The Corrosion of Trust

In the summer of 2000 I spent three weeks staying with friends  in Texas. While there I shared their excitement  as we crowded round the TV to watch  their fellow Texan, Lance Armstrong, win the Tour de France. It was his second win and this time he beat his two principal challengers, Ullrich and Pantani, who had both  been missing from the Tour he won the previous  year.  In winning against a full field  he established himself as unquestionably the most gifted Tour rider of his generation. 

The two challengers from 2000 were later  to suffer disgrace and tragedy.  Jan Ullrich was found guilty of blood doping, which he eventually admitted. All his results from 2005 onwards  were annulled. Marco Pantani faced persistent allegations of doping, sunk into depression and died in 2004 of acute cocaine poisoning.

In 2005 I was just a few metres from Armstrong as he sped by on stage 14 of the Tour, on his way to his seventh and final victory while achieving the fastest average pace in the Tour's history. At the side of the road my small holiday hire car was proudly draped with the saltire and the `lonestar'  flag of Texas, firmly adopted now as my `home'  US state.

My view of Armstrong in 2005.

Despite the persistent allegations, Armstrong's vigorous self-defence was persuasive and his victories seemed untainted. In 2001 he published "It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life".  I read it and was convinced.  The cancer that brought him close to death, he argued, had conferred such a strong moral sense that the idea of cheating his way to fraudulent  glory was simply unthinkable. Like many others, I bought the line. If this turned out to be a lie, could I ever believe anyone again?

Now we know that Armstrong was a long-term cheat, possibly from as early as 1995, and a ringleader in the doping culture that permeated cycling in the early 2000s.  In a judgement from one of the many legal actions against him, his behaviour was described as "almost certainly the most devious sustained deception ever perpetrated in world sporting history". It was painful to accept that I had naively underestimated the depth of deceit of which a ruthlessly ambitious man was capable.

In the spring of 2003 Pantani was still alive, Ullrich and Armstrong were preparing for another titanic battle in the Tour - Ullrich would finish second to Armstrong for the third time. And Tony Blair was about to make the biggest decision of his political career, or - perhaps more accurately as it turns out - he was seeking approval from the House of Commons for a decision he had already made, in cahoots with US President George  W. Bush, whom he had pledged to support "whatever".   

Blair was fond of saying, "I think I'm a pretty straight kind of guy."  And, yes, I bought that line too.  So when he told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which he could train on the UK, to arrive in 40 minutes, I was inclined to believe him. I was sceptical, yes, but in the end my judgement  - on balance - was that he was trustworthy. Had I been an M.P. I would have voted - albeit with a heavy heart - to invade Iraq. 

But Blair turned out to be the Lance Armstrong of politics. Drugged by his own sense of infallibility and his lust to make history, he discounted the warnings, manipulated the intelligence, and nailed his colours to the mast of Dubya's cause.

Nobody died as a result of Lance Armstrong's lies. The same cannot be said for Tony Blair. Their programmes of deception are not on the same level.  And Armstrong has finally expressed contrition.  But Blair's `apology' : `I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you can ever believe.' is an evasive and vacuous  mangling of the English language. He expresses more apology than we can ever believe? Too right, we can never believe it. Or him. Or perhaps any powerful politician.

Because I had believed they were pure, I was devastated by the deceptions of both men. I revised my understanding of human nature. I am wiser now, but much, much more cynical.

And now the next chapter is upon us. The corrosion of trust has become endemic. When no-one can be believed, all arguments have equal weight. The EU referendum could have been a vote to choose between evolution and creationism. It would probably have had the same lamentable result.

The Warren Brothers - a Family Legend

Season 1912-13 was a great one for Glasgow Academicals, crowned Scottish champions with 17 wins from their 19 championship matches. Two Warren brothers were in that team. Jack, at 24 the oldest of the five - a cultured and fearless centre -  was approaching his peak and starting to interest the Scotland selectors.  George, a year younger and known to all as `Pudge', played outside his brother on the wing. With a devastating turn of pace, he too was rapidly building his reputation. The mesmerising passages of interplay between these two were memorably described by one contemporary observer as `scientific shows'. Off the field, they were polar opposites in personality: Pudge known for his irrepressible bonhomie and sense of mischief; Jack the classic stong, silent type.

