Why social media is a good thing for school reunions

THE view across the North Sea, high up on the cliff tops above Scarborough as dawn was breaking, was spectacular.

There was a reddish hue on the horizon, while looking down at the North Yorkshire town from the Cleveland Way, a sprinkling of white street lights clearly etched the road which weaved along foreshore. 

Up high on the clifftop, this was a little piece of secluded heaven with only the wind whistling off the sea for company.

Over the years, I've written ad nauseum about the joys of running – the sheer ecstasy of running unbridled and alone across a remote track, whether it is in a forest, up a mountain, or towards a beach.

Words simply do not do justice to the feelings of joy both during and after a run which runners of all abilities share.

For months, while I have been nursing an annoying hamstring injury, I have been envious of others who have been setting out at the weekend for their morning sorties. I have been unable to run. 

There have been times when I wondered whether this deep-rooted hamstring pull would ever go away.

This morning, pushing my way across the beautiful and undulating countryside, I was able to run pain-free for the first time for 10 weeks. It was a huge relief.

I’m not taking anything for granted, and will only relax once I've got rid of the injury and I’m back to the level of fitness I am used to. It will mean lots of short but steady 30-minute runs – but this is a start.

I WAS in Scarborough for the last in a series of Rotary district conferences on behalf of the charity Hearing Link. For two days, I hosted a stand where I met many Rotarians from north-west England clubs to talk to them about the charity and the work we are doing around hearing loops.

I have been working hard to forge close relationships with Rotary International, and after attending district conferences in Eastbourne, Bristol, the Isle of Wight, Swansea and now Scarborough, I am hoping to set up loop projects in more towns across the UK.

Scarborough is an interesting place. A town which has seen better days, but charming and with plenty of character all the same. Give me Scarborough compared to the "kiss me quick" culture of Blackpool anytime!

We stayed in a delightful, old-style Bed & Breakfast set in a four-storey town house. It is clearly a popular place since the stair walls are littered with signed posters and programmes from some of the shows which have appeared in Scarborough. The only stars I knew were the Grumbleweeds!

This was traditional, first class English hospitality, with a very attentive landlady who served up an amazing full English breakfast and really made you feel welcome.

Having suffered so many charmless, hyperbaric hotels and B&Bs, it was a real pleasure to be made welcome in a B&B where service was superb.

IT’S been a time for reunions in the past week. I was in Newcastle earlier this week where I caught up with Colin Young, who I worked with on the Gulf Daily News in Bahrain. It was the first time we had met since 1989, and it was good to reflect on how our lives have moved on since then.

A week earlier, about 25 former classmates turned up to a school reunion in Ruislip. 

It’s 40 years since we all started school at St Nicholas and St Mary’s Grammar Schools. I still keep in touch with some of those school friends, but for others it was wonderful to be able to meet again for the first time in 32 years.

Social media and Facebook has a lot to be thanked for with rekindling school friendships – it’s also been responsible for a few divorces too. In both cases, these reunions were made possible thanks to social media which reached out through friends and to friends of friends to those who we had lost contact with.

For me, school and Bahrain were very significant parts of my life. I grew up a lot in both places and the experiences - good and bad - were very sobering. That’s why, with the advantage of hindsight, it was a perfect opportunity to share and reflect on those days.

I can vividly remember my first day at Grammar School, sitting in a bleak classroom on the ground floor being told by our class tutor Mrs Broadhead about the need to cover our text books with brown paper, and the punishments we could receive if we broke the school rules.

I’m never one to hark back on the past. Life did look rosier then, but there are certain times in your life when the battles you fought and the experiences you sampled stay with you forever.

A man accused of rape and fighting for his life....

IN Portsmouth Crown Court this week, a man in his forties was stood in the dock in court 7 fighting for his life.

Watched by his mother and his wife, this man was accused of raping a six-year-old girl. She was their next door neighbour and, according to the prosecution, the assault took place in the girl’s bedroom while her mother was next door and her father was downstairs drinking.

The court heard that the defendant, who regularly came round for a session of drinks and bawdy football talk with his neighbour, had gone upstairs where he raped the girl, pulling down her “Barbie” pants.

It was sordid stuff and at times very uncomfortable to listen to as the girl gave video evidence, and a recording was played of her police interview.

The big issue, however, is that this alleged rape took place eight years ago. It had only come to light when the girl, now 14, confided in some school friends. They told her teachers, the school contacted the police and parents, and so the man was charged with a rape going back to 2006.

I had taken my post-graduate journalism students to the court hearing. Beforehand, we had been warned about the nature of the case, but they were all keen to see the criminal justice system in full swing.

Afterwards, we discussed the opening day of the trial, and I warned the students that the defendant was very likely to be found not guilty. There was no way, I said, without any physical evidence or a witness, that any jury could find the man in the dock guilty “beyond reasonable doubt”.

On Friday, the 12-man jury – seven men and five women – agreed. And the man, who had endured these charges hanging over him for the past 12 months, wasn’t transported in a prison van to begin a long jail sentence. Instead, he could rebuild his life.

