WEEKEND WIDDY
Random Thoughts and Musings
Welcome to weekend Widdy which, as regular readers will know, is a collection of the type of short pieces which used to surround my main article on my old Daily Express page. It can come out anytime over the weekend but usually on a Sunday and it is free to all. However, when Widdy on Wednesday has not appeared, there is extra paid content in Weekend Widdy in order that paying subscribers may get full value as they keep this Substack going.
A reminder that I am also on Cameo and happy to do greetings, congratulations etc for you and yours but they must be decent! Also, I have a weekly article in GB News Online and, in rather more frivolous mode, a weekly column in Best magazine.
Last week I told you that I have joined the Mike Graham Show and will be appearing at 8.40am every Monday. Here is the clip from my first interview
For those of you who would like to visit the Mike Graham Show anyway, here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/@themikegrahamshow
I reacted with relief at first when the erstwhile Prince Andrew’s lawyers said he would be making no further statement until the police investigation was over. At least, I thought, that would spare us a few inches of obsessive and vindictive coverage but now I just want to hear from his spokesman that the awful picture of him, a small child and a lewd toy is not as it seems and that commentators have misinterpreted the toy and that it is all innocent. Because if it is what it appears to be, then we are looking at a picture so distasteful as to merit the description depraved.
With the exception of the poor little fourteen year-old who was the subject of Epstein’s conviction, the girls and women in the various allegations have been in their late teens and twenties and, as there is no suggestion of kidnap or actual force, we must conclude that they had at least a degree of choice. A child barely old enough to toddle rather than crawl has no darn choice whatever. None. The photograph turned my stomach in its grotesque exploitation of innocence.
Predictably the press has speculated about the identity of the little chap but it is better that we do not know. After all, does he know? Certainly he could not remember it and what about his parents, whoever they are? Did they know this went on or did they find out only when these photographs were published? There does not appear to be anybody else in the room and it is difficult to imagine any parent condoning such behaviour, despite the sex-obsessed company in which Andrew appears to have been so much at ease.
So, tell us please, Mr. Mountbatten Windsor, whether that toy really is what the press says it is. If it is not, we may all breathe a sigh of relief and if it is, then let the media leave the child ( who will now be some fifteen years older) alone and, we can at least hope, happily ignorant.
How often does one hear the lament that TV interviews these days are shallow, short and more about the inquisitor than the subject? Those of us who can remember the late, great Richard Dimbleby and Robin Day regularly complain that the art of good interviewing has been lost to melodrama and to the hunt for the car crash, the desire for headlines and humiliation trumping the search for truth.
When I was Shadow Health Secretary, I was once quizzed for fifty minutes by Jonathan Dimbleby and it was the most sensible interview I ever had. Partly that was due to its length, which of course produced depth, and partly to the approach of Dimbleby, which was exploratory rather than confrontational.
When I watched Laura Kuensberg interviewing Boris Johnson and Admiral Radakin on the subject of Ukraine and British involvement, I was reminded of those Halcyon days. Uncharacteristically, she did not interrupt and allowed thoughtful replies. The pair under the spotlight largely agreed rather than disagreed with each other so there was no confrontational set-up. There was no real time pressure and a hugely serious subject was treated seriously.
Ok, she did exaggerate a bit when she said Radakin “agreed with her” that Starmer should explain how he was going to pay for increased defences. She asked him to agree with her twice that he should and Radakin gave on both occasions an answer which avoided any pressure on the PM. He was not going to politicise an entirely sensible discussion about a commitment stretching into 2035.
Oh, for more of such interviews. For many, many more. I suspect I wish in vain.
An American study, the results of which have now been published, followed 464,000 adolescents aged from 13 to 26 and found that cannabis users double their risk of psychotic and bipolar disorders and run a significantly higher risk of depression and anxiety issues. It also found that cannabis use was higher among teenagers living in poorer areas. None of this is surprising and much of it simply re-states what is already well-known, but it begs the question as to why politicians are so reluctant to tackle the issue or why large sections of press and media ignore it. Peter Hitchens is an honourable exception but it speaks volumes that he is the exception rather than the rule.
