Friday 15 March 2024

Going to the dogs

How often do you read that people's conduct has declined, the country's going to the dogs, nobody knows how to behave any more etc etc?

Supposedly people are more angry, abusive, lawless, corrupt, neurotic, selfish and lazy than they used to be - and what's more it's getting worse.

But is this really true? Is people's behaviour actually slipping or is this a false impression? How on earth do you measure such things when there's no way of directly comparing behaviour now with behaviour, say, twenty years ago?

Today's bad behaviour is much more visible when it's constantly flagged up by the media and made out to be more common than it is. And yesterday's bad behaviour is not so noticeable because we've forgotten a lot of it. So of course it seems like people's behaviour has got worse.

The fact is that there's a large number of people who are badly behaved and always have been. There are plenty of people who get drunk on planes, insult shop assistants, jump queues, feign sickies and so on. Such wrongdoers didn't simply jump out of the woodwork last week.

And I admit to making these false comparisons myself. Just recently I was saying that people seem to be angrier than they used to be, but of course if you ask me for evidence or statistics, I don't have any. It's simply my personal hunch, based on nothing whatever.

I need to take the media's sensationalism with a large pinch of salt.

Monday 11 March 2024

Extremism redefined

The British government is planning a new law on extremism, saying that the existing definitions don't go far enough and democracy is threatened. What a pointless exercise.

Needless to say they're tying themselves in knots trying to find a suitable redefinition* of something that seems perfectly obvious. To my mind, and probably most people's minds, extremism is simply violence or the threat of violence.

Anything else is just free speech or public protest - possibly abusive and ignorant free speech but that's not the same as extremism. If free speech and public protest becomes "extremism", we're on a very slippery slope indeed.

But the government wants to include anything that "undermines UK democracy", an absurdly vague concept that could include just about anything.

Would rallies in support of Gaza be caught in the net? Or attacks on the government? Or trade union activities? All sorts of routine grassroots protest could be outlawed.

Civil liberties groups and lawyers have already pointed out how dangerous the new law could be, but the government is notorious for ignoring expert advice and going its own sweet way.

*The proposed redefinition of extremism runs as follows (new redefinition on March 13): "the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance" that aims to "negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others" or "undermine, overturn or replace the UK's system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights."

Thursday 7 March 2024

Silence that alarm!

Noise is a big factor in our everyday lives but it isn't discussed very much. We all react to noise in different ways, depending what the noise is and depending on our personal likings and aversions. Some things I can easily screen out while other things totally get on my nerves. The things that annoy me:

  • Background music in restaurants and shops, especially music I dislike. I prefer silence so I can focus on conversation.
  • Music blasting out of people's cars
  • Souped-up cars with roaring engines
  • Car alarms and security alarms
  • Motorbikes
  • People having loud phone conversations on public transport
  • Leaf blowers. Why can't the leaves just stay where they are?
  • People rustling food wrappers in a cinema or theatre
The things I'm okay with:

  • Mild background noise when I'm falling asleep
  • Jenny's occasional snoring
  • The sound of pigeons
  • The sirens on emergency vehicles
  • Planes taking off from the nearby airport
  • Chewing noises
  • People tapping their feet
  • The noise from washing machines
  • Chainsaws
I'm glad I've still got good hearing, despite the deafening rock concerts I went to when I was younger, which left my ears ringing for hours. I'm also glad I don't have tinnitus, which is very common, incredibly annoying and unfortunately not curable. Thankfully also I don't have hyperacusis or extreme sensitivity to noise, so sounds always seem louder than they should.

Now excuse me while I go and sabotage a few leaf blowers.

Sunday 3 March 2024

Get a grip

It's good that mental health is now so widely discussed and there's a lot more help available* for those who have mental problems. It's now perfectly okay to admit to chronic depression, anxiety, panic attacks or even suicidal feelings, and to ask for help in dealing with them.

It's suggested that one reason for the change is that young people are now enduring so many overwhelming pressures in their lives that they can't bottle up their feelings anymore and are bringing them into the open and looking for professional guidance to help them out.

Whatever the reason, this big change can only be for the good. When I was young, people were a lot less sympathetic about mental problems and tended to shrug them off as some minor quirk. If you expressed your inability to cope, you would probably be told to "get a grip", "pull yourself together" or "be more positive". Such knee-jerk advice may have helped some people, but many others felt their problems weren't being taken seriously.

