Why are cyclists so stupid?

Is there something strange that happens when a grown person climbs aboard a bike?  Are they required to leave their brain at home?



Firstly, I'm sure that there are some sensible cyclists, just as there are plenty of bad car and lorry drivers, but there is a difference: in town if you do something stupid in a car you might hit a pavement or bump another car, but if you do daft things on a bike you will probably get seriously hurt or killed.

Driving through Winchester one dark evening last week I only just spotted a cyclist, dressed all in black, on a racing bike with no rear lights.  It was the equivalent of going out on a suicide mission, and when I tooted my horn at him, he gave me the finger.  Had I killed him, I have no doubt it would have been seen as my fault.

A geriatric lady riding her bike down Parchment St in Winchester....the wrong way on a one-way street.  Try that in a car and you'll be in trouble, but if you're a cyclist...

At the traffic lights on North Walls, indicating that I plan to turn left towards River Park, when a cyclist decides to ignore my signals and come up the inside of me - he only just got away with it - had I hit him I've no doubt he'd have thought it was my fault.

Traffic lights seemingly don't apply to cyclists - watch them and you'll find that most simply ignore them.

Cyclists are, more often than not, total muppets on the road.   Fact!

Xmas gender stereotyping

Just done Waitrose in Winchester for the final time before Xmas, and was struck by the degree to which people take leave of their manners and senses at this time of the year.  By 08:00 there were around 100 punters queuing to get into the store, and once the doors opened, the gender differences became apparent.

The men were all action: "I have been given my list, and I'm going to succeed in getting everything - I'm a hunter gatherer, and being a bloke is about survival of the fittest.  Why are these people crawling round the aisles?  I'm going to go round at speed, bashing into things and sighing at the incompetence of everyone else".  Shouting too:  "Hey you, where are the pickled lemons?  What do you mean you've run out of Bourbon Vanilla Pods?  No, I don't want those vanilla pods - my list says Bourbon!  Christ, I could do this in half the time if all these other muppets weren't in the store."



Winchester Woman is a different beast.  Dyed blonde hair, sunglasses in a supermarket on 23 December, and dressed as though she has had an accident with her 14-year-old daughter's Topshop wardrobe.  Really, black leggings don't work in public once a woman gets above a certain weight - as my late father-in-law (a former gamekeeper) used to say: "The sights you see when you haven't got your gun".  Winchester Woman also checks her brain in at the door once she has parked her black, tinted-windowed 4 x 4.  The preferred trolley technique seems to be to simply stop in the middle of the aisle, and abandon it. While everyone else queues to get round the obstacle, WW is off roaming other aisles in search of chestnuts and meringues, oblivious to a) how grotesque she looks, and b) the chaos she has left behind her.




Once WW gets to the aisle, I'll bet you a pound to a penny that she dumps her groceries on the belt, and then, with a dramatic sigh and expletive, deserts them in search of the four or five items she has forgotten to get. My technique is to simply shove their shopping back up the belt while they're gone, and put mine there instead.  Trust me, they love it!

And a merry Xmas to you all!  Bah, humbug.

A truly brilliant evening

I was privileged to recently see The Unthanks singing the songs of Antony Hegarty (Antony and the Johnsons) and Robert Wyatt.   None of the songs they sang would exactly fall into the Easy Listening category, and in most cases they are as far away from 'Folk' as it's possible to be, but the sisters, and the band, bring them to life in a remarkable way.

The Hegarty songs are largely focused on transgender politics and work unexpectedly well with the sisters' voices: 'You are my sister' had a totally different feel to it when Becky and Rachel shared the vocals, and 'For today I am a boy' was hearbreakingly beautiful.  As part of the between-the-songs chat, Rachel told a story of how, when Becky was little, she believed that as she grew to her elder brother's age, she'd become a boy, and then when she reached Rachel's age she'd turn back into a girl.  As the audence laughed, Adrian - the mastermind behind the project and Rachel's partner, wryly commented: "What you're hearing is the trivialisation of a sensitive man's struggle to come to terms with his sexuality" - even bigger laugh!

The songs of Robert Wyatt were more readily accessible, and when Rachel sang 'Out of the Blue', with it's chorus of "You have planted all your everlasting hatred in my heart", I just wanted every Israeli ever born to be forced to sit in a room and hear it until the message got through.   It describes the reaction of a Palestinian whose house has been destroyed, but it could apply to any conflict where civilians get bombed.  You can hear the original being sung by Wyatt at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOh4VqCc3-Q

Then there was the indescribably beautiful 'Sea Song', which was, apparently. where the project started.  One of my favourite songs, it was even more beautiful when sung by the sisters.

The album is out and is a joy, but should they ever tour these songs again, don't miss it.



The best word is left to Robert Wyatt:
"Quite simply, Antony & The Johnsons and I have been blessed by angels. If I had to take a single summary of what Alfie [ Robert's partner] and I have being doing over the years to the proverbial desert island I wouldn’t take one of our own records. I’d take the crystal clear interpretations of The Unthanks." Robert Wyatt

Colouring your judgement?

I read that some football pundit is having to apologise for referring to 'coloured' players.  However, today I saw a woman from a social enterprise on Sky News, talking about the work that they do with 'women of colour'.

Can anyone explain why 'women of colour' is an OK term, but 'coloured' isn't?

Why M&S made me feel like a racist

I like M&S Direct, the chain store's on-line service, because whenever I've used it, it has worked really well...up until now.  I sent friends in Scotland some wine for Xmas, and having been away for a couple of days found two messages on my answering machine from two women in one of the M&S call centres.  The problem was that neither of the messages were comprehensible - the women's accents were impenetrable, but I did manage to catch the 'phone number.

I called, and the person who answered struggled to understand anything that I said to her, and her English was so bad that I became more and more baffled, and then progressively more annoyed - what should have been a two-minute call to resolve a minor delivery issue, became a 20-minute saga.  Let's not beat about the bush: she was of Asian origin and spoke lousy English with an extremely strong accent.  Had this been a cockney or a Brummie, or someone from Northern Ireland, or any of the other British accents that can sometimes be difficult, I wouldn't have had a problem complaining, but the fact that she was Asian caused me to pause before I lost the plot.  Would she, and the manager I eventually spoke to, think that I was complaining because she was Asian...was I running the risk of being branded a racist?

How sad it is that such a thought should even cross my mind, but I know lots of people who hate dealing with call centres based overseas, simply because they've had bad experiences, similar to mine.

In the end I did complain, and her supervisor promised to go off and listen to the call.  He called me back, apologised on behalf of M&S, telling me that he struggled to understand what was going on, and made a 'gesture' of a financial nature to recompense me for my inconvenience.

Call centres are, sadly, a fact of life, and I have sympathy for the people who work in them and who suffer abuse from unhappy customers, but surely the very first criterion for employing someone in a call centre has to be that their English is up to scratch?  I couldn't care less about the ethnic origins of the call centre person I speak to, but they'd better be able to communicate with me in a sensible manner!

A surreal evening in Salisbury

Ask me to name my half dozen most favourite tracks of all time, and then what would the odds be about hearing two of them them done by the inestimable June Tabor and the excellent Oyster Band?  That's exactly what happened at Salisbury City Hall on Wednesday evening, and it was wonderful.

