Kevin Spacey

[Stanfordian]

Judges make errors. The BBC management , as we are seeing very clearly, has failings, and makes errors of judgements.

Others convicted of very similar offences, ( EG Jonathan Rees -Williams, ex Chapel Royal) have been unable to make a return to any kind of musical life, let alone resuming the kind of career that King has been able to.

There is a disastrous inequality in King's case. Other convicted offenders simply have outright bans on their music being performed on the BBC. Whether this is right or not, is another matter.

And as a sideline to Robert King's particular case, the fact that he wasn't barred from working with children is quite extraordinary, and completely unjustifiable. Allowing people to rehabilitate their careers is one thing. But a convicted child sex offender not being barred from working with children , at least for a very long time ? Ludicrous.

That Robert King is still allowed to work with children after his release from Wormwood Scrubs following conviction of sexual abuse of minors does still shock me. I notice that when two well known boy's cathedral choirs have reappeared at churches in my district they now have women as part of the choir management who seem to act as chaperones.

[french frank]

It would also depend whether you see this as part of the punishment or whether it's principally a child protection issue. In this case, the fact that he's so well-known wouldn't be a factor that a judge would consider in sentencing, but with his history who would employ him in a capacity where he was unsupervised when with children? And a determined reoffender wouldn't be deterred by the fact that he had been banned for life, surely?

[teamsaint]

It would also depend whether you see this as part of the punishment or whether it's principally a child protection issue. In this case, the fact that he's so well-known wouldn't be a factor that a judge would consider in sentencing, but with his history who would employ him in a capacity where he was unsupervised when with children? And a determined reoffender wouldn't be deterred by the fact that he had been banned for life, surely?

But we don't take chances with things like the DBS checks I linked to, which in some cases are absurdly over zealous.

Why take the risk? why send that signal ?

Either as child protection( why take the risk) or punishment ( not the main part of the sentence, but an important detail) I can see no reason for not giving at least a long ban, say 10 years.

[Lat-Literal]

I haven't been on this lovely forum for a while. It's been a very, very, tough week for me. I am expecting with good reason some very bad news about my physical health in the next 1-3 weeks. Have hardly moved, let alone had the energy to opine. I'm feeling struck down, washed out, by my standards lacking drive and very confused. It's all gone a bit horrible!

But given that the topic of predatory abuse is virtually everywhere in the media, this thread seems as good as any as the basis for one of my diminishing random statements. What can appear like pontificating is invariably well-intended as some sort of offering as one's own circumstances change and, god forbid, there is a try at greater sophistication in one's so-called wisdom. I am not huge on film and theatre. They are topics in quizzes on which I can get by. Consequently, Mr Spacey is not especially meaningful to me. But having a wide range of interests I can comprehend the dilemma in the OP about an aspect of the arts that is important to him. Society hasn't begun to get to grips with the issues arising broadly in the last few weeks and I use that phrase advisedly. "Get to grips" here - and when one thinks about it, it's obvious - actually means anything but physical contact in any sense.

As the old adage goes, opposites attract. To a certain extent, that is right - and by its very definition that involves conflict which can either be managed convivially or not so. While men are men and women are women and children are children, that is only really a genetic or age based statement of fact. In minds, the feelings may be very different. For example, there is the occasional child who is very sensible and so adult as society would claim. Adulthood is littered with badly behaved children in adult frames, perhaps most frequently in positions of power. There are also vulnerable children in adult frames who are often the victims of the former. There are womanly men and manly women and, well, so the list could go on. The modern western world - something I am generally not very keen on - should be congratulated for the strides it has made to accommodate and support these differences.

Nevertheless, I do think it has a long way to go and not necessarily in the directions achieved so far. I have been trying to work out why it is, for example, that I should find it a little hard to embrace (in a non physical sense) women boxers or men transitioning to women or sixteen year olds who are parents or older men who become millionaires because they are brilliant at designing trite, childish computer games. The answer is that the achievements are all about role seen by a positive and tolerant society as remarkably going against the grain. The next step up - or perhaps even a different direction towards the same aims - is surely to emphasise in culture not the body or the role but the sensibility. Ideally, there would be sufficient sensibility in every individual to be reasonably psychologically aware of the man, the woman and the child inside themselves so that there is a degree of empathy with all and less of a distant need to inappropriately reach out to acquire any sort of connection with others deemed "other". There is more on its way but that wont be a surprise!