There's still some reluctance to use medications to deal with mental problems, and some reluctance to reveal they're being used, but they can be very effective in many cases.

Unfortunately they weren't much help to Jenny's old school friend who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was taking medicines for a number of years before killing herself at the second attempt. Her problems were very deep-rooted and not responsive to any kind of treatment.

Of course there are still people who're unsympathetic to mental problems, partly because they're lucky enough not to have any themselves, partly because they're still stuck in the "get a grip" approach, and partly because mental problems are by their nature invisible. But that sort of ignorance is fast declining.

*but not nearly enough

Wednesday 28 February 2024

Troublesome wills

I've always been fascinated by long-drawn-out disputes over wills and inheritance. Some of the disputes might be justified, like if one sibling has inherited nothing but other siblings have inherited vast amounts, but a lot of disputes seem to be easily resolvable and not worth the time and effort. Not to mention huge legal fees.

I read that there has been a big increase in disputes over wills, partly because more people are severely hard-up and could do with a sizeable inheritance to bail them out. Partly also because the older generation are often very well-off as a result of rocketing house prices and are more likely to leave substantial sums to their descendants.

I was lucky that my mother's will was very simple and was dealt with quite easily, with neither myself, my sister, my brother in law or my niece disputing it in any way. She hadn't decided to leave £10,000 to the local cats' home or her favourite hairdresser.

Jenny and I have both made wills and hopefully they're equally straightforward and won't prompt nasty legal wrangles. We certainly haven't left money to any unlikely recipients like the local cats' home (if there is one). Nor have we left anything to any political party.

We did use a solicitor to write our wills, to ensure they were fully legal and wouldn't be challenged because of faulty wording or an invalid witness or some other beginner's error. DIY wills are tempting but open to subtle pitfalls.

But once a will is contested, the dispute can go on for years, with a large chunk of the inheritance vanishing in solicitors' fees. It's not unusual for legal fees in a long-running dispute to clock up hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Better not to give lawyers a field day.

Saturday 24 February 2024

Just be yourself

"Just be yourself". Sounds like good advice, doesn't it? What could be more natural, more authentic, more straightforward? Except that this seemingly simple bit of advice is actually quite complicated.

Do I even know what is myself? I'm such a mixture of different characteristics and attitudes and tendencies, which ones are my real self? Is it the anxious bit, the happy bit, the grumpy bit, the bewildered bit (etc etc)?

Does being myself mean stomping about in a violent rage? Or hurling plates across the kitchen? Or telling people they're nauseating arseholes? Or throwing a custard pie at the King? I don't think any of those things would be helpful.

And how can I be sure I'm being myself rather than what someone else has suggested, or what's fashionable, or what's convenient? How exactly do I distinguish the genuine article from the bogus and performative?

Personally I'd replace "just be yourself" with "just do what seems to be the best thing in the circumstances". Not so pithy or succinct but a bit more practical.

Then again, if you're drawn to violence, bullying, cruelty and other undesirable traits, the last thing you need to be told is "just be yourself". "Just be anything other than yourself" would be more appropriate.

I certainly couldn't have "been myself" when I was working. I'd have been shown the door pretty quickly if I told my colleagues precisely what I thought of them, or told a stroppy customer to get lost, or turned up tipsy to an important meeting.

Just be yourself? Easier said than done.

Tuesday 20 February 2024

But I've earnt it

I love being retired. I love being able to do what I want when I want and not have to do whatever my boss tells me to do. If I want to spend all day watching rubbishy TV, sleeping or having a sudoku binge, there's nobody to stop me.

But it's odd, there's still a small part of me that thinks that such shameless self-indulgence is somehow wrong, that I should be doing something more productive, or worthwhile, or useful, or generally for the good of society.

Why do I think that? There are millions of people out there doing productive or worthwhile things, and there's no need for me to join them.

After all, I did paid work for the best part of 53 years, not retiring till I was 71, so surely I've done quite enough to qualify as an upstanding, respectable citizen, and in no way a workshy layabout or couch potato. Haven't I earnt my retirement?

But clearly there's a part of me that still isn't comfortable with pottering about the house following one trivial pursuit after another. Somewhere in my mind there's a residual hankering for an authority figure to help me on my way and organise my life.