I expected to hear them do 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' because it's on their new album, 'Ragged Kingdom', but 'White Rabbit' was a bolt from the blue.  Joy Division's LWTUA is bleak and dark, but Tabor and the Oysters turn it into an altogether different song.  Tabor and John Jones share the vocals and rather than being the bloke bemoaning the end of a relationship, it becomes a couple doing it - it won't replace Joy Division's 3' 18" of desolate perfection in my affections, but it's lovely just the same, and does shed new light on the lyrics.

White Rabbit is a different matter, however.  When Jefferson Airplane recorded it, I though that Grace Slick's vocals were as good as it could get, but June Tabor proved that she isn't just a 'folk' singer, because when she wants to she has a great rock voice.  When Tabor told us that 'the one that mother gives you, don't [sic] do anything at all', she changed the whole the emphasis of the song, and made it more understandable.  I hope that she and the Oysters record it sometime soon.

June Tabor's voice is as enthralling as ever, and John Jones is arguably the best male vocalist in the folk rock scene, and they simply brought the house down.  My worry was that Tabor's vocals, usually heard in the more intimate surroundings of concert halls and Arts Centres with a trio accompanying her, might get drowned out by the Oysters driving rock, but a lot of work (and an excellent sound engineer) had gone into getting it just right.  A word too for 'Chopper' on bass and cello, and the excellent Dil Davies on drums - they hold the whole thing together in exemplary fashion.

Salisbury City Hall is a great venue, and almost everyone that matters has played there over the years - the posters round the walls tell part of its story.  Compared with soulless modern concert halls, like the overpriced Anvil in Basingstoke, it's a gem - akin to some elderly beauty who retains her elegance despite the passing years.  It also has a Wagamama just 100m away, and plentiful parking - I love it.

Nineteen years have elapsed since Tabor and the Oysters recorded the beautiful 'Freedom and Rain', and we have to hope that it's not 2030 before we hear the follow-up to Ragged Kingdom.

It makes you proud to be a journalist - NOT!

There's something rotten at the heart of Sky News.  They've pushed the boundaries beyond reasonable limits in recent high-profile court cases, and they plumbed a new low today with their coverage of the death (murder?) of Gadaffi.



As is my norm, I turned on Sky News as soon as I got up to see what was happening in the world.  What I got was film from a mobile phone of a clearly terrified and bloodied Gadaffi being dragged through the streets, and then summarily executed.  I didn't enjoy seeing it, and I strongly believe that it shouldn't have been shown before the watershed, and possibly not even after it.

I have no doubt that very young children across the land saw this coverage before they went to school.  The broadcaster can't rely on parents ensuring that their kids don't see the news, and if they did, then in this instance they may well have been traumatised - it was nasty, nasty stuff that would earn an 18 certificate at the cinema, and Sky showed it at 07:00!  Irrespective of what kind of a bastard Gadaffi was, and by all accounts he was a particularly nasty one, he shouldn't have met his end in that way - no human being should.  However, once that happened, it would have been possible to report it without showing the footage.  To me it smacks of lazy journalism, as so much television journalism is nowadays.  The obsession with images gets in the way of skilled journalists reporting the facts in a considered and enlightening way.

It's little wonder that journalism as a profession is now regarded as being on a par with merchant banking or stockbroking - the sort of thing you don't want to own up to doing for a living.

Thank God for radio and the quality press!

Under-appreciated interpretors

It's the singer songwriters who get all the glory, but just because they wrote the words it doesn't mean they are always the best people to communicate the message within the lyrics.  Of course, cover versions are often simply pale imitations of the orginal, but once in a while someone comes along who takes a set of lyrics to a whole new level.  The new June Tabor and Oyster Band CD does that with my favourite song, 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', and last Friday I saw Barb Jungr do the most incredible things with the songs of Bob Dylan.



I've loved her work for years, but hadn't previously seen her live, and the best word I can come up with describe her performance is visceral.  It helped that were right at the front, no more than ten feet from her, and it was awe-inspiring.  I recall seeing her on BBC Breakfast once and the presenters did the usual 'You're going to sing for us, aren't you?' routine, and got much more than they bargained for.  She didn't get up from the couch, and just started, from cold at 08:30 in the morning, and with awesome power- poor old  Bill didn't know where to put himself as Barb stared into his eyes and sang a love long beautifully.

'Like A Rolling Stone' was imbued with a power and a viciousness that Dylan's voice just doesn't get across, and she finished with 'God On Our Side'.  When she sang the seventh verse...

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.
...the fact that we were seeing her at the New Greenham Arts Centre, built on the site of Greenham Common, scene of the women's peace camp, and for so many years home to Cruise missiles, meant that a collective shiver ran through the audience.  We were sitting right by where, in 1958, a B-47 bomber was destroyed with a resulting radiation leak!

Her singing was great, and her introductions to the songs, including lots of 'Dylanology' were wonderful -at some times, funny, and at others extremely moving.  Her intro to 'The Man In The Long Black Coat' was excellent, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house when she told the story of the one-man audience at a gig when she first took 'The Songs of Bob Dylan' to New York.

She goes back there next month in triumph for sell-out shows over a week, and then she heads off to Austin, LA and SF.  If you can't get to see her UK gigs, buy the album, but the band that backs her on it, although really good, can't capture the power of seeing her live with only her pianist to accompany her.
 

Driving in Scotland - part 3

Back in my adopted homeland, having been told en route to 'Respect Roadworkers' - if I meet any then I'll remember that sage advice.

Can anyone tell me why Edinburgh drivers refuse to drive in bus lanes?  The notices every 400m say that the hours are 07:00 to 09:30, and 16:00 to 18:30, but between 09:30 and 16:00, hardly anyone ventures into them.  Part of the reason that traffic congestion in Edinburgh is so bad is that most of the major routes in the city are made into single lane roads by drivers' stupidity.  It really beggars belief that people can be so thick.

Driving in Scotland - part 2

As if driving in Scotland wasn't hard enough and dangerous enough already, Transport Scotland have a novel way of distracting drivers.  The illuminated signs on motorways have a purpose: to tell drivers when there's a hazard ahead, or inform them about how long it might take to get to a point further along their journey.  However, north of the border they are used to annoy and to help your attention wander.

Heading up the M6, all is sane, but then you hit the A74/M74, and the madness starts - it also features on the M8 and the Glasgow motorway system. (you'll note that punctuation doesn't figure on the signs).

'Bin your litter Other people do'
'Picking up your litter risks workmens lives' - I wasn't sure how my picking up my litter endangered anyone, but then I realised this one was ambiguous as well as being daft
'Drive smart save fuel' - an advert for Smart cars?
'Check your tyre pressure regularly' - but hopefully not at 70 mph in the second overtaking lane.
'Check your mirror for bikes' - I did, and there were none hanging off them
'Could you car share'
'Think about car share' - actually, I was thinking about Tunnock's caramel wafers until you distracted me
'Soft tyres waste fuel' - soft signs waste lives!
'Wear seat belts its the law'
'Car sharing save money reduce emissions' - since when has that been a sentence?
'Be a courteous driver' - wasted on me as I was by then screaming 'F*** Off!' at the signs.
'Dont drive and take drugs' - are prescription drugs included in this?

