BACK in the day, the most dangerous jobs were considered to be tightrope walker, stuntman, roofer or anything that involved operating heavy machinery.
Now? The business of giving an opinion has to be right up there with the precarious wobbles of funambulism.
Kennedy NewsThe moment Ina Priestly poured boiling water from a kettle over her neighbour Sue Varley, who was with her four-year-old grandson[/caption]
Kennedy NewsSue Varley, 68, was left with horror burns that forced her left eye shut – but Ina Wriestly was let off with a two year community order and indefinite restraining order[/caption]
I have been writing columns and spouting forth on live TV for about 40 years, and the febrile climate around saying what you think has never been as terrifying as it is now.
Pretty much everyone in the public eye will tell you that, these days, vitriolic abuse and death threats are commonplace.
And they’re amplified via the social media megaphones that are sites such as X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, gathering like-minded a**eholes.
If you’re not the target, it’s perhaps easy to advocate that the recipients shouldn’t take it seriously.
But the cold-blooded assassination of polarising polemicist Charlie Kirk has clearly demonstrated that the world is becoming a very angry and dangerous place.
Whatever your stance on some of his admittedly controversial views, he was an advocate of free speech and happy to have an anger-free debate with anyone who disagreed with him.
He received death threats too, but he cared enough about everyone’s right to express their views and have them challenged in a reasonable way that he carried on regardless.
Two young children losing their father in such a cowardly, brutal act is bad enough — but the sight of so many people gleefully dancing on his grave makes it so much worse.
When, and how, did they become so angry and devoid of compassion for human life?
One doubts that the cause lies in any single thing, but a gradual erosion of the pillars of life from where standards, respect and reason were once demonstrated.
This week, Britain’s “strictest headteacher” Katharine Birbalsingh posted: “Schools fail daily in teaching basic morality and universal humanity because we immerse children in woke ideology which divides us. Abaraonye is a product of this.”
For anyone in blissful ignorance, George Abaraonye is the slipper-wearing, new president of the Oxford Union, no less, who once debated Charlie Kirk and responded to the assassination with, “Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s f***ing go”.
If that’s the viewpoint of someone from the highest echelons of education, God help us.
Then we have smartphones and the access they give young minds to dangerous ideology.
AFPThe cold-blooded assassination of polarising polemicist Charlie Kirk has clearly demonstrated that the world is becoming a very angry and dangerous place[/caption]
A new poll shows that 14 per cent of parents have given a phone to kids aged nine or younger, and teachers say they have dealt with nine-year-olds receiving nudes in group chats, boys filming assaults on other pupils and teens sharing footage of sexual encounters.
As for the mass consumption of violent video games, research has suggested a link with a desensitisation to aggressive acts and reduced empathy.
Mentally scarred
Whatever happened to the innocence of childhood, eh?
Another pillar of supposed rectitude is what is laughably still referred to as the “justice” system in this country.
Let’s take just one example of its fine work from this week’s headlines.
Susan Varley was walking her four-year-old grandson to school in Leeds when her neighbour suddenly appeared and threw a kettle of boiling water into her face.
Susan, 68, suffered serious burns to her scalp, head, face and neck and her eyesight was only saved because she was wearing glasses.
Thankfully, the boy escaped injury because he had his hood up, but according to Susan’s family, she has been left physically and mentally scarred by the incident and, once sociable, “now hardly goes out”.
And the punishment meted out this week to neighbour Ina Priestly, who pleaded guilty to this cowardly, unquestionably violent attack?
A two-year community order and indefinite restraining order. Seriously?
Freedom of speech is one thing, but freedom of hateful speech (and acts) must always be challenged and, if necessary, punished if we are to remain a civilised society.
A NEET IDEA
THERE are currently around one million Neets in the UK – youths aged 16 to 25 who are not in education, employment or training.
A King’s Trust survey reveals that almost a third of them are so desperate to work that they’re applying for jobs they don’t want.
But isn’t that the sensible thing to do? My generation certainly did.
After all, you can’t expect to get the job of your dreams from the get- go, so you take what’s going to show a work ethic and pattern of reliability and enthusiasm.
Lying on the sofa all day saying, ‘I really want to be a movie director’ won’t “cut!” the mustard.
EARLIER this year, polling guru Sir John Curtice – who rarely gets predictions wrong – said Sir Keir Starmer has had the “worst start” of any newly elected Labour or Conservative Prime Minister.
The words he might be looking for now are “most catastrophic”.
Olivia’s a cut above the rest
GettyOlivia’s scenes in 2021 movie The Electrical Life Of Louis Wain ended up on the cutting room floor[/caption]
OLIVIA COLMAN says her part in the 2021 film The Electrical Life Of Louis Wain with Benedict Cumberbatch ended up on the cutting room floor.
She adds: “It’s the best thing to be cut from a film because you still get paid and no one can say you were s**t.”
Fair enough if, like her, you’re already hugely successful with multiple awards under your belt.
But for rookies straight out of drama school, one imagines it might be slightly more devastating.
Particularly if you’ve told Uncle Tom Cobley and all to watch out for your big break.
MY HAIR ‘MARE
DO you have “recession hair”?
It’s a thing, apparently, born out of bigger, professional hairdressing bills.
Some of us are using cheaper, DIY products.
Others are letting nature take its course and letting their roots show through.
Thanks to a recession of time, last night I asked my youngest to slather a box dye on my roots while she was watching TV.
Clearly, it was a gripping show and the only missed bits are on my head.
HMRC says it is happy to be referred to as “haitch” MRC rather than “aitch” because “we respect diversity and this extends to idiolect, accents and pronunciation”.
Big of them. What they actually mean is that they don’t give a flying fig how you say the abbreviation as long as you pay your taxes on time.
It reminds me of my youth when my mother would walk along behind me pretending she had a broom.
“I’m sweeping up all your dropped aitches,” she’d chide.
BEST TO ZIP IT, TOMMY
Louis WoodStrictly star Thomas Skinner has admitted cheating on his wife with ‘an attractive woman’ just weeks after they married[/caption]
ASSUMING there’s “no such thing as bad publicity”, then Strictly’s decision to sign former Apprentice star Thomas Skinner is working well.
Following reports that he flounced out of a Strictly press conference after discovering journalists were recording his comments (what was he expecting – a quill and ink well?) it has now emerged he had a three-month affair shortly after marrying wife Sinead.
Taking to X, he posted that it “was one stupid moment I’ll carry forever” and that his wife had forgiven him.
End of, you might think.
But no, 34-year-old Thomas adds: “I’ve got an extremely chequered past . . . if you dig you’ll find more.”
Er, thanks for the tip.
Something tells me he hasn’t had media training.
BREAK FAST…
GOING on your first holiday together can be bad news for a relationship.
So says a new study which concludes that one in ten couples break up afterwards because vacations can highlight bad habits and a lack of intimacy.
So if you’re unsure of whether someone’s right for you, book those flights and find out sooner rather than later.
Because, let’s face it, if you can’t get on sipping cocktails on an idyllic beach, you’ve fat chance of surviving the irritations and mundanities of living together.
THE Taliban in Afghanistan’s Helmand province has reportedly intervened to stop a six-year-old girl being married off to a 45-year-old man.
It’s claimed her father had exchanged her for a cash payment.
But before we get too optimistic that the brutal regime is modernising, local media says the “groom” was told he must wait until she’s nine before he can take her home.
Another sickening reminder of how our failure to build a legitimate authority there has condemned the women and girls of Afghanistan to being treated as little more than chattels.
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