PeterRS

The covers of the defaced books (two below) are now exhibited in the library from which they were 'lifted'. Some were even sold at an auction in 2019 which raised £50,000 for the library. I have a feeling Orton would be quite pleased about that, although less so his lover Halliwell if only because Joe's name would appear and not his! I understand that Halliwell hacked him to death with a hammer when he heard that Joe was going to leave him. He then took an overdose of barbiturates. From the movie and his diaries, I have always wondered what on earth Joe saw in Halliwell as their relationship neared its end. Everyone seemed to like Joe. Even The Beatles commissioned a movie script from him, athough they never used it as they felt it was too gay.

FInally some sense! Some time ago I wrote about my father, a doctor. At the start of WWII, he joined up and like hundreds of thousands of other troops was transferred to northern France. While the vast majority was based close to Dunkirk, one group of around 10,000 from the 51st Highland Division was sent to the western town of St. Valery. After the many months' long phoney war, Britain evacuated all its troops at Dunkirk. But there were no ships left to pick up those at St. Valery. They were left to face the German onslaught and suffered many casualties. My father was captured and then moved around Germany in a series of prisoner of war camps, ending up near Gdansk before being liberated by the advancing Russians. Many of his colleagies were intent on escape. As the medical officer, though, he was duty bound to stay and look after his fellow prisoners. Some of those wishing to escape had been circumcised. Their main fear was they would be captured and singled out as Jews and sent to the concentration camps, even though few were Jewish. To try to prevent this, my father devised ways of over time gently pulling the skin at the shaft of the penis to make it look like more like a foreskin. He was clearly successful in that none of hose escapees who were captured were considered Jews. Most, thankfully, evaded capture and eventually returned to the UK.

Not having lived in the UK since 1979, I was not aware that Mary Whitehouse is still remembered. I do remember seeing her on an episode of The Dame Edna Experience and found she came across as very pleasant. But I resented what she was up to with her Filth campaigns. She reminded me a little of the wonderfully gay playright Joe Orton, very sadly bludgeoned to death by his lover when he was only 34. Whenever one of his three plays was on in London, newspapers would include indignant letters from one Edna Welthorpe saying such filth shold not be permitted. Welthorpe was none other than Orton himself just drumming up a bit of very good PR! I found this in an old issue of The Guardian The wording seems quite tame now but was quite cutting in its day. She died just after Queer as Folk hit British TV. That surely must have made her vitriolic! I have read several spy books, most recently two on the Burgess, Maclean and Philby episodes. I knew of Tom Driberg's Soviet exploits but have not yet read his book.

Blah! Blah! Blah!

Nor is your attaching childish videos on what are very serious subjects!

Also never been, but love the hot springs. 8 days and I am on my way to Taipei again. Incidentally i went to the Sukhumvit Yunimori hot spring in Bangkok with some Singapore friends a week ago (although it is far nearer Rama IV than Suk!) I had only ealier been to the much newer one off Sathorn very near Saint Louis Skytrain station. Although clearly older, we all enjoyed our time there. The staff are wonderfully welcoming, the facilities in the bathing space excellent. The one real difference is that the new facility has seven pools whereas the old one has four. Only the sitting out areas and little cafe need a bit of updating. Some time ago I read one post from a poster here who rather trashed the place. I beg to differ. I'd go again gladly. Both Yunimori have senior discounts - only Bt. 300 per entrance.

Ha! So typical! When a poster changes his decision on the basis of yet more idiocy from another member, you call it liying! And you post silly little cartoon-type pics supposedly to demean another poster. Don't be even more childish than you have shown yourself to be so far. We get it! Understand? You are pro-circumcision. Your choice based on your understanding of the research. I GET IT! Your view is entrenched and will not change! I GET THAT! I speak for the majority of nations in the world and the majority of the peoples of this world that have chosen a different path. I have no access to their research or the reasoning for their decisions. But the very fact that a vast majority in the world are uncircumcised without any religious or cultural reasoning shows that you and the American medical system give no attention to others than yourelves. Which i suppose in the end of the day is what indeed should happen. I am sure other members are now pissed off with yet another Japanese farmer-type impasse. Leave it be!

