Assisted Dying is a Kindness - not Cruelty

Alf Thomson was never the physically strongest of men. No Alpha Male he. He was however a brilliant man. He had a mind which worked differently from most, and a hidden intelligence which had he been given the opportunity, he could have done so much more with. He was my dad, and while we did not always get along, I respected him enormously, and loved him completely.

He did believe in a god of sorts, but he was not a Christian. He had in his life voiced that if the worst came to the worst, he would not want to linger in pain, or when his mind started to go.

That was robbed from him.

As he got older, my father was first diagnosed with Age-related Macular Degradation, which was sending him slowly blind. Then he was diagnosed with the terrible respiratory illness, COPD, and then he was diagnosed with cancer of the bladder. As he was so old and given his poor health, oncologists were unwilling to remove the tumour, as he almost certainly would have died on the operating table.

I struggled to help my dad over the next six years, as I watched this brilliant, vibrant man waste away. He wanted to stay at home to die, but this was not to be, and he eventually was hospitalised, which was probably for the best, as the care he needed was beyond my capabilities. The medication he was given caused his mind to wander, creating hallucinations and strange imaginings.

Towards the end he was more helpless than a newborn baby. Hooked up to a permanent catheter and a colostomy bag, and with his morphine maxed out, he was still in pain, and nothing could be done about that. The doctors could not give him any more morphine, as that would cause an overdose, killing him, which would have been illegal, so instead they had to leave him for nature to take it’s course. That is the perverse current situation in Scotland.

My sister and I were called into the hospital on 29 March 2009, and were told that this was his last day. Absolutely drugged out of his mind, he was breathing shallowly as he slowly drowned in the fluid from his own lungs; a noise I can only describe as like a child blowing into a bowl of soapy bubbles. We were told that he could not hear or see us, and didn’t know we were there. Yet as I held his hand and spoke softly to him, he feebly tried to grip his fingers on my hand. Oh, he knew, he knew. “Let it go, Dad,” I whispered, “Please just let go.”

When he did breathe out his last, in a long, drawn-out death rattle, his fingers eased, and I knew he was gone. And before the grief even had time to hit me, my first, overriding feeling was one of relief. At last, he was away from all that pain and suffering, and nothing and no-one could hurt him any more.

I said to my sister, “Whatever happens to me, I can promise you this now, I will never die like that.” To this day, I stand by those words, and if anything, my resolve today is greater than it has ever been.

Many people say that we treat animals better than we do human beings where end of life care is concerned. This is true, but few realise just how true it is. An animal which is suffering knows only the pain of that moment. They cannot understand it, and just want it to end. That is why it truly is kinder to end their life. Yet we, being sapient creatures, are capable of informing ourselves about whichever illness we may have. We can learn what may lie ahead for us, and the prognosis of what further pain and suffering we may face. This can and does cause the mind to dream up all sorts of dark thoughts of what may come. To subject any human being to that sort of horror, and pretend that we are being kind to them, is not merely terrorising them, it is utter hypocrisy, and the most abject, masochistic cruelty.

Some who object to Assisted Dying claim that the terminally ill can be treated with palliative care. This is true, and I would never try to take anything away the extremely kind medical professionals who administer palliative care, or the science behind it. But those same professionals, and the scientists concerned would be first to inform them that palliative care has it’s limits. It is not some great panacea which sees every patient comfortably and painlessly through the end of their life, as my own father is testimony to. There comes a time with some patients that no more palliative care can be administered, and the doctors hands are effectively tied by the law. If they don’t relieve suffering, they are condemning the patient to a painful, lingering death. If they do relieve suffering, they risk being charged with and tried for homicide. And of course, should that happen, no matter how professional they may be, how many patients they may have comforted at end of life, even if they are acquitted due to the circumstances, that is the end of their medical career. A ban on AD is not just unethical towards patients, it is unethical towards medical staff.

Those who use the palliative care line are obviously pitifully uninformed about the limits to it, and the circumstances of those patients who have reached the limit of it’s effectiveness. I used to say that I wish they too could witness a loved one drowning in the fluid from their own lungs, but in retrospect I never meant that, and would not wish that upon them. No-one should have to witness anyone suffer such a horrifying death, far less someone they love dearly. But as with so many other aspects of science, the detractors desperately need to inform themselves upon the science, because they patently do not know what they are talking about. I do not mean that to come across in any way unkind; I am merely stating a fact. Whenever I am faced with a topic I am uninformed upon, I prefer not to give any opinion until I am informed upon it. I only wish more would do likewise.

Some detractors will point to the dangers of the terminally ill, or even just the elderly, being killed through collusion from relatives who consider them a burden, or from those who would gain financially. In fact, there have been very, very few instances of this ever happening in places where AD is already in law. And in the instances where it has happened, the detractors miss a point; when they point to actual cases of this happening, the only reason they are able to do so is because the perpetrators have been caught, and are facing the full penalty of law for their actions. Murder is murder, and legalised AD does not change that. In fact, the rate of offences where AD is abused where it is legal is not higher than other homicides by doctors or in medical facilities. English doctor Harold Shipman sweet-talked 15 old ladies into changing their wills in his favour, and then killed them. He did not need legalised AD to do so.

Some may try to claim that legalised AD could exacerbate this. The first response I would give to this would be to provide proof for that claim. The second thing I would say is that this underlines why AD should only ever pertain to someone who is in the fullness of their mental capabilities, and have made it clear that they and they alone wish to end their life before they lose full capability. My third point would be that most terminally ill people do not die at home, but rather usually in hospitals, where with many witnesses, the chances of any collusion or wrongdoing is minimal.

Some will point to cases where children have been euthanised with parental consent. Where this has indeed happened, the quality of life of the children concerned was completely gone, and to leave them to continue to live would have been to subject them to unnecessary pain and suffering. Parents do hold the responsibility of consent for medical procedures upon children, and in the few cases concerned where they have had to take the terrible decision to end their child’s life, it has always been the right thing to do. I would ask those detractors to think less on a child whose life was not viable, and a lot more upon the parents who were faced with having to take that decision. To listen to some of these detractors, you’d think that the parents were callous murderers who thought nothing for the lives of their children, when in fact it must have been an utterly heartbreaking thing to do, which no doubt destroyed them, but they did nonetheless, because they loved their children, and wanted nothing more than to take them away from pain and suffering.