Meanwhile, nineteen year old Thomas (`Tam'), the middle brother, was a promising full-back, turning our regularly for the Academicals' 2nd XV in his first year out of school, and already pushing for promotion to the firsts. His place at full-back in the school team had been inherited by the next of the brothers, Alistair.

The celebrated Academy (and, later, Academicals) rugby coach, J C Scott, had great hopes for Alistair. Having nurtured all the brothers through the early years of their rugby careers, in clubroom chat he was often urged to judge their respective merits. Jack has courage and strength, he would say, while George has got speed, and the youngest, Ronald, can turn on a sixpence; but Alistair has all of these gifts. It was his firm opionion that Alistair would have a long Scotland career and most likely be with the British Lions on their next visit to the antipodes.

Legendary coach J.C.Scott

Jack was the first of the brothers to be capped for Scotland. On a grey February day in 1914 he made his debut in a closely contested match against Ireland at Landsdowne Road in Dublin. Ireland won by two tries to nil (6-0 by the scoring convention of the times.). Ironically, Jack played on the wing that day, winning his place against stiff competition from - amongst others -  Pudge.

The Scotland team v Ireland at Landsdowne Road 28 Feb 1914. J.R.Warren back row, 2nd from right.

Scotland and Ireland would not meet each other again until 1920. Jack returned from the Great War with the rank of Major and a Military Cross to his name - the ultimate expression of the courage he had earlier shown on the rugby field. He had been wounded three times and gassed three times, injuries that took a lifelong toll on his health and ended any thoughts of a return to rugby.

Only Ronald, the youngest (and smallest) of the five, and too young to see war service, was to play rugby after 1914. Alistair was killed in 1916, on the first day of the first battle of the Somme. Pudge and Tam survived the war, but were not to return to the game they loved. So was born a great family legend of what might have been. It had at one time seemed very likely that at least four of the brothers would have been capped by their country. But Ronald was the only one to follow in Jack's footsteps. Remarkably in view of his size his international career was to span nine seasons.

My memory of Ronald in his 80s is of a tiny man, barely more than five feet tall. Gentle and courteous, he lived a quiet life with his equally tiny wife, Jean, who fussed around him like a hyperactive sparrow in their large house in Glasgow's Jordanhill. But even in old age he showed signs of the fierce determination that had seen him achieve his goal of international rugby. An experienced and skilled yachtsman, in his 70s he had taken his yacht out of dry berth for one final trip with Jean  - to St.Kilda no less!

No doubt with age Ronald had shrunk in stature.  But I have one of his Scotland jerseys, which has a chest measurement of 36". In the Scottish borders he was affectionately known as `the wee reed yin' on account of his ruddy complexion and ginger hair; but he was also feared for his elusive running, which brought him many spectacular tries - unusually in those days, from full-back. It requires quite a feat of imagination, by comparison with the physicality of today's professional players, to conceive of quite such a small man having played international rugby.  The game has changed a great deal since the 1920s, and not all for the better I would suggest. I can remember matches at school and club level in the 70s and 80s that were greatly enlivened by diminutive players who were slippery and elusive - the `demented ferret up a wee drainpipe' in the lingo of Bill McLaren. In the 1920s there was still room for such players at international level; sadly not now. Even back then the selectors must have had their doubts - Ronald was capped twice in 1922 and - although remaining a stalwart of Glasgow Academicals during the most successful period in their  history - did not return for his three further caps until 1930.

Ronald is pictured here with the Scottish championship winning team of 1925-26.  In this season they won all 19 championship matches. The photo includes eight Scottish internationalists.

The only Warren rugby player of note in the next generation was my father, Alastair. He returned from another war to form part of a new Glasgow Academicals team, and played several seasons. A hooker, allegedly once rated as the third best in Scotland, he remains the family's only forward.

Oli, David and Michael Warren at Murrayfield on 28 February

 2015. (Photo: Margaret Warren)

To more recent times, and the photo above shows three latter-day Warrens gathering at Murrayfield on 28 February 2015. Oli (great-grandson of Jack Warren) and my brother David (grandson of JRW) both enjoyed rugby success at school. As for me, I lacked the family rugby gene, but enjoyed a few seasons and a few beers with Dumfries 4th XV. I would have liked to have had something good to say about the 101st anniversary match itself;  circumstances dictate otherwise. But the fact that it took place 101 years to the day since Jack's Scotland cap provided sufficient excuse for celebration, and a grand weekend was enjoyed by all.

