Bare buttocks in Salisbury: there are worse outrages

A MAN has been jailed this week for baring his buttocks in Salisbury Cathedral Close and pretended to be talking out of his bottom.
“Outraging public decency” was his crime.
His behaviour undoubtedly shocked and embarrassed onlookers, among them parents with young children.
I wouldn’t begin to criticise the judge’s decision. I don’t have all the information available to the court.
But I do know that our society tolerates all sorts of things that offend me far more than this without anyone being punished.
From time to time in my youth it was my unhappy duty to cobble together a couple of corny pun-filled sentences to accompany the topless pictures in the Daily Star. (Not as easy as it sounds, by the way.)
My colleagues had to take their turn, too.
It felt so wrong, and many of us hated it, but this was Manchester in the mid-Eighties, the management didn’t give a damn about sexism, and there was nothing I could have said that might not have cost me my well-paid job.
Eventually I did the sensible thing, volunteered for redundancy, and moved to a more congenial office.
It was in London, at the ill-fated Today, founded by Eddy Shah. No boobs on display there.
But no unions, either, sadly. Shah had been in the frontline of the war on collective bargaining.
And as it intensified, the Thatcher government used our supposedly non-political police force to help crush the miners and the rebels at Rupert Murdoch’s Wapping.
That wasn’t fair to anyone involved, including the police. It certainly jarred with my notion of decency, and I’d go so far as to call it an outrage.
OK, some union leaders overstepped the mark. But when is it right to fight abuse of power with another abuse of power?
Another instance. Just lately the county’s youth service has been dismantled with what I consider indecent haste.
But at least tonight, councillors on the Salisbury area board have a chance to salvagesomething from the wreckage.
The Sound Emporium, a community organisation that combines commercial and charitable work, has thrown a lifeline to the music project Bass Connection.
I do hope our elected representatives will set aside party politics and grasp it.
Teenagers who wouldn’t touch a traditional youth club with a bargepole need support from people who speak their language to develop their talents.
Bass Connection nurtures creativity. It isn’t a luxury we can no longer afford. It’s a long-term investment in society’s future.
To allow it to die – well, that would be an outrage.