DG falls on sword, but will Schofield fall off his sofa?

The Director General of the BBC George Entwistle has resigned after only 54 days in the job.

He committed the Hari Kiri step too late for the evening news, so many of us switched over to the BBC News channel and missed the start of the Festival of Remembrance. You'd have thought that the DG would have tried harder to have his resignation statement carried live during the news on his stations own main channel.

His crime was being in charge when Newsnight hinted at but did not name, nor display a list of names, anyone in a story that hinted that a high ranking Conservative politician of the Thatcher era may have been involved in child sexual abuse. The Newsnight team had also failed to show the victim the correct picture of the person who they felt that they had collared their guy.

This was on the back of failing to air the investigation into Jimmy Savile at the end of last year, not on Entwistle's watch, although the fall-out was.

This does raise the question about the Good Morning sofa over on ITV. On Friday Eamon Holmes was filling in for Phillip Schofield. But what if ITV bosses need someone who will not fall for internet speculation, produce it in front of a guest without checking, foolishly twist it towards camera. It needs someone used to dealing with live television as Schofield did as the continuity link of Children's Television all those years ago. Who could be a long term, cuddly replacement that fits the chat remit. Someone that could bounce of Holly Willoughby, be a favourite of the audience and the guests would relax with.

I give you my potential replacement.

Dave paedophiles are not a subset of gay men

Update I was not going to post this until I saw this by Tom Chivers in The Telegraph and then heard the way this was reported on the evening news.

Phillip Schofield may have ambushed David Cameron with a list of suspected paedophiles on This Morning but it is the PM's immediate response that this somewhat startling.

"I am worried this could turn into a witch hunt particularly against people who are gay.

"I've heard all sorts of names being bandied around and what then tends to happen is that everyone sits around and speculates about people some of who are alive and some of who are dead."

He did this without even looking at the names. Now if he was concerned merely about it becoming a witch hunt that would have been a fine response. But why did he add the caveat "who are gay"? Indeed until it was raised by David Cameron this morning nobody was linking the latest peadophilia with the gay community, there were a few individual cases but it wasn't so strongly linked.

The fact that the Prime Minister actually hesitated as soon as he said especially does seem to think that maybe his brain did try and catch on from his saying what came after he'd started with the caveat. Maybe his political brain kicked in, but it was too late he had already said especially. Where could he go after including that?

Not all of the victims of this high profile paedophile ring that are coming forward are male. But the linking of gay men to the accusation of paedophilia by being at the front (or indeed anywhere) in the Prime Minister's response does nothing to pull gay men away from the stigma and finger pointing that has historically been the case. It is often used by people opposed to any LGBT equality, especially the teaching of it in schools. Remember that Cameron himself voted for the retention of Section 28.

Does this 'slip' of the tongue actually reveal the true feelings of the Prime Minister about the LGBT community? Does the inclusion of this caveat actually reveal that he is not actually as comfortaable with LGBT equality as he would like for political expediency to make out.

One thing that is worrying is that by making this connection on national television David Cameron has actually thrown that image, that link back into people's minds. He may have tried to prevent a witch hunt but his misspeaking may very well have created one of his own.

Yes the speculation on the net about names can be a witch hunt, but that is not exclusive to one sexual orientation. The victims don't fit the narrowing of that definition of a witch hunt. So in mathematical terms this Venn diagram is not true.

What we do know from case histories is that men and women, straight and gay prey on underage victims.

This is the actual representation of the issue, though not to scale.

I spent a long time today musing over the rightness of posting this. As I said David Cameron was quite right not to support any witch hunt over the paedophiles that are being used. Indeed the news are highlighting not on the issue of the witch hunt but on it being about a witch hunt on gay people. Therefore my concern that more people will link paedophilia with homosexuality has as a result of Cameron's words already increased.

Thanks Dave for putting the positive message from the LGBT community back slightly all because of six words you did not need to include in your rebuttal of this issue. Having heard some comments from some of the This Morning audience while out earlier some people are talking about the link which isn't there already.

