PLUCKY CARIEN DU PLESSIS - ONLY ONE OF FOUR ATTACKED JOURNALISTS NOT IN HIDING

Dear Journalists everywhere,

Carien du Plessis

          It’s pathetic when journalists, who are in the business of holding other people to account can’t take it when the roles are reversed.

          Like so many people in different walks of life they often fail dismally when it comes to practising what they preach when they are cornered. You would think that as judges of our morals they would set a higher standard than this.

          They should all be man enough (sorry to a lot of you about that man reference but I can’t think of a better way of putting it) to take criticism if they are in the reporting business.

          After I took journalists Carien du Plessis, Rebecca Davies, Martin Hatcheul and Louise Marsland to task for something they Tweeted, all of them except Carien ducked for cover behind a Twitter BLOCK. They presumably felt safe in their chicken runs believing that this would ensure there was no longer a danger of me getting at them for anything they tweeted.

          It wasn’t as though I had attacked them personally or used any troll like language to malign them.

           Their reprisal was the equivalent of a newspaper cancelling the subscription of someone who disagreed with its policy.

          All except Marsland were mentioned in various posts of mine for using vulgar language on Twitter (women's sweary wall). 
I felt that as this would not normally be allowed in any of the publications they write for it was not in keeping with the way journalists as public figures should behave on an open platform like the internet.

          Carien, the City Press’ senior political reporter, was the exception in that she was big enough to just cut out the bad language and do nothing to prevent me monitoring her future Tweets. Well done Carien that’s how all journalists with any backbone should behave.

          Davis the built in dictionary scribe writes for the online paper The Daily Maverick. After my post about her she justified her language in a Maverick article (Telling it like it isn't) and subsequently closed the door to me on her Twitter account.

DAVIS HIDING IN HER CHICKEN RUN

          Unlike any of the others Hatchuel (Top Sweary Man), a Knysna freelance, directed one of his uncouth Tweets at me personally. Here it is.

          In Marsland’s case (Mommy Blog)I merely disapproved of the stance she took against Pick n Pay on Twitter and in Bizcommunity.com. The supermarket group earned her ire when it asked her to remove her tweet which gave the link to Celeste Barlow’s extremely vulgar post about its very successful Stikeez promotion.

Journo on the run

          Marsland the editor of Bizcommunity.com is a South African 25-year media veteran who claims to have been an “influential journalist, editor, columnist and public speaker.” So with that kind of background you wouldn’t have thought that she would have been so easily scared of what I might do if I was allowed to access any more of her tweets.

          Journalists are quick to go crying into print if some government or other body threatens their freedom of expression. But when this very freedom turns against them personally it can be a completely different story as this post so clearly illustrates.

          Reporting in the Maverick on the decision of Media 24, South Africa’s largest online news publisher, to cease accepting reader’s comments Davis wrote: “The announcement has already polarised opinion, with some perceiving it as part of a sinister slide towards a public discourse where only certain opinions are judged ‘correct’ enough to be aired.”

          By blocking me isn’t this exactly what these journalists are doing?

          We all make mistakes Carien (except yours truly of course), but it’s the way we deal with them afterwards that shows our true character. And this is where your score was sky high.

          Well done again Carien. You certainly showed your colleagues how to deal with criticism with courage and dignity.

          Yours critically,

          Jon, Chairman of the Keep Twitter Clean Society. 

          

TV & RADIO STAR UNATHI POSTED ON SWEARY WOMEN'S WALL OF SHAME

Dear Ladies,

Unathi - no joke now

          By ladies I mean those of you who don’t feel the need to use vulgar language to attract attention.

          Why is it that an increasing number of females seem to think that this kind of uncouth behaviour is the in thing to do?

          Is it their lack of self esteem? Is it a power thing to give the impression they have the strength of a man, or what?

          My theory is that in most cases it’s purely a lack of class. They don’t know any better and when it appears on Twitter and the like it gives them a weird thrill by having their name up in lights.

          It could also be that social media now provides a shield that gives people the courage to say things they would never have the gumption to say to anyone face to face.

          Why oh why do they find it necessary. There are no pluses. Apart from generally tarnishing their image and showing up their marked lack of common sense it can so easily lose them their job. And being on the internet for this is a millstone that can drag them down forever.

