Tuesday, January 07, 2020



Former Monty Python star Terry Gilliam slams #MeToo as a witch hunt, complains he's 'tired of white men being blamed for everything’ and calls Harvey Weinstein's victims 'adults who made choices'

Terry Gilliam once again lashed out at political correctness in Hollywood, saying he’s ‘tired, as a while male, of being blamed for everything’ and that Harvey Weinstein’s alleged victims were ‘adults who made choices.’

The Monty Python star and film director also repeated criticisms of the #MeToo movement, calling it a ‘witch hunt’ that has victimized ‘a lot of people, decent people.’

‘Yeah, I said #MeToo is a witch hunt,’ the 12 Monkeys director told The Independent.

‘I really feel there were a lot of people, decent people, or mildly irritating people, who were getting hammered. That’s wrong. ‘I don’t like mob mentality. These [women who came forward with claims] were ambitious adults.’

Weinstein is the powerful film mogul who in October 2017 was first accused of sexual misconduct by actress Ashley Judd.

Judd was quoted by The New York Times, which investigated numerous other claims against Weinstein stretching back decades.

The groundbreaking report opened the floodgates as dozens more women came forward with allegations of a litany of crimes committed by Weinstein, including harassment, assault, and rape.

Alyssa Milano, the actress from the hit show Charmed, invited other women who were either harassed or assaulted to share their stories on Twitter with the hashtag #MeToo - igniting the viral phenomenon.

The Weinstein revelations inspired other women to come forward with claims against powerful men in several industries, including Hollywood, the media, music, sports, politics, and academia.

Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not guilty to charges brought by New York prosecutors who say he sexually assaulted two women - one in 2006 and another in 2013. He has denied all allegations against him.

Gilliam, however, thinks Weinstein’s alleged victims share some responsibility for what happened to them.

‘There are many victims in Harvey’s life and I feel sympathy for them, but then, Hollywood is full of very ambitious people who are adults and they make choices,’ Gilliam said.

‘We all make choices, and I could tell you who did make the choice and who didn’t.’

Gilliam recalled that he had a negative experience working with Weinstein. ‘I hate Harvey. I had to work with him and I know the abuse, but I don’t want people saying that all men [are abusive].’

Gilliam said that when he directed the 1991 hit film The Fisher King, ‘two producers were women. ‘One was a really good producer, and the other was a neurotic b***h.  ‘It wasn’t about their sex. It was about the position of power and how people use it.’

Gilliam then says he spoke to a famous actor recently. The topic of conversation was #MeToo.

‘She has got her story of being in the room and talking her way out,’ he said. ‘She says, “I can tell you all the girls who didn’t, and I know who they are and I know the bumps in their careers.”  ‘The point is, you make choices.’

Gilliam continued: ‘I can tell you about a very well-known actress coming up to me and saying, “What do I have to do to get in your film, Terry?”

‘I don’t understand why people behave as if this hasn’t been going on as long as there’ve been powerful people. ‘I understand that men have had more power longer, but I’m tired, as a white male, of being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world.’

Gilliam then reported held up his hands and exclaimed: ‘I didn’t do it!’

The Independent writer pushed back and said that while not all white men are to blame, they are automatically given privileges that others aren’t.

Gilliam responded: ‘It’s been so simplified is what I don’t like. ‘When I announce that I’m a black lesbian in transition, people take offense at that. Why?’

Gilliam then says: ‘I don’t like the term black or white. I’m now referring to myself as a melanin-light male.

‘I can’t stand the simplistic, tribalistic behavior that we’re going through at the moment.’

Gilliam then tries to clarify, saying: ‘I’m talking about being a man accused of all the wrong in the world because I’m white-skinned. So I better not be a man. ‘I better not be white. OK, since I don’t find men sexually attractive, I’ve got to be a lesbian. ‘What else can I be? I like girls. These are just logical steps.’

Gilliam is on a promotional tour touting his new film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which opens in theaters in the United Kingdom at the end of January.

His comments sparked backlash on social media, where Twitter users took turns slamming the film director.

Alexandra Pollard, the Independent reporter who wrote the story, tweeted: ‘I can't say it was a pleasure to interview Terry Gilliam.’

