Obit: RIP Sir Jimmy Savile of BBC [2011]

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 25 Oct 12 - 05:50 AM

LOL Al!

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 Oct 12 - 07:29 PM

No the cigar was a clue to the fact he was a big turd. It was symbolism.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 24 Oct 12 - 01:37 PM

I've often wondered about that cigar Al. Was it do you think a Freudian symbol of his excited state? I don't feel he would've been particularly interested in folk clubs - not trendy enough!

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 Oct 12 - 12:52 PM

Put it like that Eliza, you couldn't really blame Jimmy Saville for creeping up on you two, with his big cigar.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 24 Oct 12 - 11:39 AM

Nice one, Eliza. That was very funny!

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 24 Oct 12 - 10:56 AM

Touche Eliza!

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 24 Oct 12 - 10:40 AM

Progamme 2 At The Folk Club

Lizzie: Gosh what a lot of people here tonight!
Eliza: Yes, I'm going to feel a bit hot in my Girl Guide uniform!
Lizzie: Shall we get some lemonade? Should cool us down a bit.
Eliza: Ooh yes! Who's that person over there? I haven't seen him before, he looks a bit grumpy.
Lizzie: Oh, he's called Al. Don't talk to him, he doesn't believe a word you say. He thinks all girls our age are frustrated and repressed!
Eliza: What does frustrated mean Lizzie?
Lizzie: I think it means we aren't having sex.
Eliza: What's sex, Lizzie?
Lizzie: No idea. Now shut up, they're just about to sing Puff the Magic Dragon!
Eliza: Ooh goodie gumdrops!

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 Oct 12 - 09:43 AM

Lizzie and Eliza - a sitcom about two nice girls in the swinging 60's
(another gentle , totally unfunny comedy probably by Carla Lane)

Scene One Lizzieand Liza's swinging groovy pad. Janis Ian's At Seventeen is playing on the radio. the television is on with the ound turned down - it is showing Ken Russell's film about Debussy, showing a girl doing a striptease to La mer. Outside the window is a Vietnam demonstration going on. The American flag is being burned.

Lizzie and Eliza are there obviously.

Lizzie; I say Eliza that Tony Blackburn doesn't half play some dreary music, what on earth is this one about?
Eliza; Oh its about this girl and she's frustrated..
Lizzie: I can't understand that, i'm never frustrated Except when homework's really hard, and i can't finish it before bedtime, or if they've run out of peardrops..
Lizzie: never mind, Blue peter's in abit - that will cheer us both up. Its like you say though, I never seen anyone frustrated in Middlesex.
Elize: Blue peter How super! Princess Anee is a special guest with her wizard new pony!
Lizzie: Yes and the funny little man with a dog is making things with toilet rolls
Eliza; (sighs) gosh! Its so much fun having so much freedom in this permissive society.

(Next week The Nice Girls visit a folk club)

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 24 Oct 12 - 08:54 AM

Excellent poem!
Watching the never-ending and terrible saga on the BBC News last night, I was squirming at the clips of Savile strutting about with his cigar, putting his arms round various youngsters. Yuk. In the end I just couldn't watch. He was so obviously a weirdo and no-one guessed except those who actually knew but winked, nudged and did nothing, and those he abused and assaulted. Heads will now roll! (I hope)

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Black Belt Caterpillar Wrestler
Date: 24 Oct 12 - 07:51 AM

HERO TO ZERO.
©R.S.Madge 2012

Hero to zero in twenty-four hours,
As the news blogs and tweets round the world.
Hero to zero and once he was ours,
As the tissue of lies is unfurled.
For once he was noble, once he was kind,
The ears they were deaf and the eyes they were blind.
Now they're digging for dirt and it's easy to find,
And it too late for justice to serve.