Why do they do this?  Does some overpaid bureaucrat sit at a computer typing in platitudes all day long, or are they randomly generated? 

Does Transport Scotland seriously believe, that as I speed up the M74, my driving experience is enhanced by this glib, fatuous nonsense?  If they want to improve the standard of driving in Scotland maybe they should try:

'Indicate occasionally' or 'Give us a clue what you intend to do next'
'Try driving in the driving lane rather than the second overtaking lane'
'Try driving in lanes rather than straddling them'

Is this really what devolved government has given Scotland - the right to become a laughing stock?

By the way, should anyone be incensed about these two most recent posts to my blog, I'm a Scot so I'm allowed to say what I like about my fellow countrymen and countrywomen! 

Driving in Scotland

The aggression which meant that the Scottish fighting man played a major role in the establishment and the maintenance of the British Empire, now finds its outlet in driving.  Up in Edinburgh for the Festival, and then the trip across country to sail to Arran, meant that I had plenty of opportunity to see the Scottish driver in full flow.



On motorways, what is properly called the second overtaking lane, or what the rest of the country colloquially calls the fast lane, is to many Scots the driving lane.  Never have I seen so many people get themselves out there, and then refuse to budge.  I saw one muppet drive for 20 miles along the M8 in that lane, and then dive across the other two lanes towards his exit.  Clearly there's a mindset that says, 'They shall not pass'.

In Scottish towns and cities it appears that different rules apply there compared to the rest of the UK.  Indicators are clearly seen as a sign of weakness: generally to be ignored totally, but if the driver is a wimp, to be briefly touched five or ten yards before the turning.

When turning left it is de rigeur to lurch towards the middle of the road in order to give oneself an easier job of making the turn.  Turning right, across the oncoming traffic, simply involves stopping in the road - as previously said, a signal would merely serve as a clue to help other drivers, and is clearly unthinkable.  I swear that some of the stuff I've seen wouldn't seem out of place in a third world country.

As an exiled Scot I love my country, but I'm baffled by why it has chosen to declare its independence from the rest of the UK by first of all changing its driving habits - I would have thought independence first, and then releasing a new Scottish Highway Code would have been more sensible.

As for Transport Scotland, the agency responsible for roads north of the border, it's a remarkable organisation...but more of that next time.

'She was a woman to whom life had been cruel...'

I was introduced to Frida Kahlo's work by Michael Marra's wonderful song about her imagined visit to Dundee's Tay Bridge Bar, and his song also shaped my view of her 'part-time' husband, Diego Rivera.  Yesterday we went to the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester to see the Kahlo / Rivera exhibition.



Knowing nothing of them, I went in with the sterotypical view of Kahlo as mistreated wife and exceptional talent, and Rivera as philandering bastard who did a bit of painting - as Marra puts it, 'a fat man of the naive school'!  Shame on me for knowing so little. 

I learned that Rivera's was undoubtedly the greater talent, but as a muralist his work isn't seen in galleries but on the walls of his native Mexico and in the States - most critics regard him as the greatest Mexican artist of the 20th century (not being an art connoisseur, I don't know how much above being the greatest ping-pong player in South Wonston that is, but it probably means he was pretty good).   I loved his work, from the portraiture through to the Mexican landscapes with huge cacti, and I'd like to see more of his murals.  There was a lovely book about the murals but at £135 it seemed more than a little bit steep.



Kahlo's work was weird but beautiful.  A huge proportion of her work was self portraits and in them she managed to make herself much less beautiful than she was in real life.  Alongside her work with its somewhat simplistic symbolism, were photographs by her one-time lover, Nicholas Murray.  In the photographs the unibrow is less defined, and what often looks to be not far off a moustache in the paintings simply seems to be shadow. 



I loved the way that the curator had resisted the glib opportunity to put Rivera's and Kahlo's paintings side by side, but had opted for separate rooms.  For example, it would have been too obvious to put their respective paintings of Natasha Gelman together and let the viewer compare their styles - far better to absorb each work in its merits and then reflect on the similarities and differences.  That also does Kahlo a favour, because while her work is the more striking, Rivera's picture of Gelman is the more accomplished piece of work (god, that was a bit of a Brian Sewell moment, wasn't it?)  

The rest of the gallery was a joy too, from the Pop Art through to the photographs of Butlin's at Bognor Regis - and the coffee shop was also good.   The best bit for me - maybe even better than the Kahlo / Rivera exhibition, were the Amberley Panels, or more accurately, Joy Gregory's modern take on them.

http://www.joygregory.co.uk/archive/details.php?proj_id=5

She has taken the nine Amberley Panels - 16th century images of strong women, with inscriptions in latin - and done modern versions.  Her photographs are stunning, and the inscriptions in English - I fell in love with them.  It's odd how the most unlikely pieces of art touch different people in very different ways. 




Pallant House Gallery is a great place for a day out, and Tuesday's are half-price which was an unexpected bonus.  It's well worth a visit.

Next week we'll be seeing the inestimable Michael Marra in concert at the 'Embra' Festival - I'm sure he'll do 'Frida Kahlo's visit to the Tay Bridge Bar', and it's bound to be even more evocative following our day out in Chichester.

Fi Glover's new radio show is, like, great

Travelling up to Beirut - sorry, London - earlier this week, I listened to Fi Glover's excellent new radio programme, Generations Apart.  Lovely stuff about people born in 1990 who Glover will follow over the next three years.

There was a guy who was a former drug addict, who had been convicted of assaulting his father - he kicked him in the head - but who came over pretty well.  Some of the interview was quite disturbing, but at least he was lucid.  However, the next woman was at, like, Cambridge and described as being, like, one of the most gifted students of her, like, generation.  Apparently she's also a playwright, which I guess means she, like, writes plays.  I bet her dialogue is, like, annoying.  She may be gifted, but she'll find it difficult to, like, get a job unless she smartens her act up.

Why do people adopt the omniword 'like', and what does it mean?  Is it just an infantile habit like smoking or farting in public, or do they think it makes them sound cool?  The reality is that it's profoundly stupid and deeply irritating - the hope is that it's just a fad and will, like, pass in the fullness of time.

Reaping what you sow

This unpleasant and discredited coalition is reaping the results of what it sowed when it announced, and implemented, swingeing cuts to public services.  The surprise for me is not that we are seeing violence on the streets, but that it took so long to happen.

On one level it's easy: what is happening is disgusting and needs to be stopped, quickly and firmly.  If that means that a few thugs and hooligans get hurt or, heaven forbid, killed, then so be it - go on the rampage, assaulting innocent people and looting shops, and you must expect what's coming to you.  I'm with the police 100% in their efforts to keep the streets safe.

That said, it's easy to understand why communities say, 'we've had enough'.  Unemployment in those London boroughs is way too high, community and youth centres are being closed, EMA has been abolished, and the increase in univeristy fees WILL deter working-class kids.  When the government tells those young people by its actions that it considers them to have no worth, then what future have they got?  Peaceful demonstrations will have no effect on this set of useless leaders, so it's hardly a surprise that they've taken to the streets.

Meanwhile, Cameron, Osborne, and Johnson are nowhere to be seen, and Teresa May is so far out of her depth that she is a national embarrassment.  If there is one ray of sunshine in this - and goodness knows it's hard to spot - it can only be that it might precipitate the fall of this rotten government.

