Just a couple of days ago I was musing here at home that we were getting to that age and stage in life where we should start to expect to hear of our childhood heroes and idols falling by the wayside. Many, of course, died young – Jimi Hendrix for example, or John Belushi. For some, their time came prematurely like John Lennon. And the last couple of years have seen Pink Floyd founders Syd Barrett and Richard Wright fall – two people on my own teenage ‘hero’ list.

And now Patrick McGoohan – John Drake of ‘Danger Man‘ fame but, more importantly, Number 6 of ‘The Prisoner‘, the short-lived but much loved 1960’s TV series that we still sit down and watch every five years or so.

McGoohan may not have been a great actor and he most certainly was not a prolific one but in ‘The Prisoner‘ he gave the world a seminal work that is unforgettable. Maybe it is auspicious that he has died before we all get to see the remake – or ‘reimagining’ as the production team have called it – due to be screened later on this year.

There have, sadly, been two rather nasty accidents in the last two days. Yesterday – two light aircraft collided near Coventry killing all on board and today a coach left the road near Alton, tumbled down an embankment and ended up in someones garden. One man has died as a result and many are injured.

I happened to be watching a BBC TV news broadcast not long after each of these tragedies. Following the air collision in which, I believe, 5 died, the newsreader was apologising for not being able to interview the paramedics on the spot. Tonight, following the coach crash, they were apologising for not being able to get live TV pictures from the actual scene.

When did this happen? This is the kind of journalism that belongs in the Rupert Murdoch arena. It’s tabloid or it’s Fox News (OK I know that’s the USA but they thrive on this sort of thing). We are being apologised to by the BBC News team for what? Not showing us the bodies? For not seeing the blood? Because they were unable to show us injured and deeply traumatised people struggling to crawl out from the wreckage of a coach?

I know it’s bad form to talk about what you donate to charity but I need to touch on that so that I can have my rant of the day. It’s possible I have had this little rant before as well but after three years it’s sometimes hard to remember! So – eyes. I have this – probably irrational – fear of losing my sight. Take a leg, an arm even, let me go deaf but please leave my eyes alone. I know that if I ever need eye surgery I will need to ask to be kept anaesthetised for a week before and a week after as any thought of anything being done to my eyes will induce a hurricane force panic attack.

So it’s not unreasonable that when it comes to supporting charities I tend to favour those concerned with helping the blind here at home and preventing unnecessary blindness in the third world. So every month one small donation goes to the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association. This works on the principle that you are a co-sponsor of a particular dog during its long period of training and as it costs around £10 a day per puppy and takes around 20 months to train, it comes down to one hell of a lot of money and a large number of sponsors.

What angers me is that every now and then, but at least four times a year, I get a progress update in the mail. This is not a simple letter telling me that things are going well and reminding me that I could always increase my donation. I’d be happy with that – actually, I’d be happy with nothing or maybe just a quick note that the dog I co-sponsor has gone to a home. No – this is a glossy, full colour leaflet dedicated to my sponsored dog with pictures of it looking happy and a report on it’s progress. And they do this for every dog in training.

As someone that was once a graphic designer working within the print industry, this sort of thing is not cheap. It’s not just the print and mail costs either, there is the design and production cost and there are people involved who need to be paid. And it is totally unnecessary. I know why they do it – the theory is that the more you ‘involve’ the donors and make them feel a part of the process the more likely you are to keep their regular donation. But the question they should be asking is ‘if we don’t send you glossy leaflets and picture postcards of your dog and don’t waste time writing it all up and getting it printed then we can invest that saving in training more dogs. Are you happy with that?‘. And I bet the vast majority would say yes. That is, after all, why we make the donation in the first place.

I was skimming the BBC news website this lunchtime when a headline caught my eye. The average home, it said, owns 4.7 televisions. On reading the item it isn’t about television ownership at all – it’s an interesting piece about the links between consumerism, social attitudes and the new “therapy culture” which promotes simple misery to depression and mental ill-health.