          By far the most widely used word by these birds, who don’t give a thought to the ramifications before fouling their own nest, is FUCK.

          Would they feel outraged if some guy came up to them and asked for a F… because this kind of talk certainly encourages this kind of approach.       

          

Unathi again laughing or crying?

Unathi Msengana, a presenter on the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) MetroFM radio station and a judge on pay TV M-net’s Idols SA show, stepped into it up to her ears earlier this month with a disgusting Twitter rant against a 19 year old student.

          It included the liberal use of the F-word.

          What started it all was when Unathi joined the controversy that was raging over the treatment of Blacks at the University of Stellenbosch. A relic of the country’s previous whites only Afrikaner government it made Black students feel isolated because Afrikaans was the main language which a lot them didn’t understand. They wanted to be taught in English.

          Unathi unintentionally turned the pot up to boiling by pointing out the obvious on air, and that was that Black students must have known about the university’s policy when they enrolled there.

          That set Twitter off with the UnathiBeLike hashtag. What were presumably mainly Blacks believed that she was supporting the Stellenbosch model. Her main antagonist was Palomino Jama, a student at the English speaking, liberal University of the Witwatersrand. 

          She tweeted: “Wife gets beaten by husband. Unathi: Why didn’t you become a lesbian? You married him knowing men could be abusive”

          She subsequently claimed she was being sarcastic and didn’t expect Unathi to take this personally.

          But that’s exactly what the star did. In private messages to the girl’s Twitter account Unathi let her lack of acceptable behaviour all hang out. “Do you think insulting me, my marriage and my sexuality is going to change your situation? You’re a fucking idiot if so… you’re fucking delusional if you think you can get personal. Fuck your stupid mind. No amount is going to change our realities. You psycho bitch. Fuck you twice over.” 

           A day later Unathi issued a statement explaining that her outburst was because she had been “criticised in ways that I felt badly violated my personal life and beliefs. I wish to publicly apologise for my choice in language,” she concluded.

          This didn’t stop the SABC, the public broadcaster from doing the right thing by suspending her. At the time of writing this the Corporation was still mulling over what to do with her.

          In an understatement its spokesman Kaizer Kganyago said her behaviour “tainted the station’s image.”

          What the SABC did is exactly what M-net should have done. But it didn’t. It took the easy way out by accepting her apology and allowing her to continue as an Idols SA judge as if nothing had happened. Piously it added: “M-net wishes to reiterate that it does not condone the use of offensive language and will take more serious action should such an incident occur again.”       

          Had Unathi been a White I wonder if they would have taken such a lenient view of what she wrote. It was particularly deplorable because of the bad example she was setting for the young people she is being called upon to judge in the search to find the best singer in the country.

          Now in its 11^th season Idols SA is based on Britain’s Pop Idol contest.

Du Plessis

          The first woman to qualify for my Wall of Shame in April 2013 was a fellow journalist Carien du Plessis, the Senior Political writer at City Press, a National Sunday paper with 1.6-million readers.

          She made it with these disgusting words in her Tweets: “Crap, fukkit, shit” and “Pee in my pants.” A worthy qualifier don’t you think.

          She seemed to have ceased her Twitter crudity after my post. I’m not sure if it was her decision or whether her editor Ferial Haffagee told her to stop it.

          Here’s the link to my post:can-swearing-on-twitter-journalism-mix

          Next came the sweary maverick of them all who seems to believe that this should not be exclusively a man thing.

       

Davis

   After I criticised Rebecca Davis on Twitter for her “Fucking hell” comment the Daily Maverick, the online paper she writes for, gave her free rein to get stuck into me, although she didn’t have the guts to name me.

          In about a thousand words headed, In defence of sweary women she bragged that “Profanity is part of my rhetorical armoury.”

          She used “Fucking hell”, which was the subject of my complaint, twice; “horseshit” four times and finished with “I’m fucking angry.”

Introduction to Davis' Daily Maverick article

          Here’s the link to my post on that one: mavericks-rebecca-davis-tells-it-like

         

Barlow

The third one to be chosen for this dubious honour of being included in this writing on the Wall was Celeste Barlow. She slipped in last month just before Unathi hit the headlines.

          However as you will see from my post about her I believe she is in a very different category to all the other sweary women in this post. She appears to have a very sad, perhaps legitimate reason for muddying her blog and in particular her Stikeez rant about the Pick n Pay supermarket group.

