Privacy

People have very different attitudes to privacy, don’t they? Some take elaborate measures to avoid being subject to the slightest scrutiny, others couldn’t care less how much attention they attract.
 
Its common in Northern Ireland for people to keep their window blinds down permanently so nobody can see into their house. They also like huge hedges for the same reason. We had some old window blinds removed because we don’t care if people look into our windows. What harm is it going to do?
 
As for personal privacy, both Jenny and I prefer to use the bathroom in private without the other barging in. I know a lot of couples are quite happy to be intruded on but we’re not one of them.
 
There’s a lot of fuss about websites that harvest our personal data, but personally I can’t see what the problem is. I’m sure hundreds of websites have my personal data but so what? What interest can anyone possibly have in my utterly humdrum existence? It would be different if I had loads of pornography or bomb-making guides.
 
People can get a bit paranoid about privacy for no good reason.

Why fame?

For the life of me I don't understand why so many people want to be famous. I can understand wanting to be rich and never having any more money worries, but wanting to be famous? What's the point? Do they realise the massive downside of fame?

Probably not. Celebrities tend not to mention the downside because it would spoil their image and because it would make them look like spoilt brats. They prefer to maintain the illusion that fame is wonderful and they can't get enough of it.

All the public usually see is celebrities swanning around in fabulous designer clothes, being presented with prestigious awards, being applauded and fawned over, getting preferential treatment wherever they go.

What they usually don't see is the endless invasion of privacy, the hordes of paparazzi, the social-media abuse, the phoney "friends", the obsessive fans, the fabricated media stories.

It seems to me that being famous just makes your life more difficult, more treacherous, more overwhelming. Why would you want to live in a goldfish bowl day in and day out, with people watching your every movement?

There are regular stories about people who've been unexpectedly thrust into the limelight and been badly damaged by it. Like Steve Dymond, who died seven days after taking part in the Jeremy Kyle chat-show.

A lot of musicians have had psychological crises after a sudden rise to fame - like Katie Melua, who had a mental breakdown in 2010 and was in hospital for six weeks.

Fame ? You can keep it.

Fame? No thanks

I value my anonymity and my privacy. I value being able to wander around with nobody paying me any special attention. I value not being a recognisable public figure.

I wonder why so many people want to be famous. Do they have any idea what fame actually involves? Do they have any idea how it disrupts any form of normal life or normal friendships?

Being recognised as you walk down the street might be fun for a while but it must soon get tedious. People stare at you, follow you, make comments about you, try to talk to you. You can't just walk around in your private reverie, enjoying the scenery or the sunshine. You have to be always prepared for other people's attention. It must be a constant nuisance.

Your photo is regularly in the media, accompanied by details of your every move and activity, most of it idle gossip and rumour. Hundreds of dubious stories are circulating, mostly depicting a totally bogus person with little resemblance to the real you.

If you're interviewed for TV or the media, you'll be asked plenty of idiotic and trivial questions, like what's your favourite food or how do you stay so thin or what was your most embarrassing moment.

If you're desperate for some privacy, you have to plan it well in advance, working out how to avoid the paparazzi, keep your movements secret and stay well away from the general public.

Of course you might say this is all sour grapes, that really I'd love to be famous but I'm not, so I make out fame is horrible and not at all glamorous or fulfilling. But no, I love my anonymity. I certainly wouldn't want to be gawped at all day like an animal in the zoo.

The gift of privacy

It's easy to take privacy, and all that goes with it, for granted. It seems like an absolutely routine thing, but millions of people around the world have little or no privacy. People in refugee camps, in shanty towns, in boarding schools, in large families crammed into tiny flats.

I take for granted that I live in a large house with one other person, and any time I like I can hide away in one of the rooms and do my own thing. I can swear for half an hour or watch kittens on Youtube or stuff myself with chocolate. I can read a book for as long as I fancy without interruptions. I can think interesting thoughts without someone badgering me.

It gives me a degree of freedom that a lot of people don't have. When I'm on my own, I don't have to worry what other people think of me, whether my behaviour is "appropriate", or what's expected from me. I can do what I like without the obligations that come with constant company.

But many people don't enjoy that advantage. If they're always surrounded by other people, they have to keep adjusting to what those people demand, which they may or may not be comfortable with.

