A year ago, the head of the NSPCC’s sexual abuse programmes, Jon Brown, claimed that:
Deliberately false or malicious accusations {against teachers} are rare […] I know many teachers, especially men, are petrified of
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A year ago, the head of the NSPCC’s sexual abuse programmes, Jon Brown, claimed that:
Deliberately false or malicious accusations {against teachers} are rare […] I know many teachers, especially men, are petrified of
Continue reading →
Hands up who sought out the dictionary in the school library to find the ‘dirty’ words. Somehow, their presence in such august pages seemed to legitimise them and also contradicted the stance of teachers when admonishing pupils
Continue reading →Venom and bile and all things vile, that’s what Little Trolls are made of. If only we were talking about those misunderstood monsters of fairy tales, the ones doomed to dwell beneath bridges because they no doubt
Continue reading →OK, it’s the question on everyone’s lips, the most important news item of the week bar none, the issue galvanising the nation into making a crucial choice that will affect
Continue reading →Twitter is not best suited as ‘a space where Feminists can safely explore intersectionality’, a term first coined by the US Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe the differing oppression your average vulnerable
Continue reading →When The Beatles essentially invented the stadium gig by default due to the sheer numbers desperate to see them on their US tours, amplification was so much in its infancy that the band’s instruments were channelled through
Continue reading →As far as I’m aware, ‘Gay Cake’ isn’t slang for some tricky, non-missionary position, but I bow to the wisdom of any readers who know otherwise. The phrase first appeared in the context of an actual cake
Continue reading →Mark Williams-Thomas has blundered into the bizarre Northern world of Owen Oyston.
Across pages 8 and 9 of the Sunday
Continue reading →It’s not been a great couple of weeks for Britain’s premier police force. Having to apologise for not passing on their concerns to the parents of the three runaway schoolgirls in front of a Parliamentary Select Committee headed
Continue reading →Ms Raccoon has been out and about – taking her business to the fat man who works out of the back of a lorry in a secret location. When I say ‘fat’ I am talking a human being
Continue reading →So, our journey back 25, 35 and 40 years arrives at my own personal terminus of 1970 – 45 years ago. This, for me, is the dawn of time
Continue reading →Ms Raccoon’s obsession with truth rather than fantasy has paid off. It is but a small victory, but one that gives me great pleasure.
Back at the beginning
Continue reading →Tuesday May 3 1977 may not be a date many have cause to recall or even remember; but that was the day when the BBC’s TV service for schools and colleges broadcast the facts of life to
Continue reading →A middle-class music journalist once asked Sid Vicious if he sang for the Man in the Street, expecting punk’s very own Dennis the Menace to support the scribe’s opinion that the peasants were revolting; however, Sidney rubbished this
Continue reading →Billy Bunter and Simple Simon in their current guises as backbench nonentities desperate to make their mediocre mark can barely contain their excitement, queuing-up to get their ugly mugs on news bulletins by the broadcaster that compares
Continue reading →Our mirthless, Eeyorish, lumbering dinosaur of a national broadcasting corporation has finally managed to plant its flat feet firmly in the middle of a contretemps it cannot win.
Astonishing remarks on Top Gear affair as senior BBC
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We had a naked man, before a blue cock rose to the occasion, then a pregnant woman…now we honour the barely dressed architect of the decline of the Lancashire cotton industry and the end of the Empire.
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Our previous Raccoon ‘golden hour’ outings took us back 25 years to 1990 and then 35 years to 1980. This time round, in order that I the author can
Continue reading →The current ‘suspension’ of Jeremy Clarkson and ‘Top Gear’ as a whole is a dilemma for the BBC. They know it’s a popular series that brings in some of BBC2’s largest viewing figures as well as earning
Continue reading →I wish I could admire you more. I admire your writing; I remember you as a reporter on 24 Hours – but I struggle when I try to admire you as a person.
It’s the way
Continue reading →Gideon the magician is poised to pull a blue-rinsed rabbit out of his hat come Budget Day in the shape of yet more favourable concessions for those members of the electorate who would never countenance avoiding the
Continue reading →We are often informed that failings in any public body are due to a lack of investment, a shortage of staff, or bureaucratic distractions that get in the way of doing the job. The Police Force has
Continue reading →As ghastly as the catalogue of crimes committed by devotees of Radical Islam already is, the sorrowful sight of ancient monuments being bulldozed into dust, ones that have witnessed the rise and fall of endless empires with a dignity above and
Continue reading →A couple of weeks ago, I (inspired by ‘er upstairs) invited you to share your memories of where you were 25 years ago. Today it’s time to take
Continue reading →One doesn’t have to scratch too far beneath the sophisticated surface of modern man to come into contact with a primitive, deep-rooted desire for the complex matrix of life to be reduced to a Ladybird language understood
Continue reading →I was struck by the number of people – allegators – in the past series of Savile reports, who had contacted Yewtree merely out of a wish to validate other reports of abuse.
In plain English
Continue reading →Another day and another half dozen ‘truly awful, dreadful’ examples of the savage abuse Savile allegedly inflicted on vulnerable children in Children’s Homes. Henshaw’s School for the Blind – the media version.
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And we’re off and running again, searching for that elusive item, a genuine example of ‘truly awful, dreadful child abuse’ as reported to Operation Yewtree, amongst the additional 20 children’s homes:
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There was a regular commentator on this blog who used to delight in taking me to task for my ‘privileged’ background, usually in disparaging tones. His assumption was one he was forced to eat for breakfast when I penned
Continue reading →Watching ‘Wolf Hall’ this week, I was reminded of how Thomas Cromwell settled a few old scores when inventing evidence to condemn the luckless Anne Boleyn to a date with the executioner. He trawled through a list
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