Whoever named the Police trawling operation in the wake of the Savile allegations âOperation Yewtreeâ had a sense of humour. The Yewtree is famous for its slow growth and longevity, and its raucously attractive fruit which appeals to little birdies â but contains
Continue reading →Category Archives: Duncroft/Savile
The Way We Were.
I was nearly tempted out of my sick bed by a chance reading of a Guardian piece which claimed to have uncovered 43,00 â thatâs forty three thousand in case you glossed over the figures â cases of child abuse in a 21
Continue reading →The Media and Propaganda.
Hollywood has long been a cost free publicity machine. Cost free in the sense that it sold its output and therefore required little or no financial input from those who wished to influence the minds of the general public.
Where
Continue reading →Secret Trials and Uncorroborated Witnesses.
âIf we do not change the way we use this material in court we risk inviting a torrent of new claims. Our enemies will begin to realise that our justice system is an open goal and come
Continue reading →Nonce Sense.
I am indebted to my commentator, DtP, for suggesting the title â superb! Wish I had thought of it myself.
First the Yewtree report. This long awaited £450,000 worth of expensive police time has succeeded in uniting
Continue reading →Who Let the Dogs Out?
Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war,
that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial.
William Shakespeare
I have been pondering this matter for days now, since
Continue reading →Child Abuse.
I try, I really do try, to get worked up over whether Stuart Hall kissed a 13 year old on the lips 20 years ago. Perhaps it did ruin her entire life. Maybe she was so traumatised
Continue reading →The pic nâ mix Pollard Report.
Along with several other interested parties, I have spent the afternoon digesting the Pollard report on whether the Newsnight âSavileâ programme was pulled from the transmission schedule because of âpressure from aboveâ or not.
Watching Twitter on the subject, the
Continue reading →Exclusive â A Panoramic View from the BBC.
Pan·o·ram·a (pn
-r
m
, -rä
m
) n.
1. An unbroken view of an entire surrounding area.
2. A comprehensive presentation; a survey.
Feudal dynasties will lock horns tonight. Old scores will be settled between those with limitless pockets. Panorama
Continue reading →Fanning the flames in the Ethical Vacuum.
âItâs all the fault of the Internetâ, cries the dead tree press. âWe have to compete with them, and their wild landscape, and that has driven us to excesses we would never have thought of without their insane ramblingsâ.
Remarkable
Continue reading →Updated! â Trial by Posthumous Innuendo.
Following last nightâs episode of âExposureâ, the prosecutionâs case for the demonisation of Jimmy Savile was completed in the sense that the audience have been invited to give their verdict. No doubt if we fail to give the required verdict, the
Continue reading →Past Lives and Present Misgivings â Part Eight.
Lordy, Lordy, Lordy â this entire shebang grows more bizzarre by the hour, if not by the minute.
Overnight, a woman called Andrea Davison has emerged to claim that she was also at Duncroft, and there she
Continue reading →The British Broadcasting Corporation â a Monument to Paedophilia.
In 1932, the British Broadcasting Corporation, pride of the British people, commissioned the architect Lieutenant Colonel G. Val Myer, to design a building as their corporate headquarters which would embody the spirit of the organisation as they pushed their version of
Continue reading →The Bureau for Instigative Churnalism.
in·sti·gate (n
st
-g
t
)
tr.v. in·sti·gat·ed, in·sti·gat·ing, in·sti·gates
1. To urge on; goad.
2. To stir up; foment.
It is said that success has many Fathers whilst failure is an orphan â surely no foundling was so swiftly denounced as âno son of mineâ than the grandiosely named Bureau
Continue reading →News-shite, and the perfect storm.
When Peter Rippon made the fateful decision not to allow broadcast of Meirion Jonesâ documentary on the alleged sexual abuse of girls at the Approved School headed by his aunt, it was the first full bodied drop of rain in what
Continue reading →Past Lives and Present Misgivings â Part Seven.
Evening all; pull up a chair and pin your ears back.
I have, this evening, had a long talk with Miss Margaret Jones, headmistress of Duncroft for many years. It was almost 50 years since we had spoken
Continue reading →Past Lives and Present Misgivings â Part Six.
The opening sequence of the Panorama film featuring the alleged sexual abuse of children at Duncroft lingered on a huge and imposing set of Victorian iron gates. Half open, they conjured up an image of a peek inside a forbidden and
Continue reading →Past Lives and Present Misgivings â Part Five.
Perhaps we should be renaming the BBC; instead of the friendly âAunty Beebâ conjuring up a safe pair of trustworthy womanly hands, would âUncle Beebâ with all the connotations of the furtive, fiddling Uncle, whose lap you avoid sitting on, be more suitable? It
Continue reading →Past Lives and Present Misgivings â Part Four.
First some corrections from yesterday â I was very tired and didnât proof read properly; dining is spelt dining, not dinning; Iâm has got an m after the apostrophe; I was 16 and coming up to my 17th birthday
Continue reading →Past Lives and Present Misgivings â Part Three.
Duncroft! I never thought I would hear that name again â and suddenly it is on everybodyâs lips! It is nearly 50 years ago that the car I was in drew up outside that familiar facade and I prepared to enter yet another
Continue reading →Past Lives and Present Misgivings â Part Two
Where was I? Oh, yes, Cumberlow Lodge, South Norwood. Politely described as a âchildrenâs homeâ â no doubt to honour the strictures of the will of the Victorian philanthropist, W E Stanley, who had left his much loved home
Continue reading →Past Lives and Present Misgivings â Part One.
The blog post that wonât go away is still bouncing around in my head; the Sunday newspapers today have further infuriated me â and after long talks with Mr G, I have made the decision to publish.
Continue reading →Paws for Thought.
THAT is one very full inboxâ¦
I am touched, genuinely. I had thought that putting up a jokey message in place of the blog would reassure you that I was OK, and just taking a rest. I underestimated how many of you
Continue reading →Why canât the English be more like the French?
Iâve been pondering the rash of new regulations over the week-end in the US, a country the UK grows more alike every week.
First the cinema chain AMC banned âJokerâ costumes, and fake fire arms being carried into
Continue reading →So who do we trust now?
Over the past 40 years there has been a systematic erosion of trust in the institutions we were brought up to respect.
The lessons of the Sunday Schools that we absorbed as children were shown by
Continue reading →Karma, Karma, Karma, Karma Chameleon
18 months ago, I was forced to retract a story on this site. That hurt; I am well known for careful research. I hadnât written the story myself, Andrew Withers had done that, and within hours
Continue reading →76 Arrests led the big âinvadeââ¦
Seventy six a-rrests led the big âinvadeâ,
With a hundred and ten new laws close at hand,
They were followed by rows and rows of the finest statutory instruments;
The dream of every Fabian hand.
Seventy six
Continue reading →News of the World Disinterred
Is there any reputation so putrid, so tarnished, that it cannot be further damaged? Gordon Brown excepted, I suspect not.
A boulder has been pushed away from the cave into which the poor old News of
Continue reading →The Moving Target
I make no apology for reposting an entry from 2009. I said at the time it was a classic Bear Trap â and so it has come to pass â The government that didnât have the spine
Continue reading →Past Lives and the NHS.
I posted yesterday on the different attitude between France and the UK to families being present in a hospital and helping nurse their relatives. I hadnât appreciated until the comments started coming in â and a couple
Continue reading →