During my five years at boarding school. there was no way of escaping the other boys or avoiding their endless scrutiny. At times it could be embarrassing or even humiliating. I couldn't wait for Sundays, when we were allowed an hour of privacy to do whatever we wanted. When I left school and was no longer being watched every minute of the day, I went a little mad with the sudden sense of personal freedom.

Privacy is a luxury. It's something many people can only dream of.

NB: Of course I'm referring to physical privacy rather than data privacy, which is a whole different subject.

Costly nosiness

How much privacy are spouses entitled to when it comes to personal information about their financial transactions? Are they entitled to keep it secret or should they be more transparent?

Suspecting her husband of infidelity, Karen Santi opened one of his paper bank statements, read messages on his computer, and sent some of the information to a financial advisor.

It seems she didn't find any evidence of an affair, and her furious husband Lawrence retaliated by seeking a court non-disclosure order to stop her passing the information to anyone else.

The divorce case is continuing, but meanwhile Mrs Santi has been told to pay £54,000 of her husband's £90,000 legal costs, a sum she says will "wipe out her liquid assets".

She maintained that looking at the confidential information of the other in the context of a marriage breakdown was understandable.

Well, this situation would never arise for me and Jenny, because all our financial transactions are on joint accounts and neither of us have individual accounts. Whatever one of us spends is immediately visible to the other.

I can see the £100 she paid for that fancy handbag and she can see the £100 I spent on Calvin Klein underpants (just kidding).

So if one of us was shagging someone else, it would be obvious pretty quickly - that unexplained hotel bill or that purchase from Posh Frocks.

But if we had separate accounts, would I feel justified in having a furtive peek at my spouse's bank statements? If I suspected a clandestine affair, maybe I would. But I'd be more cunning about it and not leave any traces of my nosiness.

Not that either of us has any hankering for affairs. We have much more interesting and guilt-free ways of enjoying ourselves.

Karen Santi is paying a high price for her suspicions.

Pic: Karen Santi

Bathroom habits

Okay, let's talk bathrooms. Some interesting new stats that say we spend an average of 416 days of our life in the bathroom - showering, bathing, moisturising, shaving, applying make-up, cleaning our teeth and even checking our emails and reading our favourite books. Some of us just go there for a bit of peace and quiet.

Seven out of ten of us find sharing a bathroom frustrating, in particular when someone else is hogging the room, the toilet roll hasn't been replaced or there are hairs in the wash basin.

Jenny and I are lucky enough to have three bathrooms - a regular bathroom, an en suite and a downstairs cloakroom. So hogging the bathroom isn't an issue any more, though it often was in the past.

We know exactly what annoys each other - yes indeed, the non-replaced toilet roll or hairs in the basin, but also towels and shampoo bottles left lying around, a dirty mirror, used plasters, toothpaste tubes without caps - and we're good at avoiding the annoyances. We're very considerate of each other's feelings!

We don't like sharing the bathroom and we close the door for privacy. This seems rather unusual as other people happily do their thing with an audience, but that's how we are. We like undisturbed seclusion....

I've used the bath only twice since we moved in ten years ago. I prefer the speed of the shower. A lot of people enjoy wallowing in a hot bath with a glass of wine, especially when it's cold, but not me. I prefer wallowing in a good book.

I certainly don't linger in front of the mirror, inspecting all the wrinkles and crinkles and assorted age-related ravages. A quick glance to make sure I haven't gone bald or lost a tooth and that's it. Luckily, being a man, nobody cares what I look like as long as I have all the expected body parts and I'm not naked or wearing a dress.

And no, I didn't write this in the bathroom.

Me myself I

I do like my privacy. I like being able to think or emote or plan or just be totally vacant without other people intruding on me and obliging me to interact.

I want to be able to choose when I mingle with other people and when I don't. There are times when I love socialising and crave other people's company. But there are also times when I want to be on my own and the slightest hint of conversation makes me want to flee.

I would hate to live in a household so full of other people - children, grandchildren, parents, neighbours - that you never have a moment to yourself unless you actually leave the house and vanish for a while.

Luckily I've spent most of my adult life either on my own or with one other person (Jenny) who is often elsewhere and allows me plenty of privacy. I once spent a month in a shared flat that turned into a chaotic multi-person squat. That was enough communal living for a lifetime.