Where does this strange impulse come from? Have I been too embedded in the Protestant Work Ethic to dismiss it all of a sudden and go my own way? Do I feel that if other people are doing productive things then it's not fair that I'm swanning around doing exactly what I please?

I'll get back to you on that one - once I've finished this sudoku.

Friday 16 February 2024

Squeaky clean

I'm always surprised by the number of people who're so germ-conscious that they spend a huge amount of time cleaning every nook and cranny in the house.

I've known a lot of people who're so convinced some lethal germ is about to jump out at them that their cleaning regime is painstaking. Every day worktops are wiped, floors are swept, carpets are hoovered, anti-bacterial agents are sprayed in all directions. If something hasn't been cleaned recently enough, they can't rest until it's done.

But as far as I'm concerned a lot of germs are either totally harmless or actually beneficial, so trying to purge them all is pointless. Especially since you can't even see them and can only imagine where they might be lurking.

But TV programmes these days are full of ads for anti-bacterial products, scaring you rigid with the warning that your kitchen or toilet is colonised by literally millions of bacteria. Clearly there's a big market for such stuff.

Jenny and I take the usual minimal steps to keep the place fairly clean and presentable, but beyond that we're not going to bust a gut trying to eradicate every last lingering microbe.

I knew a woman who would get up at 4 am to start cleaning, and who would be constantly washing clothes, cushions, curtains and other items around the house in case they were hiding some nasty bug.

Mind you, I'm not sure which is worse, cleaning fanatically or not cleaning at all. A few years before she died, my mother gave up cleaning altogether and let her flat get grubbier and grubbier. She claimed she had a cleaner though I never saw any sign of one.

But funnily enough all those festering germs never did her any harm.

Monday 12 February 2024

A work in progress

It's become a cliché that people are getting angrier and less patient, blowing their top at the smallest thing that annoys them.

What I also notice is that people are getting more self-righteous, convinced that their opinions are utterly valid and that other people's opinions are not worth even listening to.

Like all those Americans who still believe the last presidential election was fraudulent and that Trump did in fact win. No matter how many times their belief is discredited, they repeat the claim of fraud.

Like the belief that vaccinations are highly dangerous and should be avoided. The overall health benefits of vaccines are steadfastly denied.

Like the belief that you can change sex and a man can become a woman, even though this is a biological and medical impossibility.

Not to mention all the trolls firing off their trumped-up accusations and condemnations of public figures, many of them libellous.

Of course we all have a streak of self-righteousness (myself included) and we all have firmly held beliefs that defy any amount of contrary evidence. But I do regard all my opinions as a work in progress, as temporary opinions until such time as they're proved to be mistaken.

The longer I live though, the more I realise that everyday reality is so complicated that any opinion I hold is quite likely to be incorrect and based on a very partial understanding of the facts.

I'm not so insecure that I find any refuting of my opinions so threatening and alarming that I have to maintain and uphold them at any cost. In fact I like to be challenged about my fondly held but maybe totally irrational opinions. A good thing too, as Jenny takes my opinions to pieces on a regular basis!

Thursday 8 February 2024

Just suck it up

How would you feel if all of a sudden a giant warehouse was being built behind your home and you knew nothing about it because the local council had consulted the residents of the wrong road?

That's what's happening to householders in Hooke Close, Corby, Northamptonshire, after the council mistakenly consulted residents of Hubble Road. The council didn't think it fishy that nobody had raised any objections, and the planning application was duly approved.

What adds insult to injury is that the council refuses to accept any blame and presumably won't give the aggrieved residents any compensation.

They maintain that as there was a planning notice on the site, and as there was a notice in the local press, they've done their legal duty and nothing more needs to be done. But it seems none of the residents saw either notice.

Council leader Jason Smithers' reaction was pathetic. He said he understood the residents' frustration, he apologised for the error, and he pledged that he council would do all it could to ensure a similar issue didn't happen again.

That's okay then. The residents just have to suck it up because the council washes its hands of any responsibility. In other words, fuck you.

Never mind that the price of houses in Hooke Close will plummet because nobody wants a stonking great warehouse behind their back garden. Never mind that there will be heavy lorries rumbling in and out all day. Never mind that the building work is shaking people's houses.

As long as Mr Smithers has "apologised for the error", everything's just fine.

