Guilty Until Proven Guilty

It is both reassuring and disappointing to notice that human nature does not change. Our most recent public sensation was hot enough to share the front pages with the latest disgraced Member of Parliament’s outrageous expense claims. As several perceptive commentators have noted, the age of the witch hunt is ever with us and this week’s witch is one Vanessa George, a nursery worker from the original Plymouth in south-west England.

Mrs George qualifies as Demoness of the Week due to allegations that she took pornographic photos of the little children in her care and sexually abused some of them. Apart from the inherent shock value of the alleged offences, the yellow press are plainly lining her up as Myra Hindley Mark 2. But legal quibbles such as “Innocent till proven guilty” can be safely ignored, both by the media and the enraged mob at her court appearance, who spat on her and attacked the van in which she was transported.

Theodore Dalrymple had ample exposure to evil in the course of his career as a prison doctor and described the same mentality among prisoners. Many prisoners considered themselves hard done by and claimed they had been set up or framed by the police or judicial system. But no such benefit of the doubt was extended to those suspected of sexual offences against children. They were instantly guilty if charged and could expect the most ferocious punishment from fellow inmates.

Before rushing to judgement, the press might have remembered the recent fiasco of two nursery workers in Newcastle, at the other end of England. This pair were found to be innocent after years of agony when they had been falsely accused of similar offences. But, hey, what's the problem about destroying the lives of Mrs George, her husband and two teenage daughters when there's so much money to be made?

The intelligent and exceptionally well informed journalist Dominic Lawson recently wrote that the British media have been in mourning since the death of the child killer Myra Hindley in prison in 2002. For the past 40 years, the images of two blond women have been guaranteed to sell newspapers, magazines and TV programs. One is Myra, the other is Princess Diana. Admittedly Diana’s hair colour was natural, while Myra’s came out of a bottle. But her 1960s iconic image of the hard-faced bitch with the blond beehive hairdo is ever enduring and endlessly reproduced. Later pictures of her in prison, with dark hair and a sweet smile, make her look like your favourite aunt and don’t fit the fairy story so well.

Unless you have lived in Britain for the last forty years, you cannot imagine the degree and quality of hatred focused on this woman. The only remotely comparable kind of loathing might be that directed at Adolf Hitler. But even Hitler’s public presentation lacks the peculiarly venomous edge which Hindley’s name instantly provokes. I was with friends on the evening in 2002 when her death was announced on TV and one friend’s vehement and heartfelt comment was “Good!” This friend is a really sweet natured and loving person; she was also born after Hindley’s trial and conviction.

Myra’s crimes were hideous, though not exceptionally horrible by the standards of British murders of both children and adults. I can think of numerous child killings over the last 40 years that were even worse and those perpetrators are almost completely forgotten. The barbaric killing of two French students in London in 2008 made Hindley’s crimes look mild in comparison. Yet I expect the names of their two vile killers to be largely forgotten a few weeks after they begin their 35+ year sentences. But she was caught in a perfect storm of circumstances partly outside her control.

Obviously the serial killing of children excites particular revulsion. And the fact that a woman participated made it doubly heinous, even though she was an accomplice who did not physically kill the children. True, she need not have associated with the depraved Ian Brady or gone along with his murders or assisted in the burial of the bodies. But there were two extra factors which have compounded and extended the infamy of the “Moors Murders” case, as it is known (The bodies were buried in the bleak high moors east of Manchester).

The first was the audio evidence. When she came to court in 1966, even hardened policemen were shaken to the core as tape recorded screams of their tortured 10 year old victim, Lesley Anne Downey, were played back. Reasonably priced tape recording equipment had only recently become available to the general public and Brady had put it to use to record his crimes. As far as I know, it is still the only murder in history where the crime was tape recorded. It helped to seal Brady and Hindley’s conviction and added another level to the public outrage at her crimes. Also the audio evidence had a visceral and immediate impact. No verbal testimony from any number of witnesses or academic pathologists could equal the searing agony of the little girl pleading for mercy and finding none: “Please let me go home to my mummy…..I swear on the Bible, I won’t tell anyone”.