Some people appreciate the idea of social privacy, which is helpful.They understand that even if you're in a public place or in  a social gathering, you don't necessarily want to chat ad nauseam. If you look as if you're enjoying a moment of quiet reflection, they'll pass you by and approach someone else.

Of course the main downside of privacy is loneliness. Too much privacy can easily become chronic loneliness as thinking your own thoughts stops being a pleasure and turns into a tiresome albatross. Fortunately my thoughts are so sparky and so fertile that I seldom want to escape from them. The more the merrier in fact.

Oh, sorry if I've intruded on your privacy. I'll stop now and leave you alone....

Moral panic

The media have ruthlessly ganged up on the hapless Lord Sewel for snorting coke and using prostitutes*, as if this is the most outrageous behaviour ever and he should obviously be hung, drawn and quartered and buried in an unmarked grave.

The stink of hypocrisy hangs over this weird vendetta. Since plenty of his fellow peers and MPs must have taken illegal drugs of some kind, or cheated on their womenfolk by visiting prostitutes or having affairs (or both), the singling out of one politician unlucky enough to be spied upon by the Sun surely deserves sympathy rather than vilification.

What's really outrageous is a newspaper secretly filming Lord Sewel in his own flat, doing things he assumed were entirely private, and then publishing what they had filmed with the quite deliberate and cynical aim of wrecking his political career.

What's equally outrageous is that his colleagues, rather than commiserating with him, condemning the sleazy tactics of journalists, and pointing out that what he does in his own flat is his own business and nobody else's, have castigated him for his "shocking", "unacceptable" and "disgraceful" behaviour and agreed with the media that his political career is over.

Why taking coke and using prostitutes (in his own home) should make him no longer fit to do his public job of overseeing the work of House of Lords committees is anyone's guess. As far as I know, nobody has ever suggested he's falling down on the job or was too strung out to grasp a piece of legislation.

The simple fact is that if the Sun hadn't intruded on his private life, he would still be happily doing the job he was asked to do, and his political competence would never have been questioned.

Don't get me wrong. I have no time for men who use prostitutes. It's an activity that does huge psychological and emotional damage to the women who're lured into it, and the pathetic creeps who keep it going should know better.

And goodness knows what his wife Jennifer makes of it all.

But the media have no right to splash Lord Sewel's private activities across front pages unless they're of genuine public concern - which in this case they blatantly aren't. It's a classic knee-jerk moral panic over something quite piffling.

* allegedly

Give and take

What's the formula for an enduring relation-ship? How come Jenny and I have stuck together for 34 years and not 34 days? What's the glue that keeps it all going? Well, I can think of one or two things.

1) Respect the need for privacy. If the other person prefers to dress/undress in private, or use the bathroom in private, or just be on their own for a while, why not? Total sharing at all times doesn't suit everyone.

2) Accept those idiosyncracies. We all have odd obsessions and habits - hoovering every ten minutes, or scraping out the marmalade jar, or leaving dirty clothes everywhere - and there's no point in trying to change them. That's how we are.

3) Sharing the domestic chores. If one person is doing the lion's share of the chores, and feeling increasingly resentful, it's a recipe for disaster. It has to be even stevens.

4) Maintain the romance. If all the romance has gone out of the relationship, it's dead in the water. There have to be things that keep you a bit starry eyed, a bit soppy, and hopelessly enamoured.

5) Mutual self-expression. It's all a charade if one person is totally doing their thing, while the other is permanently suppressing themself and being what the other wants them to be. You both need to grow.

6) Shared perspectives. Seeing everyday issues in a similar way is important. How clean you expect the house to be, what to spend your money on, how much socialising you like to do. Total incompatibilities can be fatal.

7) Loving each other's bodies. Even as we get older, and wrinklier, and saggier, we still love what we see. We don't hanker after something younger and fresher. Whatever we look like, it's just fine.

8) Communication.* Whatever's going on inside, let the other person know. Too much secrecy and holding-back, too much image-control, will strangle the relationship.

Or to put all that in a nutshell - plenty of give and take. Oh, and plenty of sweet nothings.