I actually once took issue with someone who proposed that the elderly and terminally ill should consider euthanasia, to prevent being a “burden upon their families and upon the state”. The person in question was Baroness Warnock, a Conservative Party Peer, who proposed this stating “If you are demented, you are wasting people's lives, your family's lives, and you are wasting the resources of the National Health Service.” Of course, what Baroness Warnock failed to realise is that the elderly with dementia would not be offered AD, on the grounds that they are not in full possession of their mental capabilities. Warnock’s words led to one of the very few instances where those pro-AD and anti-AD were united; both sides were equally horrified by her words. She was 82 years old at the time, and as a member of the House of Lords, drew her salary from the public purse. Given such, I sent her a message pointing out that as she was elderly, and effectively a burden upon the taxpayer, that she lead by example. Given that she lived on another 8 years, I am assuming she did not.

Some will say that AD is “playing God”. I could not agree more. Medical science does play God. It does so all the time, and has done ever since our early ancestors discovered that a particular herb settled the stomach, that a kind of tree bark alleviated headaches, and that rubbing mouldy bread on a wound prevented infection (ancient Greek horse riders used to do this – Fleming actually rediscovered the properties of penicillin). The greatest irony of course is that we nowadays enjoy relatively long and healthy lives precisely because medical science does play God, and the vast majority would not have it any day. It is utter hypocrisy that the opponents to AD complain about medical science “playing God”, yet they are the exact same people who try to stop people being taken off life support, or indeed, being administered palliative care, which is in itself, “playing God”.

Some detractors will try to point to the infamous “Hippocratic Oath”, and will quote, “First, do no harm”. Except for one little fact; “First, do no harm” does not appear in the Hippocratic Oath. It is in fact in another work by Hippocrates, “Of the Epidemics”. But even then, if the Hippocratic Oath were taken literally, then all medicine would come to a standstill. The Hippocratic Oath states, “Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so”, so there goes the administration of most modern medicines out right away. The Hippocratic Oath also states, “I will not cut, even for the stone”. This in fact means not to cut for the kidney or liver. So there goes a great deal of surgery out as well. The Hippocratic Oath is in fact not sworn by most medical professionals, because it is unworkable with modern medical science. Most in fact swear modern oaths written up by whichever university they graduate from. Given such, there is nothing to prevent those oaths being rewritten to take account for AD.

However, if we were to take, “First, do not harm” literally, then we have to ask ourselves just what we mean by “harm”. Is not leaving someone in pain harming them? Is not prolonging suffering inflicting harm? Even if we consider the mental effects of a terminal illness, as I pointed out above, to subject anyone to that terror is indeed harmful. Many detractors merely think of physical aspects alone, but never the psychological ones. But they are nonetheless harming the individual. I know that many of those who oppose AD do so for religious grounds, and there are many of those who are Roman Catholics. I would point them to the doctrine of the “Sin of Omission”; if you are in a position to do something for someone, but fail to do so with the result they are harmed, that is still sinning against them. I would venture that likewise to leave someone to die a needlessly painful death is indeed inflicting harm upon them. It is effectively a “Sin of Omission”.

And I believe there is an important point here. The Bill about to be submitted to the Scottish Parliament covers the terminally ill, with full mental capacity, alongside palliative care. I am more than happy to support that, but it could be strongly argued that does not go far enough, and that when someone is suffering psychological terror, with no hope of alleviating that, then they too should have the right to a painless and dignified death. I will point to the case of Nathan Verhelst.

Belgian Nathan Verhelst was assigned female at birth, and given the name Nancy. However, he always identified as male, and once adult, came out as transgender and took the name Nathan. Having lived as a man for many years, Nathan decided to undergo transition surgery. Firstly, his double mastectomy was botched, leaving his chest horribly scarred. Then his body rejected the penis which had been formed, and it had to be removed. Suffering terrible depression, Nathan was told that nothing more could be done. Being faced with a life of being biologically neither male nor female, Nathan decided that death held less terrors, and in 2013 opted for Assisted Suicide. He was 44 years old.

Many have said that Nathan Verhelst should have been offered better psychological care and counselling. My reply to that is just what psychoanalyst could sympathise, or even empathise, with his plight? How many biologically ‘androgynous’ psychiatrists are there in Belgium, or even the world, who could have helped him? There are none. In the end, it was Nathan’s body, and Nathan’s life, and whatever he did with them was his decision to take, no-one else’s, and that is something we should all respect.

Which neatly brings me on to my next, extremely important point over AD. By refusing us a dignified and painless death, just what is the state saying? They are saying that they effectively own our lives. If this were any other medical procedure, where the government intervened to say that you cannot have it, because their laws say no, there would be a bloody uproar – and quite rightly so. Yet when it comes to a dignified, painless death, suddenly we are the property of the state. And worse still, the laws which prevent AD are based on rules laid down by the Christian religion. I am an atheist. I don’t believe in the Judeo/Christian/Muslim God, I don’t believe in any gods. Yet if I were unfortunate to develop or contract a terminal illness, suddenly the state would be telling me what I can and cannot do with my life, based on their Bible. Well, sorry (not sorry), my life is just that; mine. It is not the property of the state, and far, far less of any church.

The refusal to legalise AD is effectively enforcing religion upon those who may not adhere to those beliefs. That alone is just crying out for wholly secular laws and government.

All life is not sacred. Certainly it is better to live, and we should always do our utmost to uphold the right to life, and to strive to make life better for every individual. However, when quality of life is gone, when there is nothing left but pain and suffering, then that life itself has already gone, and to prolong it is not a kindness, it is cruelty. I do not seek to legalise AD because I am some sadistic, callous killer with no regard for life, but quite the contrary, because I am a kind, compassionate person, who wishes nothing but kindness upon my fellow human beings, and one who respects their wishes to live and do with their lives as they see fit.

20 Years After 9/11 The Wind Of Change Blows Still

On 20 January 1991, the US rock band The Scorpions released their song, "Wind of Change". Following the dismal and depressing 1980s, when many of us thought that a nuclear war was a certainty, it was a powerful song. It was an anthem for the time and for a generation. The Berlin Wall had fallen, and just as the countries of eastern Europe had fallen to Soviet totalitarianism, so communism fell in those countries in a domino effect as the people demanded freedom, until even the Soviet regime in Russia fell. All across the world oppressive regimes were falling one by one, and there truly was a wind of change. US President George H Bush would declare there was a "new world order" (which conspiracy theories would later feed into), and that nuclear weapons would be "weapons of last resort" (which worried me greatly, as I had been given to understand that was always the case).