You really are being stupid on this issue. Unlike you I am far from the one making any judgements here. We are talking about governments for whom I am trying to add a voice. And if you think every government is as dumb as that of the United States that has since the end of WWII maimed and killed millions of their own and not only murdered many tens of millions in the rest of the world, it continues to murder them as in Laos, the most bombed country in the history of the world where it dropped a planeload of mostly cluster bombs every eight minutes of every day for nine whole years. Laos, a tiny landlocked country where the USA will still not pay world agencies to clean up the hundreds of millions of cluster bombs remaining in the ground which kill and main young children every year. Perhaps if it diverted funds away from padding doctors' bills through circumcising American babies, it might use the funds to consider cleaning up the disasters it has left behind and which continue to kill others in other parts of the world. It is governments that have decided they do not wish male babies circumcised - not me! WHen will you get that into your head? Yet you stated unequivocally without any justification or proof these same governments have condemned 300,000 children to death. How utterly ridiculous can you get!

Apologies. The Taipei beach is Shalun Beach 沙崙海灘 Very easy to reach from Tamshui terminus on the red subway line.

Sadly I have missed the sakura in Tokyo as often as I have seen it. The only time I was guaranteed to see it were the years I lived in the country! If I was making a special trip specifically to see it, a) I'd be flexible date-wise, and b) I'd be flexible location-wise. But inevitably that means a very significant budget. As has already been pointed out, the blossom moves from south to north over a perdiod of 3-4 weeks or so. Then you have to keep a keen eye out for the weather. I recall one year I lived near the centre of Tokyo. The sakura was almost in blossom and then the next day it all looked magnificent - truly a bucket list event. But that night it rained, and the following morning most of the blossoms had fallen to the ground. I found that there are certain colours more prominent at certain times. On my last visit in earlyish April pre-covid, it was all mostly white. At other times it can be mostly pinkish. Whatever, though, whereas the blossom trees are all over the city, you need to go to where it is most concentrated. I only know the city centre ones. In addition to Ueno Park and Shinjuku Park I mentioned earlier, a great place to visit, especially in the evening is Aoyama Cemetery. An odd place to view the sakura but it has many trees. It is also fun to go in the evening when so many people also have their dinner on their tarpaulins lit by little paraffin lamps. As @Keithambrose points out, there are various internet sites which give you details of the updated daily progress of the sakura each season. The one problem is that no one is ever sure when it will start. That is totally up to the weather.

Sincere apologies. You are quite correct. In my original post I should have written $110,000 for the price that girl paid for the Baccarat bottle of cognac. (I had omitted the K from the subtitles!) Little wonder, as the host points out, that a lot of the girls become prostitutes to supprt their habit of attending host bars.

As a doctor, I would have expected you to write more succinctly and clearly on what is an extremely serious subject. You highlight obesity. You are correct, thank you. You sort of suggest giving up smoking. You are correct. Thank you. You do not mention diet and you do not mention other lifestyle issues. Alcohol intake is another. As I stressed, age is one. A look at the Mayo Clinic page on pancreatic cacer offers considerably more than your post. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pancreatic-cancer/symptoms-causes/syc-20355421

Do you know something? You are acting like the child you were roughly a year ago when you were discussing the farmer outside Tokyo who for decades had refused to sell his land to enable Narita Airport to expand as it wished. You told readers in post after post after post after post that he was wrong. He should have taken the money. Yet those who had lived in Japan a great deal longer than your few weeks there, who understood and respected Japan's history, culture and traditions, who understood how the Japanese revere their land, who accepted the decision of the governments of the day and who, most importantly of all, respected the views of the tens of millions of Japanese (if not more) who sided with the farmer, meant absolutely nothing to you. They were wrong! The farmer was wrong! Only you were right! Now it is the same. You refuse to accept that other government medical experts may be wrong on the issue of cicumcision because you are right. Well, you are again wrong! And guess what? The farmer is still there. And world governments who are not in favour of circumcision will not change their minds after all the debate on the issue just because you throw at them some studies they no doubt read ages and ages ago. Do with your copies as you wish. But accept that a large majority of our varied world just does not agree with the practice. End of discussion.