His headstone is shattered, his grave has no mark
And his family disown him for good.
The newspapers sink him downwards into the dark
Fool's gold vanished now as it should.
How often in history has this tale been told,
Of a hero debase when the real truth is told?
With the victims left sobbing outside in the cold.
And there's no way for justice to serve.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 21 Oct 12 - 08:17 AM

Well thank goodness for you Lizzie, cos at least one person now agrees that Middlesex was as I described. Your childhood days sound very similar to mine, and I well remember the playground things we enjoyed, including the witch's hat. I had a fat friend called Susan who got stuck going down the slide (aged about sixteen) We had to prise her off it. We were always climbing trees and securing a rope at the very top to swing on. Did you used to go 'over the top' on the swing? We did, standing up, I don't know how we didn't break our necks! And not a single thought of Sex in our heads.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 21 Oct 12 - 08:13 AM

No, dear two Lizzies. I am not hallucinating (although many of us were)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swinging_London

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Lizz
Date: 21 Oct 12 - 07:08 AM

And yes, Pedantic Ones, I do know that Enid didn't write 'Swallows & Amazons' ;0)

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Lizzie Cornish
Date: 21 Oct 12 - 07:03 AM

As you know, Richard, I grew up in Pinner, lived there from when I was six months old until I was 27, when I moved all the way to Ruislip. My Dad worked in Edgware, just down the road from Stanmore, my ex-husband grew up in Willesden...so I know Middlesex very well.

I was born in the mid 50s and at no time was where I grew up a riotous place where couples were having sex on the street, in the park or even throwing their keys in, behind closed doors.

My teenage years were very happy, apart from my parents marriage going through hell when my mother imploded, probably in part due to the sexual abuse she had kept locked away inside her for so very long and which stayed there until she was around 60 years old when she suddenly spoke of it, as I've described above.

I went to the roughest school in the area and none of my friends had the kind of teenage years that you seem to remember either.

We'd spent hot summer days watching the cricket in the park, boys and girls together, talking about everything under the sun...Often we'd go to the park itself and while away the hours on the Witches Hat Roundabouts, the long swings and all the other things which older kids could also play on, unlike today's park for toddlers and little children only..

We'd play tennis, go swimming, go round to each other's houses for coffee, tea and chats, listen to music....Holidays shared with friends in the Lake District, with their parents too, beaches and laughter...

And Enid Blyton as well, Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden, The Railway Children, Love Story and so much more...

I bought a compendium of The Twins At Mallory Towers a few years back, at a car boot sale and sat in the sun reconnecting with the characters Enid created...The Famous Five, The Secret Seven...and of course the books of Swallows & Amazons too, along with the films..

Happy days, surrounded by family and friends..

Older days of going to gigs with friends, where the boys still opened the doors for the girls, where we girls (and very few boys) EVER got drunk....and women rarely even walked into a pub on their own either, usually they were always with a group,which more often than not, was made up of boys and girls...

Our heads weren't filled with video horrors, or computer killing games..We dreamed of our future, knowing it was attainable, to get married, to have a home and a family..unlike so many young people today who feel they will NEVER have a home of their own or ever be able to support a family...just constant working in a world where there is no support for them in harsh times....

We didn't long to 'escape' from home, for home was home and we were happy there...Of course there WERE unhappy families, always have been, always will be, but in the main, most of my friends remained at home until they got married and very few went to University, unlike today where it's almost compulsory to assume that's where you go next on The Corporate Conveyer Belt of Life and Lunacy...

So, whether you choose to believe it or not, those days DID exist...and they existed for very many of us. Not all, I appreciate, but for the majority, back then..

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 21 Oct 12 - 05:47 AM

Well, I give up! There's no more I can add. It was all exactly as I say, and I was indeed a virgin as were all (yes ALL) my friends right up until we all left the area for Uni or college, and after. My town was quite suburban but there were fields all around and a farm nearby.
I don't think I'll post any more, as it isn't very nice to be doubted.
I have my faults but lying isn't one of them.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 21 Oct 12 - 05:25 AM

Elsewhere Eliza speaks of going up to Edinburgh University in autumn 1967. Since I took a year out to work in industry before going up to Nottingham at the same time that makes her my age or slightly younger. I cannot envisage where she would have found the idyllic agrarian pre-consumer-society Middlesex of which she speaks in the mid-to-late 60s.