Even the Balkan Wars, started through the fall and partition of the communist state of Yugoslavia, could not keep going.  In defiance of Croatian neo-fascists, the Bosnian city of Sarajevo carried out a beauty contest, in which all the contestants unfurled a banner as a message to the world; "Don't Let Them Kill Us". The fascists fell, war criminals were prosecuted, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the other Balkan states became modern, democratic states.

The wind of change was indeed blowing everywhere, and you really could "feel it in the air".  As we entered a new millennium, the world was full of hope for a new era; an age of peace, of global justice, of tolerance, and understanding.

Then on 11 September 2001, it all came crashing down.  Crashing down along with the twin towers of the World Trade Center.  Crashing down with one wall of the Pentagon.  Crashing down with United Flight 93, rammed into the ground near Stoyston, Pennsylvania, as US citizens on board decided to fight back against the hijackers.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 left me stunned for several days.  I recall my boss asking me to get on the internet to see what was happening, and telling him I couldn't as none of the news sites were coming up (due to too many people trying to access them), and me chillingly saying, "They're all dead".

As the news started to trickle out over the next few days, it was still not clear how many people had been killed, with some sources claiming as many as 10,000 may have lost their lives.  This would later eventually be scaled down to 2,977.  I sat down and wrote a letter to The Scotsman newspaper, in which I stated that I wondered if it had all been a bad dream, or memories of a movie that I watched, refusing to believe that it was real.  But no, this was all too real.  An Islamist extremist group, Al Qaeda, had carried out the attacks on the orders of their leader, Osama Bin Laden.

What was to follow in the wake of the 9/11 attacks were curtails on civil liberties, many of which people in their fear actually supported.  The Patriot Act in the USA passed almost without opposition.  Places once freely open suddenly had security barriers.  I well remember that ScotRail only a few years earlier had done away with ticket barriers and fencing in their stations.  Suddenly there were new ticket barriers and even more fencing than ever before.  In a knee-jerk reaction, litter bins were removed from stations to prevent bombs being planted in them; even at Falls of Cruachan Halt, population, zero.

Seeking retribution, the USA first targeted Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden were believed to be based, then more controversially and without a shred of evidence, Iraq was targeted, with claims of the Ba'ath regime under Saddam Hussein holding weapons of mass destruction, and Al Qaeda training camps; despite the fact that Al Qaeda despised Saddam Hussein and had tried to assassinate him on no fewer than three occasions.  As US President George W Bush decided to attack Iraq, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to go in with the USA, thereby making the war in Iraq being his everlasting legacy, instead of the political reforms he introduced.

Among the public attitudes also changed.  There was open hatred of Muslims.  But not only Muslims, but anyone perceived to be a Muslim, including turban-wearing Sikhs, and even anyone who happened to be Asian.  An Asian shopkeeper near my work was the victim of a racist attack fuelled by the frenzy stirred up by governments and the media.  His shop was trashed and he was beaten up by thugs calling him "Osama".  This poor man is in fact of Goan descent, and as such is actually a Christian.

As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continued, the public by and large accepted some terrible acts, including 'rendition', which was no more than a pseudonym for torture, and also men captured flown to Guantanamo Bay, the US base in Cuba, where they were held without charge, without trial, and without legal representation, completely against international law, as well as the very basis of justice upon which western civilisation is built.  Stories started to leak out of Guantanamo Bay, including those of inmates being tortured, and their copies of the Qur'an being torn up, flushed down toilets, or burned.  The Qur'an is absolutely sacred to Muslims, and all these acts did was to fuel further Islamist outrage throughout the world.

In 2005, the G5 Summit took place at Gleneagles, Scotland.  Fearing terrorist attacks, hundreds of police officers were drafted to north of the border, including from London's Metropolitan Police.  But instead of attacking Edinburgh or Glasgow, the terrorists waited until London had let her guard down, and on 7 July that year, the English capital was rocked by suicide bombings on a bus and on tube trains.

All through these and other terrorist attacks, the tit-for-tat hatred continued.  Every terrorist attack was met with retribution from the USA and the UK in Afghanistan and Iraq, with some reportedly having Bible verses inscribed on their guns, and Islamist sympathisers would carry out further attacks in the west. 

In turn, a backlash to the hatred of Muslims would also prove counterproductive, as many ended up finding themselves scared to speak out against wrongdoings, in case they were considered 'racist' or 'Islamophobic'.  This was particularly true in Rotherham, England, where civil services were aware of a paedophile ring, but did not report the men involved, as most of them were Muslims.

Twenty years on from 9/11, I am saddened to a great deal that the hopes for the future were dashed, and the world was changed not the better, but very much for the worse.

I stated in my 2001 letter to The Scotsman that the 9/11 attacks, and no other terrorist attack, would ever make me hate Muslims, because, "The moment we start hating, the terrorists have won.  Division is what they seek, and giving ourselves open to hate is handing victory to them on a plate."  Twenty years later I stand by that.  I have no great love for Islam, and actually find it to be a repressive ideology.  But then, I could say equally as much for Christianity, or many other faiths.  Likewise, I deeply dislike the term, "Islamophobia".  In a quote often misattributed to Christopher Hitchens, journalist Andrew Cummings once described Islamophobia as "a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons".  I'm no right-winger, but I think that Cummings pretty much hit the nail on the head.  I do not hate the bloke who runs my local grocers because he's a Muslim; I hate him because he's an uppity, arrogant dick.  His parents, also Muslim, are in fact lovely people, and how he could ever have sprung from their loins is beyond me.

I intensely dislike Islam because of the fanaticism it invokes, because of it's oppression of women, because of it's hatred of LGBT+ people, and because it suppresses freedom of speech and expression.  I equally dislike fundamentalist Christianity for exactly the same reasons.  I write this at a time when the state of Texas has instituted Christian-based anti-abortion laws which the Taliban may be envious of, and that US President Joe Biden appears to be powerless to stop that, or won't stop it, in what is constitutionally a secular country is absolutely despicable.