Am I becoming like Victor Meldrew?

I try very hard not to travel by train.  Lots of reasons, most of which are related to previous experiences in the cattle trucks taking commuters to London from Winchester - the first thing I wanted to do after getting home was change and shower to get the city's grime off me.  However, this morning my daughter wanted to travel to Manchester so I had to endure Winchester station.

Two platforms, one person selling tickets, but several automated machines.  Key in the journey from Winchester to Manchester, and up come a number of prices, the cheapest of which is £184.  My daughter says, 'that's not right - I checked online and it's £94'.  So we queue, and wait...and wait...while a number of 'Winchester women' (loud, and without the sense to try to find their credit card before they get to the counter), and OAPs, fumble and stumble through their ticket purchase.  We get to the counter, I ask for a return and...you've guessed it, £94.  Scam or simple incompetence on the part of the railways?  You decide, I have my view.

These are the same idiots who, the last time I bought my daughter a ticket, sold one that wasn't valid the following day, despite me have clearly spelled out that was when she was travelling.  She had to buy another ticket and the evil apparatchiks at South-West Pains plain refused to refund my money despite the problem being the result of their incompetence.  

I hate them, and their rickety over-priced 'services', and despite what I'm told about saving the planet, I'll keep on driving just to ensure I give them as little money as possible.

Cynic, moi? Oui.

I've just done three week's work at the BBC and it has been an eye-opener.  On my first day there I was asked to lock myself away and do a self-study programme on 'Trust'.  Here's where the cynicism comes in - I assumed that this was no more than a hoop that I had to jump through, a tick in the box, just like when IBM insisted we all read a stultefyingly boring document called Business Conduct Guidelines every year.  Once it was done, backsides had been covered, and life went on.

I was shocked, genuinely shocked, to find that it was for real.  I suppose that's a legacy of ITV's dodgy competitions, and the general malaise in the tabloid newspaper industry, but my respect for the Beeb grew hugely over those three weeks - my goodness that organisation has standards, and it tries to live by them.

Have a look at the BBC College of Journalism site - here's the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/ethics-and-values/trust-and-choices/trust-and-tv-documentary.shtml - it's a good read.

I learned the hard way.  I interviewed someone for a piece I was doing, and because the sound wasn't as good on my questions as I would have wished - that was 100% user error on my part - I recorded the same questions live back at the studios, and did the edit.  The questions were exactly the same - not a word was changed - but the producer made me do it again as it was written as an interview but the listener could tell the questions were recorded elsewhere.

I've always been a Beeb listener - I'm a Radio 4 man - but I'll do it with even more respect from now on.

Angry

Amy Winehouse is dead.  Hardly a surprise and, of course, it's terrible that anyone should die at such an early age.  That said, the reaction, especially on Sky News, was OTT.  When 93 - and counting - people who wanted to live are killed in Norway, and famine is striking Africa yet again, forgive me if I don't spend too much time mourning someone who for years had given a damned good impression of having a death wish.

Predictably, 'Legend' is being bandied about, and I suppose it will be used in the coming years, but someone who made two albums - one good, and one excellent - hardly earned that description in my book.

What a waste of talent: now excuse me if I think more about those who want to live but have had the opportunity taken from them - many of them would have loved to have got to 27!

How big are Cameron's balls?

Dodgy Dave went on the attack today, and his comment about Alastair Campbell 'doctoring' documents was a fascinating one.  When he said it in the House, of course, he was protected by parliamentary privilege, but I very much doubt he'll utter those words outside.  My recollection is that none of the inquiries found any evidence to support Cameron's accusation, and unless he knows something we don't, it was straightforward mud-slinging.  Come on Dave, say it in public if you think you're hard enough!

The disappointment of the day for me was Ed Milliband.  I was convinced that he was the wrong brother when he was elected leader, and a few good days of late, followed by today's lacklustre one, have done nothing to change my view.  I've let my Labour party membership lapse, and I'll only renew it when the party comes to its senses and ditches our loser of a leader.

As an aside, when the 'comedian' Jonnie Marbles custard pie'd YMG yesterday, the first thought that went through my mind was, "I wonder who paid him to do it?"  It was such an obvious way for YMG to get public sympathy that I assumed that it was a stunt thought up by one of his PR people.  Seemingly I was wrong in that assumption - it was all Marbles' own idea.  Maybe I'm just too cynical for my own good, or perhaps that's what the tabloid press has done to me and many others.

Mauled by kittens

Having spent the afternoon watching the Murdochs and now Rebekka Brooks facing their parliamentary inquisitors, I've simply had my previous view confirmed: the gulf between people who succeed in business, and those who enter parliament, is huge. 

Most of the MPs didn't have a clue about how to tackle questioning powerful figures, and were, in the main, simply hamming it up for the cameras - I doubt the Murdochs could believe how easy it all was.  Any journalist or salesperson would have done a better job.  I'm staggered that the MPs generally seemed to believe that convoluted three- or four-part questions were the way to get at the truth: most of the time our elected representatives seemed to confuse themselves rather than worry the interviewee.

  I actually felt sorry for Young Mr Grace, as he didn't really seem to be fully engaged it matters at the start, and it came over as a bunch of bullies having a pop at a very old man.  Later on he got into his stride - well, it was more of a totter, but it was still too good for the committee.  Son James was simply too well briefed and too smooth - they didn't lay a finger on him.  It staggered me that the MPs believed that the men (and woman) at the top of a huge multi-national should have known every detail of what was going on - like all CEOs and Chairmen, they get told what they want to hear most of the time.

A self-publicising stand-up comedian throwing shaving foam in his face was a godsend for the octogenarian YMG - mugging old people offends British sensibilities.

Of the MPs, Tom Watson at least managed a decent imitation of being menacing, but the rest just huffed and puffed.

If you want it in footballing terms, I reckon it was probably something like 5-1 to the Murdochs and Ms Brooks, and to misquote  George Bernard Shaw, 'He can that can does. He who cannot, ends up on the Commons Media Committee'.

Are you being hacked?

I'm old enough to remember the extremely politically incorrect BBC show, 'Are You Being Served?'  It ran from the early 70s through to the mid 80s, and was set in a London department store called Grace Brothers. It featured John Inman as the effeminate, camp Mr Humphries, who would squeak every so often, 'I'm free!' as he minced around the menswear department, and Molly Sugden as the wisteria-rinsed Mrs Slocombe who spent the entire series referring to her cat as her pussy.  A prime example being "Animals are very psychic; the least sign of danger and my pussy's hair stands on end".  I kid you not - this was what the great British public watched and loved 30 years ago!



The store's owner was Young Mr Grace, an octogenarian who was pushed around in a wheelchair by two mini-skirted bimbos dressed vaguely as nurses.  Mr Grace would periodically visit the store and praise the staff by saying 'You've all done very well!', before collapsing into the arms of his nurses. 



So what has brought this unfunny show to mind?  It was Rupert Murdoch's comments to the Wall Street Journal that he and others in management had handled the hacking crisis "extremely well in every way possible" with just a few "minor mistakes."  What?

When you see the once all-conquering Murdoch dwarfed by his security men as they clear a path for him, and then you read comments such as those quoted, which border on delusional, then it's hard not to see him as Young Mr Grace.  If you're old enough to remember the show, I defy you to tell me otherwise. 

