I reckon I must have been an early-adopter of vintage clothing, the cravat was a passing fad that I ditched when my peers took it up.
It had to be worn like a wide tie, not under an open-neck shirt like a country gent would wear it.

Taxi? Even thinking of a taxi was not an option, not on apprentice's wages.
One winter's night, I missed the one-o'clock flyer from Huddersfield and phoned my Dad to ask for a lift home.
His blunt response was that I should walk and I knew better than to try to change his mind, it just wouldn't happen ... eight miles that was, and in falling snow, wearing a thin suit (no cravat).
You try telling that to the young people today ...

Anyway, I digress.
You and I are, shall we say, of the same generation ... thinking back to those days, wouldn't you agree that just about every venue would have had at least a few older-looking under-agers and, of those, there must have been a fair old number who, in terms of the law and the way we look at it now, were abused ... even if it was willingly?
I reckon the biggest deterrent to lads of 17-18 back then was not the law or any real understanding, but the jeering you'd have got from your mates if they found out you'd even been out with a lass who was under sixteen.

There was a rather crude but well known saying of the time which I won't repeat here but which intimated a rule of law that if a girl was old enough to have menstrual cycles then she was old enough for sex, no such law in legal terms of course, but yes, if a 14 year old was to be found in a nightclub of the time (and they were) then they would be treated as fair game - 1970s rules.

To take that further you'd also have to understand that a female not in a relationship who went to a nightclub, or a pub or social club, whether on her own or in a group of similar females, would be considered by males to be "available" at the moment that she acknowledged his presence, I can't tell you how many times I was not-acknowleged, there aren't enough zeroes in the world

If it sounds like a different world then thats because it was and if I sound not surprised that the likes of a well-known Radio 1 DJ of the 1970s should be questioned about an alleged groping of one females breasts then thats because my only response would be "Just the one female ?" I doubt very much whether there is a male in his fifties/sixties who isn't now looking back and thinking that its only because these people were famous that they are now being brought to book as they are still easily traceable - if they offered an amnesty to any male from those times to come forward and declare indescretions that were considered acceptable in the 1970s but now would not be, then the queues at the police stations would last for weeks and weeks.

And for the record I don't include paedophilia in the above.

At last, police have finally arrested someone important, hope Max Clifford squeals like a pig.

I thought Stuart Hall had been charged?

It's perhaps indicative of something when people feel the need to stress that. I do wonder if we have, as a culture, actually gone - really very suddenly - down a very odd path of being, on the one hand, absolutely rightly concerned with genuine abuse, but on the other, actually conflating that with something different, ie the sexuality and sexual explorations of young people.

The media (in general) does not help by sensationalising everything. And at this point, I think it's correct to suggest that there's an air of Salem about this.

I equally feel concerned about some of the discussion this past few months about rape/non-consensual sex.

Gawd. I'll have to sit down and pen a big piece.

But what is most worrying, in many ways, is that the 'discussion' seems to have no nuances. And within that, absolutely no sense that, as you absolutely correctly point out, times have very much changed, but also of youth (and even child) sexuality.

I actually find a lot of what's going on very uncomfortable - not least because, strange as it may seem, I think there's a sizeable element of downright puritanism in the mix.

It is a strange thing because of course in my previous post I did exactly what I said I didn't intend to do - I DID include paedophilia in my summary because I spoke of 14 year olds being "available" in nightclubs, albeit in the guise of 18 year olds.

But thats what young girls did and still do, the only thing that has changed from the 1970s is the attitude towards them and I speak as a father of two 20-something daughters who I would be horrified to discover had been frequenting nightclubs at 14 years of age, hypocritical yes, aren't we all ?

What I do find heartening now is the concept that boys and girls of teenage years can be genuine friends with no sexualisation involved - it would be unheard of when I was a pimply youth but on the other hand I went to an all boys school and girls remained a thing of mystery until I was ... , well, they still are.





The most bizarre juxtaposition, the one that everyone notices and comments on, is that on the Daily Mail web site and I assume in its printed media too (although I've never looked), I just don't know how an editor can keep a straight face or wonder if he/she is losing their marbles when they preach so puritanically over child and teenage sexual abuse while not one column inch away there are numerous examples of teenage sexual exploitation being promoted by the same editors.

And I've mentioned this before, but the target market for most of this stuff is females, this is not page three "get yer knockers out love" stuff for builders to drool over in their Transits every monring, its gossip articles about other females who aren't shy about selling themselves and their semi naked bodies to the Mail so that females can read about other females bodies and compare notes.

...and then complain when they are sexualised by males.

My understanding is that paedophilia refers to 13 or under, so you're safe.



Single-sex schools, eh? It works the other way around too – or at least it did for me.



The [iMail[/i really is quite hideous, on so many levels. So, for that matter, is editor Paul Dacre. I've been close enough to a couple of situations to know how it's next to impossible to get the [iMail[/i to retract lies (or at least print a correction). It seems to work on the basis of having no responsibility to prove anything – it's your responsibility to disprove it. Thinking of one specific case, it took a press officer an entire week to screw a correction out of the bustards over something completely factually incorrect.

There's a reason that the likes of Dacre don't want any form of what Leveson has recommended.

rlI did a thing recently of looking at just one aspect of the [iMail[/i's sexualisation of underage childrenrl – mostly girls but sometimes boys. Yet this is the same publication that, recently was shrilling away about Starbucks not blocking porn from it's free, in-store wifi. www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... linch.html