Out fishing with Barnet's Gay Mafia

If tomorrow's newspaper headline's say "Today Rog T sleeps with the fishes" you will know that everything I've written below is rubbish. One of the dangers of blogging with a fairly easy trail to who you really are is that you sometimes get some rather strange people emailing you. Now I'm fairly thick skinned and as soon as I get some quality rubbish, the spam filter is updated and the delete key is used. That way I only have to read one lot of rubbish and all subsequent efforts are purely a waste of time for the senders.

There seems to be one correspondent who has gone to extraordinary lengths to make their point, so I thought I really ought to use this opportunity to set the record completely straight (pardon the pun). The first communication I had was in the halcyon days of my blog at the Edgware Times. The email asked me what I was going to do about Barnet's gay mafia. It then went on to list several councillors and some of the positions of trust that they had (such as President of the local scouts). The implication was that I should use my blog to lead a crusade against these councillors from my blog and get "decent people" running the council again.

Now much as I wish that my trusty blogs had the power to dismiss councillors at will, I think that amongst the many delusions the writer of the email had, was one that a blog by me would change anything. I have a simple policy of ignoring all "crank" emails so it went straight to the trash. A couple of weeks later I got a follow up email. Same subject, same tone, same result. The third in the sequence was a little bit different. This one had a slightly threatening tone. It was clear that I was a coward, maybe I was a closeted homosexual, maybe I wasn't what I seemed. I was clearly like all of those other gutless people in the press. Now if you reply to nutcases, you just encourage them, so that was yet again ignored. The fourth email in the series informed me I was being watched and they had information which would expose me (for what I know not). Anyway it all went quiet then. That was until a couple of weeks ago.

My friendly neighbourhood nutcase sent me an email to gloat at my sacking from the Times as a blogger. He suggested that if I'd exposed Barnet Council's gay mafia, I'd have done a huge public service and Phil Crowther would have been too scared to have sacked me. I was very tempted to email back and suggest he discuss this with Phil Crowther at the Times, but as I said, if you respond you only encourage them.

Anyway I got another one last week. This time there was a complete change of tone. It seems that I'm a gutless hypocrite because I say I'm a Roman Catholic, but I won't expose the gay mafia. I claim to be "one of the boys" by liking football and beer, but I clearly swing the other way as I am not "totally disgusted by the morals and behaviour of ......". It appears that as I "confessed" in my Times blog that a friend of mine was gay and I'd even had a beer with him once, there was "undeniable proof". It was also "clear that I had been suffering from AIDS since 1984"(clearly I should get in touch with the Guiness book of records for survival). The best comment of all was that my clear dislike of two rather high profile Barnet Councillors was clearly the result of "past lovers tiffs".

So there you go. Well I suppose it is a theory, up there with the flat earth and Lamarkian evolution. The latest email, I received yesterday. It berated me yet again for all my many failings (see above) and made a veiled threat that unless I exposed the Gay Mafia at Barnet Council, some terrible thing would happen. It challenged me as to why I'd expended thousands of words deriding the policies of certain promonant Barnet Councillors, but had never mentioned once the fact that they are gay.

Well, the reason is quite simple. It really has nothing to do with their ability to do their jobs. I don't care what any of them do in private and it's none of my business. I am quite happy to expose anything which is against the interests of the people living in Barnet but poking around in people's private lives is not what I do.

If anyone out there gives a monkey's, then google "gay barnet councilor" and see what you get. You can also check their list of members interests and all that sort of stuff. I really don't care. You may wonder why I haven't named any of these councilors here. Most of you probably know who they are anyway, they are quite open, so why? Well purely to wind up my trusty emailer. You see that whilst he thinks the fact that the bloke responsible for the management of the Darland Lake Management committee (apologies if the title is incorrect) is gay is a massive issue, to the rest of us the issue is whether he manages Darlands Lake properly. End of Story.

So why have I chosen to post this piece after all of the many ignored emails. Well I have a little theory of my own. Let me share it. Now I'm married, been in a long term relationship for many a year. I've got children and I'm a Roman Catholic. I subscribe to the "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" brand of religion. Now I haven't had any homosexual relationships, for the simple reason that I don't fancy guys and I love women. If you want to choose to believe otherwise, that's really up to you - I'd be more upset though, if you thought I was a closet Manchester United fan.

The point is I feel pretty secure in who I am. The guy I trust most in all the world is gay - who is he? He's the guy who mends my guitar amplifier when it goes bang. If he makes a mistake I could fry. He's a good pal and yes I have a beer with him sometimes, for what it's worth. What do we discuss over the beer? Guitars & Music, rather like I do with most of my other muso mates.

Reading the rants from my trusty emailer, I detect a strange undertone. Almost looking for some sign. Why could this be? Let me tell you, I suspect that our emailer is a repressed gay. His disgust is actually directed at his own cowardice. He assumes everyone else must have the same issues (in spite of the evidence). It would never occur to me to draw conclusions about someone in the way he does, so why does he? It reminded me of the strange case of the Austrian National Front leaders hidden love affair. Often the reason various ...phobes have their prejudices is they actually can't come to terms with their own feelings and sexuality.

Anyway, this will be the first last and only message I have for you - seek professional help and get a life. Let the rest of us live ours the way we choose. Oh and if the people who our friendly neighbourhood nutter named really were a proper mafia as he alleges, I'd have been sleeping with the fishes long ago !