[pastoralguy]

Sorry to hear you're not doing well on the health front, LL.

Hope things get better for you soon.

[Lat-Literal]

Just before it all broke, I happened to find a programme on BBC Radio Surrey at 6am. I was feeling a bit low. It suited me at the time. The best of pop and rock in the 1970s and 1980s. A lot of it - not all - "did it for me". I'd been on not especially known Eastern European composers - and I bought a lot - but it's a blimmin' big region and overwhelms before one feels it is intellectually managed (with enjoyment). I just needed a little light break. As it happened, the 1970s year was 1975 which was the second worst year of my childhood.

And the number one record, played, was Art Garfunkel's version of what was even then a very old song "I Only Have Eyes For You". I hadn't heard it for a long time and it made me all emotional in a good way. There are other contenders but I'm pretty sure it will now go to my grave with me as my favourite pop record of all time (and I know it is appallingly lush but my tastes are very wide ranging and one has to speak as one feels). Oddly enough, I can't stand the re-runs of Top of the Pops. Way too visual. Too them. Not me then or us.

Now, the DJ said that they were introducing a new feature. They would do the chart rundown from that year at the end of each hour. It was derivative. Other programmes do it. Had he not told me, it was something he had always done. And as it turned out in the first one that BBC Radio Surrey had chosen - they could have picked out any chart in the 1970s - it featured "Una Paloma Blanca" by Jonathan King. Obviously it wasn't played but what was fascinating because it showed how confused everything is now is his name was reduced to "JK". "JK's Una Paloma Blanca". I bet a committee met for several hours to discuss it. Lord knows what they will do with the glitter years. It all felt considered and yet very uneasy.

Fast Forward to Newsnight on BBC2 - was it yesterday? I came in at a halfway point. Media academics being interviewed. On the artsy side. From what I gather, the woman being interviewed had written an entire book about the sort of subject referred to on this thread in a very serious fashion. It had come to a children's author, unstated, who lived a long time ago and was a predator. Much loved, even now, she just didn't know whether she should include him in the book and ruin a lot of things for a lot of people or leave him out.

Given that it was distant history and potentially upsetting she had chosen to omit not without strong doubts. Dodgson? We will never know. For the opposition, there was a black man who argued for a banishing of such people not on the grounds that they should not be promoted but rather that their presence then and now keeps ethnic writers and women writers and gay writers out. I dunno. I dunno on that point. Anything I sense as manipulative (intellectual physicality) is questionable to me. My instinct is to disregard both sides - and all.

[french frank]

Either as child protection( why take the risk) or punishment ( not the main part of the sentence, but an important detail) I can see no reason for not giving at least a long ban, say 10 years.

Surely, it would have to be for life? Why imagine someone would be reformed after 10 years? Especially in the case of historic abuse when 10 years may well have passed anyway?

On the other hand, if for life you're denying the possibility that anyone could reform. I think a judge takes a lot of advice and considers the individual case before pronouncing sentence. It is a balance between length of sentence (thinking of the victim) and length to rehabilitate (thinking of the offender). Judges do get it wrong, but in King's case, why 10 years? The offences happened 10 years ago …

[Conchis]

Was Dodgson really a predator? I believe he took some 'artistic' nude photographs of children but that wasn't looked on askance in those days.


Barrie's sexuality has been much pondered. I somehow doubt he was a padeophile, though. I think he felt uncomfortable with his sexual urges, so chose to repress them.

[teamsaint]

Surely, it would have to be for life? Why imagine someone would be reformed after 10 years? Especially in the case of historic abuse when 10 years may well have passed anyway?

