Thought Picnic: In weakness let your discretion rule

Buckled by weakness

History chronicles the lives of many great men brought down by their weaknesses, many through sex and all the accoutrements of seeking that gratification of the flesh.

One can only feel sad for the misfortune that befell Keith Vaz, the Member of Parliament for the Leicester East constituency and Gonville and Caius (pronounced Keez) College graduate of the University of Cambridge. He with the distinction of being the longest serving MP of Asian origin in the House of Commons.

A good head start, one would say and until Tuesday, the influential chairman of the Home Affairs Committee since 2007.

Pursuits of the flesh

I cannot be said that Mr. Vaz had many friends as a politician, he has been dogged by many scandals from which he has deftly extricated himself unscathed and even served a suspension from the House of Commons as a consequence, but with that he had weaknesses that when those became the focus of media attention, none ran to defend him as a symbol worthy of anything less than opprobrium.

As each and every one of us has weaknesses, it would be unfair to dwell on the shortcomings of one man, but there are things one must comment on with regards to his downfall.

Mr. Vaz would apparently have liberal views and tastes along with a penchant for exploring adventurous pursuits of the flesh. Being a married man of 23 years with two children, he was at the weekend exposed as having met for sex with prostitutes, which really is no crime in itself. [Sky News]

The plot congealed

However, the deeper the detail of the story got, it became impossible to bat away any of the tales as media intrusion without any lasting consequence. Mr. Vaz was meeting with male prostitutes for bareback (unsafe) sex on presumably excitement enhancing substances.

Again, there is no crime in adults meeting up for sex and choosing to have any kind of sex they desire, if done with consent. However, there are moral issues that would have arisen about this liaison and other issues of compromise that could result from being exploited by less than discreet and scrupulous partners.

Unbeknownst to him, his liaisons had identified who he was being a high-profile politician on television and they decided to contact the media about their trysts. The videos that then emerge for the scoop that landed on the weekend pages of the newspapers were recorded by the men he met up with.

Discretion above all else

It goes without saying that on matters of straying from the expected, one should choose those one chooses to cover very carefully. It beggars belief that Mr. Vaz took such risks with men who probably had more to gain than to lose with meeting him for sex.

I am of the opinion that meeting with people requires a modicum of understanding the power dynamic between yourselves to understand temperament and honesty of the person to ensure one does no suffer rotten consequences from the relationship. Meeting with people in the same cadre and class, much as some might frown at this anachronism goes a long way in ensuring no one comes to harm, or if any, negligible if the situation turns sour.

The reckless things we do

Beyond this, Mr. Vaz could easily have been the subject of blackmail with the men bilking him for anything they thought they could get away with. It is unimaginable though conceivable that certain people in the know of Mr. Vaz’ interesting tastes might have exacted favours of him by reason of his influential position and his work history is not without controversy.

Invariably, he had to resign from his chair because he was caught in a seriously untenable position that suggested subjective thinking and conflicts of interest in matters over which he had the power to influence, suggest, advice on and promulgate laws.

Tougher days ahead

The other not insignificant matter of his family looms, the wife probably put at risk because of the down-low proclivities of her husband. His wife may never walk out on him, but if she does, she first has to make sense of this development.

Mr. Vaz may not identify as homosexual or bisexual, though there is a growing cohort of seemingly outwardly heterosexual males venturing into a bi-curious phase of sexual experimentation.

His children will be beside themselves in understanding their father, the shock of which will not wear off that easily. There will be some rather difficult talk ahead, with the nuclear family and the extended family.

What next?

Things like this anyone would rather keep private and secret, to have such revealed to the whole world on the yellow journalism pages of English tabloids is a raid on one’s being that one must never wish on one’s worst enemy. However, I think Mr. Vaz will come through this, a bit battered, but unbowed, he was not known as Mr. Vaz(eline); a play on Vaseline, for nothing.