* This one thanks to Dave Martin (see comments)

Rude and crude

It's still not possible for a woman to walk down a street confident her privacy will be respected and she will not at some point be intruded on and harassed by some unknown man who feels she owes him some attention.

Research by the organisation End Violence Against Women has found that 41% of London women under the age of 34 have been subjected to sexual harassment in the street, and a third have received unwanted sexual attention on trains and buses.

Will men ever get the message that women are not sexual playthings provided for their personal pleasure but are other human beings whose lives are their own and nobody else's? Answer - only if they come under a lot more pressure than they're exposed to at the moment.

As usual, reports on the research call for changed attitudes from just about everybody - councils, police, government, public transport staff. Everybody that is except the people actually causing the problem - men.

Where is the emphasis on teaching men to respect women and not invade their privacy? When are men going to be told firmly and forcefully, just stop harassing women. Stop it now. Or you'll be ostracised and isolated by the whole community.

But no, it's still women who're advised to change their behaviour to ward off harassment, as if they're the ones to blame. They should dress differently, avoid certain areas, not go out, take taxis, stay sober, not look too friendly.

Women are still seen as asking for it. When in reality it's men who're asking for it. Not even asking, assuming their male prerogative. Assuming their feudal entitlement. Assuming they're God's gift to women. Well, they're not. They're just predatory arseholes.

Under wraps

You know those new super-injunctions that are all the rage? The ones the celebs take out, banning any mention of anything in their private life, especially that sultry affair with the nanny and the pittance they paid the gardener?

Well, I've taken one out myself so my sordid private life is now safe from media exposure and backstreet gossip. From now on, if any of you breathe a word about those tawdry, squalid episodes in my past you'll be facing the sharpest lawyers in town and a huge bill for damages. So watch what you say.

You can reveal as much as you like about my unflagging work for charity and my devotion to the Sacred Order of Divine Bliss. You can refer constantly to my tireless support for stray cats and the Association of Real Spaghetti Eaters.

But any unsavoury allusion to my friendships with the glamorous supermodel Veronica Trinket, the renowned conceptual artist Tanzi Twitch or the legendary footwear designer Binario "Bino" Biscotti will lead straight to the courts.

Any suggestion of over-indulgence in relation to alcohol, drugs, sexual perversions or gambling, any insinuation that I'm a secret admirer of the Royal Family or Morris Dancing, any mention of botched plastic surgery, and you'd better have your cheque book ready.

You can demand the truth as much as you like, but I'm not interested in truth. The only thing that matters is my glittering public image, and if it has to be built on a dungheap of lies, evasions and fantasy, so be it. The masses don't want truth, they want to be lifted out of their barren lives into a shimmering utopia of human perfection.

What d'you mean, there's nothing left to write about? I'm sure you could work up a few paragraphs about my passionate love of goldfish....

Camera rats

If there's any bunch of people who deserve contempt it's the paparazzi, whose only aim is to harass and humiliate public figures for the benefit of whatever voyeuristic media outlet is prepared to publish their pictures.

Their continual spying has forced Lily Allen to install a £60,000 state-of-the-art security system at her new home in the Cotswolds to keep them out. Now she is taking legal action against the Daily Mail for publishing extensive pictures and details of her home, including the property's name, address, location, precise layout, fixtures and fittings, and details of its private gardens and rear exterior.

The paparazzi are willing to use any method at all to get their salacious and intrusive pictures. Nothing is out of bounds. Breaking into houses, chasing cars, telescopic lenses, doorstepping, following people to holiday resorts, you name it.

The usual bogus excuses are endlessly trotted out by the media. They're public figures so they're not entitled to privacy. It's what the public wants. They like all the publicity really. If they behave badly, they must expect attention.

In my opinion, total bollocks. Everyone is entitled to privacy and a personal life without unwanted intrusion, whether they're household names or the milkman. Constant invasion of privacy is not only prurient but extremely stressful and emotionally disturbing for those on the receiving end.

The only exception, to my mind, is those in responsible public positions who have done something that jeopardises their ability to do their job properly. In that case they deserve to be exposed.

How telling it is that the media bosses themselves guard their own privacy and off-duty lives so religiously. You won't see the paparazzi following them. So don't expect to find out any time soon about the newspaper editor who's hooked on prostitutes or the tabloid mogul who beats his wife.