          Here’s the link: award-winning-mommy-bloggers-cry

         

Not to be outdone the USA got a mention through the unbelievable stupidity of an education professor no less, who cried out to be sacked.

         

Buchanan

If you thought that Teresa Buchanan a 53 year old Education Professor at Louisiana State University would have got the kids stuff vulgarity out of her system many years ago you would have been totally wrong.

          She kept saying “fuck no” in class and used the word “pussy” in an off-campus conversation with a teacher. She even admitted using profanities now and again and making jokes to keep her students paying attention.  

          She told the investigative daily The Nation that she didn’t recall saying “pussy” but if she did it would have been in a conversation about how teachers must learn to handle irate parents.

          “If a parent is very angry and says, ‘You need to do a better job, you little pussy,’(Do parents corrupt the teachers over there?) you need to know how to react. I wasn’t calling anybody that word.”

          Was this a comforting reply from this mature woman who specialised in early childhood education and trained elementary school teachers?

THE REPLY GOT HER ONTO THE WALL

          She had been at the university for 20 years when her shocking choice of words got her fired.

          A Facility Committee that initially heard her case took the M-net route. It decided that she be censured and that was all. But this decision was overruled by the top Administration, which sent her packing.

            She is now taking the legal route, but whatever the result it won’t restore her tainted name.

          Moral to the story: Watch what you say, particularly on social media and of course in the work place. It’s no achievement to be on my Sweary Women’s Wall.
          My mistake it seems that Johannesburg based freelance social media and digital content writer Tamaryn Shepherd seems to think it is. A shameless Tamaryn has just become Number 7 on the Wall.

         It's never ending. I keep  having to add to the list and what's more she is another journalist on the Johannesburg based Sunday Times, at least that's what she appears to claim. Her she is;

            Regards,

            Jon

P.S. It’s not that I have only got one eye, it’s just that I  have yet to come across any men in South Africa using the kind of offensive language on the internet as the women mentioned here. In America however where free speech has, like giving everyone a gun, been taken to ridiculous lengths the grossest of comments appear on the internet if this is anything to go by. school-massacres-too-late-to-stop-them

In this case it was glamorous syndicated columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin who was on the receiving end.

            

MAVERICK'S REBECCA DAVIS TELLS IT LIKE IT ISN'T

Dear Rebecca Davis,

         You didn’t half get your knickers in a twist over my Tweets attacking you for swearing on Twitter. The on-line paper the Daily Maverick that you write for then, somewhat surprisingly, gave you space to vent your anger with In defence of sweary women.

         In your haste to get into print you didn’t let the facts stand in the way of a good story. With the result that you got the wrong end of the stick completely.

         You huffed and puffed for something like 1000 words displaying the huge chip you seemed to have about being a woman. At the same time, like a child that had just been reprimanded for swearing, you used the phrase Fucking hell which was the subject of my complaint twice and finished with I’m fucking angry.

         Just to emphasise that nobody, least of all a man, was going to stop you swearing, you threw in horsehit four times as well as your show off boast that Profanity is part of my rhetorical armoury.

         For those readers who don’t keep up with Twitter’s swearing female journalists the background was this. Rebecca commented on the case of a teenage boy who had been convicted of killing his parents and his sister who he also raped.

         She Tweeted: So the accused raped his own sister? Fucking hell.

         I asked on Twitter if it was alright to use Fucking Hell in the stories that appear in the Daily Maverick.

         I gave a link to a previous post I had written entitled Can Swearing & Journalism mix . In it I took Carien du Plessis the senior political writer at City Press to task for using crap, fukkit, bullshit and pee in my paints in her Tweets.

         I argued that as a journalist she would not be allowed to use this kind of language in the stories she wrote for City Press. So as she was in the public eye she had a duty not to swear on social media as this would reflect badly on her paper.

         And Rebecca you had obviously read this post because you referred to it in your Maverick report as being badly written and that I only accused Du Plessis of using the word crap.

         I wasn’t even aware that ‘crap’ counted as a swearword, which shows how far beyond the pale I really am, you added.

        It also shows what a wrong impression you can give if you leave out a significant part of the story. To use your phrase this is extremely selective. 