Michael Warren



Notes,Trivia and Speculation

• On 28th February 1914 Scotland also played an international football match. The result was Scotland 0 Wales 0.
• I have a copy of a letter sent in 1960 from my father, AK Warren, son of Jack Warren, to his grandfather, 100-year old John Alexander Warren (`Old John'). He signs the letter `Alistair', not `Alastair'. I can only assume this is in recognition of his having been named after his late uncle Alistair.
• Jack Warren was invited to take part in a trial for England, on account of his English mother. He politely declined.
• The only instance of four brothers representing Scotland at rugby were the four Nielson brothers (William, George, Walter and Robert) in the 1890s. William played for London Scottish, George and Robert for West of Scotland and Walter for Merchistonians.)
• Current English internationalist Manu Tuilagi has four brothers who have been capped by Samoa, and a fifth who has represented Samoa at under-20 level.)  Yet another brother, Olotuli, while sharing the imposing physique of his rugby-playing siblings, is well-known as a cross-dresser in Samoa and likes to be known as `Julie'. 
• Between seasons 1921-22 and 1925-26, Glasgow Academicals were Scottish rugby club champions four times. Their only lapse was 1922-23, when they came a dismal second. During this 5-year period they won 111 out of 123 matches.
• Four members of that great Academicals team of the 1920s, J.C.Dykes, J.B.Nelson, W.M.Simmers and H.Waddell gained 88 caps between them. This was a prodigious total at a time when there were typically only 4 international matches per season. 
• Ronald Warren was also known in his playing days as `turkey', probably on account both of his ruddy complexion and pronounced proboscis, a common Warren feature.
• The Scotland team on 28 February 2015 included one Glasgow Academical, Johnnie Beattie. Johnnie's father, John, also played for Scotland and was no.8 for Glasgow Academy when T. David Warren was scrum-half.
• Timothy David Warren has always been known as David in the family, but at school was mostly known as Tim. The reason for this was that when younger brother David started at the Academy, I was called to see the headmistress, Miss Mackintosh. I was asked what he was normally called at home - was it Timothy or David? I replied with youthful indifference, "It doesn't really matter what you call him." So he became Tim. I apologise.
• Guy Warren, a third cousin of Michael and David Warren, emigrated to New Zealand as a young man, where he played rugby at a high level, including - it is believed - representing South Island.
• Scotland's try on 28 February 2015 was the first for his country scored by a very promising young centre, Mark Bennett. Expect more to follow - he has been likened to a young Brian O'Driscoll. (Update: this prediction was proved correct sooner than I expected - Bennett scored Scotland's try in their next match, against England at Twickenham on 14 March.)
• Thanks to Sue Hopkins, one of Jack's three grand-daughters, for finding this remarkably well-informed account of the Warren brothers. I am happy to acknowledge this as the source of some of what I have written.
• Other sources include "The Glasgow Academy 1846-1946" by Professor C.A.Campbell (Blackie & Son Ltd, Glasgow, 1946) and unpublished essays of A.K.Warren
• Edinburgh recommendations: characterful village inn within easy reach of the city; trams to get you to Murrayfield; good beer; good scottish food, including best venison ever; amazing range of malts.

An Apology

On behalf of the people of Scotland I would like to apologise for Johann Lamont.

Here goes then. You've probably figured it out by now. It's `courage' of course! If the Scottish Parliament's mace had had room for a fifth word, alongside the worthy foursome of wisdom, justice, compassion and integrity, that's what designer Michael Lloyd would have gone for, as he told me in a recent conversation.

I think I see where Michael is coming from.

Here's a practical example of the contribution courage might have made.

As ever more doubt is cast on the conviction of  `Lockerbie bomber' Abdulbaset al Megrahi, the Scottish Government's capacity for displaying wisdom, justice, compasion and integrity is (at the time of writing at least) completely nullified by the lack of courage to do something about it.

I for one would be proud to be a citizen of an independent Scotland that had shown the braveheart spirit needed to face up to and deal with this issue, but ashamed if we are to be a nation prepared to live with the stain.

The 5th Word

Mace designer Michael Lloyd told me he would have liked to include a fifth word, alongside wisdom, justice, compassion and integrity, but there was no room for it.

I mentioned this in an earlier blog but did not reveal the word.

The word is contained in my last posting - the Lockerbie Test. I think I see where Michael was coming from because wisdom, justice, compassion and integrity - fine as they are - can lose their power without the fifth ingredient.