Middlesex was largely suburban by the 1930s, and indeed some parts were distinctly urban - Edmonton, Tottenham, Hornsey, Willesden, Acton, Brentford and Southall standing out in this respect.

Pinner was a noted hotbed of sophistication by the 60s. Remember (later) "the Sinner from Pinner" (actress Jane Marsh)? There was a distinctly sophisticated and cosmopolitan society in Stanmore, largely then concentrated on Stanmore and Canons Park synagogue. Nowadays Stanmore has overwhelmingly affluent Christian, Shia Muslim, Hindu, Jain, Jewish and Catholic communities, including its local Synagogue, Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue on London Road (which has the largest membership of any single synagogue in Europe), an Islamic Centre, KSIMC Of London (Hujjat) and new Hindu Temple on Wood Lane.


Middlesex simply was not as Eliza depicted it. There may have been small enclaves of relative poverty, deprivation, and repression but that was not the norm.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 20 Oct 12 - 01:49 PM

Anyway, to get away from this interesting diversion and back to Savile, a quote from "Private Eye's" "Heir of Sorrows" column, dated December 1990:

....Jimmy Savile, a man who had devoted his life to the welfare of others, especially the young....Charles was bewitched by the great man's informality, charm and infectious enthusiasm. He leaned over and spoke earnestly to the newly en-knighted philanthropist.

"Fascinating, you really must meet Diana"

Sir James looked momentarilly puzzled. "Is that your daughter, your Maj?"

Charles shook his head. "No, no, my wife".

"No thank you very much your Maj. Bit old for me. That's not Jim's scene at all".

What could he mean? Sometimes these holy men spoke in riddles.....


Hmmmmm....

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 20 Oct 12 - 01:42 PM

Still sounds more like the late 40s/ early 50s than the 60s to me. We too were out in all weathers with no supervision, but your memories really do sound more like those of a primary school child than something that persisted into late teens.

We too were very ordinary...there were one or two people in my school who seemed to lead very sheltered (not in the weather sense!) lives, but they were typically children of Salvation Army or other very strongly religious parents, and very much in the minority.

I can believe that non-association between boys and girls was the norm possibly up to age 13 or (pushing it) 14, but I do find it incredible that you say that it extended to late teens and even uni in your peer group. I suspecrt thwerer was stuff going on all around you thast you were unaware of!

I can't think of anyone I knew at uni except for 3 or 4 members of the Christian Union, who was still a virgin after the end of the first term.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 19 Oct 12 - 06:53 AM

Thank you SRS. No, we didn't have a TV. My father didn't want one. Many of my friends didn't either. A lady called Poppy down the road had one for her two small sons, and (very rarely) we watched the odd children's programme at teatime there, but only once in a blue moon. And yes we DID still enjoy the comics and I even read the Famous Five books today! Very comforting they are too. 'A sheltered life'? No, we weren't sheltered in the least, we went out in all weathers and all hours everywhere with no adult supervision at all. Most of the time our parents hadn't the least idea where we were. We got up to some dangerous and silly things too, like all children. And all my schools, primary and secondary were co-ed. The boys were as sport-mad as us, and we just didn't associate with eachother. They did their things and we did ours. It seems that true innocence like that is incredible to many of you. Well, what can I say? We weren't Amish or even terribly religious, just very ordinary. Even at Uni in Edinburgh, I spent a lot of my time studying of course, and working as a cleaner and a part-time Nanny for a Swiss family, horse-riding in the Pentland hills, ice-skating at Murrayfield and many activities with the Church and Folk Club. Still no sex!! I expect now there'll be yet more strident objections and disbelief. But it was so.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Oct 12 - 01:30 AM

She described a modest household and didn't have a television. That doesn't seem so incredible. My family in the US didn't get a televison until the early 1960s.

