The Tories Want To Kill Us All (And Make Us Pay For The Funeral)

History will record that George Osborne’s main career aspiration was to become a fifth-rate, Walter-the-Softie version of Joseph Stalin.

In the geographical absence of gulags and salt mines and being too media savvy to machine gun en masse an entire social class of dissenters (just imagine the Twitter-hate he’d get for that), George’s solution is turn the rights of the modern working man against him; to subvert the last gasping vestiges of the Welfare State and choke the last breath of life out of any human rights declaration of the last 200 years in order to return us all to the dark glories of the workhouse and a more bizarre rule of lassaiz-fare... where people are encouraged to fend for themselves without government assistance but with the government still wanting to take a good cut of the profit.

Not satisfied with pushing the retirement age back a couple of years (and undoubtedly it will get pushed back even further until aged 98 I will have to resort to selling my own body on street corners just to be able to afford a cheap moussaka from Lidl), there are now plans afoot to dispense with the old system of employers providing sick pay for their employees.

The idea being floated by George "Uncle Joe" Osborne (the Chancellor Palpatine of the Exchequer) is that worker's themselves should provide provision for their own sick pay out of the wages they earn.

Speaking as someone who at the moment can't even afford to pay pension contributions towards financing my old age ("don't worry," says George, "you've got at least another 80 years working life ahead of you - plenty of time to save for a retirement you'll never reach") I can tell you now that if deductions were forcibly being made out of my earnings in lieu of potential future sick pay awards I would simply not be able to afford to live and therefore going to work in the first place would become a pointless endeavour. Going to work would only remain viable were I never ever to become sick. Or to be exact, were I never ever to take a sick day even though I might genuinely be exploding with typhoid or - in the dystopian Victorianesque future that George is undoubtedly masturbating over - smallpox.

Essentially, my simple theory posits that the Tories are trying to kill us all. By "us" I do, of course, mean just the non-wealthy workers who don't have enough money in their Government bailed-out bank accounts to successfully lobby their favourite political party to adequately represent their own singularly selfish viewpoint over those of the moral majority.

The modus operandi of our murder is simple. Worked to death with longer hours 7 days a week, taxed to the hilt to pay for the privileges of the rich, sick pay only if you can afford to make the contributions, no sick pay at all if you can't, work work work until you drop or until you get your "congratulations on your first centenary" letter from HM The Queen (whichever comes first). Thus huge saving are made - no sick pay and no pensions payments made because I guarantee that should anyone actually make it to a pensionable age they'll be so worn out and exhausted by 80 years' hard labour they'll be dead before the first e-payment is made into their bank account. The 7 ages of man will be truncated to: baby, child, man, workhorse and fertilizer.

And who will benefit from all these savings?

The poor? The repressed?

According to the Tory worldview they do not exist. Instead the country is full of fat, lazy, ne'er-do-wells who are only in dire straits because an over-indulgent government hasn't done enough to encourage them to stand up on their own two feet and make their own way in the world.

In other words, we're back to the old "spare the rod, spoil the child" guff which has always been used in ages past to justify naked callousness and simple cold-heartedness.

Which when you are trying to hold down three jobs to put food on the table for children whose whereabouts and welfare you can't monitor anymore because you're always at work trying to pay for the sick pay you daren't take is not what you want to hear from some over-privileged buffoon in a suit whose idea of poverty a few years back was having to include the mortgage for his paddock on his taxpayer funded expenses...

Murder is going to be done, my friends. Murder is going to be done.

Privet

I’ve had to take the unprecedented step of leaving the Kate Bush Fan Club Facebook page.

Actually, it’s not unprecedented at all. I’ve left loads of pages on Facebook. When it comes to nixing FB related things I’m like Charles Bronson at the start of Once Upon A Time In The West. Sweaty, bristly, breath like Chicken Fajitas but with a lightning fast trigger finger.

And the Kate Bush Fan Club page, well, they brought too many horses (true Western fans will get that reference).

