I don’t know much about Harvey Weinstein. Although I do know that he is a famous film producer, I am not sure whether I have ever seen any of his films. In view of the torrent of sordid allegations begin to surface about his behaviour towards many women, I rather hope I haven’t. People like him make me ashamed to be a man.

I think I may have seen him on a TV chat show, perhaps Graham Norton, and perhaps heard him on the Chris Evans show on Radio Two, but I can’t be sure. I have seen pictures of him lately and they kind of ring a bell, but not a very loud one. Clearly in the movie industry, Weinstein is, or rather was, A Big Deal.

His alleged sexual activities have been sick-making to read. It will be a matter for others, including perhaps the courts, to decide whether Weinstein was involved in non-consensual sex of any kind, something which he denies. Nonetheless, it is hard to believe there is a little fire beneath the smoke.

Now I have learned more about the man, I understand rather better just how powerful he is. A major producer makes or breaks careers. If you were a young, aspiring female actor and you knew that the only way you could “get on” would be to perform a sexual act on a major industry figure, how would you react, knowing that if you failed to oblige you might never work again? I hope you will agree that this is a repulsive thing to even think about.

Emma Thompson described the allegations as being the tip of a very large iceberg. I can believe this. Historically, the movie industry in particular has been run at the behest of rich, powerful men. The casting couch was not part of folklore: it really happened. The allegations about Weinstein concern behaviour that is plainly institutionalised in Hollywood.

“What attracted you to the multimillionaire Harvey Weinstein?” might be a valid question. I am not personally attracted to him and, if I am being brutally honest, I would be surprised if the apparent legions of young female actors were any more sexually disposed to him as me. He’s a fat, balding 65 year old man; George Clooney he ain’t. I guess there is someone out there for everyone but for someone like Weinstein to attract female attention – well, there must be something more to it than looks alone?

This is nothing to do with a sex addiction, as some have suggested. It’s about power. It is the age-old story of male power over women. Change might be coming, but clearly in places like Hollywood, it’s coming very slowly, if it’s coming at all.

It is absolutely fine to be sexually attracted to someone of the opposite or same sex. That’s what makes the world go round. It’s when the boundaries are pushed too far, when power takes over. It’s another example of sleeping with the boss to get on. That boss is almost always a man and here we have the ultimate terrible example.

Hollywood needs to have a long, hard look at itself but so does all of society everywhere. I suspect that Weinstein will never work again regardless of what happens next. The world doesn’t need men like him. Law breakrer or not, he’s a pervert and he deserves nothing but our contempt.

A few talking points from Bristol Rovers defeat yesterday at the hands of Oxford United:

* I thought Oxford were the better team and deserved to win.
* Rovers really missed Billy Bodin.
* The introduction of Sinclair and, especially, Moore made things worse, not better.
* The home bench was threadbare.
* The referee got most big calls right, including the non existent penalty for the Rovers, but ruined his performance by awarding loads of yellow cards, many of which on both sides were completely unnecessary.
* Rovers two full backs, especially Bola, were running on empty in the last 20 minutes.
* The queues for the concessions between the south west tent end were a joke. Those in the corporate seats wouldn’t expect the same kind of delays for their pre match carvery, so why should those on the terraces.
* It has cost Rovers fans over £1 million to put Ken Masters on the board of directors.

That little lot will do for now. I intend to dwell on matters loosely connected with Mr Masters, the so called fans’ representative on the board. A minor debate appeared on social networks last night, questioning both the effectiveness and the importance of Bristol Rovers Supporters Club (BRSC). I emphasise the minor aspect of the debate because, as we know at Bristol Rovers, and probably at every other club, fans only get angry and “want something done” when performances on the pitch are below par and heading towards catastrophic. Right now, with the team comfortably in mid table and gates consistently as high as they have been in the modern era, there is little by way of dissent. In fact, the support for manager Darrell Clarke remains at a very high level, quite rightly so.