The campaign of the Glasgow Girls, iconic of Scottish values, was not short on this!

Lockerbie Tests the Scottish Government

The mace in the Scottish Parliament is inscribed with the four words `Wisdom, Justice, Compassion, Integrity'. Sadly none of these most worthy aspirations has been conspicuous in the Scottish Government's inaction over  the Lockerbie problem.

Where is the wisdom in simply refusing to acknowledge the body of evidence suggesting the Megrahi conviction may have been unsafe? How is justice for the victims served by failing to pursue the truth? Where is the compassion for the bereaved relatives? And if there is fear of reputational damage to the Scottish justice system , would it not show more integrity to have the courage to face this possibility honestly and then, if necessary, put it right?

Arguably, Lockerbie is the litmus test of whether this government has the character the Scottish people aspire to in the four words on the mace. With the world watching, it may also be the test that determines whether Scotland has the confidence to stand proud as an independent nation.

Where's Werrity?

The Fox-Werrity thing. Fox resigned. Werrity disappeared, not that he had ever really been in view in the first place. Fox took the rap for getting into a bit of a muddle about where the line was between his friendships and his political duties. And that was it. A line drawn, so to speak,  and the media moved on.

Only, it can't really be that simple can it? I mean Mr Fox isn't really that simple, is he? So what was really going on? And why have the media dropped the whole thing like a well-fired tuber?

I think we need some answers. And not the tired old lifestyle insinuations, it's the political deimension to this story that just doesn't smell right.

The Truth about Wisdom, Justice, Compassion and Integrity

Wisdom, Justice, Compassion, Integrity - these words are set in gold on the ceremonial mace in the Scottish Parliament. They assert the Scottish people's aspiration for the character of its government. Whether we are heading towards `devo max' or full independence, you are almost certain to hear much more about them in years to come. 

A future history of Scotland might begin, "In the beginning, were the words.. ."

And - you might not know this - just like the Beatles there was nearly a fifth one, but  more of that later.

The Mace was presented to the Scottish Parliament by the Queen, but the words first entered the nation's consciousness through Donald Dewar's speech at the opening ceremony: "Wisdom, Justice, Compassion, Integrity - timeless values, honourable aspirations for this new forum of democracy."

I don't remember giving the words much thought at the time. I may have assumed they were either Donald Dewar's own idea  or borrowed from the writings of  someone like David Hume. Or perhaps the selection was approved by some grand overseeing committee for the new Parliament.  

The Mace was presented by the Queen on the opening of the Scottish Parliament

It was a few years before I heard mention of the four words again. Keir Bloomer, a titan of educational thinking in Scotland, was addressing a gathering of aspiring Head Teachers in Seamill Hydro. His exhortation that day was that these four qualities - wisdom, justice, compassion and integrity - were just the values that should underpin the endeavours of all those working in Scottish Education. Not long afterwards, they were. Officially. The founding committee of Scotland's new Curriculum for Excellence decreed that these words should be at the very core of everything the education system should aim to achieve. I am sure it was no coincidence that their most vocal champion, Keir Bloomer, was a prominent member of this committee.

The Scottish Education Weave - an aide memoire for teachers to help them recall key principles of the Curriculum for Excellence. Everything flows from the four values: wisdom - justice - compassion - integrity

I was yet to be convinced, however. These are great-sounding words, I thought, but why these four in particular? There are lots of other great-sounding words after all - honesty, fairness, tolerance, trust for example. And since we are talking about Scotland, how about thrift, prudence or financial propriety? (This was of course in the golden age pre-Fred Goodwin.)

But the more I thought about it, the more these four words in particular seemed especially well chosen. Just as the primary colours can be mixed in different ways to produce every other colour, it struck me that these four `primary' values could be used to generate the other contenders. Honesty and trust, for example, can be seen as implicit in integrity.  Mercy? I would say it is mainly  compassion, with a dash of wisdom, and maybe a soupçon of justice.

That thought got me wondering once again about the origin of the four words. I was astonished when, on using wisdom, justice, compassion and integrity as the search terms in Google, the first document listed was a blog posting of my own from 2009! I took this as a sign that I needed to do something to justify this ludicrously exalted position and repay Google for its misplaced faith in me!

Bizarrely an earlier posting of mine was #1 on Google. I took it as a message to get busy.

