Heretic TOC

Not the dominant narrative

Compared to Sinason, Savile was a saint

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Heretic TOC has now read the official Metropolitan Police Service report on Jimmy Savile  in its entirety. As suspected, there is much sound and fury, signifying nothing very much except the virulence of moral panic in the UK right now. Far from being the worst “paedophile” offender in UK history, Savile may not have been a paedophile at all, and any offences could well have been relatively trivial. The report admits, in a coy footnote, that some respondents “don’t wish the matter to be reported as a crime”, inviting the suspicion that at least some of those involved as minors at the […]

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Savile: sound and fury, but signifying what?

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Followers of Heretic TOC hardly need to be told “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers”. What is worth pointing out, though, is that there are good reasons not to believe everything – and perhaps hardly anything – in the joint police and NSPCC report into allegations of sexual abuse made against Jimmy Savile out with an almighty, nation-blasting, media-saturating, fanfare in Britain today. I have not yet read the report, Giving Victims A Voice, but the title alone gives grounds for scepticism: Savile, lest anyone forget, died without facing trial. He is no longer around to defend himself and

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Heretic TOC threatened with closure

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This blog is under threat of closure. Scarlet Wilde@wilde has tweeted: “Paedophile blogs at WordPress: Heretic TOC, Boy Chat, Girl Chat, CLover, Every Farthing, Growing Up Sexually, (more) am reporting to close.” If the site goes down, I’ll aim to reopen elsewhere but it may take a while. Keep an eye out for new link announced at the start of the month on Boy Links or contact me here to be on list for info about new URL: tomocarr66@yahoo.co.uk . Also, advice appreciated on best way forward. Can we fight this?

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No wonder women turn against 'teasing'

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We hear much these days about independent India’s soaring economic growth and advanced IT skills. But in the last couple of weeks a much grimmer story has emerged: the sickening gang rape and murder on a bus of a young unnamed woman. Apparently her death came about through evisceration when, after multiple rapes, an iron bar was shoved into her. It is a story which might at first seem of questionable relevance here, concerned as we are with minor attraction and with consensual sex not the atrocious rape and murder of an adult. Again bearing in mind John Donne’s words that

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British Empire re-conquers America

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My old leftie friends are going to hate me for this, but I have become a neo-imperialist. Not since I was a 10-year-old schoolboy gloating over the world map showing all “our” countries in the British Empire, displayed in pink and stretching across the globe from Canada to Australia and New Zealand, with India and huge chunks of Africa in between, have I been so puffed up with pride in imperial conquest! Wherefore this sudden resurgence of vainglory? Well, the British Empire has been revived, overnight! Even the American colonies, lost by Mad King George a couple of centuries ago, have

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It’s all kicked off in the British media

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Wow! It’s all happening! Jon Henley’s Guardian article on paedophilia yesterday has provoked an immediate and massive reaction. The piece itself drew over 900 comments on the paper’s website before the no doubt exhausted moderators closed the thread: they had been kept very busy reading and deleting abusive posts. In general, though, the exchanges, though passionate, included a lot of thoughtful if not always very well informed material. There were inevitably those who said they had been abused as children, and there were others who said they had enjoyed being sexually engaged with an adult, without later ill effects. I was

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Finally, a word in edgeways at the Guardian!

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I’ll keep this brief, as I hope you will be more interested in reading the Guardian today than Heretic TOC. The long-awaited article by Jon Henley (see “Taking the hex off a media word in edgeways”, 23 Dec 2012) has finally appeared. Do tell me what you think of it, but first, in the next few hours, you might want to focus on sharing your views with the Guardian, in their comment space. Don’t dither: latecomers (tomorrow, say) are likely to find the comment thread closed.

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Begad, sir, you’re an impostor!

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It’s the end of the year again, and what more appropriate time for leisurely reflection over the past twelve months and a look forward to the future? Well, sorry, but sod that. Heretic TOC has been up to his ears in something far more exciting, and is bursting to tell you about it. Not since Oscar Wilde was accused of “posing as a sodomite” (speaking of sodding it!) over a century ago has anyone been more improbably insulted than I was yesterday. We paedophiles are well used to insults on a daily basis, of course, but not like this one! The

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Have you got what it takes to be a guest blogger?

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Heretic TOC is pleased to have attracted on average around eight comments for every blog posted so far. A number have been rejected as unsuitable but the general standard has been gratifyingly high. Some commentators have expressed frustration over the 200-word limit. On the whole I feel it is a useful restriction which encourages everyone to focus on a particular point and stick to it. There will be times, though, when what is needed is not just a “point”, but a developed argument, much as you would expect to see in a good blog piece or an op-ed column in a

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The old queen's Christmas Message

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What is it about carols? I cried a bucket listening to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, on Christmas Eve. Don’t worry, though: it only took a nice mince pie to perk me up afterwards. Superficial sentimentality then? And is that all an atheist’s faithless response to Christmas can ever amount to? Well, you can be the judge of that for yourselves, but when I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died – or rather when I survey the gorgeous choirboys (an especially fine crop at King’s this year, but not

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