Energy

I am, quite frankly, astonished and appalled to read that teacher, Jeremy Forrest, has been jailed for five and a half years for "abducting" a fifteen year old girl (now 16) and eloping with her to France. I read today that the girl, still besotted with Forrest,  is planning to stay by him, visit him in jail, and furthermore that the girl's father would be "proud" to welcome him into their family and thanks the teacher for looking after their little girl. In a world where someone can go to jail for less time for actually killing someone, I'm left wondering quite how bad a crime this actually was and whether we shouldn't focus on chasing actual criminals. Yes, Forrest was a teacher and therefore had responsibilities which he should have taken far more seriously. Yes, the girl was marginally underage and by eloping to France, they worried many people and wasted police time, but when the age of consent varies so wildly from country to country from 12 to 21, do we really want to waste our time sending people to jail whose crimes fit into that "grey" area where there's actually no victim. A rapist would go to jail for less time. 

I'm afraid I refuse to view Forrest as a paedophile or a child abductor. A silly man? Yes. A weirdo? Perhaps. An unfit teacher who should be banned from teaching forever? Probably. A criminal? No. This is surely an example of a judge allowing himself to be pulled into the witch hunt which is destroying men's careers on an almost daily basis. Let's get things in perspective. 

Drastically changing the subject, my dear friend Sam sent an hysterical curio through to me today. It seems that, in the 1980s, Northampton County Council commissioned a song, which they, no doubt, hoped would do for the town what Lorraine Chase had done for Luton Airport. 

Sadly, the only concept the writers could come up with was that if aliens, fleeing a broken world, were forced to crash land on earth, they'd probably chose to land in Northampton. Why? Well, because of its "energy" of course. I am not joking! As a man who regularly turns towns into tunes, I'm telling you that this one needs to be heard. So drop everything. Get yourself a cup of tea and listen to this...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xKjGqefH7U