Monday Moan 41

 

RED RAG TO A BULL?

Delegates to the NUT’s Annual Conference at the weekend were being asked to send a message to Education Secretary Michael Gove via the medium of pre-printed forms available for them to complete. 

 

According to Rita Chakrabarti, the BBC’s Education Correspondent, Michael Gove had sent the teachers a message wishing them a very successful conference.  Rita’s analysis of this message from Gove was that it was “a red rag to a bull”. 

 

Oh really?  Either her powers of analysis are lacking, or the teachers are a sensitive lot.  Let’s see what you think: –

 

Which of these statements would you consider to be a red rag to a bull?

(a)    I hope you have a very successful Conference, or

(b)   I don’t know why you are bothering with your Conference and hope you soon realise that it will be just so much hot air and a complete waste of everyone’s time.

 

 

MYTHS AND THE USE OF THE MEDIA

According to the Methodist Church's public policy adviser, Paul Morrison, the British public has "come to believe things about the poorest in our society which are just straightforwardly not true”, including that “the public believes that the major cause of poverty is laziness”.

 

Paul Morrison was featured heavily in the weekend’s coverage of the impending changes in the Government’s approach to welfare and other spending.  Morrison was the spokesperson talking about the joint report from the Baptist Union, the Methodist Church, the Church of Scotland and the United Reformed Church “The lies we tell ourselves: ending comfortable myths about poverty”.

 

The Report is an interesting contribution to the debate. Some might say a more interesting, reasoned and persuasive approach than that adopted by the Labour Party.  However, as a seasoned reader of such documents the first thing I looked for was the evidence to support Morrison’s claims that the public believed certain things, including that the poor are poor because they are lazy.  The Report itself says that “The most commonly cited cause of child poverty by churchgoers and the general public alike is that their parents don’t want to work”,  but in a quick scan of the report I couldn’t find any reference to the source of this statement, or indeed to any evidence that ‘people believe’ any of the ‘myths’ that the report sets out to explode.  Perhaps there is some evidence referenced somewhere in the report to back up this fundamental part of its narrative, but surely it should have been cited prominently?  And I hope it turns out to be a credible source, and not some shaky survey of a handful of people as they left church one rainy morning.

 

 

ROCK & ROLL - REBELLIOUSNESS OF YOUTH

The British ‘summer’ is packed with an increasing number of music festivals, mostly designed to part thousands of music fans from their cash in exchange for a couple of days of living in squalor listening in less than ideal conditions to a succession of artists they might not otherwise have chosen to hear.  Each to their own, of course.

 

The Glastonbury Festival is the king of all such festivals, pulling in huge numbers of people paying extraordinary amounts of money and generating an unbelievable amount of coverage on television and elsewhere.  But as an expression of the rebelliousness of youth (one of the founding principles of early music festivals) it falls far short of its ancestors.  Recent headline acts have included Stevie Wonder, Rolf Harris, Ray Davies, Leonard Cohen, Neil Diamond, Dame Shirley Bassey and Neil Young.  Rock and Roll it ain’t. 

 

This year (after missing a year because they couldn’t find enough portaloos because of the Olympics) they appear to have taken the ultimate step into old age with the promised appearance of the waxworks that are the Rolling Stones.  Perhaps they would have done the decent thing and renamed themselves The Zombies if that name had not already been taken.  The Zombies are actually the youngsters (Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone being only 68 rather than the almost 70 that Mick Jagger and Keith Richard have each (amazingly) amassed!

 

 

BRITISH CULTURAL TRIUMPH GETS JUST REWARD?

What an accolade for British culture - the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony has been nominated as one of six programmes to be the subject of a public vote for the Radio Times audience title at this year's Bafta Television Awards.

 

Apparently, previous winners have included ‘Celebrity Juice’ (a ‘comedy’ game show) and The Inbetweeners (an adolescent sitcom) – heady company for Danny Boyle.

 

Depressingly, Ben Preston, Editor of the Radio Times, thinks the shortlist (which also includes Strictly Come Dancing) captures a ‘sensational television year’.

 

Heaven help us.

 

 

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.