Peter Rhodes on Bob Dylan's legacy, a warning on guns and predicting the fall of Kabul
A reader takes me to task for stating that Andrew Cuomo, sacked as governor of New York for serial sexual harassment, will be remembered by some as a fine speaker. The reader seems to take the view that the value of a person's entire life's work is automatically erased by his sins. So if the allegations against Bob Dylan revealed this week were proven, would that instantly make all Dylan's songs, writing and poetry worthless?
And what, we may ask, about the statue of a naked Ariel with Prospero which still graces the front of the BBC's Broadcasting House? It was carved by that raging deviant Eric Gill who by his own admission was heavily into incest and bestiality. Do you bin an artist's whole lifetime of work if he is exposed as a pervert? In this age of statue-toppling, I'm amazed Gill's carving doesn't fall.
After the shotgun massacre in Plymouth, police are being urged to make stricter checks on gun owners, including trawling the internet for any hint of hate speech. It's a long overdue idea but this is a matter for law-makers, not the cops. The killers responsible for Britain's worst massacres, at Hungerford and Dunblane, used legally owned weapons. The crucial question is how to keep guns away from potential killers. I recall in the wake of Dunblane a senior police officer offering a simple solution. He took the view that anyone who wanted to have a gun at home was, by definition, an unfit person to have one.
The late John Stalker, former Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, had this to say about guns and shooters: “In Britain applicants for firearms certificates do not have to be put through any psychological filter, so the mental suitability of an applicant is not properly considered.” That was back in 1996. Still haven't learned, have we?
Politicians are queuing up to tell us how astonished and amazed they were at the speed of the Taliban occupation of Kabul. Pity they didn't read this prediction: “No matter how the White House massages the facts about Afghanistan, a defeated government once propped up by US firepower is crumbling, the Yanks are quitting and, barring a miracle, the Taliban's tanks will soon be parked on the presidential lawn in Kabul.” That was from this column exactly three months ago on May 20. And all done entirely without a crystal ball. Okay, I was wrong about the tanks.