Sonny Bunch tweeted: ‘Could’ve headlined this story “Terry Gilliam generates a ton of PR for his movie that would otherwise have trouble generating attention outside of Film Twitter by pushing all the right buttons”.’

Another Twitter user, Scott Weinberg, mocked Gilliam’s suggestion that he was in favor of diversity in films.

‘"I’m into diversity more than anybody," says Terry Gilliam, a man who has never hired a person of color for a substantial film role,’ Weinberg tweeted. 

SOURCE 






The 'madness' of King George III is redefined in new exhibition that will examine his life and mental health

He is the monarch best known for losing both the American colonies and his mind - perhaps the most famous mental breakdown in British history.

But a new royal exhibition hopes to alter the long-held public perception of the “madness” of King George III, moving away from what is deemed an outdated term in order to better understand his life and mental health issues.

Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) will use the 200th anniversary of King George’s death to open up a broader conversation about male mental health.

The exhibition, George III: The Mind Behind The Myth, will not define him by his “madness” -  a term popularised by the long-running Alan Bennett play, The Madness of George III and later adapted for the Oscar-winning film The Madness Of King George starring Nigel Hawthorne.

Instead, it will instead seek to redefine what is known about the monarch, who reigned for 60 years from 1760 until his death in 1820.

Rachel Mackay, manager of Kew Palace, said: “We want to move away from viewing George III as the ‘mad’ King, by exploring his life, interests and personality, alongside different perspectives on his mental health.

“By looking at the King and his health through a 21st century lens, we can gain a greater understanding of his life, as well as examine how our attitudes to mental health have evolved over the last 200 years.”

Among the exhibits on display at Kew, near Richmond in south west London, will be doctors notes and instructions for the King’s care written by his daughter, Princess Mary.

A poignant note written by the 28-year-old princess in June 1804, advises doctors to suggest things “in such a way that the King imagines the first thought was his own”, to let him voice his grievances both “real and imaginary” and to “keep everything in order without ever having a squabble”.

The exhibition includes portraits of the doctors tasked with “curing” the monarch as well as various medical records from the archive of the Royal College of Physicians.

One of three letters sent by the King’s senior physician, dated December 4, 1788, says: “His Majesty has had very little sleep, having had the strait waistcoat during the whole night. His Majesty is less unquiet this morning; but incoherent.”

Clothes and other possessions belonging to the monarch will also be on show.

Several men’s mental health charities will provide a different perspective to items on display with a second label relatable to the modern observer.

Members of the public have also been asked to contribute items that relate to their own mental health.

Critics claim that George III failed to protect Britain's interests by supporting policies that resulted in the American War of Independence.

Diagnosed with insanity in 1788, it was later claimed he suffered from porphyria, an iron deficiency that can cause epileptic fits.

However, experts have since dismissed the theory, confident that he did suffer from extremely manic episodes at various points in his life, possibly triggered by trauma such as the deaths of three of his children aged four, one and seven respectively.

An HRP spokesman said: “Kew was where King George retreated at times of both physical and mental ill health.

“The anniversary of his death gives us an opportunity to talk about him in a new way, to explore how attitudes towards mental health have shifted over that time.”

He added: “The idea at the time was that if the King was sick then the nation was sick so there was a real politicisation of his health. This will explore the human side of his breakdown.”

“He’s remembered for losing his reason and losing the colonies but it’s nebulous to boil it down to just two things.

“He was given the best education, he was fascinated with architecture and very interested in music and art. It was during his reign that Buckingham Palace became Buckingham Palace, when he acquired it as a private family residence for his wife, Queen Charlotte, and their children, and his was one of the founding collections of the British Library.”

The Prince of Wales has revealed that King George III is the monarch he most respects, describing him as a good man who was misunderstood.

In 2004, he said: "George III led Britain through 60 years of enormous social upheaval, industrial revolution and terrible hardships inflicted by war with Napoleon. Yet history remembers him above all as the 'mad king' or the 'king who lost America'. This is a travesty."

SOURCE 







Private security firm mounts UK's first private prosecutions for theft as police refuse to take offenders to court

Aprivate police service is mounting the UK’s first private prosecutions for theft and other “minor” crimes because it claims the police have “given up” taking them to court.