Sunday 4 February 2024

Teeming hordes

Over-tourism is in the news again as Japan grapples with a huge influx of tourists, many of whom are behaving badly and upsetting local residents. Many of the tourists just want eye-catching backdrops for their social media posts, and don't care two hoots about the locals.

Not a problem here in Northern Ireland, where tourism is gradually increasing but hasn't yet reached the tipping point of overwhelming those of us who live here. The number of visits by cruise ships is escalating, but so far the hordes of tourists descending on Belfast and its tourist attractions are easily absorbed.

Personally I don't understand why people want to visit places that are already jam-packed with so many tourists that you can only move around at a snail's pace, trying to get through thick crowds of visitors. What pleasure is there in that?

I still remember when Jenny and I were in Venice many years ago, taking about 20 minutes to get across Piazza San Marco, such was the dense thicket of tourists. Venice is about to introduce a tourist fee of five euros a day to enter the island, but I doubt if such a puny charge will put anyone off.

People can be surprisingly sheep-like. They flock in droves to the Piazza San Marco, while the very quiet and pretty district of Cannaregio in the north of the island is forgotten about and pleasantly free of the camera-waving multitudes.

Tourism can all too easily become a victim of its own success.

Pic: Cannaregio

Wednesday 31 January 2024

Letting rip

If you're desperate for a pee but you're in the middle of nowhere, is it okay to find some hidden spot and let rip? Or should you try to hold it in until you find a public toilet?

Dacorum Borough Council in Hertfordshire clearly think you should hold it in. They fined two men £88 each for peeing in a layby. The men objected, the council stood firm, but eventually the council relented and their fines were rescinded.

A layby is a bit public and not a sensible place to pee, but what if they were in the midst of a wood and totally invisible? Is it really a good use of council funds to track them down and penalise them?

I've often had a pee when I'm walking in the Mourne Mountains. As long as there's nobody else around, what's the harm? It's either that or have an embarrassing accident.

Peeing in a public street is a different matter. It's vulgar and selfish. Usually the culprits are men who've had far too much to drink and suddenly need to pee on the way home. They're oblivious to the mess they make and other people's reactions.

Theoretically you can be fined £40 for peeing in a public street, which counts as indecent behaviour. But how often do you hear of someone being fined?

Of course there should be more public toilets, but they can't be everywhere, and your chances of being near one when you need to pee are pretty low.

Just be careful what you do in a layby.

Saturday 27 January 2024

Watch your language!

There's heated controversy in Northern Ireland over bilingual signs, especially road signs. Quite a lot of signs are bilingual already (English and Irish, that is), but any proposal to add to them is always contentious.

People can apply for signs to be made bilingual, and in 2023 there were over 600 such requests. In the past road signs could only be changed if two thirds of the road's residents asked for it, but the threshold in Belfast has now been cut to 15 per cent.

There are two opposing views on bilingual signs. One says that because most people here speak English, adding Irish is unnecessary and costly, and is just a pointless political gesture by Irish language campaigners.

The other viewpoint is that the Irish language needs to be supported and promoted and used more widely as it's an important part of Irish culture, and those opposing bilingual signs are just being narrow-minded and obstinate.

I must say I tend to support the unnecessary-and-costly argument. If people want to learn and promote Irish, fine, it's a wonderful language, but why bilingual road signs? If most people speak English I don't see the need for them.

If we can find our way around quite adequately with an English road sign, why add Irish?

The bilingual road sign issue came to mind because a Welsh language campaigner is currently embroiled in a three year legal battle after refusing to pay a £70 car park penalty notice written only in English. Toni Schiavone will only pay the penalty notice if it's translated into Welsh, and he says he's being unfairly harassed.

I'm keeping well out of the language controversy. Or as an Irish speaker would say "Tá mé ag éirí go maith as".

Monday 22 January 2024

Housing blues

I'm very concerned that young people are finding it so hard to buy a home because of the stratospheric property prices, and many still live with their parents because they can't afford to either buy or rent.

I've been lucky enough to end up owning a large detached house, but if I'd had less luck I could have been struggling to find somewhere to live in my old age and making do with a run-down flat in some seedy neighbourhood.

In my twenties I was living in a run-down flat in London and wondering how on earth I could afford somewhere more desirable. I was saving money but although I had about enough for the deposit on a flat, a mortgage was quite unaffordable.

I was lucky enough to run into Jenny and between the two of us we were able to buy a tiny flat. As a result of rapidly rising property prices we were able to sell up at a profit and move into a bigger flat.