SRS

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 10:45 AM

Well I was quite prepared to believe in Eliza's enclave of good behaviour in Middlesex in the 60's till I had a bit of a think. It just can't be true that was a part of the home counties where there were "no TVs" in the 60's. I can credit she lived in a no TV household herself, but not that that was the cultural norm. Maybe in Amish teritory, but not in Middlesex. Even on Exmoor we had TVs in the 50's(to watch the coronation in 53, to be specific), never mind the 60's. I remember my uncle buying a TV in the early 60's, but he was laughing at himself for doing it so late in the day, long after everyone else had one.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Jim'll fuck it
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 10:31 AM

Richard, you know it's ungentlemanly to ask a lady her age -


errrmmm.. unless she looks young enough to be a chap's granddaughter
and he wants to stay off the sex offenders list.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 10:01 AM

Amen, Rob. I notice Eliza has given no dates despite my request. Perhaps her experiences (or, rather, absence of them) were in the 50s. It sounds much more likely.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 09:08 AM

Eliza,

All I can say is that you and your friends led a very much more sheltered life than did the people I associated with (and from what Richard, The Leveller and others have said, more sheltererd than theirs).

True, there wasn't the sexualisation in the media, or computers, but no TVs? I was from a distinctly working class background and we got our first TV in about 1960. I'd done with Enid Blyton by the time I was about 8, and I can't conceive of *any* of my contemporaries reading her into their teens, or even into double figures. We'd mostly done with the Beano or Dandy by the time we went to secondary school, but some people read The Eagle beyond primary school.

Our teachers were *mostly* very correct, but there was a coterie of young, more "bohemian" ones, who called us by our nicknames and tried to be "mates" with us. There were affairs between male teachers and 6th form girls, and, from what people like Joan Bakewell and other women journalists of a similar age have been writing in the media recently, this was far from uncommon, and tacitly accepted.

We were getting served in pubs (or the taller ones of us were, anyway) by 14 or 15, no problem. Landlords were more concerned back then with turnover than underage drinking. I remember on a school trip to Ambleside, a group of 13 year old girls from another school staying in the same youth hostel asking us to buy them some cider from a pub "off" sales (we were 14) and us all then sitting by the lakeside getting so bladdered that one of the girls wet herself.

Not sure if you were at a single sex school, but both my first "proper" girlfriend and I were at (different) mixed Grammars and the undercurrent of hormones and sex was there in both schools from early teens. There was snogging behind the bike sheds from a very early age and quite a lot of fumbling about.

At scout/guide jamoborees, despite heavy policing from the leaders and separate tent areas for scouts and guides, most tents spent at least part of the night "mixed" (we practiced our "woodcraft" in getting from male to female camping areas unobserved). I'd done with scouts at 15 so that was definitely early teens, and the girls were just as keen to mix the tents up as the boys were.

I'm not disbelieving your account, but can't help thinking you must have inhabited an enclave of 1940s attitudes while most of the rest of us were hurtling into the 60s at full speed!

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 06:54 AM

I don't believe Middlesex was any different to many of the other home counties in those days. As Lizzie correctly states, there was none of the semi-pornographic media-generated stuff bombarding us, or sexy merchandise to buy ( if we had had the money, which we didn't!). As there were no TV's or computers etc we were very happy to read the Beano or Dandy comic (which I did, right up until I left home at eighteen) and listen to The Navy Lark or Educating Archie on the radio. I read a lot, mainly classics and even Enid Blyton (yes, as a teenager). Our teachers were a very correct and moral lot. Sex education was just biological, involving study of animals and then a 'period talk' by a nurse for us girls. I can honestly say we were happy and free, doing all the daft things youngsters do, climbing trees, playing at the farm up the road, piling onto one bike and wobbling around, riding bareback at the stables, going about on a pair of stilts. We all wore either baggy jodphurs smelling of horses or 'slacks' in thick twill, and polo neck jumpers knitted by our mums. In summer it was cotton skirts (long, not mini) a blouse and short white socks. I had a pony tail in an elastic band and kirby grips, and didn't care a pin what I looked like. My mum tried to keep us tidy. If all this is incredible to some people, I'm sorry, but it was exactly like that. And I wish with all my heart the youngsters of today could enjoy the same innocence for as long as we did. Sex is for much later, not while one is still an immature child.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 06:39 AM

Ah, but as you say, Lizzie: it wasn't extreme sex; it was only middle sex.

