Transparency

Lunaria annua is best known as honesty on account of the translucency of its seed pods. Especially when the sunlight x-rays the fragile parchment of the silvery discs and reveals the contents like this. In my garden honesty grows self-sown, its fragrant purple flowers in early summer succeeded by this no less attractive autumnal form that can be added to a dried bouquet for the winter.

Currently the British press is humming with moral outrage over the 'revelations' that the 'iconic' 70s/80s disc jockey Sir Jimmy Savile, 1929-1911, was a serial sexual predator who abused girls and young women in his role as a popular entertainer. His longterm employer, the BBC, professes horror that such things should have gone unnoticed and unchallenged. Who knew??!

Well, it seems everyone did know. His predelictions were an open secret in the pop world and among the general public. (It certainly wasn't news to me.) A number of women who were abused by the seedy DJ as teenagers are coming forward to say that their complaints at the time were brushed aside or disbelieved or they were too fearful of the consequences to say anything at all. Female colleagues who worked with Savile on radio shows are now speaking out to confirm that they too were groped by him, quite blatantly, even on air, but any objection was met with a shrug and not taken seriously: at the time it was a laughing matter, something every women had to expect and take in their stride. Besides he raised millions for charity and any challenge to his credibility would threaten the income he generated.

Now that the truth is out, Savile's birthplace plaque has been defaced, there are plans to remove his statue in his home town and talk of withdrawing his knighthood too. The women he abused as minors are seeking compensation but the female colleagues who worked with him, now senior in their profession, have been criticized by the 'who knew?' brigade for not speaking out before now. Journalist Deborah Orr wrote an excellent short piece on this in her comment column in Saturday's Guardian here. Do read it if you have a moment. And ponder on the lack of honesty and transparency in society, of which this is of course but one isolated example.