When he gives his evidence to the select committee next week, think Young Mr Grace, and then whatever he says and does can't possibly be scary.

Dave ducking and diving

Can someone please explian what David Cameron meant when he said that he gave Andy Coulson 'a second chance'?  My understanding was that Coulson denied (possiblly still denies) any knowledge of phone hacking or other illegality, and that Cameron appeared to accept that.  Surely then, there was nothing to forgive?

A very unusual phrase from our Prime Minister, and one that I suspect he'll come to regret.  One thing is clear, those who said that it was barmy to appoint Coulson have been proved right.  Even if Coulson walks away from this without a stain on his character, the furore has dragged Dave into the spotlight and made him look, frankly, a bit of a fool, and extremely light on good judgement.  How I enjoyed watching him squirm!

Clegg, Cable, Osborne and Cameron...what will become of this country?

Should we be shocked?

The suggestion that the voicemail of Milly Dowler, and quite possibly those of other murder victims or their relatives, have been hacked into, seems to have shocked the nation.  Why?  I would have been more surprised had it not been going on.

We have a tabloid press that has got itself into a spiral where each paper has to try to outdo its rivals in terms of scoops, exclusives, or sleaze.  They do it for one simple reason and that's because people want to read it, so a lot of the mock indignation doesn't sit comfortably with me.  There are only two things that can stop the sort of nonsense induged in by the NotW (and, more than likely, some of its rivals):  either people stop buying it, which isn't going to happen, or advertisers stop spending.  It seems that the latter might just be happening, but forgive me if I'm cynical about that too.

Are the companies that are considering taking their advertising away doing it for honourable reasons, or for commercial ones?  Do their managements really care about what's been going on, or are they simply trying to score a few brownie points with their customers, and perhaps an edge over their competitors by beating them to the punch ?  If it was the former they'd have done it years ago, but the truth is that they value access to the NotW's demographic much more than some sort of a moral stance. 

My bet is that those who stop advertising will hold a watching brief: if the NotW's readership levels hold up then they'll be back after a suitably decent interval - that will be precisely how long they think it takes for enough people to have forgotten about the current furore.

Principle?  Don't make me laugh!

The day horseracing lost its marbles

Watching Royal Ascot yesterday I saw one of the greatest horse races I've ever seen.  The ex-Aussie 'wonder horse', So You Think, went off at 4/11 - that means if you wanted to win £4 you'd have to risk losing £11 - in the Prince of Wales's Stakes.  That made him probably the hottest favourite of the week, and before the race his trainer, Aidan O'Brien oozed confidence, telling us that this was a very special horse.

However, things didn't go according to the script as Frankie Dettori gave Rewilding one of the best rides I've ever seen any jockey give a horse (no, I didn't back him so I'm not talking through my pocket), to edge it in the final strides.  Rewilding was hugely brave, and Dettori was inspired - it was the sort of spectacle that makes racing the great sport that it is.

How then do we explain to racing's audience the nine-day ban that Dettori got for using his whip 'with excessive frequency'?  It was totally absurd to ban a jockey for winning the race by getting his horse to give every ounce of effort, but that's the way that the crazy rules work.

Racing's rulers have made an abject surrender to the well-intentioned but misguided do-gooders who don't like seeing horses hit with the whip.  It's the job of the trainer to get his horse really fit, and then the jockey has to get it to try its best to win.  If a horse is being mistreated it will dig its heels in and not show its best - Dettori did not do anything that damaged Rewilding in any way and should not have been banned.

Dettori weighs less then nine stones soaking wet, and when he's riding he isn't allowed to let his lightweight whip be delivered from above shoulder height - try it for yourself and see how much, or rather, how little effort can be applied from that position.  I don't know what Rewilding weighs, but it's a damned site more than nine stones and I seriously doubt that the horse felt pain from Dettori's whip - if he had then he'd have stopped trying his heart out.  Was it the legendary trainer George Lambton who described Flat racing as little men on big horses?

There are times when the whip can be abused. and on those occasions the jockeys should be punished.  An exhausted National Hunt horse being whipped at the end of a three-mile race in the mud is an unedifying spectacle - and those jockeys are bigger, can hit harder, and the races are longer.  But in Flat racing?  No, I don't believe I've seen anything that I would describe as abuse.

Sport is about winning, and the best horse won yesterday.  When Dettori used his whip he was encouraging / asking Rewilding to try his hardest for him, and it was a joy to see the horse's obvious desire to give his partner everything he could, and show an indomitable will to win.  The authorities need to get a grip, and fast, as they're making a mockery out of a wonderful sport, and sadly they're doing it to appease a minority.

If you want one final, and totally damning piece of evidence that shows that there's nothing wrong with using the whip in racing, then here it is: John McCririck, plainly a total madman, would like the whip banned.  The defence rests its case.

The i's have it

I've like i, the Independent's concise, cheaper, and better younger brother, ever since it appeared.  It has now started to publish on a Saturday too, so hopefully that means it's doing well and will survive.

I've found something else to like about recently, and that's the 'Letter from the editor', Simon Kelner, that appears on page three.  On Friday he devoted it to some complaints that he'd received about the paper's coverage of the funeral of Olympic diver Tom Daley's father.  In its coverage the paper showed a picture of the funeral, and a number of readers asked whether that was truly necessary.

Kelner concluded that there hadn't been a need to do it - an editor listening to his readers and acting upon their suggestions?  He's clearly not cut out for the job!  He went on to make the distinction between the recent situation when they used pictures of Sir Henry Cooper's funeral: Cooper was a public figure and there was public interest, whereas Daley's father was not a public figure.  As Kelner put it, "The funeral of a national figure is a news event in its own right, but this was not that - it was the funeral of the father of a national figure".

Kelner concludes that the coverage that i gave the event was possibly 'prurient' and 'intrusive' - well done him for having the courage to admit that, and for telling his readers that in similar circumstances in the future, the paper will err on the side of caution.  Oh that other editors of nationals were half as brave and sensible.

  

Can anyone explain to me why the Archbishop of Canterbury's pronouncements get such wide publicity?  One look at the man tells you that he's as mad as a badger, but the press hangs on his every word.



I have no time for any brand of superstition, and therefore I tend not to listen to the brand managers when they decide to issue press releases, which is what Rowan Williams latest effort is.  Of course, if you spout often enough and long enough then it's inevitable that you'll be right once in a while, and the old duffer is on the money for once when he criticises the Coalition.  Don't you just love it when one establishment figure has a pop at another one - Dave v Rowan wrestling it out over three rounds, with Gideon and God as their respective seconds !

Williams is guest editing the New Statesman this week - what on earth were they thinking about when they invited him?  Who next, a White Witch or a member of the Flat Earth society?

Amateur hour at the Labour party

I've just watched Ed Milliband speaking on the subject of the NHS - dreadful.  No, not what he said, but the way that he looked while he was talking.  He was either in terrible pain, or, more likely, his people hadn't bothered to think about the lighting in the room.  His face had a permanent grimace, with his eyes screwed up, as though he was terribly constipated or the lights were shining right in his face.

It wouldn't EVER have happened to Tony Blair, as his team would have made certain everything was right for the boss to look good on television.  Even Gordon Brown's people would have spotted the problem, but the 'wrong' Milliband looks more and more like a buffoon every time he opens his mouth.