Despite Europe being the tinderkeg of the world for 2000 years up to 1945, only for that title to move to the Middle East, I am not for one moment saying get rid of religion and you get rid of war and atrocities.  That is far too simplistic, and if it were not religion, then the tyrants of this world would have found, and would easily find, other excuses; Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein only paid lip-service to their respective faiths for populist reasons.

But at the same time, if the past 20 years since 9/11 are to mean anything, then we must be free to criticise the more fundamentalist interpretations of religion, and other ideologies.  If the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban proves anything, it is that the 'War on Terror' has already been lost.

Criticising religion, be that Islam, Christianity, or whatever, is not hatred.  And equally, tacit respect of and accommodation of religions is not capitulating.  I don't always agree with journalist Maajid Nawaz, but I do like his tenet, "No idea is above scrutiny.  No people are beneath dignity."

If we want a "world closing in, where we could be as close as brothers", then that can only come about through mutual respect and mutual understanding.  But that must come from all sides.  The west accommodating fundamentalist Islamism does not do that.  Neither do tit-for-tat atrocities on both sides.

The Berlin Wall and Soviet communism did not fall through force.  They started with one young woman demanding to pass through the Brandenburg Gate one night in 1989.  She set off a domino effect which saw what was effectively an entire empire fall.

And that is why 20 years after 9/11 I am not without hope for the future, and that future does indeed belong to today's children and young people, and the generations yet to come.  If we keep them in mind, and keep talking, then you can truly...

"Take me, to the magic of the moment
on a glory night,
where the children of tomorrow dream away,
in the wind of change."

Glasgow Border Force Raid Was London Show of Force

The abortive detention of two undocumented Indian men in Glasgow on 13 May has got me thinking. I am not by any means by a conspiracist but there are certain aspects of the attempted raid from which one can only draw disturbing conclusions.

The timing of the Home Office raid, supported by police Scotland, alone is questionable. Usually such raids are carried out early in the morning, when few people are about, and to catch the suspects by surprise. The Glasgow raid took place late morning, with plenty of people about, which is precisely why the people of Pollokshields were able to respond so quickly and so effectively.

Kenmure Street, Pollokshields, falls in the political ward of Glasgow Southside, which just happens to be the constituency of the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon MSP. It also took place while Members of the Scottish Parliament were being sworn in to form the new session of the parliament, just days after the SNP gained the highest number of votes ever cast in a Scottish Parliamentary Election.

Then there is the absolute crassness of attempting to detain two Muslim men on the day chosen, 13 May 2021. The end of the Muslim festival of Ramadan, and the day of Eid Al-Fitr; the holiest day in the Muslim calendar. Detaining the two men in a police van prevented them from joining in prayer on Eid Al-Fitr, which effectively contravened their human rights to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.

All in all, this appears to have been a deliberately-contrived show of force by the UK government agency Border Contol, to prove to those "troublesome Jocks" who is in charge, to humiliate the First Minister, and one which was potentially racist and anti-Islamic.

And it was one which backfired spectacularly, but should not have deserved to do so, for the simple fact it should never have been attempted in that way, on that day of all days. I am an atheist, but I am an atheist who has an enormous respect for the right to freedom of religion for others. And I realise that if I want freedom from religion, then I must equally stand up for freedom of religion. This was one of such instances where I have no choice but to take a stand for the rights of Muslims.

I am not for one moment suggesting that Priti Patel, the UK Home Secretary, and a woman of Hindu Indian-Ugandan immigrant background, deliberately chose the day of Eid Al-Fitr to carry out this raid, but I would say that if she knew it was going to happen on that day, then she should have known better, and should have advised the Border Force officers not to act on that day. If she did not know it was going to take place on Eid Al-Fitr, then that equally calls her competence to hold the post she does into question. At the least, Border Force should have been a great deal more sensitive to the significance or the day, and that they were not does indeed suggest some degree of prejudice.

I do not blame the people of Glasgow for being outraged. They should be, just as all living in Scotland should be. In fact, as a Scot I could not be more proud of the way they rallied around their neighbours, just as Glasgow has always done. It won't, but this was an incident which should go down in the history books of Glasgow as a city, and Scotland as a whole. In it's own way it was every bit as big as the Red Clyde incidents of the early 20th century, and the way a proud city stood up to the brute force of a bullying London government to protect and support their own.

I have nothing but praise for Police Scotland, who were used as a tool by a government which Scotland never voted for, and ordered, possibly against their wishes, to go into Kenmure Street in force. But that the officer in charge ordered the men released and the police to stand down in the interests of public safety was the sensible thing to do. And I have absolutely no doubt that did not go down well with the Border Force agents, or their Westminster bosses.

But most of all the events of Thursday, 13 May 2021, was a supreme example of the power of nonviolent mass protest. By just sitting in the street, and getting under the van holding the two men, the people of Glasgow took a stance against force which required no violence, and which gave the authorities no choice but to buckle.

If Westminster thought that this would bolster unionist feeling in Scotland, they were absolutely mistaken. Their bully-boy tactics had exactly the opposite effect, and openly displayed to Scotland, the UK, Europe, and the world, just how far a London government is willing to go, how Scotland will not put up with it, and underlined just one more reason why Scotland needs to be independent.

There have been a few people commenting about "illegal immigrants" and accusing the Scottish Government of wanting to throw the doors open. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Firstly, the term "illegal immigrant" is a complete misnomer. It is not an offence to enter the UK undocumented, and if it were, then those detained would be treated as criminals. They would be arrested, charged, and tried by a jury of their peers. That simply does not happen. Instead, undocumented people in the UK are detained, processed and assessed by Border Force, and unless they can provide proof of refugee status, they are deported. At no point do charges or trials come into it. It is only where a deportee re-enters the UK undocumented that it becomes an offence. The important point here as many have stated, including the Scottish Justice Secretary Humza Yusaf, "no person is illegal".

Secondly, the position of the Scottish Government in condemning the raid does not say that they want to "throw the doors open". Rather, it is that immigration into Scotland should be a matter for the Scottish Government. Not least because Scotland has a separate law system, and separate police, to England. No-one is saying for one moment that we cannot discuss immigration, nor prevent entry of those who may be undesirable. Rather that Scotland should be solely responsible for who comes into the country, and the only way to possibly achieve that is for Scotland to become fully independent.

