The recent news of BBC presenters abusing minors.

[my breakfast.]

Hello all.

I start a thread once in a never. However I've been thinking about the allegations made against Jimmy Savile and the fallout which has also seen John Peel and Dave Lee Travis labled. A few thoughts I have been having is;

1) Did such abuse occur habitually in many work places in the '70s and '80s and as such it is unfair to single out the BBC as an institution. I know from personal accounts that the Royal Mail and other institutions guilty of being 'closed shops' and 'boys clubs' that abuse and humiliation was something of a social norm back then in certain sectors.

2) Jimmy Savile and John Peel are both dead, so is it worth an investigation? We listen to the music of Wagner even though his antisemitic opinions are now widely known and talked about. Should the body of work a celebrity produces during their life time be viewed first and formost as the important factor, or should we let history be slightly more fairly balanced up.

3) Was there a culture of hiding sexual abuse, or even mocking the novelty value of it during the '60s - '80s? I am only 23, and watching Carry On films makes me uncomfortable. I find them to be the childish workings of the sexually stunted, so that whilst sex was never discussed openly it was uncomfortable enough to warrant becoming a source of humour.

4) Can the media truthfully pretend to be either a) morally higher than Jimmy Savile and b) capable of learning anything from the allegations? Carry On Films often sexualise supposed minors (though clearly the actresses are not) and newspapers constantly swither between sexualising minors, publishing smut and then claiming to be bastions of moral integrity when it suits them (and they know it can shift units).

I watched Have I Got News For You last week and they took a good deal of time and effort to try and single out The Daily Mail as being the actual bad guys in the whole ordeal even though it is a BBC program. Again watching the old TOTP programs they show on BBC4 I am surprised at how presenters like Dave Lee Travis treat female audience members (often hugging them really tighly and yanking them about quite physically). Jimmy Savile might have been the worst offender (by a long margin) but there seems to have been a whole culture within the BBC of older male presenters using their position of power to get near to younger females using behaviour you would now never see on TV.

Finally, why did we hold Jimmy Savile and the like in such high regard? Another case is Bruce Forsyth. Now Brucie has never done anything illegal like Savile, but he is another eccentric and annoying male presenter who is labled a national treasure. Jimmy Savile was similarily labled even though his humour was decidedly dodgy and he often jokingly alluded to being a child molestor (hiding in plain sight perhaps). Tommy Cooper was another highly damaged individual who was treated as a national treasure (and at 23 years old I find absolutely nothing funny about anything Cooper ever did). Is this a culture that sprung up after World War 2 or something?

[rememberaday]

I start work next week! Will have no time for such tom fooleries!

And yet you find the time to type out an ocean of a post! Something's in the wrong. Btw, what sort of work?

Sorry if this post is off-topic, I actually haven't really read you OP, but I swear I'll reply to that later. Promise!

[my breakfast.]

Next week... a week today.

I'm going to be a cartographer.

[Jimi Dean Barrett]

I haven't heard about Dave Lee Travis (WEEEEwowowowowowowowowow- as his old jingle used to go) being linked into this story. My view is whatever Savile did, this story will be kept running and bubbling as it distracts us happy Britons from World War III build ups, economy crashing and burning etc...

We've all heard the rumours. Personally, I reckon he was protected from very high up people in the establishment and was tolerated as a useful idiot. He could have been properly investigated several times before he died but someone "fixed it" for him to carry on unmolested. (if you pardon the expression)

If the lid gets blown open and only Jimmy gets mentioned, then the lid hasn't really been blown open. Basically.

[Bigmanpigman]

Here's the DLT stuff -



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... epens.html

[Jimi Dean Barrett]

Here's the DLT stuff -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... epens.html

Well! Well! It's nowhere near the same league as stuff Jimmy did. I think it's more a "Oh were exposing a paedophile years after he's dead as we haven't got enough between our legs to follow this stuff when he was alive... so who else can we target?"

Jimmy's past should be investigated, but the waters are being muddied. I think Jimmy's stuff goes right to the top. So to distract from this, the good old establishment has everyone looking for other things that might or might not be there instead.

Anyway. Prince Philip. There's the highest scalp this news item could claim. It won't, however. Because it's too busy distracting us with the shock horror revelations of what they thought a dead man did when he was still alive.

Prince Philip is a paedophile. Now track my IP address and sue me!

EDIT: http://inpursuitofhappiness.wordpress.c ... sing-kids/

Where did the kids go, Elizabeth II? And your husband was there as well. Well, what are the odds?

[my breakfast.]

The whole paedophile ring and the Royal family link is a little bit getting into conspiracy theory country I think. If it is true it will be totally sewn up by the Royals, so who knows.

[snifferdog]

I think it's a case of "all of the above" to be honest. I think you are right in saying women did get treated as pieces of meat back in those days and sexism was an everyday fact of life in many workplaces. It's interesting too that during this era, it was deemed acceptable to have nude underage children on album covers. I'm thinking specifically of theBlind Faith album that had a topless pubescent girl holding an aeroplane and Led Zep's Houses of the Holy that had nekkid kids on the Giant's Causeway. There are probably others too but you get the point.

What I find amazing is that Jimmy Savile went to his grave without having ever faced formal charges for what he did. It was an open secret in showbiz circles apparently. I can sort of understand why nobody spoke out about it in the old days but how this continued until recent times does puzzle me a bit. I can only think that his track record of charity work was what saved him.

[my breakfast.]

I think many paedos seem to operate under a guise of open secret. The guy who carried out the Dunblane primary school shooting was a known paedophile that many people found questionable. However it seems nobody took especially direct action. I guess the question lies importantly with whose responsibility it should be to take action.

[Bigmanpigman]

The DLT accusations are different in that they don't involve paedo behaviour, but it all makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Females can now, 20 or 30 years after the alleged event, throw this stuff around when there is no way of proving it one way or the other. When asked why it was not reported at the time, 'career' is mentioned a lot. Personally I think there is a lot of 'bandwagon jumping' going on, and possibly a bit of 'pay-back' for who know's what? This probably makes me sound like a bit of a sexist type, which couldn't be further from the truth, but I really think these women should have made their complaints at the time the alleged offences took place.

[snifferdog]

It is a subject that isn't black and white and I'm saying this as a woman. I do think that people who are abused are entitled to come forward in the future. Sexual abuse is a funny one in that people can sit for quite a long time before being able to bring themselves to make a complaint. I am also acutely aware though that it's equally possible for someone to ruin the reputation of a person who's perfectly innocent by making allegations. In a lot of these cases, it really does come down to a "He said, she said" scenario.

[danielcaux]

It's interesting too that during this era, it was deemed acceptable to have nude underage children on album covers. I'm thinking specifically of theBlind Faith album that had a topless pubescent girl holding an aeroplane and Led Zep's Houses of the Holy that had nekkid kids on the Giant's Causeway.

Is there anything wrong in those covers for you? Do you think that those covers being "acceptable" was a good or a bad symptom for 70s society?

[my breakfast.]

The covers of albums such as the Scorpions' Virgin Killers and UFO's Force It seem a little 'strong' by current standards.

[ddebil]

I think they did a grand job, with no noticable abuse, considering the harsh conditions of the Chilean desert.