The private firm, which provides neighbourhood policing to residents, firms and shops, says it has set up a new prosecution unit after its teams have apprehended shoplifters, pickpockets and drug dealers only to be told by officers called to the scene to release them.

The former senior Metropolitan police officers who run the My Local Bobby service blame cuts in police numbers which meant officers were reluctant to spend time and valuable resource investigating and prosecuting minor offences.

It comes as an analysis of police data by The Daily Telegraph shows that in some parts of Britain as few as one in 500 personal thefts - such as pickpocketing and shoplifting - are being solved with the criminal charged.

The proportion charged is down to 0.2 per cent in Suffolk, 0.3 per cent in Gloucestershire and City of London, 0.6 per cent in Warwickshire, 0.7 per cent in Greater Manchester, 0.8 per cent in Kent, and 0.9 per cent in the Metropolitan Police Service and North Yorkshire for 2018/19.

Overall, for all forces in England and Wales, the charging rate has halved in four years from 2.6 per cent in 2015/16 to 1.3 per cent for the first quarter of 2019/20.

David McKelvey, a former Detective Chief Inspector with the Met who set up the service with Tony Nash, a former Met borough commander, said the criminal justice system was in crisis with tens of thousands fewer prosecutions and lenient sentences as “old fashioned” policing had been abandoned.

Their company, TM Eye,  started by specialising in investigating and prosecuting counterfeit and fake goods rackets where it says it has brought more than 500 successful prosecutions working with police forces internationally, the FBI and Federal Drugs Administration (FDA).

It launched My Local Bobby just over two years ago to provide residents, local firms and shops with neighbourhood policing more reminiscent, it says, of “Dixon of Dock Green.”

However Mr McKelvey said its teams had become increasingly frustrated in the past year by the refusal of police to prosecute the shoplifters, pickpockets, drug dealers they have been apprehending on almost a daily basis. In the past they had handed them over to police who would investigate and prosecute them.

“Now police take ages to turn up and when they do turn up, despite overwhelming evidence, they will simply take the handcuffs off and release them. We have looked at ways to do it, trying to liaise with police and senior managers in the police,” he said.

“But what we have done now is to employ a new prosecution team on shoplifting, pickpockets, low level assaults and drug dealing and we will prosecute these offences ourselves.

“Anyone can arrest and prosecute someone. What you have to do is to meet the public interest threshold and have sufficient evidence to bring a case.”

They have already mounted a test case prosecution of a shoplifter which is currently before the courts.

Mr McKelvey claims it could be a “win-win” situation for the police as it would enable them to “allocate resources to crimes that require more police time while at the same time, the shops and residents get an outcome that people want.”

He said frontline police officers were constrained by targets and resources which meant an officer would be reluctant to “spend eight hours in custody with a shoplifter for £30” even though “that shoplifter is going to go on and shoplift the next day and the day after.”

He said reasons given by officers when his teams were told to release suspects included that they did not have space in custody suites to interview them, were too busy or ruled community resolution orders were a better way of resolving the crime.

“One of the lessons that could be learned from police is that we don’t ‘arrest’ people, we gather evidence and we summons them,” said Mr McKelvey. “We don’t have hours and hours in custody where you have to interview them, which is often a waste of time because they just say: ‘No comment.’”

The company initially plans to fund the prosecution unit out of its own resources, effectively at a loss, until it can establish if it will be successful.

Its 30 “bobbies”, who are uniformed with red vests and caps, provide cover 24/7 for up to 250 houses on each beat and the firm promises to have a response at the scene within five minutes, all for a fee of £100 to £200 a month per household.

Its ‘bobbies’ are largely drawn from the ranks of former police officers and military and are accredited with the Security Industry Authority (SIA) with most also close protection trained. TM Eye’s senior investigator is Steve Hobbs, a former Met Detective Superintendent who was lead investigator on more than 200 murders.

 So far it has beats operating in central and North London, with 30 more requests for contracts outstanding. “When we set up My Local Bobby just over two years ago, we wanted to replace something that was missing which is that you don’t see police officers walking the streets. You don’t see any neighbourhood officers,” said Mr McKelvey.

“We walked around Mayfair and Belgravia and you couldn’t find an officer. My Local Bobby is about having that principle front end presence like Dixon of Dock Green. Residents know who the bobbies are, and the bobbies know all the residents, they know when something is out of place.”