1. Naked Homophobia There is one anniversary which I consider very important in our gay calendar which I will write at length about next month (yes, for those who don’t like long blog-type articles, please do not bother to read either this or it). There is an event about to take place in England which I now remark on here. Both refer back to major events in gay history around 60 and 70 years ago, one in the USA, the this one in England. Both should be remembered even at length when we consider the relative freedoms we all now enjoy as gay men. (As this post deals with England, American readers may wish to skip it, although it is no doubt mirrored by similar events in their own country.) As most readers will know, the legal system in England and Wales is different from that in Scotland. The former decriminalised homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in 1967; the latter not until 1981. Whereas between the two World Wars homosexuality appears to have been rather brushed aside as a matter of little public import, in England the anti-brigade thereafter suddenly seemed to burst into life. We all know from the film The Imitation Game that the code breaker Alan Turing was gay. We know too that through his work he shortened the course of the War in Europe by, some say, two years. Gay relationships existed post war, but it was far from easy and most gay men found most sexual gratification through casual acquaintanceships, often in public lavatories, a practice known as “cottaging”. I do not know anything about Turing’s habits. All I am aware of is that he was discovered to be homosexual only because he freely admitted it to the police. His house had been burgled, ironically by a friend who himself was homosexual. That ‘friend’ was one of his casual sexual acquaintanceships, a 19-year old unemployed youth he had met outside a cinema. When explaining the events of that night with the police, he was confronted with the information about his friend. When asked if he, too, was homosexual, he did not try to hide it. Although he was the complainant, his solicitor urged him to plead guilty. He was then charged with “gross indecency” and given the option of two-years in jail or chemical castration. Had the police had any idea of his wartime service, the chances are the case would have been swept under the carpet. But he was bound by the terms of the Official Secrets Act and would have been subject to even greater legal penalties had be broken them. Rather than go to jail, in March 1952 he chose chemical castration. It ruined him. He lost his security clearance and hence the job he loved. He was still able to travel in Europe and in more tolerant Norway did find another man he enjoyed being with, Kjell Carson. He invited him to spend some time with him in England. But the authorities intercepted the postcard on which Kjell had informed Turing of his travel plans. They then deported him before the two could be reunited. In June 1954 he committed suicide. The English establishment had effectively murdered the one man who had save countless hundreds of thousands of lives less than a decade earlier. Alan Turing - Photo: The Nationlal Portrait Gallery, London Turing was just one of many rounded up in what became essentially a witch-hunt. Entrapment was one of their methods. Young handsome police officers were actually trained how to troll around cottages, shown how to seduce men and then wait to be propositioned before making an arrest. One caught in this trap was one of Britain’s most famous actors, the recently knighted Sir John Gielgud. He was taken to court in 1953, like Turing pleaded guilty and was fined £10 for “persistently importuning young men for immoral purposes.” Although he had been allowed to appear in the dock under the pseudonym John Smith, a journalist in court recognised him. As this was splashed all over the newspapers, for many in England it was a scandal to revel in. Yet more evidence of the furtive, dirty lives of men who were deviants, no matter their reputation! For it was fact that those people who even considered homosexuality at that time did so with revulsion. Gielgud himself was utterly mortified. He believed his career was ruined and, as he told his biographer Sheridan Morley, he considered suicide. It was only thanks to the love and loyalty of his many friends that he remained alive. As the Turing case was made into a film, so Gielgud’s case became the subject of the 2008 play Plague ever England. Its author, Nicholas de Jongh, wrote at the time that he wanted to use the offence to illustrate the depths to which the law in 1950s Britain had sunk in terms of enabling the prosecution of tens of thousands of men simply because of their sexuality. And as we know, both men are now held in the highest possible regard in Britain. Turing had the remarkable honour – and honour it was because he was one of less than a handful – to receive an official unconditional pardon not just from the Prime Minister but also from The Queen (although I am not sure why it should be termed an “honour” when he had to die before receiving it). His face now adorns Britain’s £50 notes. English heritage