It was the whinging. The whining. The petty schoolyard arguments:

“I haven’t got a ticket to her live show and it’s so unfair ‘cos I’m her number one fan and all the touts who aren’t fans have got the tickets are selling them for the price of a Heston Blumenthal 3 course meal”.

“I have got tickets and I want to witter on and on about what songs she might sing and what songs I want her to sing and what songs do you think she will sing?”

“I haven’t got tickets and I don’t want to hear about what songs you think she might sing ‘cos I want to die for the entire duration of her shows so that I don’t have to live in a world where I don’t have tickets to see her.”

“Hello I’m new to the group and I want to show you a picture of a Kate Bush 7 inch single I bought from a flea market in Birmingham and ask if it is worth anything and does anybody have any spare tickets to sell, I heard she is going to play some live dates in September…?”

On and on and on.

Now I’m a fan. I’m up there with the most devoted and delusional of any of them. I can trace my Kate Bush pedigree back to the early 80’s – none of this “been a fan since Aerial” malarkey. I have all her records. I have tickets not only to her show but also to the hospitality party beforehand. I’m convinced she is going to personally serve me canapés and share her champagne with me in the toilets. And ask me to help compose the lyrics to her next album. It is meant to be.

But I know how galling it is to not have tickets. For 2 days I was in deep dudgeon because despite having early access to the fan only tickets I still missed out and felt that the general release was merely going to give me a cat in hell’s chance. I can remember the excoriating feeling of “I’m going to miss out on a truly rare event”. I know it came good for me in the end but I still retain the muscle memory of that previous failure. Like Frodo forever feeling the burning loss of his ring. Or something like that.

But joking aside it is not the end of the world or even the start of it. If I hadn’t got tickets I would have felt gutted but I would have moved on. I still have Kate’s music to enjoy and stalking is a perfectly acceptable pastime these days.

But the petty nit-picking and childish sourness of the Facebook group was too much. I know people are just people… but really! I expected more from Kate Bush fans. And I know how stupid and vapid that sounds. As if liking Kate Bush immediately bestows wisdom and first class mental health onto the patron. But it was like being back at school. The old “I’m a bigger fan than you are – no you’re not, I am” kind of thing.

I felt besmirched. I felt like I was a kid again and not in a good way.

Do adults really behave like this without being aware of it?

Plainly they do.

So I did the adult thing. I didn’t castigate everyone in the group for being pathetic; I didn’t lob a sarky grenade into the status box and then run for cover. I just revoked my own membership, left forever and instantly felt calm again.

See, I don’t need the others. I don’t need to be part of a big group or a gang. I don’t need to be part of a happening or “a thing”.

Kate and me, we’ve got our own thing going on. A special relationship.

She’s hired a private policeman just for me.

At least that’s what my lawyer has told me.

The Black and White Minstrel Show

The wife and I watched Snow White And The Huntsman over the weekend… but this isn’t going to be a film review.

I’m writing because I was bugged by the dwarves.

Initially I was impressed by them. Amused. 7 dwarves running around offering various scatological jokes. As Hollywood dwarf effects go these celluloid dwarves did the business. I’d even go as far as to say that they out-dwarved Peter Jackson’s dwarves in Lord of the Rings and, as dwarf benchmarking goes, that’s setting the dwarf bar pretty darn high (for a dwarf).

Most amusing of all, these dwarves were played by some of the UK’s biggest and finest acting names: Ray Winstone, Bob Hoskins and Ian McShane to name but 3.

In short (ahem), as with Peter Jackson’s Gimli [Son of Gloin], these dwarves were all played by non-dwarf actors of high acting stature. Dwarfdom was temporarily bestowed upon them by the CGI gods of whatever studio produced the movie and Warwick Davis didn’t even receive a text let alone a telephone call*.

And that’s my problem with it.

