Hollywood Rapists and shouting

(To see the blog about Domestic Abuse, Red Card it! My current campaign please Click at bottom Older Post)

I am spitting nails about Roman Polanski and the cock sucking Hollywood deadbeats who are calling for this child rapist to be released. He raped a 13 year old girl and then hired a fleet of expensive lawyers to keep up with the extradition laws of the all the countries he could visit as he fled the US to avoid a prison sentence.

He admitted having sex with a minor. He drugged, sodomised and raped a 13 year old girl, but hang on, don’t forget the man is an auteur, he won an Oscar for fuck sake, Woody Allen is crying for his release – we cant possibly jail this man, he knows Harvey Weinstein and Harvey is going to speak to Schwarzenegger to get these insidious charges dropped. Its just a load of rich famous people excusing child rape, even women’s rights campaigner Whoopi Goldberg said “ it wasn’t rape-rape” really? There is such a thing as rape-rape? I never saw that kind of rape in the film the Colour Purple did you?

Speaking as a woman who was raped as a child, I am aghast at the attitude of people who can excuse this behaviour. The man who raped me told people I was promiscuous and coerced him into it; I was five years old at the time. His defence in court was that I was often seeking his attention, my uncle got three years in prison and people screamed ‘Rapist’ at him, but then he was a lazy, wife beating, debt ridden ex Orange Walk flautist and not a Hollywood pal of Tilda Swinton, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese. If only my Uncle Rapey had friends in high places, the attitude towards his child abuse would have been different. (The abuse continued into my teens- I was 13 years old when it stopped, which was just the prime age for Polanski)
I read an astounding article by Michael Deacon in The Telegraph newspaper in which Deacon said “I reread an extraordinary interview Polanski gave to the novelist Martin Amis in 1979, the year after Polanski went on the run.
The interview originally appeared in Tatler and is collected in Amis’s excellent book Visiting Mrs Nabokov.
Here’s a section of the first quote it contains from Polanski.
“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”

It doesn’t astound me that Polanski would say this kind of thing in public; it just amazes me that people view that kind of behaviour as acceptable if the person in the frame is famous!
We just need to look at the Michael Jackson debacle to know the veil of stupidity people drag over their morals when a ‘hero’ is involved.
Friends of Polanski have screamed out in his favour that his family were murdered in the Holocaust and his wife was killed in a horrific attack, so he should be left alone now!

That is a terrible insult to the families who died at the hands of the Nazi’s, and a slur to men whose wives were murdered, to suggest child rape is part of the recovery from such atrocities is just plain daft, and don’t get me started on ‘it was years ago, lets forget it’ as we all know that’s just begging the comment- so was the Polish Ghetto’s but you didn’t forget those did you Mr Polanski, and quite rightly so. Traumatic events do not fade with age and neither does their legalities.

Roman Polanski needs to serve the sentence he deserves. Apparently he is married with two young children; well let’s hope they grow up safe from the predatory eyes of a sexual beast who likes his victims ‘young’.

So now I have gotten that out of my system, I want to talk about Nick Cave. I didn’t really know who he was, but my niece Ann is dotty about him. We knew he was appearing at Borders Bookstore in Glasgow, so Ann and I headed off to the Rogano restaurant for our usual outside table for Oysters and tea. I love the Rogano, husband and I celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary there and the place is just lovely. Anyway we sat outside, she smoked and I bit my finger nails and made yukky noises as she slurped on oysters (I really can’t do food that you can’t chew) anyway, we hatched a plan to see Mr Cave.

We both ignored the long queue of people who had official tickets (we had none) and we barged past security (We had determined looks on our faces) and we stood near the table that Nick Cave was signing books.
He is a slight wee man with terribly odd dyed black hair.

“God, why are they playing whale death music over the crowd Ann?” I hissed. Of course that was Mr Cave’s music; I was too stupid to know that. It sounded like the tapes you get free to help with child birth.
The security man came over and said “if you don’t have a ticket or his latest book with a receipt then you don’t talk or approach or get anything signed”

Mr Cave is very snooty about these things and what with the whale music and his tiny peanut head dyed very black I wondered why people liked him. Apparently he nearly drowned Kylie, so he can’t be all bad eh?

