Monday Moan 28

I-paper gets me mad again ....

In Moan 9 I questioned Amol Rajan’s approach to others as being aggressive and unnecessary.  He accused others of various character defects in sweeping assertions, themselves open to serious doubt.  Now, having read the I-paper again, I see he’s still at it – maybe he’s always like this?  Certainly he’s got a 100% record whenever I have read his pieces.

 

This time he takes to task those who oppose the legalisation of drugs in the most immoderate of language. A Government spokesman’s response to a Select Committee’s report on drugs policy is dismissed by Rajan as “possibly the stupidest thing said by any public servant this year”.  Not content with that offensive remark he continues that the spokesman’s next words were “belched” by a “historically illiterate and possibly teenage buffoon”. Nice.  The “buffoon’s” crime appears to have been to say that drugs destroy lives and blight communities.  Apparently, according to Rajan, this will “enrage any right thinking person”, since it is “utterly ignorant of the lessons of the past century”.  Rajan considers that the ‘War on drugs’ is “the most disastrous policy error in the history of mankind” and the spokesman’s statement “oozes the kind of base morality common in theocrats”.

 

Rajan is well into his stride now, and next asserts that “it is very, very clear to anyone who can open their eyes”, that whole nation states are dissolving because of “idiotic prohibition” and that any parent who thinks that criminalising drugs helps to protect their children has “absolutely no idea about the society, let alone the world, you live in.”

 

Apparently, we should all take note and our lead from Portugal, where decriminalisation has reduced drug consumption and crime.

I have no idea whether Portugal offers a good model for the future.  But I know that Rajan’s hectoring, dismissive, aggressive, patronising, and insulting form of writing is most definitely not a good model for others to follow when it comes to constructing a persuasive argument. Rather the opposite, since his style will surely, to borrow from his own invective, enrage any right thinking person since it is utterly ignorant of the rules of common courtesy and public behaviour.

Should we really beat ourselves up?

In the same copy of the I-paper as the one mentioned above, Simon Kelner writes a piece on some of the issues arising from the sad death of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who took her own life after being taken in by the Australian radio station pranksters.

Mercifully, Kelner eschews the approach adopted by Amjol Rajan and instead writes a thoughtful article in which he suggests that you and I must take the blame for the suicide because we were all in the joke through our wicked, voyeuristic delight in people being exposed as stupid, cruel or eccentric.  He cites Big Brother as his only evidence for this sweeping assertion.

He then asserts that we are all to blame because of our insatiable appetite for royal news.  Moving swiftly along from this most suspect of statements, he then suggests that the public was culpable rather than the News of the World and its journalists for the whole phone-hacking scandal, because it revels in tales of scandal and misbehaviour, without thinking how those stories are unearthed.

 

Hang on a minute!  Simon Kelner was Editor of The Independent between 1998 and 2011. How typical of a journalist to try to absolve all of his profession and shift the blame elsewhere.  It’s all the public’s fault, and the journalists are merely writing what the public demands. I don’t know about you, but I find this analysis to be lacking in any kind substance - more like a child denying any responsibility for its actions, whatever the evidence there for all to see. 

 

As a member of the public that Kelner accuses, I deny any responsibility. I have never suffered from an insatiable appetite for royal news, I do not crave tittle-tattle about anyone, or demand that the human failings of high-profile people be exposed, and I have never delighted in anyone being exposed as stupid, cruel or eccentric. 

 

No, I want to read the news.  I would happily buy a publication that was able to provide that service free from any of the other things Kelner accuses us of 'forcing' journalists to do. 

Is that too much to ask of a newspaper?  Apparently it is.

  

Arsene Wenger – “I am not embarrassed”

After last week’s defeat by Division 2 Bradford City Arsene Wenger said that he was not embarrassed. 

Oh really?  Well he should have been.  True, it was only the second time his Arsenal side had been knocked out by lower division opposition in any cup competition in his 16 years in charge – a better record than that of any other team in England. But it came on the back of some really disappointing results in other competitions and when Arsenal were already beyond any serious hope of winning the Premier League title with considerably less than half of the season gone.

Yesterday’s 5-2 victory at Reading was probably a truer reflection of his team’s ability, but needs to be repeated if Arsene is to be able to continue to claim not to be embarrassed.

  

Bradley Wiggins  - Sports Personality Of The Year

Congratulations to Bradley – and congratulations also to all the other sporting stars of 2012 – the year that Britain lost its tag as a gallant loser.