No wonder that her crimes have achieved almost mythical status as examples of ultimate human evil. I say “her” crimes because Hindley is associated forever in most people’s minds as the more evil of the pair. No body wants to hang a woman. But in Hindley’s case nearly everyone would gladly have made an exception. Except that option was no longer legally possible.

Here we have the second complicating factor in her case. The last two people to be executed in England were hung in 1964. The use of the death penalty was suspended for a few years until formal abolition around 1970. As a sop to public sentiment, various officials and politicians promised that “life imprisonment for murder would mean life”. The lying bastards. “Life imprisonment” most usually means 10 years or so before release on licence. In the case of Hindley and Brady, it did turn out to be a life long sentence. She died in prison and he is still inside, probably having slid into insanity by now. So, for the thirty-six years of her imprisonment, much of the public could justly feel that an exceptionally evil killer had cheated the gallows.

The relatives of the victims publicly and repeatedly threatened to kill them if they were released. The politicians and officials responsible for parole thus had an extra nasty dimension to consider, apart from the usual established criteria for releasing a convicted killer back into the community. If Hindley was released (as she should have been freed under the normal rules in the 1990s), she would almost certainly have been killed by vigilantes. No new identity or “secret” address would have survived for 48 hours; a corrupt official would have sold it to the press before she was freed. And if she was killed and her murderers brought to justice, would a British jury convict? You might get another notorious case of a jury approving of murder, as happened in Australia where a vigilante policeman used his service revolver to kill a man he accused of molesting a relative. The victim was dead and couldn’t defend himself in court, but the policeman walked free despite there being no reasonable doubt as to his guilt.

But Hindley was not just a reviled serial killer. She was also a great long term investment from the media viewpoint. She was only in her early 20s when convicted and the reporters knew that they had a wonderful story for decades to come. For the rest of her life she was a guaranteed earner for the British press, who were and are happy to ignore any law or code of ethics in the pursuit of a great story. Any news of Hindley’s life in prison or any hint that she might be soon released were guaranteed front page coverage, along with the understandable but still unappealing chorus of hatred from a group of her victims’ relatives (who I understand were kept on a retainer by at least one tabloid).

Lord Longford, the Catholic campaigner for prison reform, quickly discovered this when he befriended Hindley. Whenever he visited her the press were waiting for him at the prison gate. He had arranged his visits confidentially in advance, so it was plainly a corrupt prison officer who was leaking the information to the newspapers. But despite his protests no one was ever detected or punished. No British politician would ever dare to offend the press barons.

So ever since her demise the newspapers have been looking for a replacement. Most of those who looked like possible candidates have proved to be fifth-rate villainesses and quickly forgotten. Even Vanessa George looks too insubstantial to be a convincing understudy for Hindley. But the search goes on.

The sad wasted life of Myra Hindley contained extra embarassments for Catholics in Britain. Lord Longford always had something of the Holy Fool about his public persona and his long association with Hindley did neither of them any favours. He was convinced that she was a good Catholic girl who had sincerely repented of her crimes and deserved to be released. I could feel only that if she truly understood the nature of her crimes, she would understand that she fully deserved a full life sentence and should accept that with resignation. As a prison visitor, I met another prison visitor who had visited Hindley and gained an utterly different impression of her character and disposition. She declared unequivocally that Hindley was “the most evil person she had ever met”. As this prison visitor was not nationally famous, merely a local volunteer, she had no political influence or powerful friends and was thus of no use to Hindley in lobbying for an early release.

In his article for “The Sunday Times” on 31st May ( http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/dominic_lawson/article6395923.ece ), Dominic Lawson considered the present chaotic shambles which poses as British policy for sentencing criminals of varying degrees of villainy. He quoted effectively from a great Christian thinker who Lord Longford might have been wise to consider before he endorsed Hindley's pleas for clemency:

“The advocates of our system maintain that it is more humane, since it allows for the prisoner who displays penitence to be released much earlier. Sixty years ago CS Lewis demolished this conceit in his essay The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment. He pointed out that a sentence based solely and inflexibly on the wickedness perpetrated – the concept of just desert, which was increasingly being denounced as “mere retribution” – was the only way of linking punishment and justice.