When I was Shadow Home Secretary at the turn of the century I attempted to introduce zero tolerance for drugs all the way from the big importer to the small dose user. My fellow shadow cabinet members reacted with horror and stories of their own drug taking in their privileged youth. Certainly if they had become addicted they would have gone to The Priory rather than prison. They seemed oblivious to the simple fact that what is recreation for Hooray Henries is deprivation for countless others.
Twenty six years later , not much has changed except that we have more damaged human beings in Britain.
Returning briefly to the Royal Family, I think we can forget the notion that Andrew’s frolics and indiscretions are going to end the monarchy. Indeed the only way I see it ending is if the grossly irresponsible Prince William ( irresponsible in this context not in general) keeps on travelling with all his family in one plane, train or car. Should the unthinkable occur, then Harry will inherit the throne and I leave it to readers’ imagination how the public would react to that!
We regularly have trouble with the spares: Andrew, Harry, Princess Margaret. You have to go back to the first half of the last century to find a spare (George VI) behaving better than the heir (Edward VIII). In 1997 when the public reacted so hysterically to Diana’s demise, there was speculation that the event might spell the end for the monarchy. It didn’t. Charles soldiered on and became King. Camilla kept her own counsel and her dignity and became Queen. Princess Anne and Prince Edward did what they have always done: their duty. Prince Philip carried on being the late Queen’s rock.
Britain loves its pageantry and its tradition and the thought of Tony Blair presiding over the trooping of the colour is just too dispiriting to contemplate. The rest of the world likes our pageantry and tradition too and wants the guard at Buckingham Palace to keep changing and the Household Cavalry to keep riding.
I am sorry for the King, who waited decades to ascend the throne, then got cancer, then saw the Princess of Wales get cancer, then had to endure the Harry nonsense and now this awful business. Just hang on in there, Sir.
The monarchy will survive. In years to come when I am pushing up the daisies the youngest members of my extended family will be watching the solemn funeral of King William V and cheering on the coronation of George VII, while the republicans gnash their teeth. Nothing lasts for ever but some things can last a very long time.
Our employment tribunals have nothing better to do than rule that calling an older woman gran or grandmother in the workplace is age discrimination. One of the nicest things that was ever said to me while I was doing Strictly Come Dancing came from a woman, who stopped me at a railway station just to say that every time the programme came on her little boy, who was four years old, asked her “Where’s that granny, Mummy? I want that granny to win!” If simply referring to somebody's age, as this tribunal ruling suggests, is ageist then the entire cast with whom I appeared on Big Brother would have been guilty of age discrimination, as they regularly referred to the fact that I held the views I did simply because I was of a certain age.
Nay, Ashley James called me her house grandmother and I rejoiced in the title. Grannies are kind, grannies are wise. I am not a granny but I certainly don’t mind being called one.
Starmer is rightly pilloried for his u-turns, which would be funny if they did not affect the country so badly, but I am now beginning to wonder how far we can trust Trump, who changes his mind more often than most men change their socks. Indeed a fear gripped me last week that history was repeating itself and that we were about to see another senile US President supposedly leading the Western World, when the globe is such a dangerous place. But I don’t think so. Mercurial, yes. Bonkers, no. But …er… what is his view of the Chagos deal?
How wonderful that the Islanders, whose views and welfare have been effectively sidelined throughout all the international prattle, have now thrown a hefty spanner in the works and won a reprieve from a judge which means that the UK cannot remove them as it was so peremptorily intending to do. Pompously the Foreign Office has said “the UK government recognises the importance of the islands to the Chagossian community and is working with Mauritius to resume a programme of heritage visits to the Chagos archepelago. This kind of illegal stunt is not the way to achieve that.”
No, but it might achieve sufficient delay to persuade Starmer to think again as Trump is thinking already. Heritage visits? Some of them might actually want to live there. Anyway, what lunatic would give away land, only to rent it back at ruinous cost? And what sort of lousy dictator drives people off their own land and doesn’t bother to consult them as to what is done with it next?
PLEASE NOTE. Next week I am campaigning for Reform in the West Midlands so Widdy on Wednesday will come out together with Weekend Widdy but I will post tomorrow’s Mike Graham interview before I depart.