Now this is out in the open, Mr. Vaz also has to decide where his loyalties lie and whether his acquired taste for men is necessary for the full expression of his sexuality. This will also determine the future of his marriage and anything else he does from henceforth.

The lesson for us is to handle our weaknesses with a little more discretion and some smarts about those we choose to exploit those pleasures that derive from our weaknesses with. At risk is position, dignity, status and respect, none of which is easy to earn back once lost.

Turn your lights down low, I need to see your liver

Once again to the north

I did not expect today to be as difficult to cope with as the last time I was in hospital to have a FibroScan and it wasn’t.

All sorts of tests needs to be done to check on health of the liver, from liver function tests that are derived from blood tests, through the FibroScan to check for liver fibrosis and today, it was the turn of an ultrasound scan of my liver to check for scarring on the liver.

The instructions for today were not to have had any meals for at least 6 hours before the scans, however, because the appointment was in the morning, it meant I was not suffering as much as when I had to do with meals for 2 hours, but the appointment was for the early afternoon.

Blog - From measuring liver stiffness to stiffneckedness

The pickup talk

After attending one of the many almost pointless talk shop telephone conferences, a forum for the deluge of conversation with the aim of achieving something much longer than if everyone just instinctively and assiduously got on with what they need to do, I got dressed and called UberXL.

The driver arrived and whilst his name looked Turkish, he revealed that he was from Eritrea and there begun a discussion about power crazy leaders whose penchant for war over peace had led to the unnecessary demise of Africans fleeing conflict.

Then, I told him where I was from and where I had lived. When I mentioned the Netherlands, he expressed reservations about how safe Holland was for children because of the Red Light District and the coffee shops.

What we never talk about

First, I gave him some insight into Dutch thinking, the realisation that we are prone to vices and whether legal or not, people will indulge in their needs for sex and drugs, they will also pay for such if they need to. In Holland, the Dutch have provided a ‘safe’ and regulated framework within which prostitution can be practiced and drugs procured legally. He got that.

On the matter of children’s safety, I tried to make a difference between instruction and education, stressing that children need more involved parental education on the realities of life so that children can end up making wise choices.

For instance, I said, if my parents had discussed sex with me and clearly indicated that if I was touched in certain parts of my anatomy, it was wrong and I should come and tell them, it is unlikely I would have silently suffered any child sexual abuse. There are more things effective parent communication on the issues of life and experience that could have been discussed and saved the child the misery of bad choices and worse.

Our different experiences

Parents again sometimes fail to realise that the cultural environment in which they were reared as children and grew up in could be so radically different from that of their wards. Failing to adapt and reconcile might well leave the kids in a somewhat schizophrenic world of home life that has no semblance to street life; their encounters in school, with friends or in social settings. It ends up a disservice to the child and could be damaging in the long-term.

It is no appeal to abandon our traditions, but we cannot recreate little Nigerias, little Eritreas, or little Pakistans abroad and expect them to pass for the new realities of our nostalgic feelings for home than we can pass on to our children. Where we live moves on and where we left has also moved on, we are then caught with fossilised expressions of things that no more exist.

My UberXL driver could begin to see my point, we all reach back to our experiences back home in our childhood and castigate the realities we now exist in because we have refused to integrate at first and then aim to claim cultural superiority of our host cultures, thereby depriving our children of the essential education they need to thrive better than we ever have done here.

Our conversation ended as we drew up to the hospital, each of us having been challenged of the need to take a more liberal view of where we now belong.

The deceptions of receptions

At the main reception, I asked for directions to the X-Ray department, and much as there are many signs to the various departments in the hospital, it is a labyrinthine maze of corridors that taking directions beyond the third left or right turn is bound to get you lost in the morgue.

I found the section reading the signs and submitted my appointment notice to the section receptionist whose fast-talking demeanour completely threw me that I did not get to answer all her questions of name, date of birth and home address. I faltered giving my home address, it was not comfortable.