SNP, LGBT YOUTH SCOTLAND, STONEWALL SCOTLAND, AND IGLA ARE NOT TRYING TO LOWER THE AGE OF CONSENT

There have been several questionable comments which have come from the recently-formed Alba Party concerning gender. However, few can be more contentious than claims around the Alba Women’s Conference on Saturday, 10 April 2021, which claimed that the SNP were planning to reduce the age of consent in Scotland to 10 years old, and that this was at the behest of LGBT Youth Scotland and Stonewall Scotland.

Denise Findlay, an Alba candidate, posted on Twitter, “Margaret Lynch on queer theory – the next move is to reduce the age of consent to 10 years of age. LGBT youth and Stonewall Scotland have signed up to this and have received over 1 million pounds of Scottish Government funding.”

Margaret Lynch, who apparently originated this comment is another Alba candidate, and one who in the blog Wings Over Scotland on 31 March referred to transgender women as, quote, “crossdressers – but not real women”. Denise Findlay later deleted her Tweet, but not before she had managed to set the heather on fire among the transphobic Twitterati.

What Lynch and Findlay are alluding to is a declaration read out in the United Nations on 9 March 2020 by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), which adopted the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, 25 years after their declaration, commonly known as “the Beijing Declaration”. The declaration, which it’s critics have been very careful to omit it’s origins lie with the UN, has some paragraphs which have been carefully cherry-picked, and taken completely out of context, to claim that the IGLA are promoting paedophilia.

When one looks at these paragraphs, and takes them in context, we can see that far from harming children and adolescents they in fact aim to protect them and to further their individual rights. The passages come from clause 14 in the declaration, with the critics very carefully picking out 14a and 14g, as follows:

14. Respect the rights of all individuals to exercise autonomy over their lives, including their sexualities, identities and bodies, desires and pleasures free from all types of discrimination, coercion and violence, and fully realize sexual and reproductive rights, and ensure bodily autonomy, integrity and sovereignty, by taking the following actions:

a. Eliminate all laws and policies that punish or criminalize same-sex intimacy, gender affirmation, abortion, HIV transmission non-disclosure and exposure, or that limit the exercise of bodily autonomy, including laws limiting legal capacity of adolescents, people with disabilities or other groups to provide consent to sex or sexual and reproductive health services or laws authorizing non-consensual abortion, sterilization, or contraceptive use;

g. End the criminalization and stigmatization of adolescents’ sexuality, and ensure and promote a positive approach to young people's and adolescents’ sexuality that enables, recognizes, and respects their agency to make informed and independent decisions on matters concerning their bodily autonomy, pleasure and fundamental freedoms;

Now, let’s go through this carefully.

“Respect the rights of all individuals to exercise autonomy over their lives, including their sexualities, identities and bodies, desires and pleasures free from all types of discrimination, coercion and violence”

That statement right there speaks of the right to bodily autonomy, and that everybody should be free of, quote, “coercion and violence”. That right away tells us that nobody has the right to coerce or force anyone else against their will, and that includes over their sexualities, identities (which can include gender), and their bodies (which of course can include gender corrective surgery). The declaration goes on to state that it is their aim to “fully realize sexual and reproductive rights, and ensure bodily autonomy, integrity and sovereignty” This again is about autonomy over ones life and body; with the goal being that everyone has the sexual and reproductive rights, which no other person has any right to dictate.

So we come to the part the transphobes are pouncing upon;

“Eliminate all laws and policies that punish or criminalize same-sex intimacy, gender affirmation, abortion, HIV transmission non-disclosure and exposure, or that limit the exercise of bodily autonomy, including laws limiting legal capacity of adolescents, people with disabilities or other groups to provide consent to sex or sexual and reproductive health services or laws authorizing non-consensual abortion, sterilization, or contraceptive use”

Those who are trying to play “GOTCHA!” with the SNP are concentrating upon that line, “including laws limiting legal capacity of adolescents, people with disabilities or other groups to provide consent to sex” to try to make out that this means a lowering of the age of consent – when it does no such thing.

Their argument is that the United Nations defines adolescence being from between 10 to 19 years of age, and there is where the “reduce the age of consent to 10 years of age” claim comes from. In fact, under the UN definition, one may already be classed as an adolescent, but still be beyond the age of consent in many countries, including Scotland, where the age of consent is 16. Can we assume then that if Margaret Lynch and Denise Findlay do not want ‘adolescents’ being able to consent to sex, that while falsely claiming that LGBT Youth, Stonewall Scotland, and the SNP seek to lower the age of consent to 10, they would in fact like it raised to 20 years old? Or would it be farcical of me to make any such claim? As farcical as them attempting to smear two vital LGBT charities and the democratically-elected Scottish Government? Indeed, could it be I’m taking them out of context? Hey, I’m merely playing their game, and they can hardly blame me for jumping the shark and making false accusations in exactly the same way they are.

So we come to paragraph g.

“End the criminalization and stigmatization of adolescents’ sexuality, and ensure and promote a positive approach to young people's and adolescents’ sexuality that enables, recognizes, and respects their agency to make informed and independent decisions on matters concerning their bodily autonomy, pleasure and fundamental freedoms”

Again, here the transphobes are concentrating upon “End the criminalization and stigmatization of adolescents’ sexuality” and are trying to claim that this means removing the protection in law for children, when again, it is saying no such thing. In fact, all this paragraph does is recognise that adolescents do indeed have attractions and sexual longings. Yes, that’s right, Missus, they do – as most parents of teenagers, particularly teenage boys, will tell you. Trust me, that funk you smell in the bedroom of any teenage boy is not just from dirty socks. I sincerely doubt that I was alone when I was a teenager of turning my bedroom into some sort of ‘masturbation furnace’.

You’ll notice that the transphobes are very careful to ignore the rest of paragraph g; the part that averts their rights to make “informed and independent decisions on matters concerning bodily autonomy, pleasure and fundamental freedoms”. I hate to inform the doubters, but your teenage daughters and sons do indeed have sexual longings and fantasies, and they do indeed, gasp, masturbate. Quick! Someone pass Margaret and Denise the smelling salts. They and others can live in ignorance in Gumdrop Castle in Lala Land, and do a Helen Lovejoy by throwing up their hands in horror and shouting “Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children?” all they want, but that does not and never will alter the fact that each and every one of us is a sexual being from puberty onwards – get used to it. Of course, it may be that Margaret Lynch and Denise Findlay never had sexual longings as teenage girls, and never masturbated. To use a well-known Scots phrase, “Aye! Right” (actually, if they didn’t that may explain a lot).

