My Doctor Is A Santana Fan

She must be because as I walked out of the door after my appointment she said “I hope you’re feeling better”.

Seriously, I was feeling absolutely horrible yesterday morning; I crashed out and resolved to fast all day, but although I managed a 17 day hunger strike in November 1996, these days I can’t go four hours without taking a bite out of something. She was a locum by the way, hello she said, I’m Susan, one of the doctors. She probably said that because she hardly looked old enough to be doctor, and what a surprise she was too, smallish, bubbly, and with a nice albeit small set of jugs I could have avoided staring at but she would insist on sitting close to me and feeling me around the gills. Does this hurt, she asked? Seriously, much of the magic of medicine is in the laying on of hands, let’s face it, an attractive young woman touching your neck and face softly like that never made anyone feel bad, man or woman.

Talking of bad though, the bad news is that she diagnosed me with nascent influenza – on the hottest day of the year! The really bad news is of course that I am at least a quarter of a century too late, though when I think of the last lady doctor who shared my bed, I don’t feel quite so disappointed, but that’s another story.

The Eclipse Of Women

Recently, the A List actress Sandra Bullock was declared the world’s most beautiful woman by People magazine, while the UK soap actress Michelle Keegan was declared the world’s sexiest woman by OK!magazine. Both are extremely attractive, and not just for a 50 year old in the case of Miss Bullock, but...

Which brings me to Eclipse, an Eighteenth Century racehorse. This stallion was raced eighteen times, and didn’t simply win every race but left the opposition standing. This led to the phrase “Eclipse first and the rest nowhere”. There is a woman who is to beautiful women what Eclipse was to other racehorses; her name is Candice Night. Mary Pickford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Lynsey de Paul, Kate Bush...were/are incredible, but also-rans.

Has there ever been any woman in history who came close to Candice Night in loveliness? Stunningly attractive in her youth, blue eyes, with that same long blonde hair today, she looked and looks like an angel. But it doesn’t stop there, she has the voice of an angel too, both her singing voice and her speaking voice. And the personality of an angel, a genuinely lovely human being. But wait, there is even more, brains too, poetess, lyricist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and together with Ritchie Blackmore the creator of a new genre of music. In short, the complete package, even lovelier today, her 44^th birthday, a mother of two, than she was the day I first saw her in an interview with her future husband way back in 1997.

Every time I see her, she leaves me speechless with delight. Happy birthday Candice, from one of your many, many admirers, male and female.

My Harold Covington Moment

I can’t remember the exact date, but I was fifty years old at the time, and having reached that age, an age I thought I would never live to see, I was feeling more than a twinge of regret at the inevitability of dying without issue.

I was in Central London not far from Cambridge Circus, and it was a sunny evening. Coming towards me was a tall, young, bearded man, blond or blondish, and handsome. Something about him caught my eye, and I thought if I’d had a son, he would probably be about his age, and impressive physical specimen that he was, I would have been proud to call him mine. Then something unthinkable happened. He was walking with another man of about the same age, this man was clean shaven, and they were talking. Then, to my utter horror, as they were right on top of me, the bearded man put his arm around his companion’s waist. I couldn’t believe it, and as they passed me I turned to look back to ensure I wasn’t daydreaming. Sadly it was not a daydream but a nightmare; they were actually walking off like lovers.

At that point, I thought of Wicked Harold, a man who is nowhere near as wicked as his myriad enemies believe, nor as wicked as he likes to make out, as I know from personal experience. Harold has never been shy about ranting against queers. While I’ve never been able to take lesbianism seriously, there are few things that disgust me as much as male homosexuality. Suddenly I was glad to be both fifty years old and childless, because if this man had indeed been my son, I would have died of shame.

A Degree Of Separation

You really begin to feel your age when you are separated by one degree of separation from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Almost. When Samuel J. Seymour was knee high to a grasshopper. his godmother took him to the theatre, and while there, on April 14, 1863, John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln in the head. The President died the following morning. On February 9, 1956, Mr Seymour appeared on the American Quiz show I’ve Got A Secret wherein one of the panel guessed correctly what was his secret, namely that he was the last living witness to the Lincoln assassination.