 

I don't want to overplay my role in this sporting triumph, but can it really be just a coincidence that in Moan 8 I predicted that Wiggins would win SPOTY unless some Olympian did something exceptional this year?  Is it credible to believe that, having read this, Wiggins did not understand the message I was giving him?  No, much more likely is that he saw the wisdom of those words, recognised the danger, and decided that he would be the one to do something exceptional.  This was the cause of him adding an Olympic title of his own to his victory in the Tour de France, thus building his case for the SPOTY title. 

A true champion - no thanks necessary. 

Monday Moan 27

Hands up all those who pay more tax than the law requires?

Perhaps it’s just me, but I can’t help wondering what all the fuss is about on the issue of taxation and whether or not companies are somehow finding ways of avoiding paying more tax than is necessary.

So many politicians (who themselves seem pretty keen to take maximum advantage of the rules, of course) are working themselves into a high state of moral indignation on this topic that I fear for their health unless they soon take one of their frequent extended holiday breaks.

I am fed up with seeing Margaret Hodge parade herself in front of the cameras every week to deliver another barrage about the ‘immorality’ of companies using the tax rules to pay the minimum amount of tax that they can – all perfectly legitimately, as it happens. If politicians don’t like it then this is not the fault of those who advise clients on tax strategies, but of those who made the rules in the first place.  Hodge last week harangued a witness appearing before her Public Accounts Committee (see Moan 6 and Moan 8 for previous comments on such Committees) with a string of aggressive questions, or rather statements designed to draw out the responses she wanted.  A bully at work.  But when she said “If the public knew you were in the business of deliberately avoiding tax they would think you were completely and utterly and totally immoral in the work you are doing” I had to pinch myself to check that I was not dreaming.  Was she really saying that someone was engaged in completely and utterly and total immoral work when what they were doing was promoting a scheme that had been advised to the tax authorities and approved by them as being perfectly legal? If you've nothing better to do then have a look here at 12 mins 40 secs.

Hands up all those (apart from Starbucks, apparently) who want to pay more tax than the law requires?  Hmm, a fairly small number of people I imagine.  And that number is unlikely to include Margaret Hodge herself, whose life has been made just a little easier by being the daughter of a very wealthy businessman who sent her off to private school and, following her inheritance on his death, in whose company she holds (directly and through her children and others) almost 10% of the shares, currently valued at some £20m.  Questions about the tax avoidance strategies of that company have exercised some commentators recently, although the company itself says everything it does is perfectly legal.  I’m quite sure that is true, but in other circumstances that would not stop Hodge from seeking a headline or two.

 

Radio 4 Today programme – an exercise in playground debating tactics

The Today programme has been up to its usual tricks again. Evan Davis interviewing George Osborne last week demonstrated precisely why either he (Davis) should be given a holiday or why politicians generally should be wary of agreeing to be interviewed.

In classic Today style (see Moans 8 and 22), Davis knew all the answers to his ‘questions’ (statements) beforehand because he, of the massive ego, was much brighter than poor old George. So, his task was simply to get George to admit his guilt by answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as required – another tactic much used these days (see Moan 17).  Davis kept telling Osborne to answer with either of these, and then talked over Osborne if he didn’t comply.  Osborne tried to reason with him but was rudely rebuked for wasting Davis’s time.

Osborne -“I’m sorry, you can’t just ask these questions and before you even allow me to answer” ….

Davis - “Well, it’s a factual question, you are clearly unable to answer, so let’s move on. Come on, let’s not waste time.”

Memo to Today.  Please stop this pointless and insulting approach to interviewing.  Perhaps just try to imagine the boot being on the other foot and ask yourselves whether you would consider this to be a perfectly reasonable approach or whether you would find it rude and unacceptable – the equivalent of playground behaviour.

 

A clever economist speaks ……

Whilst on the subject of the Today programme, we had the great pleasure of listening to Lord Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick and long-standing economic know-all, being interviewed alongside Bridget Rosewell, professional economist and business woman, last week on the subject of the Autumn Statement and the state of the UK economy.  Bridget Rosewell ventured that Lord Skidelsky’s recipe for the economy was based on a false premise because, she said, “the economy is a bit stagnant but it is not in recession”. 

Lord Skidelsky, eminent professor and man of many well-constructed thoughts, responded by saying “The economy is in recession, it has not grown, to any extent, in the last year and a half and if that isn’t …. well, all right, call it semi-recession”.