When we moved to Belfast in 2000 we sold our London flat for an even larger profit and were able to buy a house here for cash, as local house prices are much lower than in London.

Then with a large windfall from my mother we were able to buy our present house, where we've lived for almost 15 years.

But I'm always aware of the many thousands of youngsters who aren't as lucky as us and are desperate for a decent home of their own. The politicians seem unable to control the endlessly rising rents and house prices and just let them get higher. Now only the seriously wealthy can afford a sizeable house in the big cities.

Home sweet home? Only if you're lucky enough to have one.

Thursday 18 January 2024

Unfairly demonised?

I've thought for a while that social workers are often unfairly vilified for failing to prevent someone's death or serious injury. The latest instance is the death of two-year-old Bronson Battersby, who was found dead next to his father Kenneth, who had had a fatal heart attack.

Predictably his mother Sarah has blamed social services for not preventing Bronson's death. She said "If social services had done their job Bronson would still be alive. We have to be able to rely on social workers to keep our children safe."

But when you look at the details of the case, I wonder what else social services could have done.

A Skegness social worker paying her usual weekly visit on January 2 couldn't get any answer and alerted the police, who did nothing. Two days later a repeat visit also went unanswered and again the police were alerted but did nothing. The social worker finally entered the property on January 9 using the landlord's key. And discovered the two bodies.

So the police are obviously at fault for failing to visit the property.

And what about the mother's responsibility? Why wasn't she in the house when Kenneth died and her son needed her? It seems she had rowed with Kenneth and was living temporarily somewhere else. Yet she knew Kenneth had had one heart attack and could have another, meaning he might be unable to look after Bronson.

She blames Social Services for Bronson's death, but as I see it the social worker did what she could to get into the house while the police ignored her. And Sarah herself was absent.

So as I say, I think once again social workers are being unfairly blamed for a tragic death.

Update on January 18: A revealing interview with Sarah here

Update on January 19: Bronson's sister Melanie Battersby told the BBC she believed social services and the police "did what they could within the powers they had and the information they were given"

Sunday 14 January 2024

Not that special

The world could do with a little more humility right now - meaning accepting that we're not that special and not acting as if we're hugely important or influential.

I see humility as the opposite of pride - which on the contrary is the bigging up of your own or other people's achievements as if they're fantastic.*

Personally I'm more prone to humility than pride. I'm quite self-effacing and I don't see myself as in any way exceptional. I'm just a very ordinary person doing very ordinary things.

If anyone suggests I'm special I promptly deny being any such thing. I'm just a grain of sand on the banks of the Ganges, as the Buddha supposedly put it.

I find it rather odd that people take pride in other people's achievements (especially their children), as if they themselves have achieved whatever it is. They seem to be looking for some sort of reflected glory.

But I wouldn't describe myself as humble, which unfortunately has come to mean grovelling and arse-licking rather than just being ordinary. I prefer to say I'm modest or unassuming.

Many public figures develop a view of themselves as extra-special because of all the attention paid to them by the media and by the general public. They mistake attention for genuine appreciation and respect.

Politicians in particular strut around as if they're the bee's knees and as if the world revolves around them. I hate to break it to them, but they're just temporary public servants who might be replaced at any moment.

* Isn't pride a form of boasting?

Wednesday 10 January 2024

I blame the parents

There are different opinions about psychological problems in adulthood.

You can trace them back to childhood and blame parental failings.

You can say that blaming your parents is a cop-out and you should just work through your hang-ups.

Or you can say that your parents did their best by the standards of the times and so you shouldn't blame them for their failings.

Personally I take the first approach. It's clear to me that my parents sent me to an entirely unsuitable boarding school that didn't equip me properly for adult life and left me emotionally and intellectually under-developed.

I don't think it's a cop-out to blame my parents if it's quite obvious they made a major error of judgment and there's no way they could pin it on anything else. That error is a reality and should be acknowledged.

I also think referring to the standards of the times doesn't absolve my parents. Whatever the standards of the times, they picked an unsuitable school and they should have noticed I wasn't happy, I wasn't thriving, and the quality of teaching wasn't good enough.

Of course if your parents are still alive, you don't want to upset them by telling them they were deficient parents. So you're likely to hide your criticism and pretend they did a great job. Which simply sweeps everything under the carpet.