Then she made a mistake of ticking off the wrong name on the appointments list before properly searching for my appointment and ticking that off.

People like me

I was asked to sit and wait to be called. Most of the seats about 7 abreast per row were in theatre-like formation some 6 rows deep and then the wall to both the right and the front had one long row of seats facing us.

Many of the people occupied the seats in the theatre-like area apart from one middle-aged African woman, from what I could make of her features who sat alone to the right finding spiritual solace in the pages of her bible. Some others had the company of friends or relations as I made to sit amongst the crowd.

Just as I tucked into my bag to retrieve my tablet to make notes of my observations so far, a nurse called out my name. I arrived some 15 minutes before my appointment and was being seen to ahead of schedule.

Quite like yoga

We walked another labyrinth of corridors to the ultrasound equipment room where another nurse was busy on a computer to the foot of the bed. The ultrasound machine was against the wall to the left with the bed between us.

I was asked to take off my coats, pull up my shirt and lie on my back facing up for observation. The nurse then said she had to dim the lights in the room before commencing the ultrasound scans. I quipped in the words of a Bob Marley song, “Turn the lights down low,” to which she said, that was as far as the excitement will get. I remonstrated that she was a spoilsport and we all laughed.

She applied some gel to my stomach having warned me that is was warm, a stark contrast to the gel applied to my sides for the FibroScan that was cold enough to send me into hypothermic shock.

The probe was pressed against my skin and she started taking shots of my liver, from the front, from the right side, from the back and then slightly to the left. I asked if it was kicking, it brought a chuckle to all of us as she answered, it was.

In all this, I was instructed to breathe in, hold my breath, breathe normally and push out my stomach and this went on for almost 15 minutes. I could well have been in yoga classes for all those breathing exercises.

A short story

When we finished, a good deal of gel had smeared my shirt, but it washes off easily, I was told. There was time for an anecdote or short story related to pulling out a yellow plug at the end of the day. It was a short film starring Omar Sharif as a taxi driver taking a passenger to a cosmetic surgery hospital.

They passed by another major hospital that had been closed due to unfortunate circumstances, the case of unexplained deaths that damaged the reputation of a once renowned establishment. People in intensive care were dying overnight and some night doctors were about to be charged, being suspected of murder.

Eventually, they installed video cameras in the intensive care wards and it transpired that at 1:00AM the cleaning lady when into the room with her vacuum cleaner and simply pulled the plug of the life support machine to gain a socket to plug in her vacuum cleaner. The horror!

Hospitals now have tamper-proof plugs for critical equipment or red notices posted that such equipment should never be disconnected.

I left in high spirits after being told again that my liver looks fine, but I will get the full detail from my consultant when we meet at the end of next month. I was home just before noon.

Berlin: Streets of Strange

Streets of life

Courtesy - Google Maps

Kurfürstendamm [1] is the classy shopping street in the centre of Berlin that changes names to Tauentzienstrasse as it approaches the memorial Kaiser Wilheim Memorial Church [2] unto KaDeWe [4], the largest department store on mainland Europe.

It has a cousin, Kurfürstenstrasse [5], not really parallel to it but close enough to be confusing.

Starting off a few hundred metres beyond the old central railway station of Berlin Zoologischer Garten [3] it wends down respectably until a point where certain ladies in a manner of dress for a manner of trade ply their goods for custom.

This is observed is one walks the shortest path to Pohlstrasse where a Nigerian-Italian couple runs a restaurant serving Nigerian fare, the man being the chef at Ebe-Ano [6].

Strange times of things

There are a few things I conservatively consider have their times of the day. For instance, I would not look kindly on alcohol consumption before the afternoon, but ladies on heels on the street even in a pseudo-red light district before dusk is quite disconcerting.

Not only is it that, there is a sense of almost effrontery and daring aggression but could belie desperation when you as a man are found on the rough end of salacious ogling for the pleasure of an illicit liaison.