As every adolescent is indeed a sexual being, as you and I are, and were from puberty (deny it all you want – you know I’m telling the truth), they should not be at all stigmatised for that, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity, and they should be accorded the freedoms to explore those aspects of their personalities, free of interference, free of shame, and free of governmental legislation preventing them doing so. This is all the declaration is saying, nothing more.

It most certainly not the “paedophiles charter” some are making it out to be. And actually, by levelling claims of paedophilia, the panic merchants are wrong again. Paedophilia refers only to the sexual attraction to prepubescent children. The term for sexual attraction to underage pubescent adolescents is hebephilia.

The Beijing Declaration absolutely does not propose lowering the age of consent, and it does not remove the protections in law for children, whether adolescent or prepubescent. In fact, in averring the rights of bodily autonomy, it underlines the right of children to protection from those who would form them. Consider that the overwhelming majority of children who are victims of sexual abuse have no bodily autonomy; they are almost always coerced or forced into sexual activities. In law, those under the age of consent are deemed incapable of consenting to sexual activities, so the onus is always upon the adult concerned, and that is why child sexual abuse is always deemed to be statutory rape.

There are of course a tiny, tiny number of adolescents who do indeed initiate sexual congress, either with another underage person, or with an adult, and guess what? The adult is still to blame, and is still committing statutory rape. Why? Because the adult is supposed to be the responsible one, who should know better, and if they give into the demands of child, they are still the ones to blame. So another aspect of the declaration is that children who do initiate sexual contact should not be stigmatised or blamed for that, because guess what? Children often make mistakes, and get themselves into situations they think they can handle, but realise too late that they are in way over their heads. I like the way sexologist Roy Eskapa put this in his book, Bizarre Sex; that a child may think they can drive a car, but if you were to put a child behind the wheel of a car in traffic, they would be horrified (or at the least would very quickly discover they had got themselves into a situation they could not handle).

Child molesters, be they paedophiles or hebephiles, are among the most manipulative of people in the world. They tend to be inadequate adults who seek control over others. There is certainly a sexual aspect to their actions, but this is allied to a need to assert authority over those less able to defend themselves. In this aspect we can see that the child molester, like all abusers, is a bully, and in the nature of the bully, a coward at heart. Needless to say, vulnerable children, perhaps those who lack confidence, or who already suffering some other kind of abuse, are a magnet to such individuals. They will hone in on them, pretend to love them, and then make their move. The Beijing Declaration in fact seeks to protect adolescents and children from such perverts by asserting that they, and they alone, have autonomy over their own lives and their own bodies.

But hey, the Beijing Declaration, in asserting that bodily autonomy is also stating that no-one has any right to dictate the sexual or gender identities of adolescents and children; that no-one has the right to tell them, “You’re NOT trans” or “You’re NOT gay”, or to threaten or coerce them, or indeed subject them to violence. It seems to me that those against the Beijing Declaration have much more in common with child molesters than the very children they claim to be protecting. If they are denying the gender and sexual identities of young people, they are certainly abusing them.

And this is one aspect of this latest rhetoric which I do find disturbing. I have been saying since their formation that the Alba Party is full of transphobes. This I have come to expect. I never for one moment suspected them of also being homophobes, particularly as there are some lesbians in the party, but in attacking LGBT Youth Scotland and Stonewall Scotland in making false claims about IGLA, the attackers are partaking in one of the oldest homophobic tropes going. The argument is that because LGBT Youth Scotland and Stonewall Scotland signed up to IGLA, both of these charities must be in some great conspiracy to lower the age of consent, and make the molestation of children legal.

Should anyone doubt this, I would point them to the Wings Over Scotland blog of 10 April 2020, The Paedophile Charter. In this odious title (with an incorrect title – see point above about hebephilia), the originator of ‘Wings’, Rev Stuart Campbell, makes the point that both LGBT Youth Scotland and Stonewall Scotland are indeed signatories to the IGLA Charter. He then points to a Guardian story from 2009, telling how a then Chief Executive of LGBT Youth Scotland was one of a paedophile ring convicted of 50 charges of sexually abusing young boys. Campbell states, “LGBT Youth Scotland was at the centre of Scotland’s biggest ever paedophile scandal” Not so. The then Chief Executive was, but not the charity. This is putting two and two together to get five. If LGBT Youth Scotland had been at the centre of a paedophile ring, they would have been closed down long ago.

And in case you missed it, the conviction of the men concerned had absolutely nothing to do with gender identity. None of them identified as transgender. They did indeed molest little boys, and the inference here is that they did so because they are gay. Actually, as any sexual therapist who deals with paedophiles will tell you, even those men who prey upon little boys are almost always heterosexual, and many have expressed horror and even anger when a sexual encounter with another adult male has been suggested to them. Note the point again about paedophilia having a control / power dynamic.

But not happy with thus trying to smear two charities, Campbell jumps the shark even further, and makes the point that until 2017, one of LGBT Youth Scotland’s directors was openly gay SNP politician Alyn Smith, MP for Stirling. Campbell, in totally homophobic language even refers to him as ‘Alyn “Daddy Bear” Smith’. Alyn Smith had no part in the 2009 convictions, has never been involved in any criminal case involving children, but the inference here is that because he was a LGBT Youth director, he somehow must be involved.

How Campbell gets away with these vile accusations is beyond me, and it would give me the greatest of pleasure to see LGBT Youth Scotland, Stonewall Scotland, the SNP, and Alyn Smith sue the socks off him.

Margaret Lynch, Denise Findlay, Rev Stuart Campbell and others are trying to build a conspiracy out of nothing, in much the same way that there are people who try to claim that global finance is controlled by the Jews, or that Bill Gates is trying to depopulate the world. And we could just as easily laugh at them and the rest of the Alba Party, were they not so bloody dangerous. They already have followers believing them, and who are attacking LGBT Youth Scotland and Stonewall Scotland. This could do enormous damage to LGBT people – all LGBT people – in Scotland. I tried to warn people for years that the independence movement had a disturbing number of transphobes. Seems I should have been warning them about homophobia as well.