Ann got all hot and excited and stared at him longingly as I chatted to an extremely agitated autistic man in his 30s.

Yes, I met an autistic man who was trying hard to find out where the blonde girl assistant who was ‘stood there, right there with her arm like this’ had gone to. He staged the scene for me by being ‘him’ and then ‘her’ and how she stood and how she looked. Then he blurted out “My jacket melts in the heat and it this isn’t yellow its citrus colour” as he pointed to a yellow bit of his flammable top.

He was getting agitated and the crowd who had come to see Mr Cave started staring at him. “What is it you need to know?” I asked him.

He rocked back and forth a bit and stared at me wide eyed, I didn’t look away. “I need to know where I can get a magazine called Shortlist; this book has pictures of it”
He thrust the book into my face and there were photographs of a magazine called Shortlist, I recognised it. “You get them free in airports”

The man nodded and wrote down ‘airports’ in a book and then slapped his two hands over his ears and shouted “this music is making me sad inside”. I could only nod in agreement.

He then spotted a Borders assistant and ran after him in a sideways run with arms flapping, scaring the Mr Cave fans, who hadn’t seen a man in flammable fabric run sideways in their lives possibly. I giggled and Ann said quietly “Why do you always find Aspergers or Autistic people no matter where we go and why he is running about mad?”

I shrugged and quite liked the odd man in the bright jacket and was sad to see him go; he was infinitely more interesting and accessible than Mr Cave.

Ann and I decided to leave; we headed back to Rogano and watched the local Big Issue seller get photo shoot after he had had a make over and new suit. He was dressed like a proper toff and given a lobster dinner to celebrate a birthday of the Big Issue campaign. The bloke sits outside the Rogano for years and is well loved; he looked amazing in his suit and his shiny shoes. It made me gulp back tears as he stood there drinking champagne, but somehow underneath it all, I felt he was being patronised and said so to the photographer.
“Well, he got a new suit and some good food” he snapped.

He doesn’t need a new suit and the chance to drink booze with the people he normally begs off, he needs a home and it’s appalling to know he had been homeless for 18 years and got a suit for good behaviour outside the Rogano.
I suddenly felt odd and wanted to leave, there was a sad feeling inside me when the homeless guy was walking about suited and booted, he looked happy but discontent at the same time. I couldn’t quite process what I was feeling and kept thinking things like- how can he beg in a suit?
Where will he keep it when he sleeps on the street? Will it be harder to lose it now or was it easier for him not to have the nice clothes in the first place? I didn’t know the answers and no matter which way I formulated them in my head it all felt wrong.

So, to top the day off Frankie Boyle came into the Rogano and we had a wee chat, he is looking a bit better after being unwell lately.

Ashley is getting better and wants to thank everyone for sending her love.

Domestic Abuse, Red Card it!

This blog is in conjunction with the Red Card Campaign on Twitter.

Scotland’s domestic abuse statistics rise by 80% after a Rangers and Celtic football match was reported by assistant Chief Constable Neilson of Strathclyde Police. During an Old Firm match serious and violent crimes can double.

After one football game back in February this year, police were called out to 185 incidents of domestic abuse- a jump of 52% compared to weekends when a match is not being played.

Assistant Chief Constable John Neilson said the force arrested more than 550 people on the day of the match - all of whom were drunk.

Officers also had to contend with a rise in the number of attempted murders, assaults, and breaches of the peace.

And such incidents have peaked during the past Old Firm showdowns during this year.
Now with the league match next Sunday at Ibrox the bigoted wife beaters need to feel the might of the football clubs. Punching the wife is a serious as punching a fan, yet a violent thug will only be refused entry to a match for fan bashing, and wife beaters will still get welcomed into the terraces. This needs to be addressed. Men who beat their partners and have been prosecuted should never be allowed into a football ground for life.
The clubs should be highlighting this situation, it can’t all be blamed on alcohol and if the clubs are seen to be doing something, it can only help.

