Just For Lookin' Thru

According to Emma Graham Harrison and Rory Carroll’s news feature in The Guardian (2 June 2014), Bowe Bergdahl sounds like an unusual young man. Raised and home schooled in a book filled cabin, without a telephone, but with the Idaho countryside as his playground, he is described as ‘thoughtful and quiet.’ A well read thinker who joined the US army, Bergdahl is quoted in Rolling Stone as emailing home to say that he felt ashamed to be American because: “These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live. “We don’t even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armoured trucks … We make fun of them in front of their faces, and laugh at them for not understanding we are insulting them.” His father, Bob, spoke of Bowe’s apparent disillusionment prior to his capture, the exact details of whi...

Tonight is the final episode of Sally Wainwright’s unmissable Happy Valley . The whole sorry mess of a kidnap instigated by a local businessman’s weak and resentful accountant has become more violent episode by episode. There have been criticisms of the shocking violence, and questions as to whether it’s necessary. It’s only necessary to the casual rapist and throat slitter Tommy Lee Royce (played by James Norton), as his method of shutting people up; if they can’t be relied upon to keep quiet they have to die. The kidnapped young woman, Ann, (played by Charlie Murphy) was roughly handled, then raped, then injected with heroin, and raped again (neither rape filmed). Not a classic weeping victim, her character is refreshingly tough; she resisted, yelled and struggled and, when discovered in the cellar by Sgt. Cawood, wrestled herself free, wrenched some dumbbells from the floor and swung them at her captor, dealing him a decisive blow. The plucky lass dragged and heaved the badly...