has had a plaque placed on the house where he lived. Most notably for the gay community, Turing himself would probably be most pleased that parliament passed the Turing Law in 2017 which effectively pardons most categories of living and deceased gay men and is intended to wipe their criminal histories from the official records. Just one well-known name to receive the pardon is Oscar Wilde. While most welcomed the move, some campaigners to change the law claim it does not go far enough. Being pardoned automatically presumes one has been guilty of some offence. George Montague said he would refuse the pardon. Instead he wants a formal apology for government actions. Still, from saviour from war, to convicted criminal, to suicide, to becoming known to all in the UK in a very positive light and a gay martyr as a sort of icing on the cake, Turing’s existing family members must be in some senses pleased. Sir John Gielgud - Photo: Godfrey Argent 1969 Sir John took most of a year off appearing on the stage following the publicity surrounding his conviction. He gradually worked his way back, first touring a one-man show and then in some of the many plays being written by the new generation of “angry young playwrights” like Harold Pinter, John Osborne and Arnold Wesker angry at the state of Britain and many of its communities. But first he had to complete performances of the play he was then appearing in. As one blog site (listed below) writes of that first evening – The day that the news broke of Gielgud’s arrest he was paralysed with fear. At the time, he was in Liverpool, starring in a performance alongside the formidable Dame Sybil Thorndike, and felt it almost impossible to go onto the stage that night. As the curtain was about to go up, something remarkable is reported to have happened. Dame Sybil grabbed Sir John by the arm and whispered in his ear, “Come on John darling, they won’t boo me”. With that, she led Gielgud out into the dazzling lights of the Royal Court Theatre. You can almost feel the tension as the expectant audience stared down at the two theatrical legends — one intent on giving her usual astounding performance, the other shaking like a shitting dog. There was silence. Not a shout. Not a boo. Not even a cough. And then…..a standing ovation. The audience cheered and applauded Gielgud, raising the roof of the Liverpudlian theatre. The message could not have been more abundantly clear. The people did not give two hoots what Johnny got up to in his private life, they considered him an outstanding actor and held him and his performances in such high regard. His sexuality did not matter. Dame Sybil Thorndyke; “a glorious actress” quote from the celebrated British actor Paul Scofield - Photo: unknown That summing up may not have been entirely true, but it was to have two effects. The first is that Gielgud’s view against suicide was reinforced. Far more importantly it led to a far deeper public discussion about homosexuality and why it was regarded as such a heinous moral crime. It was to play a key part in parliament’s further enquiries and finally decriminalising homosexuality in England and Wales in 1967. It is important to realise that the law was not merely intended to ferret out homosexuals and parade them as deviants. Equally it played an important role in preventing gay men, however closeted, from certain professions. One was the law itself. As a young Jewish man born in 1951 who knew he was gay, Terence Etherton realised he was destined for a career in medicine or law. Even though the gay section of the law had been changed, the views of many higher up the profession had not. Etherton was aware that the conservative (with a small ‘c’) wing of the legal profession would prevent his becoming an elite Queen’s Counsel, the highest rank for a barrister, and that he could never become a judge. Although the law had by now been changed, the Conservative Government’s Lord Chancellor in the early 1970s, Lord Hailsham, had made his disgust of homosexuality. Very clear. Earlier when appearing before the Wolfenden Committee which had recommended parliament change the law, Hailsham stated, “The instinct of mankind to describe homosexual acts as ‘unnatural’ is not based on mere prejudice.” In a 1994 BBC programme he went a lot further. “All the homosexuals I have known have been extremely eager, like alcoholics, to spread the disease from which they suffer.” Lord Hailsham - Photo: Getty Images It is a mark of the progress made by the higher-ups in society that Etherton not only did become a barrister and later during the Queen's reign a Queen's Counsel. After retirement he was enobled. Terence Etherington, the boy who believed doors were closed to him because of his sexuality, became Baron Etherington. He died in May 2025 leaving behind his long-time partner Andrew Stone with whom he had entered a civil patrnership in 2006 which they converted to marriage in 2014. It is just possible that Hailsham may not have been aware of some of the more nefarious deeds some of his fellow Lords were up to! Or maybe he was and merely turned his mind from it. Robert Boothby had been a member of parliament for 34 