(There is the old joke about kilted Highlanders marching thru some foreign city, and a bystander asking if they were the Middlesex Regiment.)

~M~

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 06:08 AM

It's the 'sex' bit at the end of it....very titilating to 13 year old boys back then, so it seems....

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 05:56 AM

What is it about Middlesex?, where I grew up also ~~ lived off Golders Green Road, 7+ years at Hendon County School. Is there some concealed implication in the very name of that no-longer-extant borough, I wonder?

~M~

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 05:51 AM

Richard, I grew up in fecking Middlesex. For GAWD SAKE, stop it!

OK, so you were a randy 13 year old, but trust me on this one, I know many, MANY who weren't...and Eliza is absolutely correct, in that sex was far from our minds back then, for we were way too busy still being children.

Your hormones kicked in early, but that doesn't mean everyone's did...Most importantly of all though we weren't surrounded by images of sex everywhere, nor an internet filled with porn at the touch of a button, nor saturated with sex on TV in the most blatant and often brutal manner...

What many young girls DID dream of was LOVE! Yes, I know, something that drives you nuts, but we did have discussions about weddings and love and boys and love and music and love and films and love.....

We cried our eyes out over Love Story, then went home and dreamt of more Love....

We didn't dream of the Kama Sutra, nor stare at our teachers in an odd way because they'd spoken to us about Oral Sex, as they DIDN'T do this!

We had half an hour of sex education, boys with a male teacher, girls with a female teacher, and my teacher looked soooo uncomfortable. She talked about Love and the ultimate expression of love, sharing your bodies....We didn't stick condoms on bananas, nor talk about anal intercourse, nor any of the other somewhat dodgy things teachers are made to discuss with their pupils these days....

We have done SUCH damage...and those with no emotions, who focus and identify ONLY with sex, and NOT with Love, are to blame. There are many out there who cannot stand emotions, nor emotional people, so they have reduced the Glorious Feeling of Love to a mere bodily function which can be 'fed' with anyone at anytime, anywhere......

BRING BACK LOVE!!

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 05:22 AM

I believe you Eliza, although I had several girl-friends from the age of 15 or so, sex was definitely "off the menu" (apart from a bit of occasional fumbling, what used to be quaintly described as 'light petting'), and I only knew of one girl who got pregnant while still at school (one of my mates was responsible for the impregnation). It was the scandal of both schools, she was suspended and home-tutored until after the baby was born, and it was shipped off for adoption straight away.

And likewise, the idea promoted by the gutter press that every teenager in Britain is shagging like a rabbit nowadays is simply not true. In a dozen or so years working in the Youth Service In the '80s and '90s i was involved in many discussions with groups of young people, and individuals, on various sex-related issues, and the subject that cropped up constantly was how to avoid boys' sexual advances and would a girl think badly of a boy if he didn't try for a bonk. There are still a lot of young people around for whom 'keeping your hand on your ha'penny' (as someone here sneeringly put it) is important.

And, BTW, despite what some on this thread appear to believe, the prime abusers of young girls aren't overpaid celebrities, footballers et al - they are family members. I knew several girls who were raped by their fathers or other relatives, but none who were raped by a celebrity or a footballer.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 04:49 AM

Richard, you 'doubt my history'?? I find that very strange indeed. I lived in a perfectly ordinary town, and my father worked for the GPO, not very well-paid. My mother didn't work (very few did then). My Grammar School was not an old traditional one, but modern and new. The pupils were like myself, mainly working class and many from council estates. My parents were buying our house, a tiny semi in the suburbs of a small town. We had no TV, no phone, no car, no washing machine, and very little furniture. Our life was extremely simple and pleasant. It certainly wasn't 'Little House on the Prairie' and I haven't said it was. Sex most definitely was NOT 'the main point of interest' as you describe; maybe for boys, I wouldn't know as we didn't associate with them particularly, but NOT for us girls. Why must it be unbelievable that a set of girls such as us should have no interest or involvement in sex or sexiness? I'm very surprised and not at all pleased that someone should doubt my veracity. I can't for the life of me see why you would think I would make something up!