Falling back on "the standards of the times" is dangerous, as it can excuse all sorts of negative behaviour - like domestic violence, homophobia and sacking pregnant women. Behaviour should be judged by today's standards and not the standards of 50 years ago, as if the following decades of cultural changes never happened.

Saturday 6 January 2024

Exercise sceptic






My only regular exercise is a 30 minute daily walk. I've never done anything more systematic than that, and I'm still fairly healthy at the age of 76 - apart from the usual aches and pains that affect us oldies.

  • I don't do yoga
  • I don't do pilates
  • I don't do tai chi
  • I don't have an exercise bike
  • I don't work out
  • I don't aim for 10,000 steps a day
  • I don't do marathons
  • I don't go jogging
  • I don't cycle
  • I don't swim
Mind you, if there was a gym in the immediate neighbourhood I might very well use it, but there isn't. The nearest gym requires a car journey which I would rather not have to make.

I suspect that a lot of exercise regimes don't actually make much difference to your present or future health. It's probably more the case that it makes the person feel good or they like the sense of self-discipline. At any rate that's how an exercise sceptic like me explains my sedentary lifestyle.

I certainly don't need to exercise surplus flesh away. My weight has remained constant for over 40 years at around 11½ stone - the ideal weight for my height of six feet. Strangely I always shed several pounds overnight. It seems that my body uses a lot of calories concocting the weird dreams I'm saddled with.

I suppose that's one benefit of all the cricket and rugby I had to play at school - I left school in good physical shape and not covered in flab, like so many of today's podgy youngsters.

Tuesday 2 January 2024

Dodgy memories

Since I have such a bad memory, and since so many years have elapsed since the events in question, I've been wondering lately how many of my early memories are reliable. In other words, did they truly happen or has imagination taken over from reality?

  • Was I almost crushed to death by a falling chimney?
  • Did I almost drown at Southend on Sea?
  • Was I almost killed by two speeding cars as I ran across a busy road?
  • Was I really bullied for several years at boarding school (why can't I remember any of the details)?
  • Did a schoolmate really commit suicide?
  • Did I almost suffocate in my first workplace from all the tobacco smoke?
  • Did one workmate really tell me she thought her breasts were too small?
  • Did two of my workmates die of cancer?
  • Did I really sleep with a couple of men?
  • Did I really climb the Eiffel Tower as a teenager?
There's no way of confirming most of these supposed memories. In most cases there were no witnesses, or if there were they're now untraceable. Possibly my sister could confirm one or two of my memories - if she hasn't tweaked them herself.

But after all, most of these memories are 40 or 50 years old, which means plenty of time for them to be embellished or altered or simply invented.

At least I don't deliberately concoct dramatic memories to impress whoever I'm talking to. I don't claim to have met the King or swum the English Channel or climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. My memories, what's left them, are boringly humdrum.

And I didn't climb the Eiffel Tower. You can't climb right to the top for safety reasons. So that memory is definitely dubious.

Friday 29 December 2023

Family values

Politicians are fond of extolling "family values" and lamenting how they're not as well observed as they used to be.

Well, they might be observed a bit more if anyone could agree what "family values" actually are. The phrase is so vague that everyone gives it a different meaning. The dictionary definition refers to high moral standards and discipline, but other things might be mentioned like decency, loyalty, stability, clean living, and care and affection.

It was understood in the past that "family values" referred to a heterosexual couple, and didn't include gay couples, childless couples or single-parent households, who were beyond the pale. All possible family arrangements are now included in the term, and presumably are deemed capable of family values, whatever they might be.

Perhaps we should forget about "family values", however they're defined, and emphasise something more specific like "parenting values", which people might understand more easily. Or we could call for "civilised values", a term that would include everyone, whether or not they count as a family.

Unfortunately the term "family values" is flung about quite hypocritically by politicians and others. How often some politician who goes banging on about family values turns out to have a mistress, a drug habit, a sexual fetish or something that gives the lie to his (and it's usually his) sanctimonious public utterances. It happens so frequently that whenever a politician mentions family values nowadays, I instantly wonder what he's trying to hide.

"Family values" is just another phrase that's used as a handy smear, to suggest that your political opponents have no such values and are hedonistic rabble lacking moral standards or civilised behaviour.

Certainly Jenny and I never mention family values, which to my mind definitely implies children. But we still aspire to high moral standards.