They may dish the dirt on others, but they don't want their own dirty laundry laid out for inspection.

Read all about it

I fail to see why the entire private life of a murder suspect is seen as public property as soon as the finger of suspicion is pointed at them.

Why do the media feel entitled to dig all this stuff up and linger on all the colourful details as if they are of huge importance?

We've had columns and columns of titillating gossip about Chris Jefferies, landlord of the flat rented by the murdered landscape architect Joanna Yeates. His eccentricities, his blue-rinsed hair, his confirmed bachelorhood (nudge nudge, wink wink), his love of discipline.

Of course I'm as fascinated by all this tittle-tattle as everyone else. I won't pretend I ignore it all. I love to read the intimate details of other people's lives and draw dodgy conclusions from them.

But why should Mr Jefferies' life be laid bare and spread out before us in page after page of newsprint, as if he no longer has any right to privacy or common decency?

He is a suspect in a murder case. He may be guilty, he may be totally innocent. He hasn't yet been charged or taken to court. But because the police have taken an interest in him, he is somehow assumed to be ripe for a no-holds-barred journalistic striptease.

All we need to know is that he's a suspect, the police have questioned him, and he was Joanna's landlord. The rest is just gratuitous prattle.

Perhaps when the journos have finally scoured the bottom of the barrel, and told us what kind of underpants he prefers, how often he picks his nose, and where he buys his toilet rolls, boredom will set in and they'll be on their way, sniffing out someone juicier.

They just don't know where to stop.

Pic: Chris Jefferies

PS: Joanna's boyfriend, Greg Reardon, has said: "The finger-pointing and character assassination by social and news media of as yet innocent men has been shameful. It has made me lose a lot of faith in the morality of the British Press."

PPS: Monday morning. Police have said Joanna's killer is still "on the loose" and have effectively admitted that Chris Jefferies is innocent. Mr Jefferies is now considering legal action against the police.

Burkas

I'm fascinated by burkas. What their purpose is, what it's like wearing one, women who're forced into them, the controversies they cause.

Personally, I can't see the point of them at all. They just seem to be extremely impractical and cumbersome, making every daily activity more difficult, including communicating with other people.

Of course for those who believe in male dominance that's exactly the intention - to hamper women and stop them being too adventurous or independent. And to stop them inflaming male lust with their provocative female bodies.

Isn't it odd that there's no equivalent female lust that requires men also to hide behind decency-preserving burkas? How come the blokes are exempt?

But it must be a very weird experience being permanently shrouded from head to toe with nothing visible but your eyes. Rather than something to be appreciated and enjoyed, your body becomes a mere object, just a mechanism to do things with.

Burkas have stirred up plenty of controversy. The French object to them as conspicuous religious symbols in a highly secular society. One British government minister finds it disconcerting to talk to someone so depersonalised and anonymised, nothing but a voice and a pair of eyes.

Many feminists loathe burkas as blatant instruments of oppression, preventing women from being themselves and turning them into cocooned chattels.

Some wearers though deny this and maintain they find their burkas liberating, a way of preserving their privacy and modesty and not being seen first and foremost as male eye-candy.

I have to admit I just find them absurd and ridiculous, relics of a bygone age as quaint as Victorian bathing costumes and whalebone corsets.

Pic: Fiona, Rita, Mavis and Sharon (or was it Fatima, Tasneem....)

Street smarting

I'm finding Google Street View incredibly useful for checking out a particular area we might move to. But some folk are complaining that it's invading their privacy and encouraging crime.

Angry residents of Broughton in Buckinghamshire formed a human chain to stop the Google camera-car driving through their village.

Paul Jacobs objected that his house was being photographed without his permission, and that pictures would help burglars to identify likely houses. The village had had three burglaries in the last six weeks, he said.

Oh, come now. What would be the harm in his house being publicly viewable? You couldn't see inside it, and you couldn't see the street as it is right now because it's a one-off image.

The likelihood of a burglar scanning his particular village, out of the countless thousands of villages across the country, is minute. In any case, a burglar could drive around the village and check it out that way.

All Mr Jacobs has achieved is precisely to publicise his village, which otherwise we would never have heard of.