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 04:29 AM

And, what about all those nudes in classical paintings?
Not a pube in sight.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: theleveller
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 04:09 AM

"This was in Middlesex"

Ah, that explains it - plenty to keep you occupied. When a colleague of mine who came from the same area as I do told me he had a daughter who was onyt 15 years younger than him, he explained that there was not much else to do in those days.

"I find pre-teens wearing nail polish much less disturbing than adult porn models shaving their pubic hair."

Well don't look!

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 04:36 PM

Eliza - I doubt your history. Give dates. I lived in Middlesex from 1948 to 1953 and from 1956 to about 1968. Quite a high-priced street and mostly high priced schools involved - although the father of one of my mates just up the road was a dustman and the father of one immediately opposite a very street wheeler-dealer. At the bottom of the road lived the estranged wife of the founder of a nationally known transport company, and in the next street over the family of an England soccer manager. From 1961 (when I was 13) sex was the main point of interest. I was not as successful as some of my friends but I could give names (mostly of their conquests, not mine) - although I won't. I have no idea where your little house on the prairie version of reality comes from.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Penny S.
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 02:05 PM

About 20 years ago I was not happy about the dancing the 11 year old girls who went to the local dance school did in assembly. Not exactly Pan's People, but should they have been doing the sort of thing that pops up on Strictly? Not that they knew what they were doing, of course. They were having fun.

Penny

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Martin
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 01:44 PM

I do hope during the BBC inquiry they address their attitude to females. They turned a blind eye to abuse for a number of years.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 12:59 PM

"make-up, nail varnish and sexy clothes" exactly what I remember a friend of ours complaining of a neighbour's 9-yr-old daughter being allowed to wear to pre-teen discos provided in the children's annexe of a local pub/hotel in Ruddington, near Nottingham,, must be all of 35-40 years ago now. Nothing new, whatever anyone may claim.

~M~

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 12:52 PM

I can't imagine why some of you feel I'm not telling the truth about us girls in the early sixties. I don't presume to relate what other people in other parts of the country were up to, but I can assure you (though you tend to doubt my word) that my friends and I led lives just as I describe. This was in Middlesex, we were not particularly well-off, just ordinary families. I went to a grammar school, and there truly was none, absolutely none of the sexualisation going on described in other posts. Our parents weren't repressive or overly religious. We really did spend our leisure time at various sports, horse-riding, swimming, ice-skating etc and were all involved with the local C of E church. We were also in the Guides, and I helped with a Brownie pack and a Sunday school. My evenings were taken up with tons of homework and study. We didn't wear make-up or even nylons, just short socks. When we left the area to go to college or University, we were without a doubt still virgins. I had never even been out with a boy, and certainly not kissed anyone. I was nineteen when a lad first kissed me (nothing more!) at Edinburgh Uni. But we were happy and enjoyed our long and innocent childhoods. I can see that it was different for some of you in your own areas, but this is how it was for my friends and I.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 12:50 PM

My neighbour's little girl is nine, but she is allowed make-up, nail varnish and sexy clothes. It almost seems as if we're creating a Paedophiles' Paradise.

A paedophile's paradise is just as likely to be filled with children wearing age-appropriate children's clothes. If you're attracted to children, chances are you'll want them to look like children. There are some illuminating comments in Tony Parker's book "The Twisting Lane" (interviews with imprisoned sex offenders) about what the interviewees fancied.

I find pre-teens wearing nail polish much less disturbing than adult porn models shaving their pubic hair.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,your willie
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 11:29 AM

L.C.    I see that under pressure you allow the mask to slip. In your post 5.05 12.10 you freely use the "f" word. When I used it in a direct quote in an earlier part of this thread you came over all holier than thou and were followed in your criticism by a number of sycophantic numpties.
Where now is your much vaunted balanced judgment?.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 10:48 AM

I did one of my teaching practices in a remote Lincolnshire village in 1968.

