Don't keep it to yourself
How galling it must be for the true blue-blooded aristocracy of
Old England to see so many of their hallowed institutions now
owned by dirty foreigners. The Al Fayed brothers are two such,
owning the Queen's corner shop, Harrod's and the Ritz Hotel
group. They also used to own at least one Tory Minister, Jonathan
Aitken, who grew accustomed to the lavish accommodation in their
silk-lined pockets.
When the Al Fayeds made their bid for Harrods they were dismissed
as not having the wherewithal. They promptly returned from a
little visit to the Saudi royal family with a huge wad of
readies. The English owners sniffed at such crassness but they
did the deal and Harrod's changed hands.
The blue bloods must have been cringing over their crumpets on
Tuesday night (BBC 1 9.30pm) as they watched Muhammed Al Fayed
explain why he was selling the contents of the Paris villa that
used to belong to Edward, Duke of Windsor, and his wife Wallace
Simpson. Al Fayed bought it and turned it into a museum in honour
of the disgraced royal who was deposed, not because he was a Nazi
sympathiser but because he wanted to marry a divorced
`commoner'. Now Al Fayed is moving into the villa, so 40,000
items are to go under the hammer and are expected to make
£30,000,000 for children's charities. It looks like poetic
justice.
The announcement of a forthcoming `season' on a TV station often
heralds an excuse for showing old films whose only common
denominator is that their titles begin with a B. Occasionally
however a set of programmes of real weight and with a coherent
theme comes along. That's the case with BBC2's season on bullying
which began on Tuesday with Sticks and Stones (BBC2 9.30pm) which
told the story of children driven to suicide by victimisation in
school.
The parents of four teenagers spoke movingly of their ordeal.
Three of the teenagers hanged themselves, a fourth survived a
massive overdose of paracetemol. Asian boy Vijay Singh was the
subject of racial taunts which finally drove him to death. His
mother told how she found him hanging by one of her scarves.
Mark, a pupil at a Royal Navy boarding school, was devastated
when his friend told him he was leaving. He was the only one he
could confide in about the bullying he suffered.
The agony of the parents was sharpened by the knowledge that the
children felt that they could not tell them of their ordeal at
the hands of bullies. And this is what makes bullying possible.
The huge peer pressure not to tell on your persecutor, the fear
of the consequences if you do, ensures that children suffer in
silence. The inability to fight back can lead to taunts from
others. A vicious spiral is entered from which there seems no
escape. Most do break out at a cost but for some the damage is
permanent. In Britain it is reckoned that ten children per year
take their own lives directly as a result of such victimisation.
As one of the parents on the prgramme said, the answer is
straightforward but very difficult: ``Don't keep it to yourself.''
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