Enquiries to the Scottish Parliament produced an abundance of helpful information, including this: 

"The four words inscribed into the Mace of the Scottish Parliament – wisdom, justice, compassion, integrity - were selected by Michael Lloyd, the silversmith who designed the Mace. It is believed that Mr Lloyd selected these words as the ideals that the people of Scotland would aspire to for their Members of Parliament."

  

So I would need to speak to the creator himself. Michael Lloyd is a highly respected silversmith, one of ten invited to submit a design for the mace. He lives in Galloway, and his work reflects his love of nature.

Beyond `Galloway' the internet was silent on how I might contact Michael. More traditional methods were called for. Scotland, it is sometimes said, is just one big village. My mother happens to live in a Galloway village. A family friend, the traditional clogmaker Godfrey Smith, lives in the next village. Godfrey duly intervened and soon afterwards Michael Lloyd phoned me up.

Michael Lloyd, with the mace that he designed and made.

Michael told me how the brief he was given for the design of the mace was that it was to represent the authority of the Parliament, and that this authority would only be valid if given by the Scottish nation. The Queen had announced that she would present the mace herself. Everything was on a very tight timescale - he had just three months to design and make the mace.

"And what about the four values - Wisdom, Justice, Compassion, Integrity - what gave you the idea for them?"  I asked. "I felt that these values and hopes were very much in the air to be collected and celebrated," he told me. He went on to explain his surprise that they were simply accepted, without the need for debate or approval by a grand committee.

Grand committe or not, I felt honoured to have the opportunity to congratulate him on his excellent choice.

"Oh I nearly forgot," he said. "There was another word that I thought would be very suitable, but there was no room for it." And he told me what it was.

The fifth word. What do you think?

I will reveal all, but it would be fun to hear some suggestions first. Over to you!

Wisdom, Justice, Compassion, Integrity and . . . .

I have now learned the origins of the four words inscribed on the Scottish Parliament Mace. I also know what the 5th word would have been, had there been room. My next posting here will tell the story.

Let it Bee

And the Lord said
let there be bees
and let them buzz.
And there wuzz.



(c) Michael Warren

A Personal History of Coffee in Scotland

I may be in the Grumpy Old Man age group now, but I can remember being grumpy as a teenager - I know you are supposed to be surly at that age, but I plumped for grumpy. Back then I had three pet hates - the three Cs: caravans, coffee and Cream.

Caravan loathing was easily explained - family holidays in the Highlands mostly spent on the tortuous roads of the 60s in a barely mobile queue behind the inevitable caravaner. The proud owner of a powerful Rover 2000, with a front grille festooned with a row of hefty metal badges like Prussian campaign medals, proclaiming his allegiance to the AA, RAC and the Handlebar Moustache Drivers Club of Great Britain, he just knew that the `road unsuitable for caravans' sign couldn't possibly apply to him.

You'll have noticed the capital letter and twigged that coffee and Cream are not a pair. Yes, astonishingly it was the rock band I couldn't stand. Admittedly I had only ever heard `Badge', which I rather liked. It was in fact nothing to do with the music, but a reaction to boys a year or two older who, unlike me, had sneaked into the Cream generation and didn't they need you to know it. Nowadays I love most of Cream's music, though I still think Clapton lost it with `Layla' - ever tried dancing to the last six and a half minutes?

And then there was coffee. Fancying myself as a teenage iconoclast, I defined myself as a non-coffee drinker for no other reason than that virtually everyone else seemed to revel in it: remember that in the 70s there was still something faintly louche about coffee. The story of every addiction has its defining moments, and my first one came as a student. Our hall of residence rooms were furtively equipped with a surprising gift at the start of each term - a little tin of Nescafe (remember the tins?). To begin with, I simply gave them to my coffee-drinking neighbour. Then, with my first major exams looming, it occurred to me that the sleep-denying qualities of coffee might come in handy. So one evening, with a view to extending my studying time, I took a spoonful of the stuff, washing the gritty granules down as quickly as possible with copious amounts of water. And it worked! I was able to study for a full hour longer before the equations started swimming across the page.

With the psychological barrier broken, it was not long before I started to accept the occasional social coffee. Mostly these were those milky concoctions with a digusting skin of sickly slime and the merest suggestion of a coffee taste - a recipe dating from 1950s Scotland and our nation's dubious contribution to coffee culture. It was coffee made for people who didn't like coffee but thought they ought to drink it. The Dutch have an apt word for this coffee-esque drink: koffie verkeerd - coffee gone wrong.