years before being elevated to the peerage. In the 1950s he had been a prominent advocate for changing the law against homosexual acts. Perhaps Lord Boothby had a special reason for suggesting this for his personal life was, as been frequently described as colourful. Twice married he enjoyed an affair for many years with the wife of a senior politician who would become prime minister, Harold Macmillan. But Boothby played the field. One of his close friends was the openly gay MP, Tom Driberg. In 1979 Boothby began an affair with a man he appointed as his driver, Leslie Holt, a former burglar. At a gambling club he had been introduced to the notorious gangster Ronnie Kray. Allegedly Kray supplied Boothby with young men and arranged for him to attend orgies. When all this came to the attention of the British media and hints were made, the government enabled it to be hushed up. After the German magazine Stern which was under no such restrictions published the stories, the British media finally went to print. Boothby denied everything, it was all hushed up again and Boothby received £40,000 for libel. Many were aware of Boothby’s indiscretions but all were afraid to mention them openly. it is said that even the Queen Mother was aware of his activities! The ever ebullient Lord Boothby - Photo unknown And it was all true. In 2015 government documents were released including files from the internal security service MI5 proving Boothby’s fondness for young men. The list could go on, for several peers and other notable figures from the 1950s, 60s and 70s were very much in the closet. Much is disclosed in the long article mentioned below Double Lives – a history of sex and secrecy at Westminster. All this is a very long preamble to a new play that will be opening in the UK on 4 February in Salford outside Manchester, England. Naked Homophobia takes the audience back to the 1950s and looks in detail at the very first programme to be broadcast on the BBC on male homosexuality intended for 1954. As we know, the anti-gay law was then in force. As a result, the issue was so taboo the BBC mandarins decided in their wisdom to withhold broadcast for three whole years. They then edited it heavily prior to transmission. As today’s article in The Guardian points out the programme shines light on the experience of gay men in the 1950s and explores gay themes that still resonate today. The play’s author Stephen M. Hornby had access to the original BBC script - “The overwhelming message I got from reading it [the original script] was either naked, foaming-at-the-mouth homophobia of people like Lord Hailsham. Or the more liberal voices who say conversion therapy works, you ought to give it a go at least – and if not you can live a quiet life of abstinence and not do anything which would scare the horses,” Hornby said. The programme was presented by the man who would later go on to Chair the Homosexual Law Reform Society. A strange choice, perhaps, given that in the programme he describes homosexuality as “a sort of infantilism” and “an arrested state of development.” The author discovered that the programme makers had also attempted, although unsuccessfully, to involve the wife of a businessman and mother of three sons who had written a long expose on homosexuality in The Sunday Times newspaper. She had written – “It may seem a strange thing that a woman should write about homosexuality. But I think many mothers suffer from the fear that, through no fault of their own, their boys may be tempted or warped.” Mary Whitehouse, photographed rather inappropriately outside a sex shop! Photo: BBC That writer was Mary Whitehouse, a well-known and influential name in Britain as a crusader against what she termed “filth” in the media. She died in 2001 and is now almost totally forgotten. When the edited BBC programme was finally aired, there was such a public backlash that the BBC took the decision there would be no more programmes on the subject. Following its season in Salford, the play Naked Homophobia will tour to Birmingham, Brighton, London, Liverpool and Loughborough. Primary Sources https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/jan/16/bbc-first-programme-on-gay-men-homosexuality-1950s-stage-play https://medium.com/the-pink-green-room/tis-a-blushing-shame-faced-spirit-gielgud-s-cottaging-catastrophe-95446be36325 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/16/double-lives-a-history-of-sex-and-secrecy-at-westminster#:~:text=The long parliament of,were published in the 1960s).

E-cigarettes have been banned in Singapore since 2018. Now a new crackdown is on the way. The reason: drug-laced vapes named K-Pods have become popular on the streets. With its zero policy towards drugs, the city state is introducing new harsh punishments if caught with e-cigarettes. These include being jailed, sent to state rehab, being caned and fined US$7,780). When found, sellers can be sent to jail for up to 20 years. Note: foreigners and tourists will receive the same punishments and a hotline has been set up so the public can report if they see anyone using vapes. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3387lrz5g4o