On the other hand, if for life you're denying the possibility that anyone could reform. I think a judge takes a lot of advice and considers the individual case before pronouncing sentence. It is a balance between length of sentence (thinking of the victim) and length to rehabilitate (thinking of the offender). Judges do get it wrong, but in King's case, why 10 years? The offences happened 10 years ago …

Just for clarity, and in case we are at cross purposes, I was just suggesting that the ban from working with children might have been for , say 10 years from the date of conviction. I don't know what bans are usually given, but this does seem to have been an exception. I'm sure the judge considered everything, but not giving a ban for a number of years seems to me to send the wrong signals. If the judge was convinced that he was reformed ( and the could be right, I really hope so) it still would have been prudent to give a sentence that included a ban for a number of years, as a precaution if nothing else.

We have very strong child protection measures. Allowing convicted offenders to work with children immediately upon release from prison just doesn't look or feel right. after all, other aspects of sentencing continue after release on licence.

[MrGongGong]

I think what is a bit galling in the Robert King case is the way that he seemingly returned to the life he had previously after release from prison as if nothing had happened.
And (correct me if I'm wrong) still insisting that the people he abused were liars.

I'm NOT suggesting that he should be "punished" for ever
BUT his victims aren't able to have the same freedoms and are likely to be scarred for life.

I'm sure he is a "great" musician
BUT there are many more and no-one is that "great" or special.

If one looks at his ensembles publicity (not that it's going to say that the orchestra is directed by a convicted paedophile !) it says

For more than three decades The King's Consort, under Robert King's artistic direction, has presented an adventurous variety of repertoire, spanning from 1550 to the present day, in many of the greatest European concert halls.

How lovely and utterly wonderful (unless you are one of the children he abused when reading this kind of puff is unlikely to be good for your mental health!)

Can't he just beaver away in private doing research and writing etc?

[Lat-Literal]

Was Dodgson really a predator? I believe he took some 'artistic' nude photographs of children but that wasn't looked on askance in those days.


Barrie's sexuality has been much pondered. I somehow doubt he was a padeophile, though. I think he felt uncomfortable with his sexual urges, so chose to repress them.

Maybe she meant Barrie. I really don't know. She didn't say. I got myself in a really horrible situation on this forum - one I love - re Britten so I'm not going down that road and 54 is a little more nuanced than 49. The last thing I could be is an apologist for anything much on others' behalves in the name of art. The wonderful break in Suffolk - against all the odds in August - was I think neither enhanced or ruined in a dramatic fashion by Britten's Aldeburgh connection. We noted. It was just part of the history. I am supposed to be a historian as well as something of a politician academically, albeit a poor one. I majored in elections- psychological reasons for voting in certain ways, and race relations. I was strong on the latter.

But I really won't ostracise the golliwog or pretend that most working class white people weren't treated badly as black people were in the past (or present?). I'm not very modish. I'm not unbalanced on justice. I think one has to have an openness about history and debate with fairness about the different ways across time and the meaning of tradition, however uncomfortable. Some might see that as refusing to allow a modern book burning. They'd be right - but the issue in this thread is especially difficult for most people in the modern age.

[Lat-Literal]

Sorry to hear you're not doing well on the health front, LL.

Hope things get better for you soon.

Thank you very much indeed.

I very much appreciate it and I have taken an interest and been guided by your posts along with those of many people. A learner and an attempt at a teacher. Certainly a searcher. I don't dislike anyone here - although as is human I may have come across as too forthright, opinionated, objectionable and outraged. I am actually quite a vulnerable man who has some (not small?) potential for rationality. I've never known quite where to place me so I can't expect much more of other people. After 2010, I probably wouldn't have been here without french frank and Paul Sherratt and others who have funded it, hence the slightly unusual, (mystical?) quality of the relationships with those people, including perhaps a bit of a confrontational ego in that I knew that was the case. Then there are all the friends but I'm jumping the gun here - other people here have had diagnoses; I've just had things that I can't read yet with kind "don't get hysterical" professional "not too concerned" comments that are being adapted for my benefit. Some have known me for a long time. There may yet be another day so I shall wait. There is another post coming here when I can do it. It is about the nature of life and living which does again by definition have an angle on Spacey.