But slowly the Scottish palate was becoming more sophisticated, with foreign holidays in France and Italy introducing many of us for the first time to a completely new style of coffee. Unfortunately, in our attempts to emulate this, we chose as our coffee-maker of preference the percolator.

The percolator was the wedding gift de rigeur of the 80s, and the centrepiece of many a Thatcher-era dinner party. You can still find a few, sold as retro chic, on eBay. But some things from the past are best left there. The percolator was always an unneccessarily complicated means of arriving at another version of coffee gone wrong - the tepid, insipid and lifeless version that was Scotland's second flirtation with coffee culture.

Only in recent years have we arrived at the happy situation in Scotland where you can get a decent coffee in most of the larger towns and cities, though you still need to know where to look and only a few offerings match what you can confidently expect from even the most un-prepossessing cafe in France. Nowadays, in the grip of a joyous addiction, a morning in town will often start with two double espressos. Which brings me to one last grump. I don't mind paying £1.50 for a tiny coffee when a larger measure is available for a sensible increment. But there are still places that will try to fleece you by simply doubling the price - deftly insinuating strong coffee into the same aspirational class as malt whisky. Such places are best avoided, and not just on grounds of cost: your coffee will be made and delivered by a genuinely surly teenager.

Life is a contradictory undertaking. With age comes not just grumpiness, but mellowness. Nowadays I can think of few things better than waking in my caravan, on a sunny west coast pitch with views out to sea, and starting the day with a generous cafetiere of Taylor's Hot Java Lava (Strength 6) to a soundtrack of Disraeli Gears.

Descartes Visits Scotland

Descartes Visits Scotland

I think.
Therefore I am.

If I think
I am Scottish.
am I?

I think
I am Scottish
ish.
Therefore I am.


(c) Michael Warren

Culture Change in Banking - an Opportunity

So the RBS board members are threatening to resign if Alistair Darling does not let them pay big bonuses. Doesn't this just say it all about the banking culture that brought world banking and the economy to its knees? Let them resign! At the core of what went wrong was the toxic effect of a banking culture that promised huge bonuses and therefore attracted precisely the wrong sort of people, i.e. those motivated purely by egregious greed. To change the culture we need to attract able but pricipled people into banking - people who will be happy with more reasonable remuneration and will get their kicks from the satisfaction of a job well done rather than their next new car. Without this change there will be no real culture change in the world of banking, with the continuing risk of further calamity. AD should start the ball rolling  - by rolling some heads!

News Reaches UK of Senator Arrest in Tinpot Dictatorship

News of the arrest of Senator Stuart Syvret and the charges brought against him under the Data Protection Act by the States of Jersey has finally reached UK shores as recorded by the Times, the Independent and Channel 4 News.

The politically-motivated arrest and charges are a blatant gagging attempt by the de facto dictatorship that runs the island in the interests of the rich and well-connected.

In his blog based campaign seeking justice for survivors of Jersey's culture of institutionalised abuse Senator Syvret has frequently named names and challenged those named to take action against him for defamation. Despite a readership approaching 200,000 - more than twice the island's population - no such action has been taken against Syvret. It must therefore be assumed that the named individuals are guilty and know that the Senator has compelling evidence that would emerge in court in any defamation case.

Yet the Jersey authorities seem intent on burying bad news by attempting to silence the leading whistleblower, rather than pursue alleged abusers. They announced recently that eleven investigations had been dropped due to `lack of evidence' and it is widely expected on the island that further such announcements will follow. Meanwhile abuse survivors, denied the redress of justice through prosecution of their abusers, are preparing to launch civil actions against the States of Jersey.

The ham-fisted attempt of the Jersey oligarchy to crush dissent betrays a mindset of presumed unquestioned power. At best this might be likened to the regime of a third-rate 1950s public school - but most current observers will find more compelling parallels in the actions of despotic rulers and power cliques in countries such as Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran.

Beyond Belief

Colm O'Gorman's recently published book "Beyond Belief" is the account of his childhood abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest, the estrangement from his own family that was a direct result, and his long journey of recovery.

It has been a remarkable journey. In his late teens, haunted by the trauma of the abuse but unable to speak about it to anyone, he left his Wexford home, ending up homeless and destitute in Dublin. Some twenty years later, in 2003, he was chosen as one of Ireland's People of the Year.

