Life of Pie
Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times picks up on this strange story about the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) and its relationship with the National Council for civil Liberties (NCCL) back in the 1970s.
Clearly there's much more still to be said on the matter, but I agree with Rod Liddle on one thing - the silence of the mainstream press, up until now, is quite staggering.
So I will be interested to hear what is said now that both The Sunday Times and Observer have thrown in their tuppence worth.
Tell us more about your paedophile chums, Harriet
By Rod Liddle
What a pleasure it is to see the Paedophile Information Exchange back in the news: it’s been too long, chaps.
Just to say the name sends the mind scuttling back, perhaps in a Ford Cortina GXL, to the febrile mid-1970s, when people were out on the streets demonstrating for their right to have sex with anything with a pulse.
Including, in the case of the Paedophile Information Exchange, children as young as four. It is clearly an organisation from a different era.
I think if you were minded to set up a similar group today, you’d probably choose a less in-your-face name for it — otherwise sponsorship money would be thin on the ground. You’d keep an ear open for the occasional dawn raid, too.
I say “back in the news”, but this is not quite correct. So far, only one newspaper has reported the fact that three very senior Labour party figures had rather close links with the group back in the good ol’ seventies. They are the two most high-born and hoity of Labour’s women — the former health secretary Patricia Hewitt and the party’s deputy leader Harriet Harman — along with Harman’s hubby, the serving MP and former party treasurer Jack Dromey.
Can you imagine how the media — and especially the BBC — would react if three current senior Conservative MPs were revealed to have had links to a paedophile group? The Beeb would be in a state of perpetual agitation: you would not hear the last. It would make the reporting of Nelson Mandela’s death look a model of restraint and brevity.
Remember how worked up they were over a former Tory functionary who, as it transpired, had nothing whatsoever to do with paedophilia? That was the late Lord McAlpine, if you recall. But as it’s the Labour party on this occasion, you’ll see or hear nowt.
In 1978 all three — Harman, Dromey and Hewitt — were working for the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), an organisation of screeching, middle-class, faux-left outrage that has since morphed into the rather more amenable Liberty. The NCCL had affiliated with the Paedophile Information Exchange back then, presumably to revolutionise sexual behaviour, free it from the straitjacket of patriarchal, heterosexist tyranny, etc etc.
Nothing, so far as the NCCL was concerned, could possibly be worse than the heterosexual, monogamous nuclear family — a sexist, exploitative construct that nonetheless Jack, Harriet and Patricia have all since happily embraced. Hell, they even have kids. The Paedophile Information Exchange, incidentally, was linked to the Gay Liberation Front so as far as the NCCL was concerned, its pedigree was impeccable.
The NCCL campaigned for incest to be decriminalised and Harman, as the organisation’s legal officer, demanded that photographs of naked children should not be illegal, unless it could be proved that the children involved had suffered.
Hewitt was boss of the ghastly outfit when it announced that “childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in with an adult, result in no identifiable damage”. Go on, Pat, try to make the same case now. The NCCL was perfectly happy for its affiliate to suggest lowering the age of consent to the aforementioned four years.
None of the former NCCL troika has addressed this historic narrative directly, although Harman has said the account is ridiculous, how very dare you, and so on. In a way, the interesting thing is the distance the faux-left has moved on this issue.
It is now the liberal left that demands prosecutions be brought in cases of historic sexual abuse, especially of children, and describes those who argue that things were very different back then as “abuse deniers”. But — Harriet, Jack, Patricia — things were very different back then, weren’t they? So who has got it right — the liberal left of the 1970s or the liberal left of today?
Rocket ban
Urgent information for Muslims considering a trip to Mars. The General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the United Arab Emirates has decreed that such an expedition would be “un-Islamic”. And furthermore would present “a real risk to life”, being tantamount to “suicide”.
I’m not wholly convinced that the suicide warning will be much of a clincher, but there we are. The decree was issued because some 500 Saudis have applied to travel on a commercial flight to Mars, believing — with some justification — that the red planet may be a more liberal rock-strewn desert wasteland than the place they currently inhabit.
So, Mars is out. And while I’m no Koranic expert, I suspect Muhammad is no more kindly disposed towards Venus, and still less Uranus.
Sorry, Adolf. Bernie’s with Vlad now
Support for the Russian leader Vladimir Putin in his somewhat abrasive policy towards gay people has arrived in the shape of that lovable squirrel Bernie Ecclestone. The octogenarian motor-racing boss has said that he admires Putin’s stance on homosexuality and that “90% of the world” agrees with him. Other world leaders for whom Mr Ecclestone has previously expressed admiration include the controversial Austrian politician Adolf Hitler, whom he commended for being able to “get things done”.
I wonder if there is anyone associated with the “sport” of Formula One who, if you were sitting next to them at dinner, wouldn’t make you wish to open your wrists. Offhand, I can’t think of anyone.
Help – the Met Office says sun
One of the few reliable things in this shifting, unpredictable world of ours is the Met Office’s weather forecasts. If the pirouetting gimp in front of his map of isobars on television tells you it’s going to snow tomorrow, you can safely head to the beach with the family and a bottle of factor 30.
If only our environmental planners were able to grasp this fact. The Met Office told them that the months of December to February would be much drier than usual.
There would be “a significant reduction in precipitation compared to average”, they stated, with the blithe confidence of a man wearing a hat with bells on it and holding a pig’s bladder on a stick. That should have been the signal to stockpile the sandbags and sound the sirens. The wettest winter since 1910 duly followed. Yet still people believe these jokers.
Thin White Doofus
What a great shame that David Bowie was not able to attend the Brit awards in person to celebrate 25 years since he last made a decent record. But, as he once remarked, he’d like to come to meet us but he thinks he’d blow our minds.