The thing at the the time was heuristic learning, the children taught themselves by looking at their own environmant. S o the thing to do in an old school was to throw open the school logbook.

I suggested this to the the elderly headmaster, and he explained in as kindly a manner as possible that would not be possible. most of the children I would be teaching had families who had been run in and reprimanded for incest, under age sex, gawd knows what.

Later that year the kindly old Headmaster was fired for inappropriate sexualised behaviour with the children.

I'm not saying your wrong. But maybe - people just weren't on the lookout for it, Lizzie. that stuffwas certainly going on.

Yousee some kids were reckoned to be working men by they were fifteen. the past is a different country. My Mum was working in an office and iot was full of fifyeen year old girls. this was in the days before computers. letters and envelopes were typed.

I was in the posh grammar school, yet one of my classmates in thethird year had to leave to get a job, and support his child got with one of the girls in my Mum's office.

well it was all going on in Lincolnshire - I guess you just missed out.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 10:00 AM

Eliza,

Yes, there is a certain pressure for children to dress "sexily" at inappropriate ages, but from my own experience, that's largely down to parents colluding with the idea of peer pressure. People who bring their kids up not to "follow the herd" usually have significantly fewer problems.

However,as the Leveller, I find your description of what young girls were like in the 60s unrecogniseable. My first proper girlfriend was *just* 16 when we met, and hadn't been sexually active beyond a bit of snogging and fumbling before that, but both of her 2 best friends had lost their virginity at 15. All 3 were at an academically selective ("Grammar" in the UK sense) school. Several of the girls in my class at a (different but equally highly regarded) Grammar school had lost their virginity at 15. We even lost one from the "L" (for Latin, hence the most academic stream) Form at 14 when she became pregnant. Things were much less restrained at the Secondary Modern down the road!

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: theleveller
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 09:21 AM

Eliza and Lizzie, I think you're painting in very broad brush stokes here and I do feel that that can give a dangerous impression of what's happening amongst our young people. Just to put things in perspective, the rate of teenage pregnancies has been falling sharply, with 2010 being the lowest year since 1969. Children certainly have minds of their own when it comes to what they want to wear but it doesn't mean they are all being sexualised. I have a daughter who is 13 in a few days and her style is very much tomboy (she had to be positively bullied into wearing a bra).

Nor, Eliza, do I recognise your description of what teenage girls were like in the 60s (and I lived in the wilds of Yorkshire).

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 06:15 AM

I agree with you Lizzie. Even though girls nowadays mature physically at a much younger age, that does not (IMO) automatically mean that they should start having sex. It IS only sex, as they are far too young to form lasting relationships with men when they're in their early teens. There is, as you say, a plethora of profitable industries based around early sexualising of girls. Their childhood is so brief, if you blink you miss it. My neighbour's little girl is nine, but she is allowed make-up, nail varnish and sexy clothes. It almost seems as if we're creating a Paedophiles' Paradise. I know people groan when oldies like me start up, "When I was young..." BUT, when I was young, we girls had absolutely no thought in our heads about sex, men, alcohol etc right up until the age of seventeen or eighteen. We wore children's clothes and did tons of sport and hobbies, Girl Guides, Church activities etc. We were never bored and we enjoyed a long and happy childhood. It's a very old-fashioned word, but we were PURE.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 06:11 AM

That, Eliza, is a very pertinent question - but only in part to Savile.

Some of Savile's victims were unwilling, some (possibly not many of the present complainants) willing or even enthusiastic.

Some were young but physically mature - others prepubertal.

Some were women or girls, at least one a boy.

The broad brush is not wholly appropriate. And the "hand on your ha'penny" brigade have no idea about youthful sexuality.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 05:54 AM

Al, I went to the toughest school in the neighbourhood, and not a single person from my entire school year was engaged at 14 or 15...I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it was not common back then, in my opinion.

I feel very angry about it, Eliza, for our children these days are being groomed, without the shadow of a doubt, by some very dodgy people in the media, the music and sex industry...and most worringly, the Toy and Fashion industry...

