Regarding Guilt or Shame, What's to Blame.

    I never know in advance what to blog about. Once a week or thereabouts, not easy. (I'm approaching 400 blog posts and sometimes find I'm repeating myself; I think its called senility!) I avoid the news where possible but occasionally it triggers my mind, often in a direction I would not have chosen to go.

    I read about a mother who shaved her son's head and forced him to go to school in a wheelchair so she could claim he had cancer. Over three years, when the boy was between six and eight she claimed £85,900 in benefit fraud. She has been jailed at Gloucestershire Crown Court.for forty five months.

    I could not imagine an act of more mind bending cruelty. In a way we don't wish to acknowledge that such people exist but she is part of the world we live in. Obviously such people are abhorrent to most of us, but the thing that has played on my mind is, how do such people live with their actions afterwards, day by day, month by month, year by year. I am struggling to comprehend.

    A fifty eight year old man in my area has been charged with sexual offences with a horse. I know of this case in some detail; sadly he has been convicted of similar offences previously. The man's photograph has appeared in a local newspaper; he has also had to move area. Life as he knew it for this sad individual is, irrespective of the eventual court verdict in this case, over. How does he live, day by day, month by month, year by year; again I fail to comprehend.

    (The subject of bestiality came up in a recent edition of Never Mind the Buzzcocks. The participants seemed to find the subject funny. I suspect their amusement was borne of unthinking ignorance, a wish to not think seriously of such actions.)

    Some footballers earn amazing amounts of money. They are often of 'working class stock', their fellow men, if they are lucky enough to be working, earn derisory amounts in comparison to these 'stars'. Yet these 'ordinary' mortals are the providers of the footballers wealth by paying out hard earnt cash to see their 'heroes perform.

    Liam Ridgewell is a West Bromwich Albion footballer who apparently earns over £20,000 weekly. Roughly the average West Midland average yearly earnings. He thinks it very clever to be photographed wiping his backside on a twenty pound note. (There are numerous other twenty pound notes scattered around the toilet floor.) What a crass, stupid, unintelligent, ignorant, thoughtless thing to do. How demeaning, what rude mockery of those who scrimp and scape to watch such spoil brats perform. Again how do the Liam Ridgewells of this world live, day by day, week by week, year by year after such appalling behaviour.

    Just three examples of individual actions that will I suspect never go away for the people concerned. My interest is in many ways more concerned with what happens next rather than the actions themselves. 

    Or do the memories fade; are the memories fleeting or consistently present. Are some people so insensitive, so limited that they do not realise their actions are out of 'sinc' with the majority. (Religious people I presume can ask for forgiveness and, again. I presume, all is well.)

    Guilt, shame, it never was my strong point. (my old 'what's it all about' syndrome.) Why, I wonder, can I remember instances when I did wrong, was 'naughty' over sixty years ago; little things, unimportant yet still remembered; (the result of a religious upbringing perhaps.) I am a nobody, just little unimportant me. So nothing I have ever done that I am not so proud of is important enough to be remotely memorable for ever and a day. I am happy for that; I suspect most of us are the same.

    This post coincides with the Australian hoax call concerning the pregnancy of the Duchess of Cambridge. A hoax that is connected, however tenuous it may turn out with the death of a nurse taking the phone call. A terrible, sad event that will effect the lives of several people. It may have been a daft thing to do, but I don't think it was intentionally, deliberately vicious. The point is, sometimes our actions can affect our futures for ever more; quite a thought. Now that's off my chest I must look for a couple of posts that are more in tune with this happy, festive season!