Seymour J. Seymour died April 12, 1956, and less than four months later I was born, so in theory I could almost have met him, though sometimes, when my back is at its worst, I feel like I actually met Lincoln.

Having said that, I have a closer connection to Adolf Hitler, having shaken the hand of a man who had shaken the hand of a man who had actually shaken hands with the Führer. That is probably not something to boast about, so I will say that my connection to royalty is a lot closer, having been in the same room as both Charles and the tragic Diana, although not at the same time.

My First Revealed Truth

As today is an anniversary of sorts, it’s about time I wrote about this matter. I’ve had a number of revealed truths over the years, decades; this is not only the first one I remember, but the first one, period. I was bullied unmercifully at school. Although that is a cliché, it is true in my case. I can still remember my very first day at junior school, and the kids who tried to force my head down the toilet in the outside “bogs”, and how a friend helped me, a neighbour who lived downstairs in the same block of flats. I alluded to his mother in a previous rant, but to stay on track, when I decided to chuck in school after one year of sixth form, one of my chief tormentors – who was, ironically, the reason I first took a real interest in chess – alluded to my tenure at Barnhill Secondary Modern as “Six years of unhappiness”. He thought that was a real laugh.

It was a year or two before that though, my first revealed truth. I was, I think, fourteen, and used to hang around in a small gang. One of this three strong gang – Biscuit (don’t ask) – lived near a drop-out named Roger, on the opposite side of the road and a few doors down. He was, I suppose, a nasty piece of work. Although he was perhaps seventeen his teeth were already rotten. One day when I came out of school. probably later, after the crowds had gone, he and another, younger boy whose name I don’t think I ever knew, tormented and hit me. Although I’ve always been tall, I was too a bit of a wimp, and never used to hit back. On this occasion though I did, and it made matters worse. I was rescued by a girl. I’m not sure if she was older than me but I have a feeling she wasn’t in my year. She didn’t physically pull them off, of course, but she did chastise them, and in 1970, boys would generally not hit girls.

I don’t think she got more involved than that, I think probably I had a bloody nose or something. Anyway, fast forward a week or two, and as I was coming out of school, late again, there was a mangy cur a few feet away from me. There were a few stray dogs that used to hang around the school. I don’t know why, but for some reason this dog annoyed me, I picked up a stick, or perhaps a stone, and threw it at the animal. I think I took a swipe at it too, a wild kick that missed. And would you believe who came along? Yes, it was the very same girl, and after berating my conduct, she said something like “I’m glad those boys hit you now”.

What is the moral of this? Well, how often do you hear the claim, usually in a court case, that X was abused as a child, which is why he dragged this woman into the bushes and raped her, or Y was sexually abused by her wicked uncle, which is why she falsely accused her ex-boyfriend of raping her? And so on. Abuse does affect us, so do many things, but does it either help us or really make us feel better by subjecting someone else to pain and misery because we have suffered? And is it really an excuse?

I wish I’d learned that lesson, but four decades and more on, I can’t say I have. On top of that, Roger, the same youth with the rotten teeth who abused me on that occasion, well, he started hanging around with us, or we with him. As I said, he was a nasty piece of work for sure, but I suppose it was cool to hang out with him, although I never used that word at the time. There must be another moral there about abusive relationships, but here I will simply put it down to the follies of youth.

March 13, 2015

Philosophy For The Gullible

Gentlemen. And ladies. Meet Carissa Véliz. I would like to call this lady a self-styled philosopher; unfortunately she has credentials as the real thing, at least on paper. Which begs the question, what sort of garbage now passes for philosophy in our institutions of higher learning? That true philosopher Professor Antony Flew must be spinning in his grave. Bear with me, and I will explain why. Philosophy used to mean thinking about nature, Nature itself and human nature: the nature of reality, existence, the theory of knowledge, the purpose if any of life, good and evil. And so on.

True philosophers are supposed to think critically, not accept uncritically any garbage that is peddled to them and the rest of us by special interest groups or just plain liars. Here is some of the nonsense she espouses re so-called gender equality.

“After a long history of patriarchal societies, discrimination against women is still predominant, despite myths about it being a thing of the past.”