         Also had you done a bit of research you would have found that Du Plessis ceased her vile Twitter language immediately after my post appeared. Did she have second thoughts or did her Editor Ferial Haffajee tell her to stop it. I don’t know so I’ll leave it to you to decide what this proves.

         Your paper seems to have one rule for its writers and another for people who comment on it. Those who comment are expected to abide by polite society everywhere so I would have expected that writers like you would be required to do the same.

         Evidently your Editor and founder Branko Brkic and I have very different ideas of polite society. My version certainly doesn’t include the use of words like fucking and horseshit.

         Your paper’s website tells us that anonymous comments are not acceptable as they do not breed thoughtful civilised debate. Real names make for a real community.

         So could you ask Branko why it was that among the comments on the bottom of your story there were people (I assume they were people) with names like Kate, LG, Bonb, Panther, Hilton and McKeon etc. You can’t get much more anonymous than that.

THE EDITOR

          My second question to him is this. If names are so important why didn’t you mention my name which is on my Twitter profile? Instead you described me as a stranger; one of the critics of my swearing and this same man.

         By inference you attributed this to me. It is my experience, however, that the same men who jump to rebuke me for swearing do not seem remotely disturbed by the swearing of my male counterparts, which suggests that their delicate sense of offence is extremely selective.

AN EXTRACT FROM MY ORIGINAL POST ON THIS SUBJECT
THAT SHOWED I WAS IN GOOD COMPANY DEPLORING THIS
KIND OF LANGUAGE ON TWITTER

         Well as you have not yet got the message Rebecca my criticism of your swearing had nothing to do with you being a woman. It was, as I have already mentioned, entirely due to the fact that you are a journalist. I would have said the same about any male journo who did what you did.

         From what I’ve seen so far the male scribes have more sense and don’t have to court publicity by soiling their own doorstep with swear words on Twitter.

         Having once been employed editing Oxford English Dictionaries I wouldn’t dispute your brag that you can legitimately lay claim to a rich and extensive vocabulary; a bounteous lexical storehouse stacked high and deep with sufficient entries to convey countless shades of meaning and nuances of emotion.

         A built in dictionary doesn’t necessarily make you a good journalist.

         You went on to say that I know loads of words. I know so many words that I know ‘horsehit’ is by no means my only option to express repugnance.       

         Yet like the little girl, sorry I better mention a boy as well, trying to get attention you chose swear words instead of any of the other more acceptable words in your head. So you had no logical excuse.

         As you rightly said The precise form the censor takes varies, but the essence is always the same. In choosing to swear on a public platform, you reveal yourself not to be a ‘lady’. You betray a fundamental lack of ‘class’. You expose a vocabulary so deficient that you lack non-sweary alternatives. You encourage observers to lose all respect for you.

         You said it Rebecca not me and whether you like it or not this is exactly how sweary birds are perceived by many people.

The key question is: Do newspapers that often expose the imperfections of others need columnists and reporters like this?

          Craig Bishop, who was probably unaware of the journalist aspect, gave an apt if not somewhat harsh summary of the situation in his comment on your report.

 This is not a feminist problem – it is a social problem, he wrote. Trying to paint swearing into a feminist corner, while not invalid, limits the total resources society can bring to bear upon the problem. Besides, swearing has been and always will be the refuge of the illiterate, the uneducated, the vilely narcissistic, and rightfully, people who have dropped a sledge hammer on their toe.

         As an aside I think a lot more women must be taking up DIY.  There’s an awful lot of foul-mouthed chicks out there. It doesn’t somehow make them equal to men. It makes them equal to the illiterate, uneducated and vilely narcissistic men they have been told they can be equal to.

         Why not be better?

         The first comment I got after my tiff with you referred to my Du Plessis post. It was an Anonymous one saying:  Fucking sexist crap, this.

         Obviously I don’t know who sent it but the wording has the same sort of ring to it as the Readers Comments Policy on the Maverick’s website that begins Don’t write stupid crap.

         That’s one of the problems with those many cowards who hide behind Anonymous tags. They leave so much to the imagination.

         Anyway enough of my cr..azy and fff…… fanciful ideas on how hacks should behave because we all know that practising what they preach is not one of their strong points.

         Regards,

         Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman, who exposes the embarrassing stuff about the Press that it would prefer to keep under wraps.

