Christopher Jefferies in a blue tinted frame?

Or Are All Eccentrics Suspects?

The media, Twitter and any other form of communicaton is buzzing with notions and comments about Christopher Jefferies. As Facebook would say, "Not the Christopher Jefferies you were looking for?". Depends. Google, I think, means the Christopher Jefferies who is embroiled in the Joanna Yeates murder enquiry. It's definitely not this Christopher Jefferies.

All that aside, whatever happened about innocent until proved guilty? The BBC has recently been showing Garrow's Law. It was William Garrow who pushed so successfully for this concept to be part of English law. It would appear now that for many contempt of court and other such niceties are a thing of the past. The Daily Mirror is keen to emphasis that Christopher Jefferies was a "public school teacher" and then go on to mention that a convicted paedophile lived in one of the flats at one time. What does the Mirror know about it anyway? Innuendo, mainly.

I get the impression that eccentrics are getting a hard time. Possibly they always have. If there is any other man in the country with a blue rinse hairdo perhaps he is keeping a low profile. "Ooh Brian, your hair looks just like that eccentric's in the papers!" One has to wonder if any of this would have come about if Mr. Jefferies had been "normal" in the media's eyes.

When Madeleine McCann disappeared in Portugal a young female Murdoch minion suddenly took against Robert Murat and ran around saying he looked eccentric and behaved oddly. She of course had no evidence whatsoever. Just Sun-type prejudice. But it was enough for his private life to go through the mangle as well as the mill.

Let us remember that Mr.Jefferies has only been arrested. Evidence has to be gathered against people in order to bring charges. That is unless people want to forego that and just set up kangaroo courts on Clifton Suspension Bridge. It would be a very dull day indeed if all eccentrics were to vanish from British shores, or anywhere, just because people rushed to judgement. I find eccentrics make the icing on the cake as far as British society goes. I bet that when it comes to wrongdoing, the percentage is far less for eccentrics than it is, for example, politicians. Now there's a thought!