Culture and History

I think that we are very lucky living here in Britain, as we are surrounded by both of the above. OK, none of the seven wonders of the world are here, and there are an awful lot of more cultural and historic sites elsewhere in the world, but I still think that we're lucky. At least we're luckier than the Australians, New Zealanders, Americans and all the rest of the 'new' countries whose histories are not as old as ours.

And, in Kent and Sussex, I think that we have more than our fair share. Most of these sites are very ably looked after and preserved for posterity by two superb organisations, English Heritage and The National Trust.

So, where am I going with this. Well, I have been a member of both organisations since the time that I was married. In fact, we had family membership, and I have carried that on since I got rid of her. This has been great during the time that the kids have been here.

Obviously I needed to find something to keep the kids out of trouble and trips abroad were out of the question without passports, so we have been visiting some of the historic houses that are local to us.

The first place that we visited was Chartwell, the home of Sir Winston Churchill. This is a fascinating place with both the house and the gardens open to the public, and the kids are of an age to understand who Churchill was and what an impact he had on Britain, as well as the rest of the world, in both the World Wars.

A few days later, we visited Down House, which was Charles Darwin's family home. Again, absolutely fascinating, and the kids were able to appreciate the controversy that Darwin caused at the time of his Theory of Evolution first coming to light. Both of the kids are church going 'Christians' and I suppose their mother could be said to be 'Born Again' (I think that she thinks that being a 'Christian' means that she can lie to judges, the police, social services etc with impunity). There was also an interesting documentary about Darwin just a few days after we'd been to Down, where even the kids could not believe that there was a teacher of science at a well-known British grammar school who refused to acknowledge that the earth was older than 6,000 years because that's how old it is in the bible. But at least he wasn't as bad as the American loonies, who in the past have prosecuted teachers for teaching evolution.

The third place that we visited was Batemans, which was the home of the Kipling family. I think that the main thing that struck all of us was that of the four places that we visited, it was the least 'homely'. We all agreed that it felt uncomfortable and very unlived in. I know that the death of John, his son, during the First World War affected Kipling very deeply, and that may be why the family home is so unhomely.

The fact that Batemans scored so low was more of a surprise considering that the last place we visited was Quebec House, which was the childhood home of Major General James Wolfe, victor at Quebec, and also was the property that had gone longest since it was last used as a family home.

In the last fortnight we have been to four places, and obviously we've been to others prior to that, and in Kent and Sussex alone, there are 58 English Heritage and National Trust properties, so we'll always have opportunities during holidays and at weekends.

When we haven't been out and about, the kids and I have been watching the Olympics. This is the first one that they've really appreciated, as they were 6 and 9 during Athens. But their interest has also been grabbed by the fact that Britain has done so well, in fact their best performance since the London games of 1908.

However, it looks unlikely that this feat will be repeated when London again hosts the next games in 2012. Already, there has been talk that the budget will be nowhere near that of the Beijing games (which in the current climate is not such a bad thing), but there also seems to be less support for certain sports.

There has been lots of talk of support for the 'Formula 1' sports. My understanding of this is that the sports where the athletes/participants were likely to or are winning medals will get financial support to the detriment of those that aren't. Surely, though, the events that are not medal-winning never will be without support in the first place.

Putting on my cynical head, I wondered if some of this was a political move. The bid was made and awarded at a time when Britain had a Labour Government. At the moment, we still have a Labour Government, but it is all going horribly tits-up for them. Between now and the 2012 games there has to be a General Election and if recent by-election results are anything to go by, we are more likely to have George W Bush as President than we are to have a Labour Prime Minister.

So, could it be that this lack of funding to the Games in general and to certain sports in particular is a way of the present Government ensuring that the next Government is left with the disaster of the 2012 Olympics being underfunded and the participants being less successful than this year and making political gain out of it.

Personally, I think that we have been lucky in these Games to have been so successful, and that we have also seen the best of British, summed up beautifully by 20 year old Daniel Adwe. He didn't win any medals, he came 21st in the Decathlon. But, as he was being interviewed, he raised his arms and said 'I'm an Olympian'. And that's how it should be, and what the Olympic ideal was at the very beginning of the modern Olympics, that the participating was more important than the winning of medals.

Now the worst of British, which has been dragging on for much of the week, Paul Gadd aka Gary Glitter.

For those who don't know, this guy was a well-known 'Glam' Rocker in the 1970's who had all sorts of sob stories going on about his personal life and bankruptcy etc. Then in 1997 he took a computer to be repaired and the hard-drive was found to have child pornography on it. In 1999 he was sentenced and spent two months in prison, leaving the country on his release. He seems to have then moved from country to country until the country where he was staying found out who he is and kicked him out.

He was then arrested, in 2005, in Vietnam, where he had applied to live permanently, and charged with molesting two girls aged 10 and 11. Had he been charged and convicted of raping them, he'd have faced a firing squad (no loss there). As it was, he was sentenced to three years.

Bizarrely, the BBC were allowed to interview him in jail in 2006, where he claimed that he'd been set up as he was unaware that the 'age of consent ' in Vietnam was 18 (suggesting that his victims were over the age of 16, the British age of Consent rather than the 10/11 they actually were) and he also conveniently avoided any mention of his previous conviction.

So, on 19th August, this sexual predator was released and deported by the Vietnamese. He was supposed to return to the UK, but refused to get on a connecting flight and eventually flew to Hong Kong where, surprise surprise, he was refused entry and sent back to Thailand.

Finally, we have now got this creature back in the UK, where he's claiming that his Vietnamese conviction was a 'travesty' and is apparently unhappy that he has to sign the child sex offenders register.

I think that there was a simple way that all of this could have been avoided. All it needed was for someone from the embassy to visit Gadd when he was in the airport in Hong Kong and hide 5kg of heroin in his luggage before he flew back to Thailand..........