The story of the intervening years charts his many struggles - finding a job and getting a roof over his head, coming to terms with his own sexuality, recovering the ability to trust and build relationships, building a successful career, the eventual reconciliation with his family, and ultimately his decision to confront his past and fight for justice.

The reason for his decision in 1998 finally to contact the police was the fear that his abuser, Father Sean Fortune, might still be claiming other victims. Even as he found the courage to speak out for the first time, he was still in denial of the events that had damaged him:

"Denial is a splendid defence mechanism; a comfortable kind of ignorance I learned to embrace with all the enthusiasm of those who had taught it to me. I'm not being sarcastic; denial is a powerful, powerful defence mechanism. If you can't change something, can't escape it or defeat it and if surrender to it has its own dark horrors, then denial becomes your very best friend. You can deny what's happening even as it is happening. I always found a spot on the wall as I was being pawed at and disappeared into it, placing my entire focus on that spot or stain or cabbage rose wallpaper pattern until it was over, until it was safe to return to my body and to the world." (p128)

The police quickly gathered a mass of compelling evidence against Fortune, not just from Colm O'Gorman, but from nearly 30 other victims. In court he was charged with 29 specific offences against 8 victims and pleaded not guilty. But the closure of having the charges tested in court was never to come. In March 1999, Sean Fortune committed suicide. He had taken a lethal cocktail of drugs and whiskey and was found dead in bed by his housekeeper. He had been remanded in custody pending trial but had been released on bail days earlier.

O'Gorman and others had been denied the prospect of justice by Fortune's final act. They would now only ever be his alleged victims. But by this time, however, much wider concerns about an apparent cover-up in the Catholic Church in Ireland had surfaced. Suspicion fell on Bishop Brendan Comiskey, and his predecessor in the Ferns Diocese Bishop Herlihy. Both men were said to have failed to act on a number of previous abuse allegations about Fortune, simply moving him from one pastoral assignment to another. Pointedly Bishop Comiskey issued a statement after Fortune's death inviting people "to remember him and his family in their prayers at this difficult time". O'Gorman widened his quest for justice by taking out civil actions against the Diocese and even against the Pope himself through the person of the Dublin Papal Nuncio.

O'Gorman was outraged by the silence of the Catholic Church in Ireland and its failure to act over repeated claims of sexual abuse by a significant number of its priests over many decades.

"Silence in the case of very great wrong, " he argues, " has a deeply corrupting effect. It diminishes and cheapens us all, and denies us the opportunity to confront that wrong and make it right. And yet, so often we stay silent in the face of abuse. If we can make it invisible and secret then we don't have to deal with it. But our silence has victims, and not always obvious ones. A hurt denied and ignored can rarely heal. More likely it will fester for years after the event." (p227)

Not only did the Catholic Church remain silent and inactive over a 14 year period when they were receiving regular complaints against Fortune, but O'Gorman discovered that as early as 1986 the Archbishop of Dublin had sought legal advice with regard to the Church's legal and financial liability if a priest was returned to the ministry after undergoing some form of treatment - and abused again. The liability was made clear and the Archbishop was advised that there was a duty in law to remove a priest from ministry if an investigation established that there was a basis for complaint.

"So what did the Archbishop do? Did he immediately remove from ministry priests who had been accused? Did he inform the police and social services of all accusations and ensure a proper investigation? Did he put in place a robust child protection policy? Did he inform his brother bishops of what he had discovered and alert them to this legal difficulty and their responsibility in law to remove credibly accused priests?

No, he did none of that.

Instead, on the advice of his lawyers he . . . took out an insurance policy to protect against the costs of any claims resulting from priests raping and abusing children. He did not act to protect children; he acted to protect the Church's money." (p 287)

It took until 2003 before the Diocese of Ferns finally settled with an admission of negligence and an award of damages. The action against the Papal Nuncio was dropped after he claimed diplomatic immunity.

O'Gorman's tireless campaign achieved a measure of justice for himself and many other victims who he has encouraged and supported; and he has contributed significantly to a cultural change in Ireland, where the people and the state are no longer content with a hands-off attitude towards abuse within the Church. This change offers a promise of a far more robust response to cases of clerical abuse, and an understanding of the need for effective child protection becoming ingrained within Irish society.

But worldwide the battle against the Catholic Church's tendency towards denial, cover-up and obstruction continues. While lessons may have been learned in the western world, there are signs that little has changed in developing countries. On a visit to Brazil, for example, O'Gorman uncovered many current cases of children abused by priests, together with a very similar pattern of cover-up and denial that had been common in Ireland, the USA and elsewhere twenty or thirty years earlier.