I can't believe that "Animals" thread was opened by me in 2011. I really liked the fact that Chris Newman commented on it early - I didn't to my shame really know who he was properly - but I was reviewing "The Verb" when it wasn't always for defending and everyone then was against it; I loved doing it, making the most of it, being the host on the arts boards, and he a substantial person said "I read it - keep going" - he was a lovely man. He even provided a gateway for me into Mahler not that I could follow it all the way through.

(The Verb.....what a fool....can't even get that right; anyhow edited!)

[Lat-Literal]

I'm afraid - I'm afraid - but anyhow I'm afraid in what will be a random and contradictory post. I recall the time whenI last got myself in a twist on the editors behind Andrew McGregor if not Andrew himself and we will never know and how they went out of thei way to rehabilitate and even promote a child offender about whom I knew little while the Saville thing was going on. That suggested an intellectual circumspection which was justifiable or not but distinctly different from other branches of the BBC and artistically and/or in a rather adolescent way in defiance of art for arts sake. AM is a good broadcaster - beta double plus - and he does Womad - reasonably well. But i was noticeable for those who wished to note it and who had the capability of doing so. Personally I think I am an oik and a dimwit which can easily supported by evidence but I accept that in that respect I was in the so-called top 1%. That only just preceded allegations of abuse at music colleges of which most of us were unaware and it did lead to a feeling of something being manipulated and in not a nice way. Of course, it could have been art for arts sake and a highbrow way of a part of the BBC going out of its way to saying "we are not Radio 1". The more sophisticated part of me can see the point, no doubt aided by the programme on Tyrants. Still, it led to the raising of a half intelligent eyebrow on what it was that appeared to be occurring.

Traditionally, I needed the media. I don't have a partner. It was my partner. I'm really not sure then that I want the media partner constantly telling me about child abuse or rape of women - or men or for that matter - and cancer if I have it. I'm not sure that I want to sit in my seat all day and work out whether some adult touching another person's leg is abuse and whether that is morally not a lot different because, hey, this is entertainment. I'm not sure whether in that regard I am willing to try to work out the wheres and wherefores of those who were too blessed with good looks and money and power when I have had none of those things. I am n ot sure if I can cope, actually, with the idea that some are and always have been principally on the gravy train, not because of the fact that they as always stand to gain from what they are and say but they utterly diminish the serious aspects in some people (which could not be more serious) and also their claims under the law designed to protect them. In other words, while I had my own reasons for not having a partner and, I guess, choosing the media instead, I did not choose to be married to a combination of true evil and circus tricks. That now I look at it was the point. I couldn't handle either.

I have had especially at this time to ask me why I am who I am. For an extraordinarily emotional person. I am really not good on drama. I need some sort of steady presence. In sharing a twin room again with another bloke recently, I realized that his sheer normality and the fact that I had someone in the same room as me who I could trust and was just simply present alleviated my fears in away that I would never feel when alone or in bed with someone. Basically, I am a child. It wasn't as if we were less than equal in daily life - sometimes I took the lead on walks when he was flagging and vice versa. That sex thing - it has a hell of a lot to answer. And then there is the sky and the sea. Why should they be so significant? But before that, I think one does have to comment on the contrasts which are essentially human. Sorry - it is very Radio 2. In fact, it is Terry Wogan of whom I wasn't overly keen. Almost on his death bed he quipped of life "it is all mad". You know, most of it is mad. Young age. middle age, old age. School, work and retirement. Relationships - especially relationships of whatever kind. There is an insanity to it all about which for those who are blissfully happy in such situations I really don't want to upset. But from my perspective increasingly I think Wogan was right. Currently I'm seeing too much conflict, too much emotion, too much overactivity as being socially required and absolutely hyped up.