I’m not even convinced that those named above, and others making these false accusations do not know what they are doing, or the potential for damage it has, and in fact, I don’t think they even care. They claim to want to ‘help’ the SNP to get a supermajority, and to work with the SNP, but they seem intent on attacking the SNP at every turn, even if that means throwing Scotland’s LGBT people under the bus.

The twisting of the IGLA / Beijing Declaration seems to say that they want to deny adolescents their right to bodily autonomy, or that any mention of such should never be heard. It’s not unlike the hugely damaging law of Section 28, which outlawed the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools, which made any mention of being gay illegal, and which led to gay / lesbian young people being stigmatised, bullied, made to feel ashamed and guilty for their sexuality, and did indeed destroy many lives. And if they are seeking to deny young people access to sexual / reproductive health and birth control, well we have already seen the effects of that in some ‘abstinence only’ states in the USA, and some other countries; they end up having the highest incidence of teenage pregnancies, and of teenagers contracting STDs.

All in all, it smacks a bit like some authoritarian, right-wing state, which seeks to enforce sexual and gender laws under some religious pretext, that they know what’s best for children and young people, and anything LGBT is ‘sinful’. Is there any proof for this? Well, we are talking about the Reverend Stuart Campbell – that is a ‘reverend’ of the Universal Life Church; an internet organisation with no legal recognition as an official church – so we may be seeing yet another religious bigot appointing himself moral guardian, and trying to enforce his beliefs upon all of us.

Stuart Campbell does not even live in Scotland, but rather Bath, England. It is true that as a supporter of Scottish independence, I do not want legislation in my country dictated from London – and I don’t want it from bloody Bath, or anywhere else outwith Scotland, either.

And if we ever get independence, but that independence ignores the rights of LGBT people, and castigates them, then I should want no part of that. Any independent Scotland must be just and equitable for all who live here. If we leave one person behind, then we fail as a movement, as a people, and as a nation, and that would be a free Scotland not worth having.

As the song goes, “One of us are chained? None of us are free.”

By the way, when asked why she removed the Tweet, Denise Findlay claimed she was the one being bullied.  You couldn't make this shit up.

Have We Entered the Realm of Thoughtcrime?

Baden-Powell Statue

The death in the USA of African American George Floyd at the hands of white police officer Derek Chauvin has seen a number of responses under the banner of “Black Lives Matter”.  Not least of these has been a renewed call to remove the statues of those involved in slavery, and/or the oppression of people of colour, and even other minorities.

Protests have spread worldwide, and one such event in Bristol, England, saw the statue of Edward Colston, an 18^th century slave owner, being torn from its plinth by protestors, dragged through the streets, and dumped in Bristol harbour.  The place where Colston’s statue was dispatched to the harbour was Pero’s Bridge; named after an 18^th century slave, Pero Jones, who was a well-known character in Bristol in his time.  Whether the protestors were aware of the significance of the bridge, or whether it was a complete coincidence remains unknown.

Since then protests in other parts of the UK have taken place, as have statues being sprayed with graffiti.  In one protest in London, a statue of Winston Churchill was so attacked.  However, bizarrely was the Cenotaph, which is the central war memorial for the entire UK.  One man also set light to a Union Flag atop the Cenotaph.  It is true that Winston Churchill was an odious character; a racist, misogynist, anti-Semite, and class elitist, who was responsible for a great number of deaths of unarmed and innocent people.  But the attack upon the statue of the man many see as the victor of the Second World War, allied with the attack upon the Cenotaph, and setting the Union Flag alight, certainly set a great many people against the BLM movement and protests.

Some cities, including London, have responded by stating that they will either remove statues, or where they cannot be removed, plaques explaining the unsavoury past of the characters they represent, which is to be applauded.  At the same time, the authorities claim to have a “hit list” or targeted statues, and one among those was the statue of Lord Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, on Brownsea Island, Poole, where the first Boy Scout camp took place.

The reasons for Baden-Powell’s statue apparently being targeted were things he wrote during his lifetime.  He was blatantly homophobic in his lifetime, admired Adolf Hitler, once advised people to read Mein Kampf, and allegedly was seeking to ally the English Boy Scout movement with the Hitlerjugend in Germany.

Of course, the Scouts never were allied with the Hitler Youth, and had Baden-Powell, who died in 1941, known the enormity of the brainwashing and brutality of that organisation, or indeed the enormity of the horrors of the Nazi regime, which few knew until 1945, then he may well have thought very differently.  As to his homophobia, well it is a well-known phenomena that those who speak out loudest against gays are usually closet cases themselves, and that is almost certainly the case with Robert Baden-Powell, whom many online biographies say was a closeted gay man.

I am not a big fan of Scouting myself, but then, I am not a parent, and I am well aware that many children get a great deal from it, none less than my two dear little great-nephews.  Likewise a friend of mine not only has a son who is very active in the Scouts, but she is very active with the organisation herself.  And I think this is an important point here.  The Scouts of today are no longer the regimented, Empire loyalist organisation they were when I was a boy, and kicked out of the cubs for refusing to swear allegiance to God and Queen, but rather they are a modern, all-inclusive club, which helps to hone children’s social skills, encourages them to achieve, and where all are welcome, including LGBT+ children.

Therefore, to attack a statue of Robert Baden-Powell to me seems a bit silly.  The man himself was never personally responsible for the death or oppression of anyone, but merely wrote some highly questionable opinions.  And this makes me wonder if some protestors are going too far, and have we entered the realm of Thoughtcrime?

There are many people in history who wrote and said many questionable things, but that does not for one moment detract from the great many other things they said, wrote, or did.  During one protest in Edinburgh, a cardboard placard was put around the neck of a statue of David Hume, alleging he was a racist.  Hume, the foremost empiricist and sceptical philosophers of all time, probably did hold views which would be considered racist by modern standards, but given he lived mostly in his native Edinburgh from 1711 to 1776, his experience of anyone of any colour different to his own would have been extremely limited.  Even today, with a population of only 5 million, Scotland simply does not have a large number of ethnic minorities, and in Hume’s day, seeing a black face on the streets of Edinburgh would have been something of a sensation.  Can we then condemn Hume for holding views that could be construed as racist by holding a 21^st century candle up to them?  And do these views somehow suddenly invalidate all the great things one of the fathers of modern philosophy did say and write?

When we try to apply our modern mores to characters of the past, we open up a whole can of worms.  And those on the political left may find that some of their heroes are likewise hardly blameless.