I am not going to re-run the arguments of the last 15 years about supporter representation at BRFC. At times of various crises just about every alternative and independent form of representation has been offered and many attempted. This included democratisation of BRSC itself which ultimately led to the organisation having full directors. But that was where democracy ended. The last two directors, Brian Seymour Smith and Ken Masters, have failed totally to fulfil the roles the million pounds plus Rovers fans paid to put them there. Yes, they appeared on match days, as Masters does to this day, but their influence has been negligible, arguably zero. They were never part of big decisions made in the Higgs era, they have had no input into the new regime. Masters stood next to the disability teams at half time yesterday which was admirable, but he didn’t need to be a fans’ director to do that. He was put in the job to ensure Rovers had a voice on the board. In that, he has palpably failed. A director with principles would have resigned years ago, but not Ken in the Community.

What does BRSC do these days? It runs a loss-making shop in Kingswood, it organises buses for away travel, it sells programmes and 50/50 tickets and that’s it. A vehicle for change? Hardly. Look, the people who run BRSC deserve unending praise for their job in providing financial assistance to the football club because they care passionately about it. They are not in the game of holding people to account. It is no longer what BRSC does and it hasn’t done for many years. So, if you want an independent form of representation at the club, here is my advice: don’t bother.

Even when the club was on its knees in the early 2000s, a relatively small number of people came to its aid. As the club, under the dead hand of Nick Higgs, tumbled out of the Football League, a few half-hearted and half-arsed fan initiatives were tried. As soon as the team recovered, they faded and died. Put very simply the fact is this: Gasheads do not support fan ownership or accountability from those at the top. This is as near to a fact as you can get. That is not to say they don’t care because they are among the most passionate fans in the land. However, as with most fans, that passion is confined to what happens on the pitch and, after wasting too many years trying and failing to persuade people that what happens off the field is also important, I now feel the same way.

I had a chat with a longstanding fan a few weeks ago and he told me, very simply, that he was “not interested in the politics” and just wanted to enjoy the game. Years ago, I might have argued that actually that “politics” was nothing of the kind, just a desire to see the club run sustainably and to make it better. This time I didn’t. Banging your head against a brick wall is not all it is made out to be, except that it hurts the more you do it.

You may call me a cynic for suggesting that nothing can be done and you would be right because I still believe nothing can be done, unless you have plenty of excess energy to waste. Some things, Bruce Hornsby and the Range once put it, will never change. Well over a million quid of fans money and all you get is Ken Masters suggests I am not wrong.

I only wish we could turn the clock back. Thanks to the actions of one man, this country is becoming ugly, it is already divided and racism is becoming the norm and not the exception. Put to one side the word ‘Iraq’ and remember how much better this country was in the late 1990s and early to mid 2000s when Tony Blair’s New Labour was the majority party in the House of Commons. You may have disagreed with the policies of increasing NHS and spending on schools, reducing poverty, the introduction of the minimum wage and so much more, but you surely cannot argue that the times in which we now live are far, far worse. The man to blame is David Cameron.

This is not to re-run last year’s referendum on EU membership, although I would like it if we did. It is to heap a large bucket of shit over the man who called it in the first place, not to give people the vote on our future in or out of Europe, but to end once and forever the internal Tory party wars over the EU. That went well, didn’t it?

A referendum is a shocking way of doing democracy. That is why this country embraced parliamentary democracy, where we elect people to make decisions on our behalf. If we don’t like what they do, we don’t vote for them again. This is especially important with incredibly complex subjects like the EU. Last year, David Cameron offered a binary vote on the most complex of decisions imaginable, one which was condensed simply into remain in the EU or leave. The answer that came back was that we should leave. That was the moment when our problems began.

We have done the arguments to death. I firmly believe the country was lied to by shysters and liars like Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and the like. But don’t take my word for it. Read the words of prominent Vote Leave director Dominic Cummings: “Pundits and MPs kept saying ‘why isn’t Leave arguing about the economy and living standards’. They did not realise that for millions of people, £350m/NHS was about the economy and living standards – that’s why it was so effective. It was clearly the most effective argument not only with the crucial swing fifth but with almost every demographic. Even with UKIP voters it was level-pegging with immigration. Would we have won without immigration? No. Would we have won without £350m/NHS? All our research and the close result strongly suggests No. Would we have won by spending our time talking about trade and the Single Market? No way.” So the reason I believe that the country was lied to is based on fact. The people who campaigned to leave the EU admit they lied to us. And that is a prime example of how referendums are simply wrong.

