Where did the years go TO?
J WELL now we have the first actual tragedy of the Westminster witch-hunt on sleaze. It is getting more like Salem every day – and now a death, not by burning but by a man’s own hand. Carl Sargeant, a 49-year old Welsh cabinet minister, has taken his own life after he was accused of sexual misconduct by three women. No one knows what these accusations are based on or the identity of the complainants. Apparently Mr Sargeant was also left in the dark, all he said was that he found them “shocking and distressing” but that the details had not been disclosed to him.
So this well-liked Labour MP, adored by his devastated family (his wife and two bereft children both in their 20s) presumably felt unable to cope with this alleged public shame and so killed himself.
Mr Sargeant’s death is a reminder of the medieval madhouse we’re now caught up in – and all because a depraved Hollywood film producer has been exposed as a disgusting sexual exploiter.
We’ve just returned from Cornwall where the honest Joes are as bracing as a walk along the clifftops and I can report the conversation in the shops, pubs, taxis, lanes and beaches is invigorating in its refusal to be dragged into this Westminster navel-gazing. People there are rolling their eyes at what they believe is mostly nonsense.
Perhaps the hysteric whispering in the corridors of power would benefit from a good long break away from the Thames and down across the Tamar. It might show them a bit of common sense. r THIS week the BBC provided me with a photo of myself taken when I was a 21-year-old radio reporter. It is part of their celebration of the 50th anniversary of the birth of BBC local radio (I joined Radio Carlisle, now Radio Cumbria, back in 1976). Just look at the “portable” reel-toreel tape recorder hanging from my neck (it was about as portable as a sink) and compare it with today’s pocket-sized iPhones with built-in microphones and near-infinite recording capacity. I hardly recognise that kid. So much ahead of him, so much change and upheaval in his personal and public life – not to mention technology. No internet back then. No email. No mobile phones. No texting. Just three TV channels to choose from. No breakfast telly. Closedown at midnight on Auntie Beeb. Now I know what a fossil feels like.