Don’t get me wrong, our Ray and our Bob made excellent dwarves. There was comedic value in seeing their heads on dwarf’s shoulders. But I couldn’t help thinking: what about all those dwarf actors out there? Lord knows some of them are superb actors (Peter Dinklage springs readily to mind) and are wasted as it is, being typecast merely as dwarves in productions that just happen to need a dwarf as opposed to being accepted as fine actors who just happen to be dwarves in real life. But if they now can’t even get work as “dwarves” in fairy-tale and fantasy films what hope have they got to get work at all?

It’s finally happening: computers are putting people out of work.

OK.

I realize I’m being a bit tongue-in-cheek about this but there is a serious point to be made here. Imagine if, for example, white actors were being blacked up via CGI and were then taking roles that legitimately should have gone to black actors… Imagine the outcry! Imagine the uproar! Or what about if male actors were being CGI'd into women and taking all the leading actress roles? I think Helen Mirren might drop a few F bombs at that turn of events. And quite rightly so.

So why is it OK to do it with dwarfs? Because they’re funny? Because their entire movie raison d'etre is merely to provide light relief and a bit of carnivaleqsue exotique?

Anyone who’s seen Peter Dinklage’s performances in Game Of Thrones knows how ultimately short-sighted and short-change-giving that view now is.

It makes intellectual pigmies of us all.

And, at the end of the day, aren’t we all supposed to be a bit bigger than that?

* I'm quite willing to accept that Warwick Davis and Peter Dinklage were both approached to appear in the film but refused, perhaps feeling that the role was beneath them.

Tears For Fears

The recent series of The Great British Bake Off has stirred up a lot of online debate and astoundingly none of it has been about buns, baps or crusty cobs. It has instead been about crying. About tears. About the expression of emotion.

I’ve read a number of blogs recently that have given Ruby, this year’s youngest Bake Off contestant, a hard time. She has come under fire for crying too much, for crying at the slightest little thing, for ‘crying to gain sympathy’. In short she has been accused of utilizing her tears as some kind of Machiavellian tactic to gain advantage over the other contestants.

Now, aside from the fact that she has gained no advantage at all and indeed I fail to see what actual advantage there is to gain, I find the accusations deeply disturbing, repugnant and unfair. Some of the comments I have seen directed Ruby’s way included the old gem, “oh she’s just putting it on; I knew girls like her at school – very pretty and they turn on the tears just to get their own way; they know exactly what they are doing.”

It took me a while to work out why that statement angered me so much – because there are a number of reasons.

The first (and major) is that the initial gut reaction of both my wife and I when we first saw Ruby was along the lines of: this person has had something happen to her which has left her a little bit damaged. We didn’t see someone who was deliberately manipulative or turning on the tears just for effect; we saw someone who was plainly fragile, had major self-esteem problems despite her looks (because, let’s acknowledge something here: just because you’re perceived as good looking by other people doesn’t mean you believe it yourself) and was severely lacking in confidence and a sense of self-worth.

I’m sure it will be argued that I am merely transferring my own experiences and (mis)conceptions onto Ruby. I would argue that people accusing her of being manipulative are doing the same. To dismiss her with the phrase “I have known girls like her…” is offensive, lazy, callous and reductive. Have you really known girls like Ruby? Isn’t everyone an individual? How can you judge someone who appears on a highly edited TV programme – someone you have never seen before – and decide you know them well enough to critique their entire personality? And as for these girls that you “knew”… how well did you really know them? Enough to judge their behaviour and condemn them for it out of hand? What if there were issues at home? What if there were traumas? Or did you really know everything about them to be able to say they had no reason at all for their behaviour except an inherent and apparently unjustifiable nastiness?

The other thing that bugged me was the implication that other people’s tears and ‘confidence wobbles’ on the show were genuine while Ruby’s were not. How the hell can anybody make a judgement call like that? As far as I could discern this judgement was based solely on Ruby’s looks. Ruby is very attractive therefore she must be supremely confident, must have an easy life with no trauma ever taking place and is not allowed to be attributed with any nervousness, lack of confidence or feelings of self-doubt and emotional negativity. People who are more plain looking, however, well when they cry and go through a confidence crisis that must be genuine because everyone knows that attractiveness = manipulativeness while plainness = honesty and integrity.