Edinburgh was also the birthplace of Marie Stopes, pioneer of family planning, after whom there are now clinics across the UK, and around the world, which offer family planning information and resources, including abortion.  Therefore, many would see Marie Stopes as a champion of women’s rights, and of a woman’s right to autonomy over her own body, which she indeed was.  Yet Stopes was also a strong believer in and campaigner for Eugenics, and in her 1920 book Radiant Motherhood, she wrote, "inborn incapacity which lies in the vast and ever increasing stock of degenerate, feeble-minded and unbalanced who are now in our midst and who devastate social customs. These populate most rapidly and tend proportionately to increase and these are like the parasite upon the healthy tree sapping its vitality"  Marie Stopes’ answer to this was "when Bills are passed to ensure the sterility of the hopelessly rotten and racially diseased, and to provide for the education of the child-bearing woman so that she spaces her children healthily, our race will rapidly quell the stream of the depraved, hopeless and wretched lives which are at present increasing in proportion in our midst"  So in other words, Marie Stopes believed in the enforced sterilisation, “by X-ray”, of women she deemed to be “degenerate, feeble-minded and unbalanced”. and referred to as a “prolific depravity”.

But let’s up the ante here.  Marie Stopes read Mein Kampf, and as a result started a correspondence with Adolf Hitler, sharing views on Eugenics and the “master race”, and even sent him poems.  This admittedly was however before the Nazis actually outlawed family planning, closed down clinics first in Germany and later across Europe, and even executed doctors who offered family planning, contraceptives, or abortions.

Do we then take down the blue plaque on Edinburgh’s High Street that marks the birthplace of Marie Stopes?  Do we rename all of the Marie Stopes International clinics?  Or do we recognise that she had some very mistaken ideas, but ultimately her 1918 work Married Love was a seminal moment, which recognised that women did indeed enjoy sex, that they could enjoy sex without the worry of falling pregnant, and that Marie Stopes International has helped and continues to help educating and empowering countless women about bodily autonomy?

Eugenics was a product of its time, and grew out of mistaken ideas from the findings of Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species.  People such as Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, and the economist Herbert Spencer, first man to coin the phrase, “Survival of the fittest”, misunderstood natural selection to mean that only the strongest survive; a belief that became known as Social Darwinism.  Galton particularly became the father of Eugenics, and it had many followers across the political spectrum.  Another firm adherent of Eugenics was George Bernard Shaw, who in 1910 at a lecture for the Eugenics Education Society stated, "A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people's time to look after them."  Likewise, Bertrand Russell in ICARUS, or the Future of Science, wrote "But probably, in time, opposition to the government will be taken to prove imbecility, so that rebels of all kinds will be sterilized. Epileptics, consumptives, dipsomaniacs and so on will gradually be included; in the end, there will be a tendency to include all who fail to pass the usual school examinations. The result will be to increase the average intelligence; in the long run, it may be greatly increased."  H.G. Wells, in the American Journal of Sociology (Vol 10, 1904), wrote, "It is in the sterilization of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies."

Do we then take down the statues of George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, and H.G. Wells?   Do we discount all the great things they did write?  Should we indeed topple the Martian Tripod sculpture in Woking, which represents one of the alien spacecraft from War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells?

These things are never easy, and it may surprise many on the left to discover that many of their heroes are just as guilty of questionable comments as those considered to be heroes of the political right.  Even Karl Marx is not immune.  A rabid anti-Semite who in his 1844 pamphlet On the Jewish Question, wrote, "What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. … Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist."  Marx also thought little of Mexicans, whom he considered lazy and feckless; “Is it a misfortune that magnificent California was seized from the lazy Mexicans who did not know what to do with it?”

In 1977 the band The Stranglers released one of their most successful songs, No More Heroes.  Songwriter Hugh Cornwell later said of the meaning in the song, “Don’t have heroes.  Be your own hero.”  The message of this is that whatever heroes we have will ultimately let you down.  This is a truth as much as it is for the left as it is for the right.  In recent years Mohandas Gandhi has been exposed as an abusive husband.  John Lennon likewise horribly mistreated firstly Cynthia Powell, and later Yoko Ono.  Both of these may mar forever the memory of these men, but it does not for one moment discredit their nonviolent philosophy.  And just how happy would the left be with someone pulling down a statue of John Lennon or Mohandas Gandhi?

Removing statues and plaques, and renaming streets is by no means a new idea.  Back to Edinburgh, there was once a statue of the 16^th century leader of the Protestant Reformation, John Knox, outside the New College of Divinity.  If you’ve seen the movie Chariots of Fire, you will have seen actor Ian Charleston, playing Eric Liddel, saluting it as he runs past on his way to his studies.  Today it is no longer there, but can still be seen inside St Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile.  The statue was removed due to the venomous anti-Catholic views and actions, and which still fuel the sectarianism that is the scourge and shame of Scotland to this day.  Yet ironically, Knox himself was once exiled from Scotland, which at one time saw him serve on a ship as a galley slave.

I am all for removing statues, plaques, and street names of those whose actions have directly led to the suffering and death of innocents, and I am not for one moment convinced that retaining them would make us forget history.  The absence of statues of Hitler in Germany does not mean we have forgotten the Nazis of World War II.  But where a statue cannot be removed, then there should be plaques put up to tell the whole truth about the individual involved.  But this must be the truth, thoroughly researched, and absolutely accurate.

But it needs more than this.  There needs to be a more holistic approach, whereby children in schools are taught the whole truth.   For the UK, this means teaching children the absolute truth about British imperialism, including its deficits, as well as its benefits.  Too long children have been taught that Britain built an empire upon which the sun never set, where the white man went out and educated and civilised the “ignorant savages”.  Likewise, it is way past time that schools in the USA started telling the truth about their slave-owning Founding Fathers, or indeed, the genocide and continuing mistreatment of Native American peoples, which no president, not even mixed-race Barack Obama, has ever properly addressed.

But the moment we start discounting the artistic works of people who have not personally hurt others, we go down a dangerous road indeed.  We need to recognise that some people were a product of their times, and shared the uninformed ideas of those times, which we cannot condemn in the 21^st century, and even where some views have been objectionable, that does not detract from their other works.

And as Hugh Cornwell said, perhaps we need to stop having heroes - and start being our own heroes.