By contrast, said Lewis, if sentences served were based on a subjective assessment of the rehabilitative process, “grumpy unrepentant prisoners” could be consigned to perpetual incarceration while those cunning enough to “cheat with success” would be freed.

The dystopia foreseen by CS Lewis is now the English system of justice.”

Dear Stan,

I have driven past the church of St Laurence in the historic town of Petersfield (40 miles south of Reading) many times. Its styling is eye catching and unusual for a small town Catholic parish church

http://www.petersfieldparish.org.uk/page/Home.aspx

In fact, Petersfield has an excellent collection of churches. The Methodist church across the road from St Laurence is very handsome, but the 800 year old St Peter in the ancient Market Place is a gem of a building. Of course, it was a Catholic church for over 300 years until Henry 8th came along. But the Anglicans have done a great job of preserving it and adapting it for modern needs, most recently in the year 2000. It is very visibly a vibrant parish church, as befits its position in the heart of this lovely town. The Farmers' Market was in full swing in the Market Place a few yards from its doors when I visited.

As I admired its refurbished interior, a couple came in. The man explained that it was a year since their marriage in that historic setting.

St Laurence's most famous parishioner was one Sir Alec Guinness, who, between "Star Wars" and " Passage to India", lived nearby. Pity that I could not get inside St Laurence. Like nearly all Catholic churches in England, its doors remain firmly locked between Masses. I am sure that its interior is good match for its very striking shell.

U.S. One of the Largest Muslim Countries?

Dear Stan,

Here is a fascinating excerpt from Melanie Phillips' blog of 3rd June 2009. It is not often that you know that a politician is lying the moment he utters a sentence. Usually, you just don't have the background knowledge to instantly detect a blatant falsehood. And even if you suspect that you're being fed garbage, you don't have the time to research the facts. But the Leader of the Free World has spoken one piece of drivel which almost all his audience must have known immediately to be untrue.

Even if you lived in Detroit, with a very large concentration of Arab-Americans, you would have your doubts about the USA being "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world". Years ago I read that 80% of Arab-Americans were Christian and I suspect that has not changed too dramatically as more and more Arab Christians flee the Middle East.

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Wednesday, 3rd June 2009
A statement -- or an aspiration?
9:57am
Having previously declared that America is ‘no longer a Christian nation’ – to be precise:
... At least not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers...
Obama has now announced, on the eve of his pilgrimage to make obeisance to the entire Islamic world, that the US can be seen as a Muslim country:

‘And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,’

Mr. Obama said.
Uh? Here are some statistics of the number and percentage of Muslims in various countries:

Indonesia: 207,105,000 (88.2%);
Pakistan: 167,430,801 (95%);
India: 156,254,615 (13.4%);
Turkey: 70,800,000 (99%);
Egypt: 70,530,237 (90%);
Nigeria: 64,385,994 (45%);
Iran: 64,089,571 (98%);
Algeria: 32,999,883 (99%);
Morocco: 32,300,410 (99%);
Afghanistan: 31,571,023 (99%)
Saudi Arabia: 26,417,599 (100%)
USA: 4,558,068 (1.5%)
Just what planet is this US President on? Or is this not a statement but an aspiration?


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Invisible Massacre

Here is part of the ever thoughtful Archbishop Chaput's article in "First Things" on 2nd June 2009. He was reflecting on the uses of technology. He mentions the downside of the invention of cars. "traffic jams, oil dependency and pollution". Is he leaving something out.....like mass carnage? The fact that such an intelligent writer could omit the most obvious downside of widespread car use is testimony to how invisible death on the roads is.

Yesterday's Air France disaster over the Atlantic finally pushed the Members of Parliament expenses row off the top of the British news agenda for a day - this never ending scandal went down to the Number 2 slot for a day, so I expect it to be back at Number 1 tomorrow and for every day until a General Election is called or the "Daily Telegraph" runs out of politicians to destroy. 228 people have probably died in that crash. The death toll on the British roads, among the safest in the world, is 3,000 a year - more than 12 Air France disasters. The death toll on US roads is over 40,000 a year - an Air France disaster every two days.