P.S. In the interest of fairness I would have liked to get a comment from your Editor before I posted this but I was unable to do this. Your paper’s website tells us that as the individuals on your paper are constantly running around to bring you amazing news and analysis we can be a little hard to reach. This proved to be true as far as I was concerned.

P.P.S. This seems far from ideal if you are in the news gathering business.

P.P.P.S. It seems this post did some good because the Maverick's Readers Policy was changed. Here is my Tweet about it on 25/9/2014.

Can Swearing on Twitter & Journalism mix?

Dear Newspaper Readers,

Carien, ever the child



         Do you think it’s reasonable for journalists to play a dual writing role in the belief that the one can’t affect the other?

         What I’m talking about is hacks that are employed by newspapers and voice their opinions on social media at the same time using language that their papers wouldn’t countenance.

         For example I had a bit of an altercation on Twitter with Carien du Plessis who bills herself as a City Press political reporter. She claims: Love the job. In fact married to it.

         In my newspaper days political writers were in the top echelons of the profession, who you would not have expected to behave in a childish way; using attention seeking foul language for all to see. It would have damaged both their own and their paper’s credibility.

         But nobody seems to care now, least of all the City Press. This is a national Sunday paper with 1.6 million readers that claims to be the second most quoted paper in South Africa.

      Over a period of about a week I tried to get hold of City Press’ Editorial Policy. I got shunted from one person to another; given a wrong email address and then just when I thought I would get the answer from Gayle Edmunds, the Managing Editor, she referred me to somebody else.

      But not before confessing I don’t have a copy. How shameful. Needless to say I heard nothing from the person she asked to give me the information.

         Does the paper actually have one, I wondered

         Like a good journalist, as I don’t know what it contains, I will have to guess or better still quote an anonymous ‘source’.

         My source tells me that City Press journalists are not allowed to use swear words and any type of foul language to colour their reports.

         So if this is the case is it reasonable for Carien, who is actually their Senior Political writer, to spice up her Tweets with unnecessary words like crap, fukkit, shit and pee in my pants.

         My tiff with her on Twitter began after she Tweeted: Oh crap. I’m not good at this Lotto thing.



         The Twitter conversation then continued like this.

Jon - A lady doesn’t say ‘crap’. But then I suppose female journos have to keep up with the boys.

Carien - May be ladies don’t, but fortunately I’m not a lady. So I’ll say crap if I want to.

Jon - Thankfully some ladies are extinct because they keep saying ‘crap’ in front of your mother & they are proud of it. 

Carien - It’s my mom who raised me to be a woman, free from the crap that limits ladies to behave lady-like.

Jon - I’m surprised because in my limited experience Afrikaans vrous are extremely lady-like. And they would be shocked to have a daughter who craps on twitter for the world to see where she’s come from. Hopefully they’ve got good editors at City Press because people often complain that there’s a lot of crap in the papers.(That's two Tweets in one in case you are mystified)

Carien – Welcome to the 21st century, grandpa.

         Evidently I’m not the only media grandpa around who believes that foul language is not appropriate.

     

    Yusuff Abramjee the Head of News & Current Affairs Prime Media Broadcasting and Chairman of the National Press Council no less Tweeted this about Jackson Mthembu, the ANC party’s spokesman, Your language is a disgrace. Using the word “pissing” in not appropriate.

         I put this question about Carien’s language on Twitter to Ferial

Haffagee

Haffagee, the City Press’ Editor in Chief. Is it ok for your political reporter to crap on Twitter? Does that not reflect on your paper at all?

         And I added, Ferial don’t’ tell me it’s alright because she did it in her personal capacity, because reporters can’t divorce their Twits from their work.

         Has Ferial’s staff perhaps taken their lead from her? When she tells us about her background on Twitter she says I tweet what I like in my own capacity.

         I assume that means that whatever she says on Twitter will have no bearing on her work as the City Press Editor.

         What do you readers think? My view is that journalists on the staff of a newspaper are very much in the public eye and have a duty to behave themselves in a dignified manner especially when it comes to the very public medium of social networks.

         And they can’t expect people to believe that it is alright for them have split personalities that allows them to write all kinds of garbage in their own capacity on Twitter and in another capacity for their newspaper.

         Yours truthfully,

         Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman 

P.S. I noticed that Carien changed the Twitter picture of herself after our set-to. Is this her new, cleaner image? My mistake here's her latest Tweet   (the @ Jon is not me)
                          

                        Who is her admirer in the background?