I have enormous discomfort about prosecuting historical sex cases. That doesn’t mean where there is strong, physical evidence, that a conviction should be sought. Absolutely, we should be sending out a strong message to anyone guilty of a sexual assault of any nature that society won’t tolerate such behaviour.

But where a case is built solely on circumstantial evidence, when it is founded on historical allegations, then despite the need to see justice being done I don’t know how the Crown Prosecution Service can go ahead. If fact, justice isn’t being served well.

At times, with the spate of high-profile sex cases, it is as if the CPS have been going on a prosecution fishing expedition to satisfy public need. Sadly, they’ve been left disappointed.

The Radio DJ Paul Gambaccini learnt earlier this month that he will not face any action over alleged sex offences dating back to the early 1980s. He was arrested under the Operation Yewtree operation. The 65-year-old said he had suffered “12 months of trauma”.

The comedian Freddie Starr suffered the same fate in February this year. He pledged to bring Operation Yewtree “down to its knees” after his fourth arrest over historical sex abuse allegations.

At the time, he blasted Scotland Yard for using him as a scapegoat after failing to convict Jimmy Savile when he was alive.

And then there is the case of the DJ Dave Lee Travis, finally convicted after two trials of a sex offence. One has to wonder on the basis of the allegation whether justice was seen to be done in prosecuting him for what he now carries a conviction.

 

Dave Lee Travis is not a sex offender, he’s not a rapist, to put it bluntly he was a dirty old man who liked a grope. Rightly or wrongly, that was the culture of the day. But was it right to prosecute him and waste millions of pounds in tax-payers' money? I don't think so.

Having been on domestic violence courses through magistrates’ training, and also learned about the consequences of rape, I’m not in any way diminishing the need to prosecute the perpetrators.

Rape and sexual offences are abhorrent. But, such is the emotive nature of the crime, surely we have to ensure the bar is set high in terms of pursuing a conviction ensuring the quality of evidence is gold standard.

You can’t prosecute someone based on one allegation, an allegation which may be carried with malice or even to gain attention on behalf of the alleged victim.

For the guy who was in the dock at Portsmouth Crown Court, we will never know whether anything did happen. But it doesn’t make it right to convict him on circumstantial evidence.

For him, the stain will stick on his character. The “no smoke without fire” principle with hang over him from some quarters for the rest of his life, and unfairly so.

It’s about time we got a sense of perspective with sex offences. It's about time we didn't pursue knee-jerk witch-hunts in a splatter-gun way with the hope of nailing a few people on the basis of what might be a spurious and tainted allegation. 

Half marathons, teacher training days and a school reunion - the pot pourri that is Passing Shots!

ONE of the downsides of social media is that it rubs in your face those occasions and events which you can't attend.

This morning, flicking through Facebook, there are loads of postings about the Swindon and the Royal Parks half marathons - at least one of which I was hoping to run this morning. That was until my blessed hamstring decided to give me so much jip.

I'm doing the exercises twice daily and have got another physio session tomorrow evening with "Mad Mark". Patience is the name of the game, but it's not easy when you read how everyone is gearing up for their runs this morning.

It's moments like this which make you value the good things in your life, and make you more determined to get back to fitness as soon as possible.


WE had a teacher training day this week at college. Initially told my boss that I wasn't keen to attend since my focus had to be on the students, particularly those on the 20-week journalism course.

In the end, we agreed a compromise and I turned up for half a day's training, and rotated the timetable with extra shorthand lessons so the students didn't miss out.

The first session was about understanding disability, particularly autism, a subject where I learnt absolutely nothing new. It would have been interesting to have understood strategies which might be employed for dealing with various disabilities in class, but that didn't happen.

The second session featured a speaker from Hampshire Police talking about the vulnerability of young students to be radicalised by religion. His presentation style was a little unusual, and at times flippant and patronising, but the subject matter was interesting.

In 2013, a student from Highbury College was among five Portsmouth men who made the trip to Syria, and one of them, Ifthekar Jaman, was killed almost a year ago while fighting with Islamic State in Iraq. He's not the guy in the picture, by the way!

During the teacher training, it was fascinating to hear what police are doing to counter this radicalisation, especially in universities and colleges. One of the ways is to challenge the views of these youngsters. It's an interesting theory.

As for the teacher training day, I still wonder why we have them in the middle of term.

These are the old-style Baker Days, born from the Conservative Government of Kenneth Baker. There is no doubt that these training days are extremely valuable. In business, training is an integral part of an employee's development, and so it should be for teaching.

Before I was a teacher, I questioned why these teacher training days were thrown in the middle of term, causing enormous disruption to pupils and their families. Now as a teacher, I still subscribe to that view.

I get 40 days' holiday a year, plus eight Bank Holidays. Surely it is feasible to organise training days just before the start of a new term - the Monday after the pupils break-up for holidays, or even the Friday before term resumes.


I'M looking forward to a week's time when we have a school reunion in Middlesex.

