Picking up on the Roy Greenslade/ Daily Mirror story that Whitehall files on Mark Thatcher’s activities during his mother’s premiership have been withheld from public release.

Here’s a reminder of the original story from 1984.

PL on RT discussing the Nice terror attack – raising the mental health issue

Three days later…….. from Kim Sengupta’s article in today’s Independent quoting the Nice killer’s father: “For four years, from 2002 to 2004 he had problems, he had a nervous breakdown. He would get very angry, and would break things for no reason, he was put on medication. But the one thing he did not get angry about was religion, he did not go to mosque, he drank.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nice-attack-mohamed-lahouaiej-bouhlel-neighbours-not-a-terrorist-drink-drugs-a7140856.html

We need a grown up discussion of the relationship between mental health and terrorism. If we confuse people with long term mental health issues who attracted to acts of terrorism with die hard terrorists then we will not understand what is going on out there. Confusing mental health with ‘evil’ is retrogressive and will prevent the identification of people who such problems before they act.  There have been a number of similar events and the first reaction in the coverage is to imply they are an ISIS terrorist and only then look at the person’s mental health record.

Forthcoming: 9 September 2016. Inside Kind of Blue – Dorchester Arts Centre
A celebration of the classic Miles Davis album. In Part 1: Paul Lashmar tells the story of Kind of Blue with musical illustrations from the Frank Griffiths sextet. A jazz outreach project with Frank Griffith (Brunel University). Fourth in series.

WW1 Memories: Great-Grandfather James Marrey. Joined up underage. Fought at Omdurman and Spion Kop (seriously wounded) and a sergeant during WW1. Photo taken in Grimethorpe. His two sons George and Bernard went into the army  in WW2. Fortunately James lived to old age. Due to common-sense in Europe the last two generations have not had to fight in Europe. Let’s hope that the decision to leave the the EU won’t result in future generation called to war.