The Chicago Tribune ran a series of articles some time ago about Illinois high school students killing themselves in a series of gruesome and easily avoided accidents (e.g. if they had been driving sober or at less than 100 mph). Perhaps older or younger citizens' lives were less valuable or less newsworthy, because I never saw any similar series on accidents involving other drivers. But most of the time road deaths never make the news unless it is an exceptionally high death toll.
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"The historian Edward Tenner once warned that every new technology brings with it a "revenge of unintended consequences." We invent cars, for example, to move us more quickly--and of course, they do. But we also end up with traffic jams, oil dependency and pollution. We're never as smart as we think we are. The modern scientific mind likes to imagine itself as Prometheus, the hero of Greek myth who's punished by Zeus for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humans. But we're really much more like the Sorcerer's Apprentice: smart enough to use the Master's magic, but not smart enough to know where it leads or how to control it.
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Because It's WRONG! (Part 5)

Here is a great article from "The Independent" of 30th May 2009. Richard Ingrams is one of the surviving founders of "Private Eye" - a fondness for alcohol and general unhealthy living has carried off some of his friends and colleagues from the early 1960s. But Richard is still going strong. He often refers to commuting to London from Reading, so he obviously lives somewhere in this area. But as so-called "real life" is always crazier than the most heroic satirical efforts of "Private Eye", perhaps he realises that satire is redundant nowadays.

His article on the recent approval of a gay clergyman by the Church of Scotland is a prime example. Such an event would have been regarded as beyond the bounds of worst-taste satire when "Private Eye" started. But it is now hardly surprising - just the final end stage of the disintegration of Scottish Christianity, so evident on my holiday in Scotland in 2008 when I came across any number of closed churches converted to other purposes.

Remember the stern 1920s religion depicted in "Chariots of Fire", when the great Scottish missionary and athlete Eric Liddell refuses to run even an Olympic heat on the Sabbath? Some of Eric's spiritual descendants are definitely NOT taking the admission of gay clergy lying down, so we have yet another schism in full swing. The more vacuous talk there is of "Christian Unity", the more disunity there is in real life.

As Richard so truly says, "we are all very relaxed about the breaking of the marriage vows". In the last few weeks, yet another pair of my Catholic friends (with two children) have split up. Admittedly, I was not surprised from a Catholic viewpoint as their marriage had long struck me as a good business arrangement rather than a true Christian union, but it was still intensely depressing.

And if even the formerly rigorous Kirk in Scotland is indifferent to adultery and sodomy what is wrong? What is the purpose of such a "Church", except as a a vaguely spiritual welfare and social society?

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What was a vocation has turned into just another job

Being a priest, in the eyes of the secular media, is no different from any other job. It follows that we should no more think of objecting to a gay minister of religion than we would a gay dentist.

Hence the general rejoicing that the Church of Scotland has voted in favour of the appointment of its first ever gay minister, Mr Scott Rennie, 37, pictured.
Here is an organisation long associated with the harsh puritanism of John Knox now showing itself to be tolerant, forward-looking, modernising and all kinds of words that don't mean anything much.

The fact that Mr Rennie was married with a young child but has left them, is now divorced and living with a man is neither here nor there. In today's world we are all very relaxed about the breaking of the marriage vows. "Jesus loves me," says Mr Rennie, so it must be all right then.

The issue of openly gay clergy has already caused a major upheaval in the Church of England and now the same sort of crisis is threatening the Church of Scotland.
But the issue is not really to do with homosexuality. The only way the churches can survive is if priests and ministers are seen to be making personal sacrifices which the rest of us are not prepared to make. Then they will be respected.

As soon as they feel free to marry, get divorced, remarry, live with other men and so on then they are telling us that there's nothing so special about being a priest. It's just another job, like being a dentist. So no wonder the media are being so supportive.

Farmer Builds Model of Biblical Temple

Here's link to incredible model and many pictures:
http://www.letterofrepentance.com/FarmerbuildsmodelofBiblicaltemple.html

Dear Stan,

Yes, I saw the report on this incredible project in a British newspaper. Norfolk is a county on the east coast of England, about 100 miles north-east of London. As it is very flat, it was the site of numerous RAF and USAAF bases in WW2. Its biggest Christian claim to fame is the major shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, frequented by both Catholic and Anglican pilgrims. Its major city, Norwich, has TWO cathedrals - one Catholic, one Anglican.