What simplistic, reductive rot.

You cannot allow that one person is genuinely upset and not another. There is a basic human right issue here that has nothing to do with looks, gut instinct or whether or not you find someone’s personality appealing or not. Human emotional responses are impossibly complex. Nobody can read them well enough to say exactly what someone is feeling let alone instantly dismiss them as being OTT or inappropriate. For Christ’s sake, if you feel something you feel it. It is not for others to deny you the rights to your own emotions or charge you with fraudulent behaviour. Imagine how crippling that is: you feel something strongly enough to make you cry but those around you shrug and say, “Nah, you’re faking it.” How do you feel now?

The last thing that piqued a response from me was the debate about whether there were too many crying people on TV per se. Whether there was an emerging crying culture generally that was, if not fake, then at least over-done and distasteful to those of us who battle on with stiff upper lips. Is all this free-wheeling emotion a good thing or a bad thing? Part of the argument again was based on the idea that people use tears as a means to an end; a moral gambit to win (or even just avoid) an argument.

I’m not sure what the answer is here except that I would rather a world where people were open and honest about their feelings than a world where people bottled things up, battled on until they either popped and took out half the street in a killing spree or popped internally and fell to the big C or heart disease. Surely the real issue here lies with how people deal with the tears and upset of other people? Isn’t a sighing, dismissive, disgruntled response (“Oh God, they’re not crying, are they?”) also an emotional response that is just as open to criticism?

Surely there is an analogy here to dealing with crying children? Certainly you don’t want to give in and give them whatever it is they want just to stop / avoid the tears… but you do need to talk to them because there is plainly an issue. They might not get what they want but, in the words of Mick Jagger, they might get what they need. At the end of the day we are all emotional beings to one degree or another – our place on the spectrum isn’t the benchmark. I don’t believe there is a norm and I don’t think a norm should be proscribed.

But we do all need to be better about how we deal with our emotions and how we deal with the emotions of other people.

Dismissing, castigating, denigrating and vilifying someone just because of how they express their feelings is not the way forward.

And that is something I feel most sincerely.

Blackheads Revisited

Secondary school is a world unto itself.

Inhabited by creatures whose brains are being rewired to such an extent that they no longer resemble other human beings on the planet. Fizzing human bombs (© Danielle Dax) whose hormone levels explode like weapons grade plutonium within the space of a few months and then pulse with a seedy half life that lasts for the next 30 years (if they’re lucky).

I remember it as a callous no-man’s land that delighted in alienating the weak or the different or (rarest of all) those who retained a modicum of human compassion. I felt alone and “outside” for most of my secondary school career. Hey. Why pull the punch? I felt dis-included for ALL of my secondary school career.

It could not be changed. It had to be borne. It had to be endured. And it was a horrifically lonely journey.

My eldest boy has suddenly found himself immersed in that same world. Curriculums might change. Teaching methods might be revolutionized. But the world of the geeky teenager remains essentially the same. The rites of passage that you largely walk alone.

He doesn’t make friends easily. He has trouble “getting” other people. He doesn’t connect well. He swings from ultra negative to overpowering positive without touching the middle ground in an instant; switches from totally controlling teen-god one minute to uber-victim the next who is unable to take responsibility for anyone or anything and thus finds himself always hopelessly disempowered.

Karen and I are at a loss as to how to help him beyond giving advice, helpful practical hints and trying to keep home life as secure as possible.

Because the simple truth is, unless you are one of the lucky ones, secondary school life starts off being diabolically damaging and only gets marginally better with each passing year. End of story.

