrical realms, the song is a uniquely direct collection of grievances spat out at the disgruntled folkie audience from the newly-electric troubadour. The time-honoured ritual of kicking a man when he’s down, especially when the kickers in question built the man up in the first place, is particularly pungent in this country. The British media – and to an extent (it has to be said) the general public – like nothing better than the downfall of a famous name they once lauded and applauded; when the Law gets involved as well, the one-time darling doesn’t stand a chance.

A quarter of a century ago, Paul Gascoigne was one of the most famous people in the country. Already recognised as a prodigious talent by regular followers of football, his role in the England team’s unexpected route to the World Cup semi-final in 1990 caught the eye of the fair-weather fans that only pay attention when the national side does well in a major tournament. Receiving a yellow card in the battle with the Germans, Gascoigne’s realisation that he would therefore miss the final should England make it provoked something nobody had ever seen a participant in such a masculine pastime reduced to before – he burst into tears. Overnight, ‘Gazza’ became a national treasure for wearing his heart on his sleeve, an instant household name whose emotions placed him under the scrutiny of a spotlight his emotions were ill-equipped to deal with.

England manager Bobby Robson had described his star youngster as being ‘daft as a brush’, and Gazza certainly played the joker within the England team, his evident hyperactivity and childlike enthusiasm for being the class clown masking a deep insecurity and emotional vulnerability at the root of his manic persona. When his career didn’t quite pan out as it should have, Gazza found the intense press intrusion into his private life and personal relationships a downside to the fame he had embraced with such gusto in the aftermath of Italia 90. The trajectory his life followed thereafter uncannily echoed the route taken by that other outstanding football talent produced by the British Isles, George Best. The demon drink took hold and after one final glorious hurrah on the pitch with Euro 96, Gazza ended his days as a player turning out for lower league clubs seemingly to make ends meet. It was a sad winding down to a playing career that should have ended on a far higher note.

Sport, like many other areas of society, has become adept at smugly patting itself on the back of late via various initiatives allegedly aimed at stamping out prejudices towards ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals and the mentally ill. But its ability to aid those within it that have suffered as a consequence of previous inaction on the part of sporting authorities is fairly limited. Paul Gascoigne’s alcoholism and mental illness have received precious little assistance from football’s governing bodies; some fellow team-mates have done their bit to help him out, but Gazza has paid the rent in recent years by joining the after-dinner circuit. A man whose natural talent on the field of play is the kind today’s England side would die for has been relegated to a graveyard it’s difficult to imagine contemporaries such as Gary Lineker or Alan Shearer enduring.

Throughout the years since he retired from playing, Gazza’s difficulties have been reported on with obscene relish by the tabloid press. The ‘How the mighty have fallen’ subtext to every telescopic lens image of Gascoigne staggering around dressed in wino chic is appalling, though who would expect anything less from the press? Unfortunately, Paul Gascoigne is not emotionally equipped to cope with that kind of intrusive voyeurism and one suspects the dream headline craved by the pack who persist in slavering over his every misstep would be the one announcing his premature death.

And now poor old Gazza has been subjected to another irredeemably corrupt British institution – the Law. Today he was found guilty of ‘Racially Aggravated Abuse’, following an ill-timed and innocuous throwaway rehash of an old unfunny Bernard Manning joke during one of his ‘An Evening with Gazza’ events in Wolverhampton. The fact that the utterly reprehensible Crown Prosecution Service (a pusillanimous stain on this country’s legal profession beyond compare) chose to pursue this charge all the way to court merely because it could is despicable enough, but the box-ticking, self-righteous piety encapsulated in the summary of the District Judge at Dudley Magistrates’ Court reads as a last will and testament for common sense within British Law.

After praising the contemptible CPS for bringing the case to court, District Judge Graham Wilkinson pompously declared: ‘As a society it is important that we challenge racially-aggravated behaviour in all its forms. It is the creeping low-level racism that society still needs to challenge. A message needs to be sent that in the twenty-first century society that we live in, such action, such words will not be tolerated.’

And yet the CPS is tolerated, despite its jaw-dropping catalogue of sanctimonious moral crusading and politically-motivated pursuance of those whose crime has been to utter a mistimed gag in public or to have indulged in a consensual intimate encounter with a willing participant decades before that has now been reclassified as post-therapy rape. Fined £1,000 for ‘threatening or abusive words or behaviour’, were Paul Gascoigne clued-up on the rancid and redundant institution that dragged him into court he might well ask what the monetary value would be of a suitably fitting fine the CPS should receive for its deplorable record over its lamentable 30-year existence. I suspect the amount is incalculable.

© The Editor