I love models of anything. The best one I have seen recently is an incredibly detailed model of Worcester Cathedral (about 80 miles north-west of Reading) which was displayed in a side aisle of this magnificent building. On the upper levels of the Lutheran Cathedral in Berlin there are several excellent models, to varying scales, of the entire cathedral and parts of its structure.

To my stunned surprise, I discovered a major Catholic cathedral only twenty miles south of Reading today. I was briefly checking out the Army town of Aldershot on a day's random driving. There was a very large and handsome Victorian church in the heart of the military district. I wandered in, assuming that it was an Anglican church as it was so similar in general style to other Anglican parish churches in Southern England. But no, it was the Cathedral Church of the Armed Forces and the seat of the Catholic bishop to the Forces. I ended up enjoying coffee and biscuits (cookies) with the priest and congregation who had just finished Mass. Like other aspects of the Church in England, the chaplaincy to the Armed Forces exists in a parallel universe with hardly any overlap with the main diocesan structure. But this Cathedral's congregation is divided between military families, who are mostly short-stayers before transferring to another Army town, and civilians who are the long-term backbone of the parish.

This very splendid building, with lavish stained glass, mosaics and statues, was indeed an Anglican church up to 1973 when the Anglicans offered it to the Catholic chaplaincy. In the entrance porch a display case contains the trowel used by Queen Victoria to lay the foundation stone in 1892. Now there's a claim to fame; I suspect it is the only Catholic church in the world to have its foundation stone laid by Queen Victoria.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_Church_of_St._Michael_and_St._George

Here is the link to the Wikipaedia article on the Cathedral Church of Saints Michael and George in Aldershot. It was designed by two military engineers. Not many Catholic churches have such architects, I bet.....though there is the wonderful little Italian chapel in the Orkney Islands in Scotland, which I told you about last year. As that was converted from two prefabricated Nissen huts, you might argue that that was also a military building.

Because it's WRONG! (Part 4)

The most recent overblown British media frenzy is still running as I write. It is even worse than the insane coverage given to the demise of Princess Diana in 1997. At least the media moved on to other trivia once she was buried. Now we have continuous coverage of the excessive expenses which Members of Parliament have been claiming. The problem is that there are over 600 MPs, while there was mercifully only one Princess D. Thus the unsavoury revelations about our elected representatives could run for the next year, with another juicy titbit being unveiled every day or two.

Nearly all the revelations centre on claims for MPs' "second homes". As most MPs represent constituencies outside commuting distance of London, they need a base both in their constituency and in London. The problem then becomes, which is their "main home" and which is their "second home"? The assumption is that they pay the costs for their main home out of their $100,000 a year salary (which is well over twice that of the ordinary working Joe in Britain). But the costs for the "second home" can be reimbursed out of public funds. And the permitted allowances for everything from redecoration to new kitchens to new widescreen TVs and home cinema systems are very generous.

So, all of a sudden, the enraged working Joes of Britain have been introduced to a new meaning of the word "flipping". It does not refer to practices such as tossing pancakes, but the way MPs have been able to switch their "main" and the "second" homes. You could call your London base your "main" home in 2007 and claim expenses for your "second" home in Yorkshire or wherever. Then in 2008 you could nominate the Yorkshire property as your "main" home and claim a second truckload of money for refurbishing, refurnishing and equipping your "second" home in London.

It was not just the blatant fraud involved which has provided ample fuel for public fury. The details of expenses claimed aroused further mirth and derision. My favourite was the Conservative MP who claimed $3,000 for cleaning out his moat. But of course....no English gentleman of taste and breeding would be seen dead with a dirty moat. The luckless Home Secretary revealed a mixture of greed and parsimony when she claimed for everything down to a $1.30 electric plug. (This very senior minister is on over $200,000 a year). She had an even worse day when it was revealed that her cable bill, which was also being charged to the public purse, included a couple of pornographic movies which her husband had watched.

Further merciless fun has been had at the expense of the MP who claimed mortgage costs for a property where the mortgage had already been repaid. As "The Daily Mash" explained, he is the first person in history not to realise that he had repaid his mortgage. And the guy who claimed $13,000 for a new TV.....I did not realise that it was possible to spend so much on any domestic TV. But apparently it is, if you buy it from the top-of-the- market Danish manufacturer Bang and Olufsen.