I think Street View is fabulous. I can see if an area is smart or scruffy, leafy or built-up, quiet or busy. I can see if there are any local shops or services. That saves me all the trouble of physically visiting the neighbourhood and walking around it to get the same information. Surely that's a brilliant innovation?

Come on, Mr Jacobs, stop being so paranoid and let Google do their stuff. You know you want to really.

(Oh and before you ask - yes, our house IS on Street View. Fortunately I wasn't outside doing anything scandalous at the time)

Note to burglars: Broughton is just outside the town of Aylesbury, easily accessible from several major roads. What are you waiting for?
.................................................................................

Isn't it depressing that the media's only interest in Michelle Obama's British visit is the clothes she's wearing and whether they're more glamorous than Carla's? Excuse me, she was actually DOING a few things....

Candid camera

I really don't understand the widespread fuss about CCTV cameras. The claim that they are invading our privacy and creating a Big Brother society seems to me rather hysterical and over-the-top.

So what if a camera at the top of a building somewhere can see me blowing my nose or watching an attractive woman or wrestling with an over-stuffed sandwich? Where's the threat?

Critics say the ubiquitous CCTV cameras (the UK has one of the highest concentrations in the world) are intimidating us and putting us all under suspicion. They are the sign of an authoritarian society that wants to monitor its citizens' every movement.

I think that's farfetched nonsense. I don't feel in the least intimidated by the odd camera. No one's going to see anything particularly revealing or illicit, unless I'm fixing a drugs deal or handing over a bribe. And who in their right mind would do that in full public view anyway?

We don't mind hundreds of other passers-by watching our movements so why are we so worried about cameras seeing exactly the same thing?

They're only in public places after all, where we're expected to behave ourselves. It's not as if they're in our living rooms or bedrooms recording our private vices and eccentricities.

What's more, CCTV has caught quite a number of genuine criminals red-handed and led to convictions that wouldn't have happened without them. And that includes rapists* and muggers who seriously jeopardise street safety. If we can catch a few more of them, CCTV's just fine by me.

* An estimated 47,000 women are raped every year in Britain.
.................................................................................

Oh dear! The ever-popular Grandad, usually brilliantly funny, has done a spectacularly unfunny post condemning political correctness. He says we should be free to call people anything we like, no matter how offensive, and stop being so over-sensitive. Micks, Paddies, golliwogs, what does it matter? Sorry, grandad, I couldn't agree less. The point of so-called political correctness is simply to have respect for other people. Of course it can be overdone but so can anything. And most of the extremist scare stories are tabloid inventions in any case. Is it so hard to call black people blacks and not niggers?

NB: In the interests of fairness, please also read Grandad's reply in Comments.

Privacy buff

I like my privacy, I like to keep a few things to myself. I'm not one of those people happy to live in the public gaze and share every intimate detail with others.

There are plenty of things I just don't want to reveal to all and sundry - because they're too embarrassing or distasteful or weird or puzzling or upsetting. I don't want to share the ins and outs of my sex life, the stupid mistakes of my youth, my peculiar obsessions or unsuitable crushes.

If something's embarrassing or upsetting, I don't think it necessarily helps to tell every Tom, Dick and Harriet. It might make it easier to deal with, but it might make it worse and magnify it a hundred times.

But there are loads of people who have no problem baring their souls to the world, or even relish it. I'm always open-mouthed as celebrities, or just ordinary individuals, appear on TV answering the most personal and intrusive questions as if they were nothing unusual, spilling out shocking and painful facts as if they were passing on a recipe.

In a few seconds, the whole country knows they've had three abortions, or used to be a chronic shoplifter, or only enjoy sex if they're bound and gagged. I'm just amazed at the total lack of inhibition, the belief that anything at all is suitable for the public domain, that there is nothing that needs to be held back.

I think some people can only see their actions as normal if they've revealed them to everyone else. They feel it's wrong to keep something secret, as if that makes it somehow odd or shameful. Whether others approve or disapprove doesn't really matter as long as it's out in the open and common knowledge.

The idea of "airing your dirty washing in public" used to fill people with horror as something extremely vulgar and unhelpful, but now it's totally acceptable and even encouraged as healthy openness. But personally I still think some things are better left unsaid.