A missing portrait and the true cost of Rolf and Jimmy

Just a quick update regarding the question I asked yesterday about what would happen to Rolf Harris' portrait of the Queen.
Well, it looks as though someone at the BBC (who no doubt read my blog) has asked the same question:

The BBC article

The BBC doesn't have it.
The Palace doesn't have it.
Apparently, it was last seen in Liverpool in 2012, but then of course an awful lot of things were 'last seen in Liverpool' by their owners…

There is a wider question here though.
There will, in the aftermath of the Harris conviction, be the inevitable clamour for compensation (and the equally inevitable emergence of a mix of genuine victims and those grubby and morally vacant freaks looking to make a quick buck) - and to pay for that compensation, most , if not all, of the Harris estate will need to be sold.
All of which is fine and is something I agree with. People have to pay for their crimes.
What I don't agree with, however, is the worrying precedent set recently with regards to potential compensation for the victims of Jimmy Savile. A High Court ruling has said that victims can make claims of up to £60,000 from either Savile's estate, the BBC or the NHS. Health Secretary Jeremy (rhymes with) Hunt has said that all claims made against the NHS will be paid out of the public purse (and as the BBC is funded by the public through the licence fee, then we'll be paying for any claims against that organisation as well). Savile's estate of £3.3m has already been all but swallowed up by legal leeches, so it's almost certain that claims that would have been made against his estate will be altered so that either the Beeb or the Health Service is seen as culpable. All of which means that Savile, and probably Harris, and maybe countless other paedos who have yet to be unearthed, could add to their list of victims the names of patients denied life-saving medicines or made to wait an extra couple of months for treatment because the NHS has had to fork out millions in compensation for what they've done.

ps I was also going to add a glib remark about the rest of us being victims as well because the BBC will have even less money with which to make half-decent TV programmes; but as they've only been able to produce reality TV shite for the last few years (e.g. The Voice), and would probably have spent that money on pay-offs for top executives, I'm not sure that's anything to get worked up about.

Rolf's a perv. Where's my humble pie?

On the 20th April, 2013, I wrote a post entitled: 'Rolf a perv? I just don't buy it.'
Well, following yesterday's guilty verdict on twelve counts of indecent assault, it looks like I'll have to buy it after all. Hence a large helping of humble pie for supper tonight.

I will not deny that I am shocked by this verdict. I really did believe (or, perhaps, more accurately, really wanted to believe) that the claims against the Aussie kangaroo-tier-down were spurious and, perhaps because this world makes cynics of us all, probably motivated by the prospect of compensation and media-money for the victim's 'story' - but that no longer seem to be the case. Old Rolf's been found guilty and, possibly, may spend the rest of his life behind bars.

So where does this leave us?
Well, from a personal perspective, it leaves me wondering whether Rolf and Stuart Hall and Jimmy Savile (whose names must only now be whispered in sombre tones accompanied by a disapproving shake of the head) should all now face a new charge:
1. Wilful destruction of memories of happier, more innocent days.
On this count I suggest all of these 'gentlemen' are guilty because I, like millions of others who grew up with Jim'll Fix It, Rolf's Cartoon Time and It's a Knockout, will no longer be able to look back on the television of their childhood without those fond memories being tainted by the realisation that behind the smiles and the laughter of the programmes' stars and presenters, there was a dark unpleasantness and a growing catalogue of victims.

It also leaves me wondering if there are actually any TV personalities from the seventies and eighties who weren't going around kiddy-fiddling or grooming young girls to be sexual playthings - how many others still have such skeletons in their proverbial cupboards? I know they weren't all pervs, but the growing list of guilty verdicts does make you wonder - how many more?

ps - Remember that portrait that Rolf did of the Queen recently?

Here's one for the caption contest...

So much rant-fodder to choose from...

