Saturday 5th July

We didn’t really study the French Revolution at school, or of course the English or the Russian either.  Better not put any incendiary ideas into the minds of young kids.  They showed A Tale of Two Cities on Tv and though I found it confusing I sort of grasped the idea.  What always amazed me though was the image of the old hags cackling beneath the guillotine as another head rolled into the basket.  Were people back then quite so vicarious about death and execution?  Crowds used to gather to see public hangings, and even back in the thirties and forties there was some demand to see criminals hanged.  In America it is quite common for people to witness executions.  Justice must be seen to be done.

Of course we are all grown up now, and have abolished Capital punishment.  However we are just as vicarious, eagerly awaiting the sentencing of Newspaper Hackers and Celebrity sex-abusers alike.  The Media scrum is quite sickening at what by any account must be a harrowing time for the defendants, guilty as they may have been found.  Victims and victims families pronounce that the sentence is never harsh enough.  Well it isn’t happening to you, is it?  And the reporters hang on every word from the judge and the severity of the sentence is debated by self-appointed pundits.  And we, the public are just as vicarious, either in our self-righteous finger-wagging or stunned incredulity; we are just as eager to hear what is handed down to those who have fallen.  We all love to trample on a man (or woman) when someone else has already knocked them to the ground, and the higher the pedestal from which they are knocked the better.  No better and no worse than the cheering mob of old, we cackle as the guillotine slides down and another head rolls into the basket.