If I am supposed to feel miserable because instead of 4.7 televisions in my house I have just the one then I am obviously missing something. To be honest, I sometimes feel miserable because I’ve got one at all. If you sit in front of the bloody thing on an average evening, switch on Sky and browse through the programme guide, the feeling of misery gets more intense with each passing page. It’s not just because absolutely none of it is worth wasting my time on. It’s more that as a so-called civilized society we have become so culturally bankrupt. The vapid output dreamed up, no doubt, by the vacuous legion of first generation media studies graduates is so stunningly awful, unengaging, uninspired and dumbed down that I am surprised the whole country isn’t on Prozac. Or perhaps it is and I didn’t notice. Prozac just might make ‘Deal Or No Deal’ bearable.

I recall, a long time ago, reading that the average household owns just 11 books. At the time we owned around a couple of thousand which equated to a large village full of houses where no books would be found at all to maintain the balance. Our single television suggests that the guy down the road must have at least 8.

I am beginning to think there is no hope.

Sacked Conservative candidate Nigel Hastilow may, for all I know, be a thoroughly decent chap or he may be a raving right-wing BNP sympathiser. Either way, the moment he invoked the name of Enoch Powell and uttered that taboo phrase “Rivers of Blood” his fate was irrevocably sealed. There was, let’s face it, no possible way that the modern Tory party or our lame, pathetic media, steeped as they are in the fear of political correctness, could tolerate this reawakening of such an embarrassing skeleton in their collective cupboard.

The real truth, of course, is that I would take bets that almost to a man every member of the Tory Party along with the vast majority of their constituents across the country, cannot but agree with Hastilow’s assertion that Powell was at least correct in his prediction that unchecked immigration into the UK would change the face of our country beyond recognition. They agree but they are unable to publicly say this because they fear the consequences. Hastilow was, on one hand, foolish in the extreme. On the other hand, he was totally honest and spoke the mind of the average Englishman.

I was just 16 when Powell made the famous speech that both shot him to enormous and unprecedented popularity (surprisingly so amongst the traditional left wing working class) and blighted his future political career. Any review of this man’s life reveals many things. He was a brilliant scholar with an immense intelligence; he was a fierce defender of his country; he was politically astute. He was, above all, perhaps the most honest politician you could hope to find who steadfastly refused to place party considerations above those of the people he represented. One thing he clearly was not was racist. Lost in the furore his speech caused amongst the small but growing first generation of PC advocates, was the reason he gave the speech in the first place. It was true that he was appalled at the apparent unchecked immigration that was taking place and feared for the fabric of the country he loved beyond all else. But the real target of his speech was the introduction by the Labour Government of anti-discrimination legislation that was the first Race Relations Act. He foresaw the approach of such policies as positive discrimination and a future where today’s failed and disastrous policy of multiculturalism could take root.

But as other people have later found to their cost – the latest being Nigel Hastilow – once the apologists and PC crowd shout ‘racist’ the term sticks and everyone else becomes too frightened to simply say – “no he isn’t”. Powell was, perhaps, the first victim of political correctness. Hastilow is the latest. It is just another dark and sad day when our politicians bury the truth and their beliefs because they fear the consequences of stating them. They are cowed by the beast of PC which they themselves allowed to get loose in the first place. The Conservative Party, had they supported Hastilow, would have at the very least earned some respect from the people of this country. Instead they have shown they are scared of their own shadows.

Footnote: I was quietly pleased to read respected and Right Wing ‘blogger’ Iain Dale make the following comment today:

The Party acted quickly and Caroline Spelman summoned him (Hastilow) for a meeting yesterday . Whether he jumped or was pushed is immaterial. The fact is he is gone. There will be two side effects from this. Firstly it sends a signal to all candidates that their public utterances will be scrutinised as closely as those of MPs, and secondly it may well inhibit them from saying anything at all which can be considered as deviating even slightly from the party line. If that is indeed the effect, it may well give CCHQ fewer sleepless nights, but it will mean we are developing a factory line of androgynous politicians.

Leaving aside the questionable use of the word ‘androgynous‘, I have to take him to task on his fear that we “are developing a factory line of androgynous politicians”. Sorry Iain – this process started a long time ago. Today’s clutch are the result.