So, that’s clear.  The noble Lord’s views are based on the UK being in recession, which turns out to be not a recession but a newly-coined economic state of half-recession when confronted by the need to support his assertions.

Makes you look up to the academic profession, doesn’t it?

 

Time to put it out to grass?

I have been a great fan of Have I Got News For You for many years.  I have put up with Ian Hislop’s almost unbearable smugness, particularly when there is a guest he clearly dislikes.  I have put up with the scripted nature of so much of the programme, because it still made me laugh and there was enough apparent spontaneity to make you feel you were watching people thinking on their feet.

This series, however, has limped along rather joylessly.  We have had too may poor episodes to be able to excuse each of them as ‘just one that didn’t work’ (see Moan 19). Far too many awful guest presenters.

Even Paul Merton now appears to have lost his spark.  He has been the key to the programme’s attraction for me, and it is sad to see him struggling to find things to say that make you laugh. He doesn’t seem disiniterested, just lost.   This week’s epsode featured an extraordinarily wooden David Mitchell as guest host – another who suffers when working to a formal script, it seems.  Worst of all, it featured, yet again, Janet Street-Porter. Leaving aside the voice, which ought to have guaranteed that she was never allowed to broadcast in any form whatsoever, the fact is that she is just boring and whatever is the very opposite of funny.  She has been on this programme so many times I have to assume either that she is always available and very cheap, that she has some incriminating evidence stashed away against whoever is in charge of bookings for the programme, or that (surely not?) some kind of warped audience research indicates that people like her.

 

I can hardly believe it, but I can't see the point in watching HIGNFY in future.  It's the end of an era.

Monday Moan 26

Lord Leveson – did he fail to read the script?
The Leveson Inquiry seems to have been going on for ever, but in the way these things work it did not actually take that much time.  The problem was that it was heavily featured on the television, mainly because there were so many high-profile witnesses (i.e. newsworthy people) and because the coverage provided a fabulous opportunity for the non-Murdoch owned media to gloat over the discomfort of Rupert and his empire.

Leveson published his report last week – all four volumes and around 2,000 pages of it – and within what seemed like minutes we had firm opinions on what it contained, including later the same day the Prime Minister saying that he was not minded to accept the fundamental recommendation of Lord Leveson for statutory under-pinning of a new system of self-regulation.

Nobody should be surprised at how quickly positions taken for or against the recommendations. Very few people ever bother to wait to read such a report, consider what it says and then form a view as to the merits of its proposals.  Unfortunately, life isn’t like that and so we cannot expect our politics to be any different.   People know what they want, what they agree with and what they oppose – very few of them are open to persuasion, let alone to taking a fresh look at their own views (prejudices) and seeing if they stand the test of independent analysis.

So, let me reveal one of my own prejudices.  Any time Shami Chakrabarti, Director of pressure group Liberty, speaks on a subject I am immediately likely to find what she says irritating.  I know, it shouldn’t be like that, but then she shouldn’t keep saying such irritating things, should she?  In this case, she was one of six Assessors appointed to the Leveson Inquiry but she has come out against the legal underpinning recommendation because, she says, it would violate the Human Rights Act (oh no, not that again!) - "A compulsory statute to regulate media ethics in the way the report suggests would violate the act, and I cannot support it." 

Now I confess that I have not read the whole document – one of the many benefits of having retired from my previous full-time employment.  But I cannot easily shake old habits and so I have read the Executive Summary of the Report.

So, for those who have neither the time nor the inclination to plough through the Leveson Report, what did it actually say on this subject?  Here’s the summary:-

The press, operating properly and in the public interest is one of the true safeguards of our democracy. As a result of this principle … the press is given significant and special rights in this country … with these rights, however, come responsibilities to the public interest: to respect the truth, to obey the law4 and to uphold the rights and liberties of individuals … principles  proclaimed and articulated by the industry itself (and to a large degree reflected in the Editors’ Code of Practice). (paras 5 and 6)

 … there have been far too many occasions … when, chasing the story, parts of the press have acted as if its own code, which it wrote, simply did not exist. This has caused real hardship and, on occasion, wreaked havoc with the lives of innocent people. (para 7)

Not a single witness has proposed that the Government or Parliament should themselves be involved in the regulation of the press. I have not contemplated and do not make any such proposal. (para 12) I consider that what is needed is a genuinely independent and effective system of self-regulation. (para 51)  In order to give effect to the incentives that I have outlined, it is essential that there should be legislation to underpin the independent self-regulatory system and facilitate its recognition in legal processes. (para 70)