One can only wonder what happens when the light of the sun makes way for the dim light of the moon. Not a street to walk after a certain hour, I would suppose.

Street of strange

However, whatever the circumstances that put the ladies out there, for situational adversity through will to the coercion borne of heinous human trafficking, there is some sadness can only be felt as people meet different human needs in the darkest recesses of primal desire.

I hope the church at the tail-end of the street offers succour to all who ply that street of strange.

As I returned to my hotel, I walked up Bülowstraße [7], the far end of the street that started off this blog, she flagged down a car, it stopped, she negotiated and he nodded, she got in and they drove off.

Opinion: My Views About That Human Trafficking Exclusive

Revisiting that story

I did think I should do a piece about my reading of the Premium Times piece about Human Trafficking by the investigative journalist Tobore Ovuorie.

Article - INVESTIGATION: Inside Nigeria’s Ruthless Human Trafficking Mafia

A few days have passed since I first read the story, and I have been able in some way to begin to appreciate some of the detail shared in that four-part piece.

Now, I am driven to write this now because Ikhide R. Ikheloa, who we all fondly refer to as Pa Ikhide on social media has raised some rather pertinent questions as to where this narrative lies between fact and fiction.

Healthy scepticism

Indeed, one should harbour a healthy scepticism towards such incredible stories and challenge many assumptions by posing some serious questions that need clear and detailed answers.

This is importantly part of the verification process, yet, some stories because they are narratives possibly taken without the convenience of notes, but a debrief after a traumatic experience might suffer the conflicts between the trusting part of taking it at face value and the verifying which is somewhat a distrusting it with closer scrutiny.

I would not rewrite Pa Ikhide’s piece here, rather, it is pertinent people read that along with other narratives and make up their minds.

Review - Tobore Ovuorie’s story: Fact or fiction? By Ikhide R. Ikheloa

Follow the money

On my reading of Tobore Ovuorie’s story, a number of things jumped out at me that made me feel that the matter of man’s gross inhumanity to man is an extant evil fuelled by the quest for filthy lucre and no particular care for anyone who gets trampled on in the process.

If I were to go by the catchphrase, ‘Follow the money’, as a breadcrumb trail through this Hansel and Gretel forest of narratives, I see two trails, one paid up by the mafia that smooths everything from the acquisition of willing victims, through their inductions, the officialdom that provides passports, passage and providence, to the inability for many victims to extricate themselves because of the rotten contracts they sign, signing off their lives.

The love of money

The second trail is that which cajoles and beguiles the victims who believe in the possibilities that the mafia gang promises in great returns from making it out of a difficult Nigeria to Europe where the pickings – yes, pickpocketing was a new one to me and the macabre organ harvesting was even more gruesome.

However, when I read of what informs the Nigerian psyche of success in the acquisition of things as cars, building houses, partying with the powerful, money being passed around in jute bags and the apparent hierarchies of progression through the system, I am persuaded to err on the side of plausibility.

The risks

Having lived in Amsterdam, I did a quick check for where ZAM Chronicle purports to operate from, and I am quite concerned and at the same time interested that a journalistic outfit would choose to site their offices under a railway arch at Tussen de Bogen 66, 1013 JB Amsterdam.

However, the bigger question which Pa Ikhide raised is about the risks Tobore Ovuorie took and the willingness for all the parties to this enterprise to allow the journalist to go through this activity which carried the possibility of her losing her life. I ask, do we have war correspondents? Is reporting from a war zone a carnival? Do reputed news organisations send people on such projects? Do we lose journalists in war zones?

ZAM Chronicle - Nigerian Undercover Reporter Busts Human Traffic Network

Considering, the number of witch doctors that suggested she might bring bad fortune to the business, and the tale that two of such harbingers of bad omen were taken for the slaughter in the presence of the ladies about to be trafficked, the venture was careless bordering on recklessness, but then, it is possible from a Western perspective to measure risk in those terms and yet realise that none of this story would have been possible without the willingness to entertain this possibility.