Does she really believe in patriarchy theory? Apparently so. In the past, women suffered terrible discrimination, after all they were sent off to fight wars, or to labour from dawn till dusk in the fields while men stayed home looking after the young. No? The ancient Greeks fought a war over Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. Did any nation go to war over a man’s face, even in mythology? Gender roles, so-called, evolved not because of the wicked patriarchy but because without them, civilisation would not have survived. Women of child-bearing age and young girls are more precious than men, because a woman can bare how many children? While a man can in theory sire hundreds.

In the modern world, traditional gender roles are not so important, women don’t die in childbirth to the extent they used to; however dangerous the streets of our cities may be, they are a lot safer than the environments in which our distant ancestors lived; education is universal because the advance of technology means there is more time for the young to be educated. Unfortunately, as Miss Véliz shows, education is not always a boon.

Here’s a gem: “In 1997, it was estimated that women worked two-thirds of the world’s working hours, earned 10% of the world’s income and owned less than 1% of the world’s property”. She cites World Bank Development Indicators, 1997 as the source of this claim; unfortunately, as Christina Hoff Sommers points out, these figures were plucked out of thin air like most feminist statistics.

Let’s take just one of the above. Do women really own only 1% of the world’s property, and even if that were the case, would it matter? Much property is owned not by individuals – men or women – but by non-human entities. The Government owns much land in all countries. Infrastructure: roads, schools, hospitals, may be owned by the government, local authorities, and so on. An art gallery may be a registered charity, like for example, the Tate Gallery in London. Art galleries contain colossal wealth, though not the sort we can consume or put to use. However, apart from special exhibitions, most galleries and museums (in the UK) are open to the public free. Clearly access is easier for people who live within easy travelling distance, but in a sense the art displayed in these galleries belongs to the nation or even to the entire world.

In the UK, the Crown in the personage of the Queen owns enormous wealth including the forces – HM Armed Forces, and even the prison system – HMP. This holding of wealth is though purely symbolic, and is more of a liability than an asset, because prisons and armies do not make money. If one removes all the aforementioned forms of wealth from the equation, do women really own only 1% of the UK’s property, of America’s property, of China’s property? Clearly not. Then there is another factor to be taken into account, married couples and even families may own much of their wealth collectively; a housewife who has a wealthy husband may have no income in her own right, the same may be said of their children, but he is duty bound to provide for her. In the US, females in higher education have outnumbered males for some time; these are the high earners of the future, so clearly the figures cited by both the World Bank and our airhead philosopher are total bunk.

Sadly, Miss Véliz has also swallowed the rape culture nonsense of the sisterhood; here she parrots “1 in 6 women in the US, for example, have been the victims of a completed or attempted rape, and many rapists will say that they didn’t rape their victim even if a woman said no at the start. So, if you’re a man, be very careful about getting explicit consent and not imposing yourself on a woman.”

Studies like the infamous Ms survey conducted by Mary Koss tell us as much about the true instance of rape as for example the June 2012 survey that revealed 36% of Americans believe in flying saucers. The big difference is that the theory of flying saucers sounds good whereas the claim that one woman in 6, one in 5 or even one in 4 is or will become a rape victim sounds like and is lying propaganda. And is the average age of entry into prostitution really 13? That would imply that some or indeed many start younger; clearly this is not prostitution but child sexual abuse, which is an entirely different matter. It is simply ludicrous for her to claim that most prostitutes are abused or coerced into the oldest profession; it may be a sordid business, but not only do many women make a good living out of it – in a purely financial sense – most are happy doing it, whatever social stigma it may have.

Some do it part-time, many give it up as they age, be it out of choice or necessity, and the claim that the average age of death of prostitutes is 34 is based on what evidence, precisely? Her claim based on a New York Times article (she says) that around 90% of an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 prostitutes working in Spain have been trafficked is emotive nonsense. The word trafficked – and declensions thereof – is a recent addition to the lexicon of lunacy; it is used to imply coercion or even slavery. The bottom line is that a taxi driver who drives a prostitute to a meeting with a client can be said to have trafficked her.

Having said that, there has been a certain amount of organised trafficking of prostitutes in Spain and elsewhere, but it remains to be seen how many of these women were genuinely coerced and much less forced into prostitution, whatever tall tales they tell the police when they are busted in raids.

Let’s not bother with the nonsense about the gender pay gap, at least not while the patriarchy is paying her to produce gibberish.

