Saturday, April 10, 2010
Nick and Vince Answer: “Why Vote Lib Dem?”
I don’t know what I’m going to be able to write about during this election campaign. I want to help at least five Liberal Democrat candidates; I want to volunteer at Lib Dem HQ; I know my poor health’s going to get in the way, as always. And I want to write about the election, not just getting pissed off with other parties but about my positive reasons to vote Lib Dem. So, in case I’m too ill, or too tired, or too busy, here’s a start: Nick Clegg and Vince Cable’s reasons to vote Lib Dem. It’s about fairness.
The Liberal Democrat constitution starts by saying that what we do, what we are is based on our values of Liberty, Equality and Community. Our purpose is to free people from poverty, ignorance and conformity. That’s why fairness was a key part of the Liberal Democrat campaigns in 2001 and 2005, and why for the last five years our policies have increasingly been aimed at creating greater fairness – not least economic fairness, in a society where under both the Tories and then under Labour, the gap between rich and poor has always widened, and in a tax system where under both the Tories and then under Labour, the richest in society pay a smaller proportion of their income in tax than the poorest.
For the last year, the Liberal Democrats have been campaigning on four key ways to make Britain a fairer place:
I’ve got my own beliefs and my own reasons to support the Lib Dems, but – though I hope to find time and energy to get on to those too – you might think it only fair that I tell you directly why Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg is asking you to support him. He set out those four themes in detail at our Conference last month in Birmingham; click here to watch or read the whole speech.
This is why Nick wants a vote for the Liberal Democrats:
When Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable won the Channel 4 Ask the Chancellors debate on the 29th of March – my bias or my observation? I’m confident enough in Vince to say, don’t listen to the spin, just watch the whole thing and I think most of you will agree with me – he did something considered unusual: he answered the questions. He was measured, and sensible, and positive (even when giving bad news). But in his closing statement, he showed passion as he finally went on the attack.
This is why Vince wants a vote for the Liberal Democrats:
Update: Now you can read the full Liberal Democrat Manifesto, complete with all the figures at the back so you can see how every priority is paid for – the only party with fully worked-out costings.
Fairness
The Liberal Democrat constitution starts by saying that what we do, what we are is based on our values of Liberty, Equality and Community. Our purpose is to free people from poverty, ignorance and conformity. That’s why fairness was a key part of the Liberal Democrat campaigns in 2001 and 2005, and why for the last five years our policies have increasingly been aimed at creating greater fairness – not least economic fairness, in a society where under both the Tories and then under Labour, the gap between rich and poor has always widened, and in a tax system where under both the Tories and then under Labour, the richest in society pay a smaller proportion of their income in tax than the poorest.
For the last year, the Liberal Democrats have been campaigning on four key ways to make Britain a fairer place:
- A Fair tax system, with no tax to pay on the first ten thousand pounds you earn – paid for by more tax from the richest and on pollution
- A Fair start for children, with a pupil premium for schools to invest in the least well off
- A Fair economy, rebalanced to stand up to bankers and with investment in new green jobs to start the country growing again
- Fair, clean, open politics, including fair votes, the ability to sack your MP if they let you down, no more unelected second chamber so no more cronies, and a Freedom Bill to scrap many of Labour’s unfair 4,300 new laws.
Nick Clegg: “Why Vote Lib Dem?”
I’ve got my own beliefs and my own reasons to support the Lib Dems, but – though I hope to find time and energy to get on to those too – you might think it only fair that I tell you directly why Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg is asking you to support him. He set out those four themes in detail at our Conference last month in Birmingham; click here to watch or read the whole speech.
This is why Nick wants a vote for the Liberal Democrats:
“Shall I tell you the one phrase that bothers me more than any other? It’s this.
‘That’s just the way things are’.
“No. The way things are is not the way they have to be.
”We do not have to live in a country where the poorest pay the biggest chunk of their income in tax. We do not have to live in a country where politics is the plaything of wealthy donors and corrupt MPs. We do not have to live in a country where the banks can profiteer at the expense of everybody else and our climate is in jeopardy. We do not have to live in a country where children’s chances are determined more by their parents’ background than by their own hopes and dreams.
“There is a better way.”
“We will give you fairer taxes.
“We will make sure your child gets the fair start in life they deserve.
”We will create a new, fair economy where we are no longer held hostage by the greed of bankers in the City of London.
“And we will give you a fair, open and transparent politics after the gross betrayal of the expenses scandal.
“It really is as simple as that. No-one can guarantee what the election result will be. But I can guarantee what we will always fight to deliver.”
“When you think about who to vote for remember that the future of your country is at stake.
“Whatever you do – do not settle for the way things are.
“Be demanding.
“Vote for what you believe in.
“Vote with your heart.”
