NASTIES IN THE NEWS

There’s almost nothing the British people like reading about more than nasty folk in the news. People temporarily caught in the glare of national attention for doing some kind of serious wrong. They’re manna from heaven for a mass media that well understands an ugly truth, not so much about the wrongdoing itself but that stories about the misdeeds of others perversely makes people feel good about themselves. It’s this that sells newspapers and guarantees a goggle-eyed attention to television. And all the more so if the perpetrator just happens to be a celebrity. The downfall of celebrities is such sweet music in the ears of so many!

Some of my prime candidates for nasties in the news today however are not so much celebrities but the  nastiness itself, the first two of which are products of one of the prime arenas for abysmal conduct anywhere in the world today, namely the United States. In recent days a German teenager was shot dead in Montana for allegedly trespassing in someone’s garage. He wasn’t killed for stealing anything but shot with a rifle simply because he was there! The elderly oh so respectable killer has claimed that the laws of the state of Montana allowed him to take such action in the name of self defence and in this he may be correct! It may also be correct to say that the laws of so many states of this gun mad, shooting mad country allow its population to pump bullets into each other or just about anyone else they don’t like the look of. And alongside this their state and federal police have the lawful ability to do likewise.

The German father of the murdered teenager may have expressed outrage at his exchange student son’s killing, describing America as a cowboy society, but that’s looking at it from a European angle. One that is in theory more enlightened. However it’s all too easy for any American to swing round and point a deadly finger at Germany for its only too recent horrendous misdeeds. Time has moved on but the stain still remains. Even so Germany and its people have made magnificent strides and fully returned to the heart of civilisation. Can the same be said for a nation with such a record of military aggression as the United States over the last sixty years whose population, so perennially nervy and twitchy, is allowed to walk the streets of its cities legally carrying what may best be described as weapons of mass destruction?

It’s not so much that cowboy gun toting is serious big business in America. Far more important is the fact that gun owners believe that the law allows them to use deadly force whenever they like and will protect them from the consequences of such use. In other words they believe that it is within their own personal remit to interpret the law for their own benefit and act accordingly! That they themselves, as citizens, are the arbiters because the law itself gives them that right!

What we have here then is a nation of countless millions of potential killers on the loose and a very different kind of place to anywhere else, but then killing is a not uncommon phenomena in a society where the taking of life becomes commonplace. Here I refer to the issue of judicial execution, revered by so many states in America as their lawful right and practiced with such enthusiasm. The trouble here is that the cowboys of the American legal system have a nasty habit of overcomplicating their barbarous practice and keep on getting it wrong. It’s one of those delightful characteristics of the American Way to have a large stage managed audience watch a man die in a kind of Entertainment Macabre. However last week in America something went seriously wrong. The judicial execution of an inmate of the Oklahoma prison system by a flawed lethal injection of chemicals led to his prolonged, agonizing and traumatic death. The important thing about this is not the newsworthiness of such an appalling incident but the reaction to it of the President of the United States, the supposedly liberal Barak Obama, who described the death as “deeply troubling” and said he had conflicted feelings about the death penalty.

Deeply troubling… conflicted feelings… Is this the best that the leader of America can do? Be troubled and conflicted about such a barbarous death? If this is indeed the case and his views represent those of the American people it puts them centuries behind most other nations of the world with regard to the most fundamental of humanitarian of issues, that of life and death. That such a reaction should so typify the American character is quite frankly ghastly, but then we see such a flagrant ambivalence and disregard for human life reflected in the American mentality in so many ways. The gun laws and endless civilian killings for example or the unending use of military force by the United States over the last sixty years, mainly against civilian populations. This callous disregard for life has become an integral part of the American psyche and comes to us in yet another sharp manifestation of the botched execution last week.

Just as nasty and newsworthy and right here on our own doorstep has been the revelation of vile, hateful conduct of care staff towards elderly patients at private nursing homes. Verbal abuse, physical assault and deliberate neglect have been the order of the day for so many defenceless old people. To my mind it’s more than abuse, more than neglect, more than plain sickening. It’s the purposeful exercise of power over those perceived to be needy and helpless. A kind of inhuman act by those whose employment, looking after sick and old people, purposefully charges them to be human. To act in a human, compassionate manner. What kind of people then are those caught on camera who do this? What kind of sickness do they have in their heads that compels them to be harmful to others. This is not simply a matter of breach of trust. What it actually comes down to is Government laying down guidance and operational criteria for the employment of suitable people.

The ill treatment of elderly patients at care homes seems to make a regular round in the news. It’s been with us before only recently with secret filming. Arrests have been made, staff dismissed and assurances given by administrative staff and owners alike. Assurances, assurances! Now here it is dirty and smelly all over again for the nation to contemplate.

But then it’s okay! It’s ugly alright but nothing to do with me. Fair enough! Just wait to you are shoved away somewhere after a decent life of hard work and caring for others. Nasty people make nasty news.

