WELCOME TO SALEM

It’s been rife for years - at every school - at every church - at every sports club - and as for the Scouts and Guides ….. sexual misbehaviour of all kinds has been part of our lives. There would be no pop business, as we know it, if all the stars had been hauled in for their behaviour.

But this is a totally new world.  After Savile everything has changed. A sniff of guilt is all it takes. Paranoia and vigilante-ism are very infectious and they too are rife.

And because of that two things have happened - the presumption of innocence as a basic human right has gone, the media are allowed free licence to pre-try and do so in a shamelessly suggestive way (imagine Prince Charles laughing with Jimmy Savile - nudge, nudge…or anyone alongside Gary Glitter) and the police have become stage managers of pantomimes, battering on doors at 6am and standing outside dead men’s houses looking menacing.

What one tweet said last week was more than a joke - it was an observation of stunning perceptiveness:

“Edward Heath’s silence on this whole affair has been most revealing.”

Ours has the risk of becoming a world of fantasists and prosecutors full of fetid incrimination, insinuation and rage.  But the problem is this. Most of us are too frightened of being seen as apologists of the evil doings of perverts to resist this no-smoke-without-a-fire nonsense.

On Saturday Matthew Parish quoted Ed Murrow who said this at the peak of the McCarthy inquisitions in the USA in the early 1950s:

“We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.”

Melodrama has filled the week. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet, Donald Trump’s Republican debate and that hairstyle and the continuing surge of Jeremy Corbyn. Benedict will be splendid I’m sure and bring his own fast talking energy to a part that’s nearly always done well because, I suspect, of its authenticity.

There’s a bit of the sweet prince in all of us.

Donald is defined by the worst haircut in history. Can it or he be real? But the applause from the audience that greeted this suggest probably yes.

"I've been challenged by so many people and I don't frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn't have time either. This country is in big trouble."

And there’s Jeremy Corbyn - one of the most unreasonable and non-team-playing people in politics sweeping all before him by seeming to be concerned and reasonable. He’s a teetotal Nigel Farage with a red shirt.

Finally England winning the Ashes.

Proof that in today’s topsy-turvy world anything can happen. And probably