Sectarianism has been being tackled with some success.
But thugs have basically swapped one form of abuse for another and yet again women get the brunt of their pent up frustrations.

These cowardly thugs, are restricted from bottling other football fans who wear a different coloured scarf on the streets by the police have now found an outlet for their drunken spitting hatred. They can now do their beating in private.

It is shocking to realise that women and children recognise that when their father’s favourite team gets beat, then so will they.
There has to be some sort of solution to this issue.

Police have warned pub and club owners to reinforce their responsibility towards customers and to make sure that drunks will not be served.

Booze is not always the cause for post match wife beating, it’s not as prevalent with other Scottish premier league clubs, it is mainly connected with Rangers and Celtic fans, and so that rules alcohol out as the sole instigator in this issue.

There is something that runs deeper with the psyche of the Old Firm fans, why do they become so vehemently angry? What makes an Old Firm football attendee kick his wife in the head when his team gets beaten?

Someone somewhere needs to come up with an answer and my opinion still sways towards football managers and committees to come out and talk about Old Firm violence.
Sectarianism isn’t Scotland’s dirty secret- Old Firm Wife Beating is.

Please support this campaign on Twitter, do all you can to highlight this issue. Thanks Janey Godley

It was a dark time for all

Ashley has been really ill; we didn’t know what to do other than kill her quickly with a firm pillow pressed against her sick face, but husband offered another option, how about we take her to hospital? I am the kind of person who if I cant fix it- I will kill it. I am sorry I sound cruel but I am crap with sick kids and sick people/things in general. If you don’t believe me I used to have a hamster that had eczema and a goldfish that swam sideways. They are no longer here.

It turns out Ashley may or may not have Swine flu…I think she has a viral infection but then am the woman who drowns fish so what the hell do I know? She has been told to drink plenty fluids and get bed rest and this she is really good at doing, so that’s a relief, though she is really sick, I am being sarcastic and I do worry.

She gets really hot then shivery and cold then I get bored listening to it and hide in my room. When she was a tiny baby and used to vomit all down my back when I picked her up I felt like squashing her wee cheeks hard, though I never did that- I merely wiped up the vomit and hugged her till she felt better. But I thought it would be honest to admit that sometimes your kids can make you insane. People underestimate the power of sleep deprivation, it is used a torture technique during interrogation and yet babies can induce sleep deprivation and people – usually mums suffer it in silence. I am not saying I am about to snap, am just saying it can happen.

Luckily Ashley was a sleepy baby, but once or twice when she did scream in her cot at 4am and I had a 17 hour shift in the pub to get up to, it was horrendously annoying. She wasn’t wet or hungry- she was just determined to get me to lift her up and I showed my mothering skills off by ignoring her and sleeping through the throat wrenching screams. She never really did make it a habit. I have little patience for that kind of behaviour.

The same goes with my patience for husbands Aspergers, I no longer care about his deeply inconvenient syndrome, he has been a tad screamy and insanely picky the past month as he is going through his Aspergic episode – a pillow to his face might happen soon as well. Did I tell you all I have stopped smoking? I am loving it and feel I may have passed the worst of it now…but I think I am slightly short tempered.

So I woke up today to discover that all the electricity in the surrounding area has been cut off. It was like the power strikes of the 70s, I walked about the house trying switches, as if some magical power had stayed in one wall and would give me light! I called people, I moaned, I worried about my frozen foods and I huddled under the covers with Ashley and told her about the dark days when I was a kid and our electric got cut off, how we sat with candles, how we walked about with blankets to keep us warm, she got bored and fell asleep. I woke her to continue the story, she was ill, what else did she have to do but listen? The bitch…anyway she got a fever again and I got heat off her back. So sometimes a viral infection can be good.

I am off to London this week for a bunch of meetings and a few other things and then off to see Monica and Elaine my buddy’s. I am doing a one woman show at The Platform in Easterhouse on November 14th.

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