The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) said that forces had faced a 20,000 reduction in the number of officers since 2010 as demand from the public had increased but welcomed plans by the Government to recruit 20,000 extra police.

“Fewer officers and staff...has meant a fall in the number of cases referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and a lower number of people being charged,” said a spokesman.

 “An increase in officer numbers in the coming years will help us to provide a better service to victims, and ease the pressure on our people.”

The spokesman added: “Policing is well used to working with private security companies on a daily basis. These firms should not replace or supplement policing and it is for properly trained officers to intervene when a crime has been committed. Where communities wish to engage these companies, they should ensure that they are properly trained and accredited. We will work with these personnel in the most appropriate way and reports of crime and evidence provided to police by a third party will be assessed and dealt with.

SOURCE 





Australian government rules out visa-free travel between Australia, UK

 The Morrison government has baulked at expanding a new post-Brexit trade pact to include visa-free work and travel between Australia and the United Kingdom, arguing any special deal that circumvented existing immigration caps could be deeply unpopular in both countries.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that some changes to work rights would be proposed and accepted by both sides but said he “can't imagine full and unfettered free movement” will be on the table during negotiations.

“We're not into full negotiating mode and we will have to see what the UK aspires to, but noting that work rights and movement of people in the UK has been a big part of the European Union debate, I would be surprised if complete liberalisation around migration and labour rights was on their agenda,” Senator Birmingham said during an interview in London.

Australia already has a free movement deal with New Zealand but Senator Birmingham said the Morrison government would not use the Brexit trade talks to propose a similar scheme allowing British citizens to work and live in Australia visa-free, and vice-versa.

UK International Trade Secretary Liz Truss floated possible talks on free movement during a visit to Australia in September, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson also advocated for the creation of a special visa-free zone when he was mayor of London.

Mr Johnson once said opening the borders would end “absurd discrimination” facing expats in the UK and aid the Australian economy because the “unspoken reality is that Australians are actually quite keen to encourage more immigration from Britain”.

A largely foreign concept in Australia, free movement could unleash significant economic and social consequences, including a possible exodus of highly trained workers to the UK and influx of unskilled Brits to Sydney and Melbourne.

While Australians can visit the UK for less than six months without a visa, British tourists need one to enter Australia. Some 636,000 UK nationals were granted tourist, business or temporary work visas last financial year.

Unrestricted European migration was a major factor behind the push for Brexit. The Coalition has also moved to ease fears over congestion and employment in Australia by cutting the permanent migration cap from 190,000 to 160,000 a year.

Senator Birmingham said he expected possible tweaks to existing immigration rules to allow “more flexibility”, but stressed his priority was sealing a free trade deal focused on giving Australian exporters easier access to the lucrative British market.

He pledged to canvass public opinion on any changes to “kinks” in the existing migration regime.

“How you draw the line around rights to access work visas and other visas is a different question, that has an entire spectrum of grey, between the black and white of no movement and unfettered movement,” he said.

The UK’s departure from the European Union means it must seal new free trade terms with major economies, including the United States and Australia.

The UK is Australia’s eighth-largest trading partner, with two-way trade valued at $26.9 billion in 2018. Britain is also the second-largest source of total foreign investment in Australia.

Britain will formally leave the EU on January 31 but the existing economic, customs and migration relationship will remain in place for one more year while the two parties thrash out a new trading and security pact.

Senator Birmingham met his UK counterpart over Christmas and hopes a deal can be struck and ratified by the December 2020 deadline that Britain has set itself to finalise a new post-Brexit relationship with Europe.

Mr Johnson’s legislation makes it illegal to extend the one-year transition window, making a “hard” Brexit a possibility in December 2020 if the negotiations collapse or take too long to complete and ratify, as some experts have predicted.

Senator Birmingham said the UK and EU were in “uncharted waters” but expressed confidence a deal can be struck in such a short timeframe. He predicted this would give Australian businesses and investors final confidence and certainty.

“Those uncharted waters also mean unprecedented outcomes can probably be achieved,” he said.

“The incentive to get a deal done has got to be significant given how much is at stake, so I expect given how much clarity and certainty the UK election provided, that goodwill exists on both sides of the Channel to nut out out a deal.”

SOURCE  

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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