We were less censorious in the 1960s

A GREAT deal of newsprint has been devoted to Christine Keeler, the prostitute at the centre of the Profumo Affair, who died last week. Much of the commentary has been focused on the changes in society which resulted from that vast scandal but there is one big change that everybody missed.

Profumo was allowed to re-build his life to such an extent that he was honoured for his charity work by the Queen. His wife, an accomplished actress, forgave him and stood by him. Nobody thought either of those things odd.

Today, society’s concept of redemption is vastly more grudging with wrongdoers shunned even before wrongdoing is proved and their attempts at any return resisted. Aggrieved wives fill the air with complaint and self-pity.

Most would say that today we are much more tolerant than we were 50 years ago but I often wonder if the reverse is true.

Wolf whistling is not a hate crime

OUR police are hardpressed, yes? Indeed things are so bad, are they not, that they can no longer bother with shoplifters? Yet in Nottinghamshire the police must have all the time in the world because they have been trialling a scheme to treat wolf-whistling as a “hate crime” as it is apparently sexist.

Is it I or is it the rest of the world which gets madder every day? A wolf whistle is a sign of appreciation not hate. The same force also proposes to make taking photographs without consent a hate crime. Oh, darn, PC Plod, I thought it was just because people recognised me and were taking a snap to prove to their friends that they really had spotted me in the high street of Much Snoring or on the Clapham omnibus. Now I realise it is because I am a woman and they hate me. I also realise there are Martians at the bottom of my garden.