Things are going pear-shaped for the Coalition and it should be easy for Labour to capitalise on their problems, but there's a real danger that they'll miss the boat.  Ed M must go, and Labour should beg brother David to step into the breach.  It's not as simple as just saving the Labour party, it's about saving the country from the likes of Dave, Gideon, Nick and Vince.

We don't serve your type in here

'Mind your p's and q's', 'Out of sorts', 'Coin (Quoin) a phrase', are all sayings which have their origins in the world of printing.  I recently visited Robert Smail's print workshop in Innerleithen in the Scottish Borders, and it's a wonderful place.  The Smails were inveterate hoarders, and the workshop, owned now by the National Trust for Scotland, is a treasure trove of their work over more than a century.  They saved everything: labels for parcels of wool that went from the mills to customers across the world, the local newspaper, notices of meetings, wedding invitations, and so on - it's great.



You start with the archivist who is painstakingly working her way through a roomful of documents, and then move on to the typesetting room where you set up your name - I of course got it wrong and first time around was gaoB niloC!  The room has the trays of sorts - the name for an individual piece of type - and if you run out then you're out of sorts.  The trays have the capitals in the upper case, and the rest in the lower case - hence the terms we unthinkingly use today. Sorts are a mirror image of the letter they're meant to print, and they're loaded upside down in the composing stick, so it's easy for even an experienced printer to get his p's and q's mixed up.

You then move on to the print room where there are four wonderful old presses which still work - the printers who tell you about the machines actually use them because the Trust runs a small printing business. 

It is a wonderful place to visit and it doesn't half give you food for thought.  We change fonts all the time on our PCs, and we use italics and bold as a matter of course: at one time every one of those changes involved a different set of trays.  I'm reading Andrew Garfield's 'Just My Type' at present and it reminded me that it was as recent as 1984, when the first Mac was launched, that different fonts became available to anyone who wasn't a printer.



The book is fascinating, and Smail's makes for an absorbing visit - if you're ever up north of the border don't miss out on visiting it.

Without fear or favour

Fascinating to see Sir Alex Ferguson trying to get a journalist banned from a press conference - let me say, by the way, that Ferguson can ban me anytime he likes, as based on his past utterances, I'm one of those who would rather stick pins in my eyes than be in his presence!



Apart from the obvious question, 'What on earth makes him think he has the right to do anything like that?', it raises questions about how we as journalists report.  It seems that if you ask a question he doesn't like, or say or write anything that hacks him off, then your access to him is withdrawn.  That shows a misunderstanding of his role in my opinion - it's not him as an individual that people want to interview, but him as the holder of the position of manager of a football club.  Once he retires I suspect journalists won't be queuing to hear his words of wisdom.  Shame on the management of the club for not spelling it out him that theyre the ones who decide what his responsibilities are - it's another example of the fairytale world that football inhabits.  He should have been told years ago that the BBC is the national broadcaster of the UK, and if he doesn't co-operate fully with them then he's in breach of the terms of his employment.

It happens in other sports too.  I once wrote about the now-retired racehorse trainer, Jenny Pitman, that she'd 'had a poor season by her own high standards' - that was my way of saying that it had been a disastrous year.  You see, I wanted to interview her again in the future, so I had to tone it down.  In that case it didn't work!

Sunday morning comes and I'm on the tennis court when the phone rings: 'Get home as soon as you can, I've got Jenny Pitman ringing me going apeshit!'  I did, and she was.  Apart from a lecture couched in terms that would make a trooper blush, my fax machine kicked into life, and a list of every winner Mrs Pitman had ever trained started to pour out...page after page after page.  She then rang me back to check that I'd received it and asked me - again in the bluntest of terms - what was I [expletive deleted] going to do about it, and told me I'd never interview her again.

In the end, I did nothing, and she calmed down - and I interviewed her again in the future.  But it makes you think doesn't it?  If you were the sports editor of a regional, or the editor of a specialist sports, paper, would you publish and be damned, or would you tread very carefully for fear of losing the access you require to do your job?

Think on this the next time you read the sports pages: are you getting the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or a sanitised version of it?  I think I know the answer to that one.     

Pain and death

I'm opposed to blood sports - always have been, and, had you asked me anytime up until a couple of days ago I would have said that I always will be.  However, I've just heard an interview that has made me think.



Sir Mark Prescott is a racehorse trainer, exceptionally bright and articulate, a tad eccentric, and a big fan of hare coursing and bull-fighting.  Interviewed on Racing UK he made a comment to the following effect.  The difference between the countryman and the town dweller is that the countryman worries about suffering, whereas his urban counterpart worries about death.  Sharp, indignant intake of breath from me, and probably from you too.

He then went on to say that the countryside is a cruel place, and that death is a fact of life on a farm - the dogs are working animals and when they can no longer work are despatched, and all of the stock on the farm is bred to either be slaughtered, or used until their working life is done.  Farmers accept death, and those of us that are meat-eaters sign up to that contract.  What a farmer doesn't like is to see an animal suffering - the old horse gets shot, the sheepdog that can no longer work gets killed, and so on.  During the Foot and Mouth crisis farmers wept to see their herds being killed, even though they knew that was to be the animals' eventual fate - it was the suffering that upset them so.  However, the town-dweller is happy to get the vet to keep their old blind dog alive, even when he's bumping into the furniture, or keep their rabbit in a tiny hutch, remove their cat's claws so it can't hunt, and so on - they are happy to let their pet suffer because they can't cope with death.

He then went on to argue that there isn't that much between what he calls the 'rational anti' and the hunting enthusiast - both worry about suffering.  The anti worries that a hare might be torn apart by a greyhound, and the hunter worries about hares dying a slow, painful death in a field when it can no longer run.  The fact that intrigued me most is that the previous three heads of the League Against Cruel Sport all came to accept that hare coursing was, on balance, better for the welfare of hares than a ban would be!  When Sir Mark was an advisor to a programme about hares, the producer was staggered to find that the leading authority on hares and their habitat was the man who ran the Waterloo Cup - the premier hare coursing event in Britain.  The man who was most involved with hare conservation also set his dogs to chase them!  He knew, said Prescott, that the very few that got caught by the dogs were the ones that were the weak ones and which would, in any rate, shortly die - Darwin had a thing or two to say on that subject.



Am I now a blood sports fan?  No, of course not.  Am I now as violently opposed to them as I once was?  No, I'm not - Prescott's comments have given me cause to reflect on my position. 

The end of super-injunctions?

It looks to me as though social networking sites will sound the death knell for super-injunctions.  The rationale behind such legal moves is questionable anyway - does Article 10 recognising press freedom outweigh Article 8 which guarantees an individual's right ro privacy?  Eventually the courts would have made a decisive ruling, but the sheer number of challenges on Twittter, Facebook, and sundry blogs is such that the judges will, in future, be wasting their time granting injunctions - they don't buy privacy, merely an increasingly short amount of time.  It's one thing to pursue an individual for contempt of a court ruling, but can you pursue thousands of individuals?  It's Spartacus all over again

I won't repeat the names of those that have been granted super-injunctions - I don't yet feel brave enough to do that, and to be frank, the details of their peccadiloes doesn't much interest me - but anyone who wants to know simply needs 5 minutes and an internet connection.  Having now heard the names I wonder what all of the fuss is about.  If someone is in the public eye are they really daft enough to believe that martital infidelity or using prostitutes can be kept secret?  Anyone who does believe that deserves to be 'outed' on the grounds of rank stupudity!