We know that many people wanted to leave the EU because of migration. How many of them realised that the end of free movement would have dramatic effects on their own ability to travel freely in Europe? I am sure some people voted to restrict the ability of these wretched foreigners coming over here, doing valuable work, paying taxes, attending our universities (at great financial benefit to this country) and perhaps even falling in love and moving in with a partner, but did they do the same to prevent their own children doing the same? Perhaps some of them did – I suppose if you hate foreigners that much, you might want to dramatically reduce the opportunities of your own children – but I am not convinced. Did people vote to leave to potentially wreck the ability of our businesses to trade with Europe, or devastate British farming? Well, enough farmers voted leave, so maybe they did. The turkeys will have their Christmas very soon.

A simple verdict on a complex decision will take up decades to come, during which many of those who voted to leave will depart their mortal coil. The whole thing will override everything. Theresa May’s pathetic, squabbling government will have time to do absolutely nothing else in this parliament and neither will which ever government succeeds them. That’s one of the biggest tragedies of all.

Cameron’s referendum was, like most referendums, was predicated on weakness. He wanted to see off, once and for all, his Europhobic headbangers on the backbenches and the advancing Ukip. He felt he could not see off his enemies through our parliamentary structures. The referendum would sort out everything. But it made it much worse. Now we have so many different groups of people wanting different things. An ultra hard Brexit on one side to no Brexit at all on the other and many people somewhere in the middle. Some want to stay in the single market and the customs union, others want to leave both, others like Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn want to leave both but have full access to both. Confused? You should be.

Is the EU like the Hotel California where “you can check out any time you like but you can never leave”? Well, not quite, despite my wishing it was. It was unlikely that, barring a majority right wing Tory majority, that there would have been a parliamentary majority to break away from Europe, which was probably why the headbangers wanted a referendum. Now we have to deal with the consequences and, ultimately, pick up the pieces. The final destination, wherever it is, will satisfy no one and it will take forever.

The electorate didn’t get it right or wrong over Brexit: they were offered a false prospectus and no indication of the final destination, with the government, never mind the people, completely in the dark as to what happens next. Many of us will have to put up with this fiasco for the rest of our lives and no one promised us that. But these are the consequences of being asked to make a simple decision on a million different issues. It’s democracy, but not as we know it and the truth is we have not taken back control. Rather the opposite.

This country is on the road to ruin thanks to David Cameron’s misjudged party politicking and we will all pay a huge price for it. This is all his fault.

I feel sorry for someone who has committed a crime. I know I shouldn’t because what this someone did was so utterly unforgivable it can be no surprise he was sent to prison. Robert Loveridge, an undertaker from from Teignmouth, Devon, stole around £6000 in funeral charity donations.

“What have you been smoking?” you are entitled to ask me. “Feel sorry for a low life who attended funerals where grieving family and friends would still have the time to think about the suffering of others by arranging charity collections and then steals that money?” Yes, I do, actually.

I feel sorry for him because Mr Loveridge was born without a heart and without a soul. I don’t know about you, but I could never, no matter how bad my circumstances were, contemplate such a thing. I would go as far as to say that I know of no one would do such a thing just once, never mind to do it over a 10 year period.

Picture the scene: a funeral, with sad songs, some readings by the vicar plus tears, lots of tears. People in different shades of black experiencing some of the worst feelings it is possible to experience. Wiping away those tears, you dip into your wallet and put a few quid, maybe more, into the collection box. Perhaps a substantial sum would be collected and actually you’d feel very proud. And along comes Robert Loveridge.

I am not bothered as to whether this man had any excuses for doing what he did because whatever they are, they don’t wash. If one is in debt, there are ways and means to deal with it, other than to steal money from the bereaved. If one wants to buy that special object or have that special holiday, then either save up for it or just accept that for you in this lifetime it’s not going to happen.