Well, I've been absent from the blog-iverse for a few days, partly down to having spent a couple of days in the Lake District, and partly because of technological malfunction...and whilst my absence may have left blog followers fearing the worst (or the best, depending upon your bent), the return to the blog after even just this short period of no-blogginess has highlighted to me what an absolute wealth of riches exist in this wonderfully mad and vibrant world of ours on which to comment, about which to moan, or from which to merciless take the proverbial piss.
For instance, we have:

• the first Ashes test and the fact that, for four days, the Australians somehow managed to smuggle a Marais Erasmus lookalike (allegedly from a small town just north of Wollongong) into the third umpire's seat (whereupon he missed a glaring stumping of the Australian wonder-kid named after a type of laboratory jelly and then gave Trotty out even though he couldn't actually check whether he'd hit the ball or not...which is pretty fundamental, methinks) whilst the real Marais Erasmus (who only returned in time to give the last Australian batsman out) was held hostage in a small bungalow on the outskirts of Nottingham, not far from the M1;
• the news that the BBC have spent my licence-fee money (and that of a shed-load of other people as well) on three investigations into why nobody at the BBC spotted that Jimmy Savile was a paedo;
• and still on the BBC, news on severance packages which make me hope (in vain, I suspect) that my current employers would be as generous as the BBC Board in calculating any payout I will get should my services no longer be required;
• and, of course, there's the ongoing nonsense of the European Convention on Human Rights and the fact that, according to the idiot judges in Brussels, we in Britain are not even now within our rights to tell psychotic murderers that they are going to die in prison, because that is seen as 'inhumane' (though not, I suggest, as inhumane as the way Jeremy Bamber butchered five members of his own family...but, then again, the law doesn't really give a toss about the victims of crime, does it...only the perpetrators).

And that's just a few of the things that I could easily rant on about!

There was, however, one story that I thought worthy of a bit of vitriol today, and that's the fact that the government has (at long, fucking last) put a cap on the amount of benefits that non-working families are entitled to...shame it's still so ridiculously high at £26,000 (and remember, that's £26,000 tax-free).
There is talk of getting it down to £20,000 (only talk, mind you), but I maintain that until it is lower than the minimum amount of money that a working family are able to bring home (after tax), sponging off the State will still be seen as a positive career choice for an awful lot of feckless individuals who bizarrely believe they have some God-given right to sit on their arses watching (and dreaming about appearing on) Jeremy Kyle whilst the rest of us have to get up everyday and go and do an honest day's labour (even though we might prefer to spend that day lounging in the garden!).
Even in the most benevolent of societies, the benefits system should be nothing more than a safety net to ensure that those without work, or those genuinely unable to work, are kept healthy, sheltered and fed...but nothing more. It should not, must not, provide them with holidays or Playstations or 70" plasma TVs...such things should be the material rewards for those with the motivation and determination to get a fucking job!

There, rant over...and, by Jove, it did feel good...

Oh Stuart, say it isn't so...

So, it turns out that Stuart Hall, whacky host of It's a Knockout and Jeux Sans Frontières (when it came to Blighty - was I the only one perpetually confused by the fact the Swiss had 'CH' on their jerseys?) is a kiddy-fiddler.
I mean, one of them was a nine-year-old girl - now that's just sick!
Hally-boy was also the host of Look North (or Look Northwest or Northwest Tonight or whatever the hell it was called back then), which meant he was a regular on TV during my early years and, as such, was something of a TV icon of the era...not a cool TV icon in the way that Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby were of course (The Hulk/David Banner), or Ricardo Montalban on the Love Boat for that matter, but still, an icon of sorts...a bit like, dare I say, Jimmy Savile.
Which makes me wonder...were they all perverts and paedos, the TV icons of my youth?
In one of my previous blogs http://andyritchie999.blogspot.com/2013/04/rolf-perv-i-just-dont-buy-it.html, I said that I just didn't believe that Rolf Harris was a perv - after the revelations about Stuart Hall and his 20 years of predation of young girls, my convictions aren't quite as strong as they were a couple of weeks ago.
How truly depressing will it be if all those TV icons, whose shows brought a smile to the lips of so many viewers and laughter to the living rooms of homes all across the country, are ultimately proven to be monstrous abusers, not only of children and the vulnerable, but of the trust and adoration they were given by so many ordinary people.