Plessis
Note. Before posting this I sent it to both Ferial Haffagee and Carien du  and invited them to comment if they wished. Haffagee, who is also a board member of the International Press Institute and the International Women’s Media Foundation replied: Our editorial policy is guided by the Press Code which you can find on the website of the Press Council or I could mail you a copy. I’m sorry you had a run-around finding it. You will notice that journalists around the world add the rider that tweeting is in their own capacity. The Press Council has not yet included social media in its remit, though it may do so. Best wishes, Ferial.

Carien: I'll let the Tweets speak for themselves.

Should Press Boss fall on his sword?

Dear Mondli Mkhanya, off-the-ball, Editor-in-Chief of Avusa’s Newspapers,

        Oh no Mondli, one of your guys has done it again. Your Group (Sunday Times, Sowetan, Sunday World etc) can’t trust its columnists as far as it can fire them.

          Talk about dereliction of duty. Where are the editors when your papers get published? And what’s even more important, where have you been as the overall editorial boss for your entire Group?

          One after another we have had your columnists writing what you yourself considered to be unacceptable, racially charged statements that have outraged all and sundry. Nobody, least of all you or your Editors know what they are going to put into print next.

          And all this has happened on your watch.

          In 2008 you were the Editor of the Sunday Times when you fired David Bullard for insulting Blacks in his Out to Lunch column which he had been writing for years. You apologised saying, We were complicit in disseminating his Stone Age philosophies.

        You were subsequently promoted to your present position and low and behold the Stone Age philosophies kept being expounded by two different columnists who also got their marching orders.

          The first of these was Black, Kuli Roberts at the Sunday World who got stuck into South Africa’s Coloured population, most of whom live in the Western Cape, for all manner of sins from being very violent (as if Blacks are not) and breeding like rabbits.

          Did she take her queue from you, I have always wondered? I say this because shortly before her unacceptable piece your regular Sunday Times column was all about how Blacks were ostracised in the Western Cape. You proposed action, presumably by the Black Government, to solve this. The inference was that the Coloureds should be forced to change their attitude towards Blacks. 

When Kuli’s column, Bitches Brew was axed you came out with this pious statement, Avusa Media will not allow any of its titles to disseminate prejudicial commentary that reinforces divisions and entrenches racial stereotypes. It was a particular gem considering that you had previous allowed Bullard’s divisive, racial remarks to slip through.

          The most recent scandal involved Eric Miyeni. In the Sowetan, as you know, he slammed Ferial Haffajee, the Coloured editor of City Press, owned by your opposition, the predominately White, Naspers Group. He accused her of being a Black snake in the grass employed by White capitalists to sow discord among Blacks who would have had a burning tyre put round her neck in the 1980s.

         They are quite capably of organising their own discord if you ask me, without any help from Haffagee. But that’s another story.

         You continued to be unaware that Stone Age philosophies were still thriving right under your nose until they once again hit the fan.

Miyeni felt that his kind of racial slander was appropriate because the City Press had exposed Julius Malema, the Black  President of the Youth Wing of the ruling African National Congress and well known shit stirrer. The paper claimed that Malema, who professes to champion the plight of the poor, had a suspect trust to fund his lavish lifestyle.

          I see that after he was sacked Miyeni hit back by claiming you and your Editors were not doing their job by letting his kind of outbursts get into print and then firing the authors afterwards.

How right he is Mondli.

Your act of revenge was to make him the Mampara (fool) of the Week in the Sunday Times. But one has to ask, what does that make you?

         The acting editor of the Sowetan, Len Maseko must be commended for being extremely honourable by taking responsibility for Miyeni’s lapse and resigning. And what makes his decision even more honourable was that he was on leave when the column appeared.

          So don’t you think Mondli that you should follow his excellent example, especially as you didn’t have the I was on holiday excuse when this happen, not once, not twice, but three times while you were in charge.

        I know it’s not part of African culture, but do the right thing Mondli, fall on your sword.

          Always watchfully yours,

          Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman. 

P.S. I’m a former Sunday Times columnist who wasn’t fired, but perhaps it will now be done retrospectively. 

Buy my book 'Wherer have all the children gone?' on Amazon.com  It's thriller with an underlying love story that defied generations of prejudice.