A View From Middle England - Conservative with a slight libertarian touch - For Christian charity and traditional belief - Free Enterprise NOT Covert Corporatism

Friday, December 31, 2010

Christopher Jefferies in a blue tinted frame?

Or Are All Eccentrics Suspects?

The media, Twitter and any other form of communicaton is buzzing with notions and comments about Christopher Jefferies. As Facebook would say, "Not the Christopher Jefferies you were looking for?". Depends. Google, I think, means the Christopher Jefferies who is embroiled in the Joanna Yeates murder enquiry. It's definitely not this Christopher Jefferies.

All that aside, whatever happened about innocent until proved guilty? The BBC has recently been showing Garrow's Law. It was William Garrow who pushed so successfully for this concept to be part of English law. It would appear now that for many contempt of court and other such niceties are a thing of the past. The Daily Mirror is keen to emphasis that Christopher Jefferies was a "public school teacher" and then go on to mention that a convicted paedophile lived in one of the flats at one time. What does the Mirror know about it anyway? Innuendo, mainly.

I get the impression that eccentrics are getting a hard time. Possibly they always have. If there is any other man in the country with a blue rinse hairdo perhaps he is keeping a low profile. "Ooh Brian, your hair looks just like that eccentric's in the papers!" One has to wonder if any of this would have come about if Mr. Jefferies had been "normal" in the media's eyes.

When Madeleine McCann disappeared in Portugal a young female Murdoch minion suddenly took against Robert Murat and ran around saying he looked eccentric and behaved oddly. She of course had no evidence whatsoever. Just Sun-type prejudice. But it was enough for his private life to go through the mangle as well as the mill.

Let us remember that Mr.Jefferies has only been arrested. Evidence has to be gathered against people in order to bring charges. That is unless people want to forego that and just set up kangaroo courts on Clifton Suspension Bridge. It would be a very dull day indeed if all eccentrics were to vanish from British shores, or anywhere, just because people rushed to judgement. I find eccentrics make the icing on the cake as far as British society goes. I bet that when it comes to wrongdoing, the percentage is far less for eccentrics than it is, for example, politicians. Now there's a thought!

3 comments:

It was Mirror hack Lori Campbell who started on Robert Murat, she had worked with Clarence Mitchell in the past, on the Soham case. Clarence Mitchell also made a Soham case reference to Robert Murat.
Mitchell worked for the UK Gov at the time of Campbell's smears.

Your point's well taken. On the hand, as a survivor of Clifton College in the late 80s, I can tell you that the place was run by psychopaths. Not all eccentrics are charming or avatars of good old British humor and individualism. The masters of Clifton were downright scary.

Thank you for correcting me. Lori Campbell, I remember now. Not Murdoch's lot after all.

Anonymous 2. I suppose Clifton College now is nothing like it was twenty-odd years ago. All checks and New Labour balances. John Cleese is an old boy and he has similar thoughts to you I understand. Not that it should have been like that, of course. Many of us who went through the public school system have fond and happy memories. But I acknowledge many didn't fare so well.

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