How do you deal with the sniping comments of others? How do you deal with the bullying tactics of the playground – both overt and secretly snide? How do you deal with people who you once thought of as friends but now decide to ostracise you and leave you out in the cold at every opportunity?

What possible advice can I give to an 11 year old to combat all these issues when they are problems that, 28 years after leaving secondary school and now in full time employment, I still come up against and struggle with every week if not every day?

Because the sad fact is, although Secondary school is a world unto itself that isn’t meant to last forever, for some people (both good and ill), it bloody does.

Blessed Are Those Whose Anger Flowers Early

I believe the Italians have a saying: beware the anger of a patient man.

The reason being, I am sure, that the anger of someone with a short fuse who is prone to ignite at the merest whiff of a spark tends to be short-lived. It tends to be all noise and no fire. The damage radius remain relatively local.

I’m sure there are exceptions and I am at pains to point out that this is by no means an empirically proven thesis.

The corollary, however, is certainly true. The anger of a man who remains for years, if not decades, patient, calm, tolerant and tranquil must be devastating when it finally blows. We are talking thousand mega-tonne detonation. Something that wipes out half a continent. The collateral damage must be catastrophic.

I much regret being so tolerant, calm and level-headed. I regret being a patient man. Especially in the face of certain situations and circumstances over the years that when viewed logically and with perspective plainly call for someone to be given am almighty slap. I am, of course, talking metaphorically. I abhor all kinds of physical violence. (Unless it is done to my enemies).

Much better, much healthier to open the bottle a little every day and let out a small fizzing demon every now and then, as the need arises. The pressure is relieved. The beast has its moment in the sun and tires itself out. It retires and the bottle is resealed. All is made safe.

When this is not done, however, the beastie grows. It grows inside the bottle. It grows and grows. The bottle begins to chafe. The ever tightening constraints of the bottle then adds to the beasts anger. The pressure builds.

Until it get to the point where it is not ever safe to open it. The beast inside will run riot. The beast inside will tower over everything and level the entire city. It is much too strong now to be loosed upon the world. So the bottle top is tightened. You try to forget the demon is there but, of course, as is the way of things, the beast grows most quickly in the dark, most voluminously when it is ignored.

But the bottle cannot hold it forever.

The bottle is becoming more and more brittle with age. The will to keep the stopper held in place is become weaker, becoming compromised.

The effect is a nuclear countdown that cannot be deactivated.

You can cut the red wire, the blue wire or even the yellow but it will make no difference. If anything you will only speed up the clock.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

8 Out Of 10 Cats Pay Their Tax The Hard Way

It is a measure of how much I detest the Tories when David Cameron's slating of the devil makes me instantly have sympathy with him.

Unless you've been living under a rock, on drugs or just in a different country for the last few days you can't fail to have heard or read about the big hoo-ha involving UK comedian, Jimmy Carr, and K2.

Yeah, that was my first thought too: he hasn't exactly got the physique of a mountaineer.

But it turns out K2 is some clever-clever, smarmy, rich man's tax dodge. I'm not sure of the ins and outs because whenever I read financial information all I hear in my head is farting noises but the basic premise seems to be that rich bastards pay their money into an account in Jersey and then the people running the account pay the money back out to them as "a loan". And because it is classed as a loan rather than a wage these mega-earners don't have to pay the statutory 50% tax rate on their stratospheric earnings.

All perfectly legal as Jimmy Carr and other K2 members have been desperate to point out.

So 'legally' the UK has missed out on something like £45bn per year on missed tax payments because of schemes like K2. Or £45mn. Or 45 drachma. One of those.

This is not funny when the likes of you and me are struggling to make ends meet and the government and tax office and the banks seem set on nobbling the poor, the middle wage earners and small business men in general.

K2 would be a great idea if we could all take advantage of it. The unfairness lies in the fact that it is a club that only the obscenely rich can join.

David Cameron (hardly short of a few bob himself) has condemned Jimmy Carr as "morally wrong".