It was 40 years ago that I began secondary school education at the Mr Chips-like St Nicholas Grammar School in Northwood Hills. That seems a lifetime away.

I was one of the last of the 11-plus brigade and remember cycling the four miles from home in South Ruislip to school every day.

School was not easy. I wasn't gifted academically like some of the other students, and preferred sport to lessons, but I got by.

Anyway, it's going to be fun to catch up with some old school friends, some of whom I haven't seen for almost 35 years when we meet in a pub near Harefield next Saturday evening.

It will be a time to compare grey hairs and waist lines!

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The Isle of Wight - Rotary & Michael Portillo

THE last of the cars are being loaded onto the Wight Sky from a slip of a quay at Yarmouth, at the western end of the Isle of Wight.

It is a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, with drinkers sitting on a sun-terrace right next to the terminal entrance soaking up the last of the late summer weather.

It’s hard to believe this is the first week of October, with the sun beating down on a shimmering  Solent littered by a scattering of yachts. The Isle of Wight is a beautiful place anyway, and when the sun is shining, the island really looks resplendent in its party clothes.

Despite living on the south coast for almost 25 years, I’ve not often made the trip across the Solent. At £71 a throw to bring the car over, it’s not cheap. Whether you’re crossing from Portsmouth, Southampton or Lymington, the three to five-mile ferry trip is among the most expensive commercial boat crossing in the world.

Surely it’s about time the Monopolies Commission took a close look at how Wightlink and Red Funnel can justify such exorbitant charges.

THE reason for the weekend away was to attend the first of a series of Rotary district conferences.

Over the next month, I’m visiting events in Eastbourne and Scarborough on behalf of the charity Hearing Link to promote the “Let’s Loop the UK” campaign.

Despite moving into teaching full-time with Highbury College, I’m still heavily involved with the national charity which provides support for the 10 million people in the UK with hearing loss – two million of whom wear hearing aids.

In the past year, I have been working for Hearing Link to promote the use of hearing loops, and have set up groups in Surrey, Swindon, Chester and Newcastle, to sit alongside an existing initiative in Eastbourne. It is a wonderfully exciting project.

The idea of these groups is to promote awareness of hearing loops among businesses and to encourage greater use of them by hearing aid wearers. It is a huge task and one which involves changing cultures among businesses and people, including hearing aid wearers who have become so disenchanted with non-working hearing loops.

But, this is a challenge which has to be bitten off one piece at a time, working in partnership with a number of national organisations, such as the hearing loop and hearing aid manufacturers, audiologists, and businesses, such as Tesco, the National Trust, HSBC, Asda and Nationwide.

Rotary is another important partnership. In Bembridge on the Isle of Wight, I manned a stand during the three-day district conference for Sussex Rotary clubs. I gave a 15 minute speech to 400 delegates on Sunday morning and over the weekend spoke to a number of people to see if their clubs would be prepared to get involved.

The response has been very positive and it will be interesting to see how many of the initial contacts turn into positive leads. It looks like I’ve got a full speaking diary over the next six months.

As a member of the Click4Action e-Rotary club – more of which another time – I’m acutely aware of how important Rotary can be with the success of the project. We had a similar presence this weekend in Bristol for a Rotary convention of Surrey clubs.

Rotary might seem an out-dated and old-fashioned institution, but I believe it retains its importance, made up of the movers and shakers in our communities.

However, in my speech, I warned Rotarians that they had to carefully look to the future, in order to continue Rotary’s relevance in society today. Rotary memberships are dwindling as people have less time, so it is vital the organisation nationally looks at new and inventive ways of boosting membership.

The “Let’s Loop” campaign is promoting the use of Rotary Community Corps – a sort of Rotary Lite, where volunteers can get involved with Rotary in an informal way, without the commitment. These volunteers could one day be motivated to join Rotary full-time. We have chartered one such group in Swindon.

Rotary sits at the heart of its communities, and in Bembridge I asked the Rotary audience to look at “Let’s Loop the UK” as a vehicle to encourage greater participation by tackling hearing loss, an issue which affects so many people.

IT’S been an interesting few days on the Isle of Wight. I was pleased to meet former MP Michael Portillo, who was at the Rotary conference to give a speech on behalf of the charity Debra – an organisation which works with children suffering with Epidermolysis Bullosa.

I wasn’t able to hear his speech, but I’m told it was very funny, and disarming, with a few pointed anecdotes about his days working with Margaret Thatcher as a member of the Cabinet.

We chatted briefly towards the end of his visit about his work with Debra and Hearing Link. He’s a very charming man, and the lady from Debra was saying how the reaction of some female Rotarians to him was quite amazing.

One lady, clearly flirting with the former Conservative Minister, was, to put it bluntly, quite tactile.

Another told a clearly taken aback Portillo that they were having bets at what this debonair follower of fashion was wearing. It was a slightly creased blue jacket, but as a definite non-follower of fashion, I can’t embroider this description with any more detail.

Still, he took time to speak to everyone and was a consummate gentleman. Nice guy!