Mighty dread

Much as I am wont to believe the best of everyone, I could very well see in the more African or Nigerian context where the outrageously outlandish seeking excoriation and sanction is an everyday issue and I would not be surprised if Tobore Ovuorie’s motivations were as compelling as she proffers, informed from watching her friend expire from an AIDS-related illness some 14 years before. She had the antecedents, the possibility came, and the opportunity presented itself for her to embark on this venture, and for that, I seriously commend her.

In this story, I see what Lord Lugard in his rotten assessment of Africans in 1922.

“The religious sense seldom rises above pantheistic animalism and seems more often to take the form of a vague dread of the supernatural.”

Blog - Introducing the Apes Obey! Series

There was lots of fetishist activity and the use of the dread of the supernatural to terrify the ladies about to be trafficked into compliance either by the ritual or the murders for organ harvesting. I would think the organs were harvested for ritual purposes rather than for medical procedures. The evil and savagery was palpable.

Used and dumped

Again, having lived in Amsterdam where prostitution is legal and regulated, the people in the trade have access to social, legal and medical support whilst those seemingly trafficked to other parts of Europe simply had utility when healthy and were dumped when their health failed without respite or care.

Such was the fate of Tobore Ovuorie’s friend who died of AIDS-related Kaposi Sarcoma, this is a type of skin cancer and it is the same cancer that killed Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Worst still is the heartlessness of the trafficking mafia that had no concern for the deterioration of health of their victims, that once their vile chattels stopped earning money, they were discarded.

The pain and agony of cancer is something I have once experienced, this cancer is treatable though the treatment is expensive, first with Antiretrovirals and then chemotherapy. It goes without saying that the trafficked were used like animals, they engaged with unsafe sex which some punters would have preferred, they contracted HIV and probably passed it on to others without once thinking about it – that is if they even knew that they were infected.

HIV InSite - Treatment of HIV-Associated Kaposi Sarcoma

The system is paid up

Before I entertain the needed healthy scepticism at Tobore Ovuorie’s story and the many unanswered questions that need to be addressed promptly, the deeper core of my humanity suggests many are probably going through worse than Tobore Ovuorie attempted to share, and one can only wonder about the even more unprintable backstories that inform this sordid human trafficking enterprise.

This is the system we are up against, bought and sustained on the lives of many with no name sacrificed to this evil activity of human trafficking.

“Don’t worry about crossing borders and getting caught,” she had told me. “Immigration, customs, police, army and even foreign embassies are part of our network. You only run into trouble with them if you fail to be obedient to us.”

This alone shows why the risks were taken and possibly how the moneyed, the powerful and the influential are turning a blind eye to this, because, they are the system.

The real fight

Our altruistic desire that the institutions we have from law enforcement, through non-governmental organisations, the international aid organisations, our governments, politicians and representatives engage in abolishing the human trafficking should take us back to a historical parallel and the length of time it took to abolish the slave trade.

As long as great profits are there to be made from human lives sold and traded like dirt, much as the truth is critical, the reality of just one conscripted into this evil enterprise should inform our desire to eradicate these narratives from either the fact or the fiction of our humanity.

Thought Picnic: Disowned in life and loved in death

Ipswich was hardly a wish

A few years ago a serial killer was nabbed in a town I once lived in, Ipswich, well, I usually say I died in Ipswich for 2 years – a big town, quite parochial, very provincial and I could not say I was welcomed with open arms when I was there between 1995 and 1997.

When I returned for 6 months in 1999/2000, I thought I had matured enough to handle the idiosyncrasies that defined the capital of sleepy Suffolk but that really presaged my decision to leave the United Kingdom for good – on May the 20^th, that was 10 years ago – I got bored of living in the United Kingdom, I had done all that I thought I needed to do.

On the advice of an occupational psychotherapist, I was to try something completely different like change my career, change my residence, change something that resets my comfort zone – moving to the Netherlands was it.