The legislation would not establish a body to regulate the press: it would be up to the press to come forward with their own body that meets the criteria laid down. The legislation would not give any rights to Parliament, to the Government, or to any regulatory (or other) body to prevent newspapers from publishing any material whatsoever. (para 71)

This is not, and cannot be characterised as, statutory regulation of the press. What is proposed here is independent regulation of the press organised by the press, with a statutory verification process to ensure that the required levels of independence and effectiveness are met by the system in order for publishers to take advantage of the benefits arising as a result of membership. (para 73)

 

Now, if you think all that amounts to a proposal for Government control of the press and the end of democracy in the UK, then please line up behind the Tory part of the Coalition, the phalanx of Tory MPs who apparently still fear to cross Rupert Murdoch, Shami Chakrabarti and others.  If, on the other hand, you think that the press has had enough opportunities to put its house in order, that 8 inquiries in the last 70 years into the way the press operates in the UK suggests that leaving things as they are will mean we’ll be faced with another inquiry before too long, and that what Leveson proposes seems entirely logical, then please form another queue under the banner of ‘Bound to be disappointed’.

 

I won’t be able to avoid a moan for too much longer

After what seems like most of the last few editions,  various readers have asked me why there have been no moans about Arsenal and their decline from title contenders to also-rans.  My response has always been that I don’t like to jump on bandwagons and, anyway, everyone recognises that ‘Arsene Knows’ – he will wave his magic wand and all will be well again.

I still hope that this is true.  I am no longer utterly convinced, however, and so the time is coming ever closer when a moan will be inevitable.

Come on Arsene – get your collection of talented players to perform somewhere near to their abilities, give them a bit of fight to go with their ball-skills.  Beating Tottenham 5-2 every season is simply not enough, if you couple that with abject surrenders to the likes of (no insult intended) Norwich and Swansea.

There – that should be enough to galvanise him and them into action.

 

White legs and a full house

I have just had a fabulous weekend away in one of my favourite places in the UK.  I’m not going to tell you where, since then you’ll all want to go there, but I will say it’s by the coast and the sun shone all day yesterday.  Four hours of walking beside the sea in the cold, fresh and invigorating air made me feel very tired but full of the joy of living.

I managed to attend a concert the previous evening, given by the local choir who have the very great fortune of being able to sing in one of the best concert halls in the country.  The place was all but a sell-out and, from the comments I heard around me during the interval and at the end, everyone thought it was a wonderful evening.  Oh well, satisfy your audience and you’ve done well.  It was a throwback to the English tradition of community choral societies, only transferred to a fabulous concert hall.  Those who know me will perhaps be surprised to hear that my presence lowered the average age of the audience and would have significantly lowered the average age of the choir too, had I been on stage with them.  

I’m glad I went, though.  There was one star of the evening and that was the soprano soloist – her performance made the journey and the cost of the ticket worthwhile, absolutely brilliant.  I really can’t say the same about all the others, including one who seemed to think that having been on TV and been promoted as one of this year’s ‘young things in the classical world’ meant he had arrived.  He hadn’t, at least in any kind of musical sense.

There were other highlights too.  The energetic contribution of the orchestra leader was a constant source of interest.  The lilywhite legs of the cellist were a constant distraction – suggest she wears some black tights next time.  And I’ll never again think bad thoughts about the dress sense of our own choir’s conductor – at least he never tries to look like Gandalf.

 

p.s. to avoid confusion, I should add that the image above is not taken from the actual concert ...........

 

No need to rub it in!

One of the great delights of being out and about is the way that the smell of fresh bread or the look of a cream cake or Danish pastry can lure you into a café so you can then enjoy a relaxing time over a cup of coffee or tea whilst consuming the produce that enticed you there in the first place.

Unfortunately, I had the misfortune to be diagnosed as a coeliac sufferer just over a year ago.  So, no more fresh bread and mouth-watering cakes for me.   I think I have coped quite well, all things considered.  Obviously, I still go into places that sell such enticing foods because my wife needs to eat.  The chances of going somewhere and finding that they offer gluten-free cakes are very slim – and even then those cakes will never be able to compete with the real thing in terms of smell, looks and taste L  But worst of all is to go somewhere to be told by the waitress (also the owner in this case) that “oh yes, we normally do gluten-free cakes but we have run out today”. 

Cruel.  There ought to be a law against it.