Now up to that point I was bitterly disappointed with Jimmy Carr. I mean, how could he co-present such politically satirical programmes like 10 O'clock Live, lampooning the misdemeanours of others, when he himself was effectively ripping the entire country off?

But Cameron's condemnation just sticks in my craw worse than the whole K2 bunch. Are we to believe that Cameron knew nothing of this? That all our deeply respected politicians had no idea that such schemes existed and have done so for years and years? Are we to believe that they themselves have never partook of such perfectly legal tax dodging shenanigans?

It seems to me that Cameron's comdemnation comes only on the back of the recent media coverage. Up to then he was happy to have us all ignorant. Isn't that morally wrong too?

Jimmy Carr has today apologized for a "terrible error of judgement" over K2. He was asked by his financial advisor if he wanted to pay less tax without breaking the law. He said yes.

Well, bugger me, but who wouldn't?

The problem isn't Jimmy Carr or even K2 or it's directors (who are surely more morally repugnant than everybody?)... the problem is the long standing loophole in the law that allows such schemes to exist and to flourish. These schemes and loopholes are not new developments; they've been around for decades.

And whose fault is that?

The politicians and the bankers.

Frankie Boyle Tweeted this morning that if he'd been called "morally wrong" by Cameron he'd put it on his [tour] posters. I'd be tempted to put it on a T-shirt and wear it with pride.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

I wonder if my employer would care to loan me next month's wages rather than paying me...?

Trouble is, with my luck, they'd expect me to pay it back...

With interest.

Methadone

I’ve nothing against privilege. I really don’t.

I’ve nothing against the upper classes, the landed gentry, Lords and Ladies of the House and sherry addled debutantes. I’ve nothing against the Royal Family either.

Nothing at all, in fact, apart from the huge bank accounts they have chock full of money which allows them to do pretty much whatever the hell they like to without worrying about paying off next month’s mortgage.

Apart from that they’re fine and I’m happy to share the world with them.

But there is a limit to my magnanimity. A limit to my social largesse.

You see, it’s the freebies wot get up my nose, gov’nor. The gifts and the special considerations. The gratuities which, financially speaking, are completely unnecessary.

Take Camilla Peter Bowles the other day. She’s on a jolly in the Netherlands. She’s visiting the set of The Killing. If you haven’t seen The Killing then you’ve missed out. It features the coolest female detective the world has ever seen. Cooler even then Cagney and Lacey. Sarah Lund is the next best thing this side of Morse and The Killing is superlative television of the highest order.

But this is by-the-by.

It seems that Camisole Parker Bowling-green is an avid fan of the show. She is, in her own words (reported in the press this week) “an addict”.

Well fine. I’m technically an addict of the show too. Both me and the wife are. We religiously sat through 30 episodes that spanned series 1 and 2 last month as an example of our highly enflamed addiction.

I bet Camomile PB didn’t do that.

And yet her addiction gets her a genuine, bona fide Sarah Lund jumper presented to her by supercool, supersexy Sarah Lund actress Sofie Gråbøl herself.

Those things cost a bloody fortune! I know ‘cos I’ve looked. €300! Made solely on the Faroe Isles. Not impossibly extortionate I know but I really can’t afford to blow the equivalent of £250 on a jumper right now no matter how much I might be in the throes of addiction.

But Camilla Poker Battleaxe could. She could buy one every month for the next 10 years and not raise a hair on her perfidious little bank manager’s scalp.

So quite frankly gifting her one for free is like giving methadone to someone who is lying on a Las Vegas style water bed bursting at the seams with liquefied heroin.

It's not like she can even wear the ruddy thing in public anyway! It's just going to get mothballed in her cavernous walk-in-wardrobe which is already the size of Denmark...

Suddenly, privilege is leaving a nasty taste in one’s mouth.

Someone is making a real killing and it certainly isn’t me.

Sniping The Snipe

The Snipe is clever.

The Snipe is patient.