A convenient narrative

Anyway, only yesterday, there was the arraignment of another alleged serial killer but this time up North in England, Bradford in fact, where he gave his name as the Crossbow Cannibal drawing gasps from the public gallery and garnering every news headline possible for the day.

However, my concern is about the narrative that follows the discovery of these serial murders, in all cases the victims were women, whose complicated lives included prostitution for all sorts of reasons.

Whilst I will not say that people engage in prostitution as a matter of choice, I find that a template has been provided for these stories, the women are supposed to be social misfits, on drugs and needing to feed a drug habit, so never in control of their life situations.

They by fate meet a malevolent patron who butchers them and dumps their bodies somewhere. It is a sad tale and a very heart-rending situation that is not exacerbated by the activities that follow the discoveries of the deaths.

Suddenly they have family

In both cases, what throws me is that these women suddenly have family after death, a good deal of them come out clamouring for justice, blaming the authorities and hardly reviewing their responsibilities – it is a damning note on the sense of family and community that we all sometimes pretend to espouse.

Here are women who in life were outcasts, disowned and literally abandoned by omission, commission or some situation not too evident that at death suddenly are loving daughters, mothers and beautiful friends to be remembered as victims who no more bring embarrassment to their survivors – it is all too convenient.

There is a need for great reflection on this, death should not be the path to redemption, the presence of life most offer hope and long before the dangerous and heinous overtakes events – I am in two minds as to whether the families of the brutally murdered do really deserve condolences, sympathies or a stern talking to.

My Mother's Generation

Introducing the M Generation

Some were born just before Hitler’s guns were silenced and it stretches to just about when the Korean War ended.

A generation of women we probably fail to understand and appreciate who were our mothers, our teachers, the market women or successful business or career woman, all still with strong opinions and views.

I call them my mother’s generation (The M Generation) and maybe one should have researched this more, but in the advent of the scurrilously annoying bill about indecent dressing sponsored by one of that generation in the Nigerian Senate, the passing of the International Women’s Day and the incessant cases of violence against women, something had to be written.

The indecent dress divide

Did I not chat to one of that generation about the indecent dressing bill only to be regaled with examples of ladies looking like ladies of the night and unworthy of respect, ready meat for abuse?

Well, at the risk of inviting unpalatable commentary, even if one were dressed like a prostitute, the whole idea of prostitution was that you paid to obtain a service – nobody has the standing right to violate the person of another person regardless of relationship, appearance, situation or opportunity.

The acquiescence to sexual menace divide

That should be a cardinal law which when violated should attract the heaviest sanctions, to paint men as salivating uncontrollable sexual beasts who run rampant and criminal on sighting any form of “indecent dressing” is unhelpful.

Everyman should have control of their bodies and urges, as human-beings they should have an advanced sense of societal responsibility not to behave like animals on seeing a sexually attractive female.

Unfortunately, the M Generation has given men carte blanche, rather than call the men to order and wipe out unacceptable behaviour; they expect young women to fend off these “beasts” to maintain peace in our communities.

The sexual education divide

Many a time, I saw how they were able to detect that a young girl had taken in whilst still trying to remain oblivious of the fact that adolescents can and do become sexually active and find outlets for those urges that inadvertently lead to unwanted pregnancies.

A typical inquisition of a girl of suffered that misfortune went along the lines of

M Generation: You are pregnant, your eyes are whiter and you have been spitting all day, whose is it?

Girl: I don’t know

M Generation: What do you mean I don’t know, did it jump on you? (The Yoruba version is O fo mo e ni?)

Girl: I don’t know

M Generation then goes through a list of probable men and boys without a sense of irony, if she hits on the right man, it is unlikely that the man would get anything more than a warning to keep away from the girls, whilst all girls are told to be wary of the man.

It is amazing how abortion comes easily to mind and many have been done with unwavering religious conviction. Where the pregnancy comes to term there have been things less cruel than taking the baby into care without letting the young mother know that the baby survived.