In any event, the law has never been set in stone, and it has always changed with the passing of time and changes in social mores - what we're seeing now are changes driven by the digital age, and there are sure to be more yet to come.

They're AV'ing a larf!

On Thursday we're encouraged to vote, and amongst other things we're asked to decide on whether we prefer first past the post (FPTP), or AV.  This is a seriously tough one.

I'd prefer PR to FPTP, as it means that everyone's vote properly counts, but it isn't as simple as that in this case.  PR would mean that the Tories would never get a majority again, and that has to be a good thing.  So, surely I'll vote for the wathyered down PR alternative, AV, as the vile Dave and Gideon dislike it?  That would normally be the case.  However, the even more vile, and additionally duplicitous, Clegg and Cable want AV, so what's a man to do?

I'm afraid that on this occasion expediency will win out.  Cameron and Osborne are screwing things up so badly, and are so clearly out of their depth, that I think we can leave them to dig their own graves.  The Lib Dems have forfeited their claim to every get any sane person's vote again as a result of their stance on tuition fees, and their total reluctance to let principle get in the way of their desire to be part of the shabby coalition.  So here's what I'll do: I'll side with the Tories and vote against the Labour leader Ed Milliband, simply to ensure that Clegg, Cable and the rest sink even deeper into the poo.

Sporting greatness

I know that lots of people don't really 'get' horse-racing, but if you get the chance to see the replay of Frankel winning the 2000 Guineas it's well worth a look.  I've been a racing fan for longer than I care to remember, but I've never, ever seen anything like it.  These are the best three-year old colts around, and they are all good horses - some of them very good - but he simply toyed with them and won by as far as his jockey wanted.



He's trained by the great Henry Cecil - a man with a mix of genius and human frailty that the Briitish racing public finds irresistible.  To my generation he's simply known as 'god', and when he revealed that jockey Tom Queally had told him that there was more in Frankel's tank had it been needed, I nearly fell off my chair.  It would be great if Frankel went on to win again, but if he doesn't, then no matter - on the day that counted he was, I believe, the best horse I've ever seen.

Separated at birth?

Thanks to a mate for sending me this link.  No wonder 'Posh' (that must be why she was invited) looks baffled - she's wondering where David has gone and how she ended up on the arm of a slightly younger Ricky Gervais.

http://socialitelife.com/david-beckham-and-victoria-beckham-arrive-at-the-royal-wedding-04-2011

A right Royal mess

It was the hairdressers that finally made me crack.  Just how many hairdresser's does one girl need, even if she is about to become a princess, and do they really need four months of preparation to do Kate's hair?

I just don't get it.  What on earth would make a seemingly sane person camp out in central London for a couple of days, just so that they can say they were there?  The likelihood is that they'll see almost nothing that matters, and if they do, it will be for seconds and from a safe distance.  Why?

I didn't get it when Diana died either.  Not the grief, because even the hardest-hearted Republican would have felt sorry for the passing of anyone so young, and the dreadful way it happened, but the need to display that grief publicly.  Again, why?

An intimate occasion for the couple and 1,000 of their friends, most of whom are workshy fops, with just a smattering of bits of rough added to lend street cred to the occasion - David and Victoria Beckham will surely have added a bit of class.

I hope that Kate Middleton, who seems, from what we read, to be a pleasant enough woman, knows what she's doing.  She's joining a family that's even more dysfunctional than the Gallagher clan from Shameless.  Princess Margaret, Princess Anne, Prince Charles, Prince Andrew...need I go on.  Everyone will wish the happy couple well, but what are the real odds that their marriage will last?  Based on the rest of the sorry Royals, the omens aren't good.

Thankfully, I've got something more important to do today - I've been putting off worming my ferrets for long enough.

The day I lunched with Roy Orbison in Paris

Driving to Reading to cover London Irish vs Northampton Saints, and Graham Norton’s voice told me that today would have been Roy Orbison’s 75^th birthday.

It brought back memories of a trip to Paris in 1988 when we lunched with him just a few days before his death.  We were there on a business trip – well, it was really a jolly disguised as business – and our host took us to a lovely little restaurant for Saturday lunch.  It was one of those places with bench seating, so it was more than likely that you’d end up sitting next to a stranger.  In our case the strangers were Roy Orbison and his wife, Barbara – a lovely lady wearing a fantastic poncho made from, she told us, a Native American blanket.

Like most Americans you meet in Paris, they had no French, so the menu was a mystery to them.  We were glad to help and it was one of those strange conversations that you have with celebs when you meet them in an off-duty setting.  They guessed that we knew, and we knew but wouldn’t have dreamt of ruining their lunch by mentioning it!  We talked about everything and nothing; Paris, their ranch, the food, but not a word about his career which had just been revived by The Travelling Wilburys.  We bade them farewell and set off into the sunshine – it was one of those brilliantly bright, cold December days that make Paris look utterly wonderful – to climb the little spiral staircase leading to the roof of the Samaritaine department store which had one of the very best views of the city.  I remember we joked that he didn't look a well man - his clearly dyed jet-black hair contrasted with his pallor.

Not so long afterwards I was walking through Basingstoke town centre and in a television shop there was a set carrying the news of his death.  We’d only spent a couple of hours with him and it was on most levels utterly unmemorable, had it not been for the fact that he was the world-famous Roy Orbison!  I popped into Virgin Records and bought his Greatest Hits album.  Bizarrely, the news of his death upset me despite the fact that I didn’t, on any normal level, actually know the man!

Subsequently, what upset me even more was that we got hammered and I could never recall the name of the restaurant!  I think it was on Ile St Louis but I’ve tried several times to find it, but with no success.  I do recall, however, that the steak and chips were great and the crème brulee even better!

Scoop: Papa Lazarou appointed Foreign Secretary

Listening to Radio 4 this morning I wondered why I hadn't previously noticed the similarities between William Hague and Papa Lazarou.  As Hague waffled on about Libya, he talked about the need to save lives, except it came out as 'levs'.  On the assumption that he and Ffion are still a couple, I wonder whether he ever tells her 'you're ma weff now'?  On balance, I think that Papa Lazarou would probably do a better job as Foreign Secretary, but maybe that's all part of Dave's masterplan - at any rate, no-one has ever accused Papa Lazarou of losing 'his mojo'.



Hague has always been right up there in the eccentricities of speech league table, alongside Ken Clarke and the Beeb's Robert Peston.  The rhythm of their speech always makes me think of 'Just a Minute', with voices rising Aussie-style at the end of a sentence before launching into the next one without hesitation.  That leads to breath problems, and this morning Hague got positively squeaky as he desperately tried to finish one sentence, only to realise that he had to seamlessly plough on in order to stop John Humphries torturing him further.  When he eventually had to gulp in air I half expected Paul Merton to come buzzing in with a challenge.

