A Crime to be Old?

I don't want to sound like a columnist for the "Daily Mail", but feel that I must comment upon the light sentencing of the two teenage killers of the late  Ekram Haque, 67, who was attacked in August 2009 in Tooting as he left a mosque with his 3 year old grand-daughter. He died from his injuries a week later. His killers,
Leon Elcock, 16, and Hamza Lyzai, 15, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in June at the Old Bailey.
Elcock was detained for four-and-a half years and Lyzai for three-and-a-half. That's 8 years between them. Not much of an exchange for the death of an innocent man, a small child traumatised and a family devastated. Both Elcock and Lyzai will be back on the streets before their 21st birthdays. No wonder Mr Haque's son Arfan, 35, said outside court: "I thought justice has not been served today. I have been really let down." In that, I must agree - in fact, we have all been let down.
    But there is another, more sinister, angle to all this: Elcock, with another youth, had taken part in another attack on old people, and was on bail for this offence when he killed Mr Haque. It seems that a couple in their 70s, Jasumati and Jushbhai Patel, asked the boys not to sit on their wall, and were then punched and stamped upon in their own home.For youths like Elcock, then, the elderly are fair targets for violence. This is worrying, because, even among the more violent tearaways that I knew in my youth, thuggery against old people was regarded as contemptible and cowardly. Elcock and his ilk do not seem to subscribe to this belief. Perhaps they see being old as a greater crime? Photographs of individuals can tell a story - if not the whole story. The photographs of Elcock and Lyzai below suggest a story to me - one without a happy ending.

Working Class Victim or Just Plain Evil?

Like most people who were shocked at the gun spree of Raoul Moat, and like the Prime Minister, I am sickened at the setting up of a Facebook tribute (twice) to this thug, rapist and murderer. What I want to ask here is: why do people want to pay tribute to a man who has committed such heinous deeds? George Galloway, ex- MP, offered this explanation, quoted by the BBC:
He said: "I think it is a cry from the heart from poor, white, working class, unemployed people who are drifting on to dangerous shores.
"They hate the government, they hate the police, they hate society and feel left behind."
While I accept that many people who belong to what was once described by sociologists (do we still have any?) as "the unskilled working class", may feel abandoned, this does not explain (still less excuse) Moat's murder of an innocent man, blinding of a police officer, or Moat's well-documented abuse of women. Evil deeds are evil deeds, and to try to justify them in neo-Marxist terms is totally reprehensible.

Jonathan Ross - a Cultural Icon?

I can just imagine the response to the question above! Mr Ross seems capable of dividing opinion, but even his admirers would baulk at that proposition. But I'll come to that.
   In this week's "Radio Times", Mark Lawson (Radio 4) and Quentin Letts (Daily Mail), take widely differing views on the lad from Leytonstone. Mr Lawson says that Ross: "...was a fresh, irreverent TV natural who changed British broadcasting". Mr Letts, on the other hand, says that Ross: "...has long embodied the predictable, sarcastic silliness of so many baby-boomers. The BBC is well shot of him."
  Both men make telling points for and against "Wossie", but I think that both have missed something about him that is highly pertinent. JR is a shrewd operator who likes to come out on top. He picks his targets with care and is careful never to upset the right people. Like a playground bully, he only ever attacks easy targets, such as Mrs Thatcher, with his smutty questioning of David Cameron. Then there was his sexist humiliation of Gwyneth Paltrow and Keeley Hawes and his (and Russell Brand's) notorious baiting of Andrew Sachs over his granddaughter. None of these people were any threat to JR, which goes some way to explain why he felt free to insult them.
    And yet - Ross had no scruples about appearing in a programme from Buckingham Palace, where he unctuously (and nauseatingly) fawned about the Queen. Also, as Quentin Letts points out: "...Mr Sarcastic was a soft touch for Hollywood PR agents." As the old saying goes, JR knew on which side his bread was buttered. He is no liberal iconoclast, as far as I can see, nor is he a chirpy East End baby boomer. I think he is well aware of what he is doing, and perhaps his excesses are carefully prepared moves in preparation for something else - like a move to ITV. In short, I think both Lawson and Letts are wrong about JR; he is a cynical opportunist who will stop at nothing to get what he wants - even to the extent of harassing a harmless old man like Andrew Sachs.
  But is he a cultural icon? Well, yes, he is in a way. He is a rich man who stands as an example of what can be achieved by self-promotion, grovelling and being nasty to people. No wonder so many young people believe they can acquire fame and fortune without hard work.