And Now For The News

Pooch and I both like to listen to news on the radio in the mornings. When we get up on weekdays it is "The World Tonight" on BBC R4 which is clearly an international program so quite diverse. However, if we listen in the evenings we'll get one of the regular UK news programs. What is very noticeable is how a theme gets a lot of coverage while other things that don't fit the theme get left out. Plus once the news machine gets a grip on a particular issue they then go on and on and on about it.

This isn't a new thing and it's also not something I've only become aware of since moving to Japan. But being out here and wanting a general overview means you have to really spend time digging around the lower levels of the bbc news site.

The topic of 'news from home' came up at the Stitch n Bitch group on Tuesday when I happened to be at a table with an australian, a new zealander, an american and a german. The american was talking about how there was a politician in her state misbehaving and how she just didn't want to know and couldn't see why so much airtime was given to it. We compared what the big themes were for our countries and my contribution was "Weather - there have been loads of floods, immigration...oh, and of course the pedophiles". Lengthy pause. "Pedophiles?" someone says. "Oh yeah I heard that the Pope had been dealing with the bad priests." "Oh no" I said, "I mean the famous ones."

So the good thing about this conversation is that it reveals that the UK is not yet famous for having lots of pedophiles. Yay!

The revelations about the mass abuse carried out by an admittedly limited number of celebrities from the seventies and eighties is something I find particularly disturbing since it is the celebrities of my own youth who are involved. Jimmy Saville was always a real oddball and I never felt comfortable with the juxtpositions of his lifestyle. Not that I ever suspected he had abused hundreds if not thousands of children - but that didn't stop me wanting to be on Jim-ll-fix-it. And as for Rolf Harris...a big part of me is still thinking that it can't be true. But then that suggests the multiple women accusing him must all be either fantasists or psychotically mercantile.

But I loved Rolf Harris as a child and I loved him as an adult. When the accusations came out I wanted to hug him and tell him I still believed in him and Pooch and I had several heated conversations about whether it could be true. However, I am a strong believer in the justice of the UK legal system so the case will wind its way towards a conclusion and in the meantime I will maintain a strong hope that he is innocent.