There have been so many revelations every day that by the time Saturday's crook is unveiled you have forgotten the crooks named on Tuesday and Wednesday.

But our pleasure at seeing one crook after another being publicly crucified should be tempered with several other considerations. For one thing, the information was obtained corruptly by the "Daily Telegraph" when they bought a CD full of this devastating information from an insider. Thus they have acted corruptly to expose corruption. It has been notorious for decades that British tabloids corrupt police and prison officers and civil servants for inside information. In more than one case such corruption probably compromised murder investigations. Now a so-called "quality" paper has indulged publicly in the same sordid practice; almost certainly every British paper, "quality" or downmarket, is in the corruption business if there's a great story on the market.

For another, the DT has a monopoly on this data and is thus able to drive the news agenda for every broadcaster and every other newspaper. These have been reduced to playing catch-up as every day the DT leaks another chunk of information and another politician's career goes down the toilet. Also it looks as if the DT is itself playing a political game to destroy the careers of politicians who the Conservative Party leadership want out of the way.

Also various commentators have been lashing out at the way every one of these crooks has claimed that their expenses were "within the rules". Of course they were. The rules in question were set by MPs. But these commentators have been going further, insisting that MPs should behave according to some stricter moral code than the letter of the law requires.

These condemnations look doubly laughable. For one thing, most journalists' best creative writing has traditionally been reserved for their expenses claims. My favourite was the journalist who reportedly claimed for a lawn mower when he lived in a fourth floor apartment. This story may be apocryphal, but lavish entertainment and fictitious travel costs are always good for tax-free boosts to journalists' salaries. And even without the creative expenses, many journalists, broadcasters and editors are on far higher salaries than MPs - up to $1.5 million a year, which makes their accusations of greed look all the more hollow.

The second flaw was the almost total lack of condemnation of the Telegraph's own corruption of a civil servant to get their hands on the data. Informed guesswork suggests that they paid around $130,000 for the CD - an absolute bargain, considering the publicity it has generated. But so many media people are personally corrupt; if they are paying bribes for stories or in receipt of fraudulent expenses and bloated salaries, they are hardly likely to condemn a fellow media worker.

The third flaw is the fact that the sums involved in MPs' expenses are microscopically small compared with the truckloads of taxpayers' money poured down the toilet on everything from the 2012 Olympics to useless weapons to useless computer systems. But these MPs made the mistake of embezzling imaginable sums of money. The $13,000 for a new TV generates outrage because people know how much a good ordinary TV costs and that the $13,000 would buy them a good secondhand car, a purchase they can imagine making. $20 billion squandered on the National Health Service computer system is just an unimaginably enormous sum and no individual is ever going to order such an object for himself. Yet such criminal incompetence and extravagance in spending public money attracts very little attention in comparison to $1.30 claimed for a new bathplug.

The fourth and most grievous flaw was the "Because it's wrong!" tone of all the writers, as if they were reading from tablets freshly delivered to Mount Sinai. Even the atheist philosopher A C Grayling was wheeled on to add his fuel to the bonfire of condemnation. He was loud in his insistence that politicians and the rest of us should have an inner voice telling us that something which was publicly shameful, albeit technically "legal", should not be done even in private when no one was likely to detect it. Of course the Church has always taught that our consciences should be formed according to an objective standard of morality. So which objective standard of morality are we using this week? A C Grayling? The editor of the Daily Mail? Or the Daily Telegraph? Or the BBC's political correspondent? Take your pick. That's the great thing about the consumer society; limitless choice.

After all, I should declare an interest here. In my Civil Service days, I felt no particular restraint in claiming any expenses going. The sums involved were small compared to the MPs' extravagance, but the principle was just the same. You are always far more careful with your money than other peoples' money, especially when the cash is coming from one gigantic impersonal trough labelled "taxation", rather than out of a small company's budget or your parents' pocket. Yet it was every small company and every parent in the country who I was screwing every time I put in a claim. And all my claims were of course entirely "within the rules" and approved by other civil servants.