Ever wondered what it feels like being a cannibal? Then consider how so many in the media establishment feel about dining out off the corpse of Max Clifford! Previously one of their own fraternity, a celebrity in his own right who dealt almost exclusively with celebrity interest stories, earning serious money from it, he’s now been kicked off his perch into an open dustbin where the rats of his profession will chew on his still living carcass. If it sounds like something nasty from straight out the insect world well it is.

But then so was his exploitative, opportunist sexual behaviour with regard to young women over a number of years. These misdeeds, currently magnified into monstrosities by a veritable legion of agencies and activists who seek to raise the issue and profile of sexual misdemeanor and abuse, may well, given the great wall of moral turpitude and indignation following his prosecution and conviction, be hung over many others in what might well become a vengeful angry climate.

A string of complaints recently made against high profile media and political figures failed to stand up in court and justify prosecution. The case made against Max Clifford succeeded, but in a framework unlike that of the others. Here was a man of the media in a highly specialized, exploitative relationship  to it. He cultivated it, using it for his own ends as an independent public relations entrepreneur making much money for his clients and taking a fair whack for himself. He cut a celebrity profile and was resented for it. Flashing bright and perky up on a perch he became a figure disliked by the Establishment and resented by the police. A prime candidate for being taken down and put back in a box. If his sexual misconduct occurred over so many years one might ask why it took so long to take him to task. Was it simply because the police failed to act or because, as some of his accusers maintained and the judge stressed in his summing up, they felt intimidated by his powerful position in the media and thought no-one would listen, besides which they felt emotionally and morally damaged.

Returning to Clifford, the personal resentment against him across most of the media in recent days, especially since his conviction has been powerful. He’s been accused of arrogance by many and contempt by some of his victims. Of having a contemptuous attitude inside and outside of court which went down like a lead balloon with the judge. News of his sentence and jailing has been accompanied by something akin to glee. There’s a palpable sense of sticking the knives in for a string of sexual offences which taken together smell of a personality disorder that became manifest at a much earlier time in his life, ceased thirty years back and were never repeated. In other words he’s paid for what he did a long time ago, after which, let it be said, he anonymously devoted a fair part of his life to charitable work for medical foundations.

Nonetheless, shame on you Mr Clifford for attempting to use your influence this way. It was all small, and needless, petty and nasty. You must have known it was wrong and carried on taking chances with kids when you might then have done bigger, better, more worthy things in your life. It was clearly a phase you went through. If you’d had a much bigger vision you might have cultivated an impulse altogether more grand rather than something self-indulgent and petty, and you wouldn’t be where you are now.

Someone else down to the nick in recent days was Her Honor no less, the Magistrate and part time Judge Constance Briscoe, Afro-Caribbean lady of the law now doing time after being found guilty of three counts of perjury after lying to the police when giving evidence for her good friend Vicky Pryce in the Chris Huhne penalty points case. You remember that little Liberal-Democrat spat don’t you? Mr Green Energy doing jail time with his good lady for telling porkies over a speeding offence!

Poor Constance! Sixteen months away and her so respectable and all. Passing sentence the judge left no doubt where his feelings lay. Oh dear oh dear, such a fall from grace! So respectable a career now in ruins.  For three counts of perjury no less he was giving her the minimum sentence possible!

What? Sixteen months for three counts of perjury? And out in eight for good behaviour. Some lucky lady. Some kindly judge! Her worship must have thought she had her arse in the jam. It wasn’t so long ago that she’d written a book openly accusing her mother of abusing her when she was a child. The lady had sued her daughter for libel and lost. It has now been suggested that some of the medical evidence Constance Briscoe presented against her mother was fabricated. Does all of this make her a newsworthy nasty? I think not. She’s too small, too much of an irritating triviality to get under anyone’s collar. Another stupid small timer who thought she could use her legal reputation to get away with misdeeds. She’ll make use of her time away writing a book, Jail Time by Constance Briscoe…then start thinking of a making new career. Possibly in public relations now there’s a vacancy. Given the relationship between the media fraternity and the British legal system, trust me Constance, you couldn’t go wrong!

Finally those with serious cred for being newsworthy nasties right now are the gang of nationalist-fascists operating in the Ukraine under the protection of their patrons, the American State Department and British Foreign Office. The sight of these axe and metal pipe wielding friendlies on television doing the business in the cities of the Eastern Ukraine on the heads of the Russian speaking civilian population certainly qualifies as nasty in the extreme and their conduct, despite the blatant outpouring of lies from so much of the media, a stain on the character of Government in Britain. Has anyone noticed the overwhelming silence coming from the Millipede and the British Labour Party and Trade Union movement about these fascist thugs operating under the auspices of the British Foreign Office? It’s a silence which allows the Tories and their Liberal Democrat Coalition partners to act as they please. So what about it Ed Miliband, social democrat son of a socialist father? Where are your anti-fascist principles these days my lad? Or have you too gone the way of the Daily Mail? Your silence and that of the whole Labour Movement stinks.