He sent, in his place, the talented and brilliant musician Kate Moss, with a message to the people of Scotland not to vote for independence. This was David’s second foray into domestic politics, his first being the contentious observation that Britain “could benefit from a fascist leader”.
Next week: Sting sends Cara Delevingne to explain his position on the Ukraine rioting.
Just to say the name sends the mind scuttling back, perhaps in a Ford Cortina GXL, to the febrile mid-1970s, when people were out on the streets demonstrating for their right to have sex with anything with a pulse.
Including, in the case of the Paedophile Information Exchange, children as young as four. It is clearly an organisation from a different era.
I think if you were minded to set up a similar group today, you’d probably choose a less in-your-face name for it — otherwise sponsorship money would be thin on the ground. You’d keep an ear open for the occasional dawn raid, too.
I say “back in the news”, but this is not quite correct. So far, only one newspaper has reported the fact that three very senior Labour party figures had rather close links with the group back in the good ol’ seventies. They are the two most high-born and hoity of Labour’s women — the former health secretary Patricia Hewitt and the party’s deputy leader Harriet Harman — along with Harman’s hubby, the serving MP and former party treasurer Jack Dromey.
Can you imagine how the media — and especially the BBC — would react if three current senior Conservative MPs were revealed to have had links to a paedophile group? The Beeb would be in a state of perpetual agitation: you would not hear the last. It would make the reporting of Nelson Mandela’s death look a model of restraint and brevity.
Remember how worked up they were over a former Tory functionary who, as it transpired, had nothing whatsoever to do with paedophilia? That was the late Lord McAlpine, if you recall. But as it’s the Labour party on this occasion, you’ll see or hear nowt.
In 1978 all three — Harman, Dromey and Hewitt — were working for the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), an organisation of screeching, middle-class, faux-left outrage that has since morphed into the rather more amenable Liberty. The NCCL had affiliated with the Paedophile Information Exchange back then, presumably to revolutionise sexual behaviour, free it from the straitjacket of patriarchal, heterosexist tyranny, etc etc.
Nothing, so far as the NCCL was concerned, could possibly be worse than the heterosexual, monogamous nuclear family — a sexist, exploitative construct that nonetheless Jack, Harriet and Patricia have all since happily embraced. Hell, they even have kids. The Paedophile Information Exchange, incidentally, was linked to the Gay Liberation Front so as far as the NCCL was concerned, its pedigree was impeccable.
The NCCL campaigned for incest to be decriminalised and Harman, as the organisation’s legal officer, demanded that photographs of naked children should not be illegal, unless it could be proved that the children involved had suffered.
Hewitt was boss of the ghastly outfit when it announced that “childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in with an adult, result in no identifiable damage”. Go on, Pat, try to make the same case now. The NCCL was perfectly happy for its affiliate to suggest lowering the age of consent to the aforementioned four years.
None of the former NCCL troika has addressed this historic narrative directly, although Harman has said the account is ridiculous, how very dare you, and so on. In a way, the interesting thing is the distance the faux-left has moved on this issue.
It is now the liberal left that demands prosecutions be brought in cases of historic sexual abuse, especially of children, and describes those who argue that things were very different back then as “abuse deniers”. But — Harriet, Jack, Patricia — things were very different back then, weren’t they? So who has got it right — the liberal left of the 1970s or the liberal left of today?
Rocket ban
Urgent information for Muslims considering a trip to Mars. The General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the United Arab Emirates has decreed that such an expedition would be “un-Islamic”. And furthermore would present “a real risk to life”, being tantamount to “suicide”.
I’m not wholly convinced that the suicide warning will be much of a clincher, but there we are. The decree was issued because some 500 Saudis have applied to travel on a commercial flight to Mars, believing — with some justification — that the red planet may be a more liberal rock-strewn desert wasteland than the place they currently inhabit.
So, Mars is out. And while I’m no Koranic expert, I suspect Muhammad is no more kindly disposed towards Venus, and still less Uranus.
Sorry, Adolf. Bernie’s with Vlad now
Support for the Russian leader Vladimir Putin in his somewhat abrasive policy towards gay people has arrived in the shape of that lovable squirrel Bernie Ecclestone. The octogenarian motor-racing boss has said that he admires Putin’s stance on homosexuality and that “90% of the world” agrees with him. Other world leaders for whom Mr Ecclestone has previously expressed admiration include the controversial Austrian politician Adolf Hitler, whom he commended for being able to “get things done”.
I wonder if there is anyone associated with the “sport” of Formula One who, if you were sitting next to them at dinner, wouldn’t make you wish to open your wrists. Offhand, I can’t think of anyone.
Help – the Met Office says sun
One of the few reliable things in this shifting, unpredictable world of ours is the Met Office’s weather forecasts. If the pirouetting gimp in front of his map of isobars on television tells you it’s going to snow tomorrow, you can safely head to the beach with the family and a bottle of factor 30.
If only our environmental planners were able to grasp this fact. The Met Office told them that the months of December to February would be much drier than usual.
There would be “a significant reduction in precipitation compared to average”, they stated, with the blithe confidence of a man wearing a hat with bells on it and holding a pig’s bladder on a stick. That should have been the signal to stockpile the sandbags and sound the sirens. The wettest winter since 1910 duly followed. Yet still people believe these jokers.
Thin White Doofus
What a great shame that David Bowie was not able to attend the Brit awards in person to celebrate 25 years since he last made a decent record. But, as he once remarked, he’d like to come to meet us but he thinks he’d blow our minds.
He sent, in his place, the talented and brilliant musician Kate Moss, with a message to the people of Scotland not to vote for independence. This was David’s second foray into domestic politics, his first being the contentious observation that Britain “could benefit from a fascist leader”.
Next week: Sting sends Cara Delevingne to explain his position on the Ukraine rioting.