Many of these misfortunes might have been avoided if they ever deigned to talk to us about sex but it was always a taboo subject and the way they express surprise at the consequences is breathtaking. However, from the questions they ask afterwards, it is evident that they do know what it takes to end up in that situation and how it could have been avoided.

It is all for the good divide

This, according to them is all for the good, because, regardless of what they do, and usually what they do is wrong in the long run, it is all for the family for the honour of the family and to avoid shame in the community.

Some of the M Generation have suffered horrible and rotten marriages but they have always been stoic, taking all the abuse within the four walls of their homes but defending their atrocious husbands to the hilt in the streets.

They exercised a loyalty that would be utterly alien to the generation that comes after them, therein is the wide generation gap – even if we have conservative ideals, we are still considerably more liberal than they are in many things.

That is not to say they were wrong, it does not make them right either – they are a product of their own generation, one that had broken free to gain independence of will and means but willing subjugated it all for the preponderance of their men or men in society.

They are our mothers, we cherish them; they have taught us, we honour them; but I doubt if we would willingly follow them down the path that they have laid out – we have lessons to learn from the M Generation and many are about – How not to do some things.

Between London and Ipswich without passing out

In London incognito

I can imagine that friends, cousins and relations would be cross with me visiting London and not informing them – I have reasons, which might not sound valid to them, but are essential for me.

The last time I was in the UK, I informed so many people and got so swamped that it was impossible for me to get anything done talk less of spending quality time with all these lovely people.

This time, the ones who know are so far out of town that the obligatory visit would not be exacted on the little time one has.

Ma’am and I this morning

So, I spent the morning reviewing the passing out parade of Prince William with the Queen by my side, sometimes one has to step out to grace royal meetings, even Ms. Kate Middleton’s hat was well-worn as it crossed my mind that if she tried to appear more glamorous than her prospective step-mother in-law she might accidentally prick her finger on a spinning-wheel as one does and a hundred years would pass in the bliss of being the 21^st Century Sleeping Beauty.

Though, that is an apt reference considering the Prince could not exceed the 2 guest quota to the dinner celebrating his passing-out, my having rescinded a place did not mean Ms. Middleton could step up to that plate – such is life with the Firm.

Ipswich Town going down

One piece of news pervading the headlines in the UK concerns Ipswich, at one time in my life, I died in Ipswich for 2 years – it is my opinion you cannot live there – times when I tried to make friends the prospects ended up being hostile.

In fact, I slept over at one such “friend’s” place having worked most of the evening helping to recover data, just before 3:00AM the next morning, an armed response team broke down the door and entered the building with assault weapons, I could have been on the set of Lethal Weapon VI; the day before he had threatened his business partner with whom he has disagreements with a possible gun attack.

That put paid of trying to make friends in Ipswich, you make one and you are in a mysterious world of fear and terror, ever to loath all moments – that is just my experience.

Cardinal Wolsey, the catholic cardinal who could not arrange a divorce for Henry VIII bequeath some things to Ipswich, Ipswich is definitely an old town, Chaucer, martyrs and witch-burning in nearby Manningtree a charter that dates back to 1200.

The Suffolk Strangler

So, 5 women who probably were prostitutes and had drug dependency problems have been found murdered and dumped in rivers and fields around Ipswich and there is the possibility of another missing woman, who has been found safe and well.

Somehow, if anyone is missing for more than 5 minutes, panic first and think after, that is the pall of fear that fill the townspeople with irrational anxiety.

Not to talk of just one new opportunity to play up xenophobia as some now suspect a Polish builder who drives a Be My Wife (the irony of seeing prostitutes) – BMW – might have been sowing his wild oats and turned Jack the Ripper – err – the Suffolk Strangler, a good distraction till the facts are better gathered.

In all, if I have nothing to contribute to improving the reputation of Ipswich, I might as well end here – what a place, what a tragedy.