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 05:33 AM

I think this thread has now taken a very interesting turn, and has provoked much thought in my (rather old) head. We seem to be considering the different mindsets of young girls and young teens regarding having sex, from the sixties/seventies compared to the present day.
There does seem to be one constant, which is adulation of 'stars' and desire for contact with 'celebrities' and the media. There appears to be a tendency for lassies to follow wealthy and famous men around (eg footballers, singers etc) and to be prepared to have sex with them in an effort to participate in their hedonistic lives.
There are two points (IMO) to consider. One is, how do we feel about legally underage yet physically mature young girls doing this, albeit voluntarily? And is it actually abuse on the part of the (usually older) men who enthusiastically take up their offers? The married teacher for example who took his young pupil to France was pursued relentlessly and arrested for it. Yet quite young girls drink and have sex all over the place (in local parks for instance) and no-one appears to do anything about it. What constitutes abuse?

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Musket
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 05:22 AM

I am indebted to the clairvoyants on this thread who know the mind of Saville. Also, having been married twice, I am glad I am not single, as that seems to be a preposition for being a paedophile according to some...

The Saville affair should not, in my opinion, be a catalyst to ensuring the appropriate authorities do what they should be doing, as that would mean no more than a rejigging of priorities rather than facing the real issue.

If you read the reports of safeguarding boards, and as a regulator in the field I am somewhat familiar with their work, protecting children and vulnerable adults in a meaningful way takes money. Big money. Money that is not there. Money that police, NHS, social services, private sector providers Uncle Tom Cobbley and all simply do not have.

Hand wringing is all well and good, but the situation needs addressing for the future, not just to sell newspapers today. Kneejerk outrage does not protect a single person. Rather, as in the case of The News of the World when they started a crusade, you end up with paediatricians being beat up in the street.

This is too important for media and "disgusted of Suburbia" to set the agenda. Any money coming forward needs targeting where it is needed, not finding quick results based on improvements already there. it is far harder for a Saville now than when he was in his "prime" and I am concerned that to get votes at the next election, claiming credit for what is already in place whilst spending money at it to show you have done something.... All too familiar, and all on the basis that irrational reactionary idiots are the only people who vote.

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 03:53 AM

'that common' is how common. sadly amogst certain strata of society its always been pretty common. I doubt if a teacher in a posh grammar school would encounter it more than once or twice a year, but in the sec mods, it was pretty much a fact of our childrens lives.

As far as childrens behaviour and sexuality is concerned - I think the media are actually holding the line as much as possible.

My middle class friends used to ask me when Grange Hill started on TV - do modern children REALLY behave like that? And teachers smiled grimly knowing that Grange Hill was a highly edited version of reality.

As ben Elton, at the time commented, the only playground in England where the kids don't say Fuck. And that was thirty years ago.

get a grip Lizzie...!

Subject: RE: Jimmy Savile :-( UK disc jockey
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 03:25 AM

I still don't believe that 14 year olds becoming engaged was *that* common. I was a young person during the time of Gary Glitter and I didn't know any young person who was engaged at 14, or 15, or even 16.

And as for social attitudes being safer for young people now I completely disagree, as these days it IS considered 'normal' for 14 year olds to be having sex, which it wasn't back then.

The constant cry of 'It's what youngsters do' is heard these days, and it sickens me, for so many of those young people are merely having sex because their peers are. They don't want to, they don't feel loved or cared for, because it's now become a bodily function and little else. They're taught goodness knows what by schools, often with teachers feeling *very* uncomfortable at what they're being told to teach, yet still those teachers teach it, rather than stand up and say "You know, this is peverted!"

If I went up to a young person and started telling them what teachers tell them in school sex lessons, I'd probably be arrested, but heyho, such is the crazy way the world has now become...

Sadly, the sex industry is creating 'fodder' for the paedophiles, for young girls now see nothing wrong (even if they don't like it) in having sex at an earlier and earlier age, whilst society looks on and remains silent or totally apathetic.

We have spent way too long protecting paedophiles whilst NOT protecting the children and young people from them.