I have tried to think through the actions involved. After the mourners had shuffled away from the service, chatting gently alongside the flowers spread out before them, some hugs and kisses, more tears. Meanwhile, one man is pocketing the proceeds. Speculate what happens next. Does he go to the bookies and have a bet? Does he go in the pub and have a drink? Does he put this money in his Post Office savings book? Whatever he does, he steals money from the bereaved.

In my youth, I removed a few items from shops, like sweets or in one exceptional circumstance a copy of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band from a large store in Bristol. And I felt utterly consumed with guilt which, to this day, has never left me. I still cringe, as I did some 43 years ago. I almost feel like visiting the stores involved and offer to pay them back. Now if I felt so terrible about that, how on earth would I feel if I started nicking charity money? The answer is simple: I could not do it. Which brings me back to Robert Loveridge.

Everyone probably hates him now and I can see why. He did something that was morally so repugnant there is no way back from it, even if he manages to repay every penny he stole. It could be that he genuinely has no remorse for his callous acts in which case I really do feel sorry for him. He may have been financially more rich with that extra money but his soul must be poverty-stricken. He deserves nothing but pity, the saddest man in the world.

Firstly, an apology. After my miserabilist pound shop polemic yesterday, anticipating a zero media and public reaction to World Mental Health Day, I hold my hands up. Whilst it’s not exactly front page material – it is, after all, far more important to concentrate column inches to Jamie Redknapp’s marital situation, apparently – today’s big event is actually out there. Even the Sun runs a story on how someone called Chris Hughes, who appears on a telly show called Love Island, pretended to break down in tears to draw attention to the fact that some people break down in tears when they are mentally ill. Or something. I look on the bright side here because their previous mental health coverage has usually revolved around taking this piss out of celebrities with mental health conditions (“Bonkers (Frank) Bruno locked up”, also referring to the ex boxer as a “nut”). Actually, well done, Chris Hughes, whoever you are.

The newspapers have done quite well actually with their stories. Here are a few examples:

“How can I get involved today and what is the Workplace Pledge?” – The Sun.

“How to feel better in five simple steps!” – Daily Mirror.

“The charts that show that the UK is in the midst of a mental health awakening.” – Daily Telegraph.

“Asylum seekers give you cancer!” – Daily Mail.

“Kill all foreigners now and cut back on Cholesterol!” – Daily Express.

I look upon this day with a shrug of the shoulders “it’s better than nothing” point of view. It won’t change the world, it won’t see an extra penny spent on mental health services but it might do two things: it might encourage someone who thinks there is something wrong to visit their GP and for those who know someone with a mental issue or two some support. With regard to the latter, I was truly blessed to have a series of excellent managers in my final 20 years or so in the civil service who had the unusual idea of helping me manage my issues and so keep me in work. By design and not accident, for most of the time, I stayed in work and, I hope, contributed to the team. If I had been left to rot, to have my problems ignored and made worse, if I had been subject to bullying and abuse things might have turned out very differently. But good managers do good things. It is only when you don’t have good managers that you realise just how good they were.

The fact that even the gutter press is beginning to get the idea is encouraging. I am guessing that Rupert Murdoch’s lapdogs have calculated that a substantial number of its readers have mental health problems and that there is money in it for the Dirty Digger. My mental health, poor though it is, has not declined sufficiently for me to buy the Sun just yet. But seriously, to have moved from the vile headline about Frank Bruno to explaining how people can get involved is a big step. The next step from Murdoch’s oily organ will surely be to call for more public spending on mental health, especially since the Sun has campaigned so vociferously for major public spending cuts. And no, I couldn’t pass up the chance of slagging off the Sun even in a perfectly reasonable blog about mental health. Not sorry if you are offended.

Tomorrow it will all be forgotten. Something else will fill our TV screens – my guess is Brexit – and the newspapers can resume speculating about Jamie Redknapp’s private life. I say that because who knows how bad the Sky TV pundit might be feeling today. I am not saying he is suffering from any form of mental illness, but hey it is World Mental Health Day. Keep an eye on the lad to make sure he is not struggling. Be a good employer and stick with that Workplace Pledge, Murdoch.

I am not going to let World Mental Health Day pass by without celebrating, in my case with another bout of depression and anxiety. It would rather miss the point if my mood was good, wouldn’t it?