It waits by the kettle, by the radiator, by the computer monitor occasionally ticking its eye like an ancient lizard. It is in for the long haul. It plays the long game. It plays to win.

It waits for its prey with a lipstick smile and the bat of an eyelash. It lures its victim in with a sticky tongue of kind words, of sweetness, of sugary betrayal. It offers the sharpened claws of fake friendship. The piercing tooth of confidence.

Once you are in its cooing clutches it sucks out every intimacy, every near silent secret.

It doesn’t digest. It doesn’t consume.

It stores them away. It stockpiles them. Hardens them into little balls of armour shattering ammunition. While the world sleeps the Snipe is up all night making bullets.

Being a coward, afraid of its own dirty work, it offers these to a greater power. With instructions of where lies its victims palpitating heart.

It has no mercy. But it will offer a shoulder to cry on so that it may take suck again. Its appetite is insatiable.

But some of us are prepared. Some of us have been bitten before and have learned from the bites.

Some of us also wait.

Cleverly.

Patiently.

Waiting for the Snipe to look up and smile and catch our eye. Waiting for the Snipe to gulp in fear as it realizes we are blinking at it like smarter lizards through the steady lens of a telescopic rifle.

It will not hear the shot ring out.

It will not feel the impact.

It will not understand the cheers of jubilation.

But it will recognize the bullet.

Sexsomnia

It doesn’t even look like a real word, does it? It looks like the title to another duff, soppy-voiced, “soul” record by Peter Andre.

But no. It’s real alright. It’s a recognized condition whereby the sufferer can’t help but have sex with whoever he/she is sharing a bed with in his/her sleep. He/She doesn’t wake up at all. He/She has sex, can’t fall asleep afterwards because he/she is already asleep and then remembers nothing about it in the morning.

I could make jokes about the whole premise. Crack a few gags.

But it’s not funny.

Because a 16 year old girl brought a rape case to court this week and lost because the defendant claimed he was suffering from sexsomnia and various medical experts backed him up.

His ex-partner and his current wife also confirmed that [let’s call him] Mr Z regularly groped them in his sleep and had had sex with them but had no memory of it the next day.

Now, I’m trying not to pass judgement here because I don’t know enough about the case or the condition but... and it’s a but that won’t go away... various facts about the case make me feel uncomfortable and, dare I say it, suspicious?

This 16 year old college girl was spending the night at the defendant’s house. It was hot so in the early hours of the morning she went to sleep on the defendant’s bed – with him still in it and already asleep (according to him) – because it was cooler.

The girl then awoke later to find the defendant having sex with her. The next day he sent her a text asking her if she was OK and enquiring if anything had happened?

See, all that does not add up to me.

Where was the defendant’s wife? She cannot have been at home if the girl was able to sleep on the defendant’s bed with him in it. If the wife wasn’t at home why the hell did the defendant allow a 16 year old girl to stay the night on her own knowing that he suffers from this condition?

What 16 year old would take it upon herself to share a bed with a grown man no matter how hot it is? I’m not blaming the girl here, but - and I’m wary of making an accusation – wouldn’t she have needed some coercion? Wouldn’t the suggestion have had to have been put into her mind by someone else? Certainly not naming Mr Z here. *cough cough*

Mr Z clearly suspected something had happened because he sent her a text the next day asking the girl if she was OK.

No. she’s not OK. She’s been raped but this appears to be a crime with a victim but no assailant.

This cannot be right, surely?

To my mind, I can just about buy the idea of sexsomnia. Some geek in a white coat has staked his reputation on it so it must be real.

My problem is Mr Z knows he has the condition. He knows he is a danger to people sleeping in his house and sleeping in close proximity to him. He allowed this girl to share his house and share his bed – no matter what innocent reasons lie behind this. He knew he was a danger to others and allowed the assault to happen.

Sorry, Mr Z, but in the kangaroo court of my mind, you are guilty. Because the full weight of responsibility for managing your condition was yours.

I rest my case.