RANT FOR THE WEEK.

I may as well have my say regarding the furore over those two idiots on Radio 2 and apologise for those outside the U.K. who aren’t familiar with this, though you may well be since there’s the internet.

In my view, though many of us lampooned Mary Whitehouse, giving her a hard time and dismissing her as a crank who wanted to stifle free speech and “nanny” adults by deciding what is good for them when it comes to what they should see and hear, I thought and still think that she was a courageous and sensible woman who recognised what would happen if we allowed there to be unfettered, no holds barred, free rein to free speech. It wasn’t for nothing that my nickname at the blind school I attended was: “Mrs. Morals”. For I realised then that although there was much to commend the ‘60’s there was much to be sorry about too. I knew society had its feet on a slippery slope leading to the moral decline in almost every sphere of life from good manners to standards of decency both in public life and private life to the sexual immorality we have today and certainly I am aware that it’s not where something starts but where it will end which should concern us.

To give air time and a programme of his own, or more, to ghastly and vulgar individuals like Jonothan Ross only can and has ended in his grabbing hold of the BBC and dragging it where his mind and thoughts are – Down in the sewer with the stink, rats and rubbish. He cannot get his mind above his genetalia and finds it as easy to crack an non-vulgar joke as a fly does to crack an egg. He and this other apology for a star who supposedly passes for a comedian, namely Russell Brand have only been allowed to leave lewd and vulgar messages on an elderly man’s answer phone simply because we now need more and more outrageous and trashy stuff in order to become disgusted and shocked.

This puerile rubbish would never have been allowed past the hierarchy in the BBC years ago and comedians of worth and note such as Milligan, Hancock, Morecambe and Wise and many others would never have had to stoop to these depths in order to gain a laugh. I can remember the days when comedy was clever, as in the case of Norden and Muir and slightly naughty but funny all the same as in the case of Galton and Simpson whose talents spoke through their scripts and who left you feeling not as though you’d filled your ears with dross, thereby sullying your soul. Those people raised you up and made you think life was worth living whereas these loutish oafs have not only upset an elderly man and his granddaughter but also as I said, dragged the name and reputation of the BBC into the mud.

I’m all for free speech and don’t want a “Pollyanna” world in which everyone is pristine and crooks their little fingers while drinking out of dainty china teacups but neither do I want to live in a cultural litter bin or have the “smell” of one in my living-room.

I remember when I said my first swear word: “Damn” and I was hauled up to the teacher who said:

“The need to swear shows a lack of vocabulary and if you carry on you’ll graduate from ‘Damn’ to much nastier words”.

Of course I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t use harsher words than “damn” especially when I stub a toe or bump into an open cupboard door I’ve carelessly forgotten to close but though I didn’t understand it then, I get her point now. She was trying to make me achieve the best, show consideration for others by respecting them and knowing what may offend them and to this day I apologise if I swear in front of a very elderly person and never use obscene words in public. My short stories and longer ones not on the blog, do not contain obsceneties or explicit sex or violence and if the oafish Ross was on the BBC and offered me a thousand pound a minute to appear on his programme should I get well known as a writer, I’d refuse, such is my low opinion of the man and his drivel filled programmes.

People of my age and younger wring their hands and wonder why our young people have gone wrong and why we’re all grubbing around in an immoral vacuum and why drug addiction, alcoholism, crime and sexually transmitted diseases are on the increase and why the U.K. is in such a mess. Part of the answer has to be because we think anything goes and because we laud such dolts as the overpaid unimaginative broadcasters like Ross and Brand who have little regard for the sensibilities of other people both listeners and those they offend and whose privacy they invade and violate. If we’d listened to instead of laughed at Mary Whitehouse who we ridiculed because she foresaw just where our lapse in moral conduct would lead, then maybe those BBC people wouldn’t have had such a hard time deciding what to do about these oafs and their reputation as a decent public service broadcaster would be intact instead of in shredss. We’re where we are now because of what we didn’t do then and it doesn’t bode well for tomorrow when the children of today are the parents of the next generation. I never thought I’d say it, but I’m glad to have been brought up in a more disciplined and respectful age, even though I ridiculed my teachers and saw no harm in the odd: “Damn” or “bloody” for they helped me to differentiate between what may upset, offend and hurt other people and what is acceptable between consenting friends in private. You can never get out of the gutter iff someone doesn’t make you focus your eyes on the stars.