And the stench of guilt again goes right to the very top: Cardinal Ratzinger, before he became Pope Benedict XVI, sent a letter instructing all bishops that every case of sexual abuse involving a priest anywhere in the world was to be referred to the Vatican.

The message to the Roman Catholic Church in the biblical quotation with which O'Gorman ends the book could hardly be clearer:

Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. (1 John 3:18)

Archbishops' cover-up of child sex abuse revealed (Irish Independent 23/11/09)

Decline and Fall of the Jersey Empire

Some well-researched articles with a lot of background on the Jersey abuse scandal.

Cathy Scott-Clark Guardian 14 March

Eileen Fairweather Mail on Sunday 18 April

David James Smith Sunday Times 10 May

There is also an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons relating to the politicised police harassment of Jersey's leading dissident, Senator Stuart Syvret. It may sound like I am talking about Burma, China or Zimbabwe here. I make no apologies: I honestly don't think the comparison is too far fetched. The motion has been proposed by Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming. At the time of writing it has picked up 19 signatories, despite MPs' preoccupation with other matters; and the list includes Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative MPs.

Wisdom, Justice, Compassion, Integrity

The words "Wisdom, Justice, Compassion, Integrity" are woven into thistles at the head of the mace to represent the aspirations of the Scottish people for the Members of their Parliament.

I do not know how those four words in particular came to be on the mace, and at first glance it seems easy to think of others that might have sat there quite nicely. Truth, trust, honesty, tolerance for example.

But the words on the mace are really clusters of dispositions, rather than discreet concepts; thus the creators have also ensured value for money - many words for the price of just four. Tolerance, for example, is surely implicit in compassion; and truth, trust (trusting and trusted) and honesty are core ingredients of integrity.

If you want to know what a western government looks like when it lacks wisdom, justice, compassion and integrity, you need look no further than the island of Jersey, and in particular the response of the island's establishment to the allegations of decades of concealed abuse in its childcare establishments.

The best starting place is here.

Flat Earth News in Jersey Too

David Rose is an experienced writer and investigative journalist who has worked for the Observer and the Daily Mail, and is by all accounts a decent sort. But he caused dismay to many in Jersey when, last November, he wrote a piece in the Mail enthusiastically endorsing the establishment's attempts to discredit Lenny Harper's investigation. The article contained clear signs that he had been got at by the establishment's PR machine. But why would such a seasoned journalist have been so easily duped by transparently self-serving spin?

The answer may lie in Nick Davies's polemic on the dire condition of the UK media "Flat Earth News", published earlier in the year. In his book, Davies characterises Rose as having "all of the self-confidence of the great reporters, but less of the judgement." And here is why. During the period between 9/11 and the war on Iraq, Davies tells how Rose wrote a series of "high profile and aggressive" stories for the Observer linking the 9/11 attacks (amongst other atrocities) to Iraq, and trumpeting his belief that Saddam Hussein was preparing weapons of mass distruction. This campaign led to the Observer endorsing the Bush/Blair illegal war, and ultimately caused serious damage to the paper's reputation for well-evidenced independent journalism.

Rose has since confessed that his enthusiasm for the invasion had been "misplaced and naive" and that he had been the victim of a "calculated set-up , devised to foster the propaganda case for war". He had allowed himself to be misled both by accounts from unreliable Iraqi defectors and by deliberate misinformation from CIA and MI6 sources. He has since published a retraction. (Roger Alton, whose role in this fiasco is starkly detailed by Davies, resigned as editor of the Observer shortly before the book was published.)

Whether or not the Jersey oligarchy knew that Rose had a history of being duped, they fed their line to an investigative journalist with clear potential to be manipulated. (Davies, incidentally, has also written about the Harper investigation, but mainly as a critique of the media for over-hyping police press releases.)

Davies's book is a fascinating read for anyone interested in poking beneath what is presented as fact in large swathes of the UK national media. It sheds light on what motivates Rupert Murdoch, Andrew Neil, Paul Dacre and the other unsavoury big beasts who have presided over the decline of journalistic ethics in the UK in the last 20 years or so. It is not hard to see some of the same structural fault-lines that he describes at play in the Jersey media.

I was thinking of reviewing "Flat Earth News", but it is quicker and far more useful to suggest you read this.