Death in the afternoon, Liverpool style

Did you watch the Grand National on Saturday?  It doesn't quite have the overwhelming appeal of the Melbourne Cup, 'the race that stops a nation', but it still draws a huge television audience.  If you did watch it you will have spotted that the field was directed to miss out two fences on account of the dead horses lying on the landing side.  If you were listening rather than watching, however, you wouldn't have known about it as the Beeb decided to censor its transmission and simply omit an reference to it.

How and why does a broadcaster decide that its audience is too squeamish to be allowed to see dead horses?  Does it believe that people are unaware of the fact that horses get killed when racing?  Why doesn't it tackle the issue head on?

The case against jump racing is an easy one to make, plucking on the heart-strings of the average Brit's love of animals.  However, like most seemingly easy issues, this one gets a bit more complicated if you delve beneath the surface.

According to Horse Death Watch, on average around 170 horses have died on the track in each of the past four years.  Shocking?  Yes and no.

Cliche warning: the death of every horse whilst racing is very sad.  Now that's out of the way let's present some counter arguments.  Without racing there would be many fewer horses - that's a fact as the breeding industry exists to provide horses for racing and other even more dangerous equine pursuits such as cross-country eventing.  Those horses, whilst in training, are amongst the most cossetted animals around: fed well, exercised regularly, and getting the best of veterinary attention.  That veterinary care extends to keeping horses alive in circumstances where many owners would simply have the animal put down - if a horse needs 12 months of rest, how many domestic owners have the time, patience and funds to do that?

Next time you're driving through the countryside, have a look at the horses in the fields, and think about the lives that they lead.  If you were a horse would you like to spend the winters outside with just a rug to keep you warm, seeing your owner for 20 minutes a day when they bring you feed, and living a solitary life, or would you rather be in a heated box at night, riden out every day, fed the ideal diet, and with a vet on hand should you have a problem?  Or, if there were no equine sports, simply dead?

There are scandals to be investigated in terms of horse welfare, but racing comes a long way down the list.  Try these.  What happens to horses when their owners tire of them?  Have you seen the horse butcher's shops in continental Europe, and have you ever wondered about the conditions those horses endure on the way to the slaughterhouse?  When the temperature gets to -10C in mid-winter, what happens to some of the horses out in British fields? 

The real scandal is not the sad fact of a couple of horses dying at Aintree.  Charities such as World Horse Welfare are at the forefront of the fight to improve the lot of the working horse and it's worth a look at the work they do.  I once did a book review for the long-departed Sporting Life in which I used the phrase 'down among the meat-men' highlighting that when a horse is sold below a certain price, it's likely that it's being sold as horse-meat - you won't be surprised that my review was printed intact, except for the paragraph on that issue.  This is racing and eventing's equivalent of Lord Alfred Douglas's 'love that dare not speak its name'.

Finally, and you might have missed it with the tabloids making a fuss about the deaths of Ornais and Dooney's Gate on Saturday, jockey Peter Toole continues to fight for his life in a Liverpool hospital after being critically injured in a fall in an earlier Aintree race.

Censorship, we all hate it, don't we?

Censorship is, the the words of '1066 and all that', a 'bad thing', isn't it?  Of course it is - there would be a justifiable outcry if any government tried to censor our free press.  However, it strikes me that a few editors are, in effect, censoring our news coverage.  Here are a couple examples from recent days.

How many Libyans are being killed by UN-backed air strikes?  I heard a BBC correspondent using the word 'obliterated' when referring to the pro-Gadaffi forces that had been attacking a Libyan town.  Obliterated by air power suggests to me that the casualty list might be rather high, but I haven't seen much of a furore being made about this.  In a totalitarian state, like Libya, will all of the troops described as being pro-Gadaffi, actually be supporters of the mad Colonel, or will they be regular guys who fancied a better-paid job?  I'd quite like to know how many are being killed and a bit more about their motivation.

How are things at Fukushima?  Again, it seems that the struggle to regain control of the nuclear reactors there is regarded as having gone on for far too long.  Why couldn't these pesky Japanese either fix it quickly, or have the decency to have a proper melt-down?  Don't they understand that this is getting boring?

It's an old cliche that editors understand their readers or viewers, but I'm not sure that it truly stand up to scrutiny.  What we get is what we're given, and the papers and television news channels all seem to be singing off the same hymn-sheet.  If a dozen or so individuals in the Home Office, the Foreign Office, or the Ministry of Truth decided what we could and couldn't see or read, the we'd all be up in arms (possibly literally), but it's OK for a few editors to adopt that role and we seemingly accept it meekly.  I wonder what motivates them to decide that some topics are just not right for you and me to read or view?  Funny old world. 

Sky News up to its old tricks

You'd have thought that pillorying an innocent man in the Jo Yeates murder case might have taught Sky News a lesson, but apparently it hasn't.  There is a suspect in the Sian O'Callaghan case, and as yet he's not been charged with anything.  However, that hasn't stopped this increasingly shabby news channel from publishing his name.

I guess they have deep pockets and reckon they can afford to pay out damages when they get it wrong.  As for the government law officers, what are they doing to stop such abuses?  As far as we can tell, not a thing.  Spineless or what?

Pi-eyed in Alabama?

This made me smile, but what was especially pleasing was that some people have taken it seriously!  The serious point is that the Republicans in the US are so damned crazy that you wouldn't put it past them to try something as daft as this - in this case it's not Sarah Palin, but it could have been!  "Who do these pesky foreigners think they are making pi so complicated - we're 'the Land of the free and the home of the Brave' - we can damned well do anything we please!"

Read and enjoy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-squires/republicans-introduce-leg_b_837828.html

Fashion victims and the news

Fashion commentators say things like "Blue is the new black", but this week Libya is the new tsunami as far as the 24-hour news channels are concerned.  Can someone remind me please: wasn't there a magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Japan ten days ago, and didn't a massive wave sweep across swathes of the north-east of the country?  Wasn't there some sort of a problem with nuclear reactors too, and maybe I dreamt that more than 300,000 people were displaced and that tens of thousands perished?

Watching Sky this morning, it's as if it didn't happen, and the Beeb is making only the most occasional references to it.  Libya, Libya and even more Libya is what we're getting, with pointless pics of a black sky with anti-aircraft fire flashing through it.  There are some library shots of planes taking off, and submarines firing tomahawk missiles - I've seen it all before in Iraq and I'm bored with it.

Do these people really think that we're so dumb that we'll put up with this lazy and sloppy journalism, or is it me that's out of step with the general view?  More likely is that they simply overdid it so much last week that they believe we're all tsunami'd out, and need a change.  I fear that my journalism course is simply making me loathe televison news with a vengeance. 

The old adage that the pictures are what is important was absolutely true when the tsunami struck, but that was only because they were so 'good' (that's TV speak for horrific) that no-one who saw them will ever forget it.  However, in 90%+ of news reporting that isn't the case, and that means that the words become important.  The problem is that when news channels are stuck with their rolling coverage, the pictures - probably already unremarkable in most instances - are coupled with cliched, and not very good words.  The result is coverage that is occasionally wonderful, but usually pretty average.  That's why I turn on Sky News first thing to look at the breaking news ticker, but then immediately dump it for Radio 4 - maybe it's my age but I prefer my news to be of the grown-up variety (this morning, by the way, Radio 4 did cover the crisis at the nuclear plants - it's going better but there's still a long way to go - you wouldn't have got that from Sky!).