Under Living Ethically, Miss Véliz displays the full extent of both her ignorance and her naïveté when she claims banks lend money. Does anyone still believe this? Banks do not lend money, rather they create credit; I have explained this in my speech Pay Wealth-Creators, Not Banksters, others have explained it before me, and increasingly ordinary people are coming to recognise the banking scam for what it is. It remains to be seen though if even Goldman Sachs has knowingly been involved in the trafficking of underage girls for the sex trade as she claims here.

Miss Véliz is also an advocate of veganism: cows, pigs, and chickens, all show a wide array of emotions, including fear and happiness, she says. Certainly cows do, although they do not necessarily display much intelligence. Is it really cruel, barbaric, inhumane to breed animals for food? Why don’t you ask your local fox? Hey dude, don’t you realise that tearing chickens to shreds is cruel, barbaric and unfoxlike? Have you ever considered veganism? But it gets worse: a vegetarian can save up to about 400 lives a year, she says. Man, she must have found that figure on the same website as her ludicrous rape statistics.

Gentlemen. And ladies. Miss Véliz is a truly tragic case. All the more tragic for me, because I really could have done with meeting a woman like her thirty years ago when I would have charmed her into my bed with my own hard luck story, and probably have persuaded her to pick up the restaurant bill into the bargain.

Barrister’s Rape Blog Controversy

Last week, a barrister caused controversy by suggesting in a blog that if a woman complains about being raped while drunk, her complaint should be dismissed. Drunken consent is still consent, argued David Osborne, who one hopes is no relation to George Osborne.

His suggestion was indelicate, to put it mildly, but was clearly provoked by the ludicrous hysteria we are now facing on both sides of the Atlantic about certain kinds of rape. Not the unambiguous kind in which a victim is attacked in her own home or in the park by a masked assailant who often terrorises and brutalises her in addition to any sexual acts he performs or forces her to perform, but the she said/he said type known as date rape, acquaintance rape, and the like. Although his blog was removed PDQ – one suspects after a call from the Bar Council or some such – it has been captured by at least one newspaper. Outrage aside, one should ask, was he right? The unambiguous answer is of course yes and no.

Firstly there are cases – thankfully few and far between – like the outrageous and well-publicised Steubenville affair of 2012 in which a 16 year old girl got drunk at a party, and was then handed round like a piece of meat by other students who seemed to think their behaviour was hilarious. Then, at the other end of the spectrum there was the still albeit sordid Ched Evans case in which a young woman went to an hotel with the intent of having sex with one man, then woke up the next morning (claiming) she could not remember if she had engaged in sexual acts with one man or two or none.

Some cases are worse than that by far, a young woman may consume a great deal of alcohol then have sex with a man who is equally drunk. If she cannot remember – or claims she cannot remember – having sex, agreeing to have sex, or even if she initiates the act with a willing partner, can that really be classed as rape, or is it simply buyer’s remorse?

A woman who goes to bed with a prince and wakes up next to a frog has not been raped, rather she has had bad sex. This is something that cuts both ways.

David Osborne’s anger was directed at the insidious and dangerous attempts of the CPS to pander to anti-rape activists (so-called) who insist on no credible evidence that the vast majority of rapes go unreported, and that this is because of a culture of disbelief amongst the police. Furthermore, they claim, juries acquit defendants unjustly because they too have been taken in by rape myths, one of the most prevalent being that women seldom if ever lie about being raped. All the available credible evidence indicates otherwise. The fact is that when juries hear the evidence, so-called, they refuse to convict. Why should a jury convict on the evidence of a woman who claims to have been raped by a man, who admits dating him repeatedly afterwards, then weeks or months later accuses him of rape? That is what happened in the case of American student Landen Gambill, which did not involve either alcohol or the police.

A major false premise about most of these date rape cases is that any sex that takes place is initiated by the male, and that this is seen as some sort of reward, one which is always given reluctantly. The reality is that it is the woman who chooses to have sex, and with whom, including who takes her home, at least as far as young women are concerned, though as women grow older, men have more say and may even dictate terms.

We need to break away from this hysterical nonsense; convicting innocent men is an even greater injustice than allowing the innocent to walk free, although increasingly those who control our criminal justice system do not appear to believe so.