Whether he intended to or not, unprompted David Cameron went on daytime TV and linked paedophilia with homosexuality.  He took it too far and the response in some quarters will be a return to linking the two.

Update I have noticed that the comments this morning have given Nick Griffen something to rant about inaccurately (warning this is the only time I will link to a Griffen Tweet).

So Tory Bear Describe a Typical Paedophile?

The disgusting and thoroughly uncuddly Tory Bear has made a tweet too far. During the Gordon Brown interview with Piers Morgan he tweeted. "Brown looks like paedo".

(I see that Tory Bear has deleted the post put I'd taken a sceen print in case he deleted without apology, no apology so here it is)



Of course of those involved in acts of child abuse 30% are as likely to be family members not just the strangers you'd meet on the street. Up to 20% of offences may be perpetrated by women rather than men.

Maybe in light of this Tory Bear would like to tell us what sort of new detection process, maybe facial profiling, he has come up with that would help the police, or is that Dave's SS, to round up all the paedophiles in the country by sight alone?

Indeed this is the blogger who wants to take the Tory spotlight and push their agenda front and centre but with such language and reaction he's really just a low life and he's proven it again.

However, if this is the level of Conservative Future, maybe it isn't that much of a surprise that Dave doesn't want actually Tory students behind him when he's making a speech. But then the Conservative Future Scotland Chair thinks it's OK to lie about their provenance "it's called PR". Oh dear the young Tories seem to not understand when the people don't trust politicians to start PR needs to be truthful, honest and decent.

PS I wonder if the same action from un high in Conservative Central Office will befall Tory Bear's use of language. Which IMHO is actually worse as it is in a political sense that that which brought the heavy hand down on Cardiff Blogger last November.



Update 19:00 I see that Harry Cole is trying to excuse his tweet on drink and twitter mixing. Only problem is that even sober he still keeps putting into writing his thoughts and they haven't changed.

Vactican Buck Passing In Extremis

The latest comment from the Vatican on the Church's child sex abuse scandal is attempting to shift blame to the gay community at large rather than at the priesthood (hattip to Daniel Edward Pitt @myinfamy). It states that it is caused by gay men preying on teenage boys not paedophiles.

Ignore for a start that paedophilia is the sexual attraction to children and therefore is gender non-specific. That is just a spin that the Church appears to be trying to say somehow that being sexually attracted to an opposite sex child is somewhat less debauched.

Now there may well be 80-90% of the paedophile instances in the Catholic Church are against boys, but those that automatically by definition place the blame on the gay community. The fact is do all the girls that have been abused by priests admit to it. Is the fact that they may have been deflowered by the church maybe something that they don't want to report. Is Thorn Birds merely a make believe or is that going on too? After all we know that there are occasions of priests fathering children with their house keepers. So is it maybe all down to the willingness and availability of personnel, housekeepers or alter boys?

The fact that the Catholic Church indoctrinates their priest that they are to be celibate and abstain from sex from women folk could well led to a deep outpouring of sexual pent up anger. Also does the restriction of the right to marriage also attract a certain type of person to the priesthood? Is it possible that the churches latest statement throws up a whole chicken or the egg kind of situation that they are not prepared to address.

Now I'm not denying that there have been instances of child abuse in other churches, I know there have been cases. Nor am I denying that some of those weren't carried out by men against boys. But they have admitted that 1.5 to 5% of priest have been abused in underage sexual abuse, this isn't accounting for affairs of an adult nature. The question does arise if the vow of celibacy a causal effect of all this?

Trying to shift the attention to gay men also doesn't negate the effect that those men were ordained and took Holy Orders in the Church. They were under its jurisdiction and supervision. We know that on occasion they were not dismissed but merely moved over elsewhere with the same responsibility, accessibility and opportunity. Trying to dust it under the carpet and attempt to shift the focus doesn't negate the Churches responsibility for the issue.