So, I'm a really complicated soul who finds myself in a world where I feel overwhelmed by being overly simplistic. Yet.....yet.....I do know that there is some substance here and that genuine complexity is always, always usurped by the manipulative and trite. Back in 1984 I worked for three weeks in a mainly administrative capacity in a home for the mentally ill. The patients didn't frighten me, I felt sad for them, and certainly I wanted to know if in their ways they were happy. They had been terribly treated by society. I can't say that I witnessed abuse of them when I was there. I liked to think the best of the authorities which were by then trying to do their best for them. I was always a little uneasy that the empathy was such that I felt caught between those people and my mates. I now feel that the craziness of all of the routines and the life cycle was their main problem. All of them. Perhaps not of themselves but the fact that they rationally felt intimidated by the protestations that everything else was normal. No it wasn't and no it ain't. The problem with those who are ill in such ways is that deep down they applied too much rationality. Those who live - those who breed - those who procreate - are those who have the immense ability to shrug their shoulders and view the madness of living as rational. People win. People lose. People are constantly wanting to win. I am in no doubt that very many posts on this forum are about winning against the losing battle of tides. Ultimately we all lose. We all die. Money can be made via the media and in society at large by spinning as many colours into that mix as is humanly possible. But once one fades and sees the main message, the primary colours one sees that is the problem itself. Spacey and ilk would be lighter if they shrank.

In my very last one, I'm doin's skies and seas and that, then I'm goin' back to the great JC and the great GT's great Four Brothers, innit.

(1934, Harry Warren and Al Dubin; 1975 Arty's Version - "Our Song" - Me, Me and I - oh, s--t, that's three of us but right - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9C53IEcg_0)

[Lat-Literal]

With hindsight, I took this one off in rather wild directions. I am not sure, actually, that is wholly a bad thing. While not deliberate, it is fairly telling that the silence which has ensued is very much in contrast with the acres of media devoted to the topic narrowly. One could argue that the very serious problems are not wholly served by circuses which mushroom precisely from narrow - or focussed - contexts. Anyhow, not a lot now except on the eve of god knows what and several similar eves that will follow I am tonight in the business of tying up loose ends. The appeal of the skies and seas, of the weather, of the plants and of the animals to the human eye - I hadn't realized this before and perhaps I should have - is not that they are forever changing but they are permanent while changing and changing back. Some of it is circular. Some of it is tidal. Much benefits from a lack of knowledge and detail. It's Stonehenge but with movement. One can emotionally invest in them while recognising or before it feeling that they are them but also us in a way that does not prompt anxiety other than in extreme conditions. Here there is no sense of deterioration as can be felt of society and is inevitably true of people. There is no life path that we need to know.

Some might tell us of the brutal nature of wildlife in particular. We have no especial personal investment. Another hyacinth or squirrel will come along and it will have the same impact on us, hopefully, as another hyacinth or squirrel. We do not share the pain, nor would we of the rain, the spaces negotiated by boats or planes, or a lump of rock on the Wiltshire plain, even when it is assailed at the time of the solstice. Such things are needed. I assume they were gifted. They are needed by the over-privileged and their victims. They are also needed by those who simply experience the lows as well as the highs of a natural life course. Politically, economically, socially, culturally, historically, environmentally, so much of human life and perspective has changed. There has been too much movement, too much learning and too much complexity for it to ever have had a hope of positive progress, let alone contentment. Nature rather than Hollywood or Westminster is the answer. But the key to happiness is not to know much about either and to recall little. Just "listen". Talking is a great self-entertainment. One hopes that on rare occasions it might touch some others. Otherwise, it is often distinctly unhelpful. Sad but true. Incidentally, I think society needs to decide whether it wants kids who can grab anything, even if precious vases break, or who are told not to touch the walls because it will ruin the paintwork. That's about economics - but it is also about the manner in which they might approach other people. Ditto the concerns or lack of it about using a public water fountain. The middle classes can afford to be blase and the poor are often so uninformed they couldn't access that sort of issue anyway. I realise that in my summary these too are wild directions. But I have tied it up well.

That's what I do on a keyboard although nowhere else.