“A vote for the Liberal Democrats is a commitment to hope and opportunity.
“It’s a vote that says:
“I want government to be honest and open.
“I want a green economy.
“I want fairer taxes.
“I want a fairer future for my children and for all our children.”
“And if you like what we say… If you share our values… If you want fair taxes, a fair start in life for your child, a fairer economy, and a new, fair politics… Vote for it.”
Vince Cable: “Why Vote Lib Dem?”
When Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable won the Channel 4 Ask the Chancellors debate on the 29th of March – my bias or my observation? I’m confident enough in Vince to say, don’t listen to the spin, just watch the whole thing and I think most of you will agree with me – he did something considered unusual: he answered the questions. He was measured, and sensible, and positive (even when giving bad news). But in his closing statement, he showed passion as he finally went on the attack.
This is why Vince wants a vote for the Liberal Democrats:
“I’ve set out my agenda. It’s financial discipline in the public sector; directed lending from banks to support small and medium-sized companies; we’ve got to have a fairer tax system; we’ve got to make the economy much less dependent on financial gambling. The question is – who can you trust to do it?
“The Labour Government led us into this mess; they have done severe damage to pensions and savings; they have wasted a vast amount of money on over-centralised public services.
“The Tories presided over two big recessions in office; they wasted most of the North Sea oil revenue; they sold off the family silver on the cheap; now they want to have another turn to get their noses in the trough and reward their rich backers.
“The Liberal Democrats are different. The Liberal Democrats are different. We got this crisis basically right. We are not beholden to either the super rich or militant unions.
“We have people of real experience who are committed to fairness. We want a change of government. Yes, we want a change of government. But it’s got to be a change for the better – not for the worse.”
Update: Now you can read the full Liberal Democrat Manifesto, complete with all the figures at the back so you can see how every priority is paid for – the only party with fully worked-out costings.
Labels: British Politics, Liberal Democrat Conferences, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, Tax, What the Lib Dems Stand For
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Liveblogging BBC 10pm News 8th April
Headline: pressure on Labour on NI
Tories reveal more business backers (yawn – why are the BBC falling for this?)
Labour hits back, apparently
Clips of Brown and Cameron talking
Image of Nick Clegg – but no speech (11 seconds in first 4 minutes)
Samantha Cameron coming up. Sexist tripe warning.
22.02
More than 80 prominent businessmen (not a single woman, the BBC implies) now backing Tories. Amazing! Unions apparently backing Labour, too. Still treating this as if it’s news: good heavens. What, the Labservatives’ wealthy interest group backers are backing the Labservatives? Who else here fainted from sheer surprise?
Landale: Can Labour rebut, from back foot?
Imagine of Brown and Cameron – no Nick – on an NI card
Brown press conference – speaks
Cameron press conference – speaks (Caine in background). Significantly longer.
And on to Stuart Rose backing Tories on NI, to no-one’s surprise.
22.04
Nick C’s first words – on Tory tax bribes paid for by VAT bombshell
Under a minute
Back to pics of Brown and Cameron for roundup.
22.05
Huw: NI has underlined clear difference between Labour and the Conservatives.
Hugh Pym. “Hugh?” “Yes, Huw.” Descending into parody now.
Presents analysis of Tory spending plans, with “Reality Check” graphics.
£6bn isn’t much out of total public spending £704bn.
Bizarre quote from IFS – quotes Tories, but gives no view on whether or not they add up! Just BBC editing?
Labour says efficiency savings can’t be done.
“And they’ve been backed by some public spending experts.” Quote from one.
Not a peep about Lib Dems.
22.08
Cameron and Caine reported on national citizens’ service. Caine gets speech.
22.08
Huw “Now, in a month’s time, the LD Leader could find himself holding the balance of power…”
Nick ‘Mate of Dave Cameron’ Robinson: “Early morning in the home of the man who knows he won’t be our next Prime Minister – but could decide who is.”
Robinson says no voters in sight (camera swivels) to show cameras and Lib Dem candidates.
Says Tories say they don’t need VAT on voiceover. Doesn’t let Nick refute.
22.10
Finally a couple of words from Nick and Charles on Lib Dem Scotland launch. Less than 30 secs the both.
“Mr Clegg travels like an American tourist” taking in many stops in a day. Tiny clip of Nick speaking in Bristol.
One line from Nick C, then talks to voters. Robinson: “Did you know who he was before he came in? What’s his name?” Didn’t ask that of anyone else.
22.12
Nick R then asks about Nick C’s tax plans on the bus. At last, Nick C gets a word in edgeways.
Robinson allows a few answers, but talks over footage in ratio 3:1 over Nick C, even in the Nick C piece. Why bother having the politicians on at all? Wouldn’t making ‘news’ all journalists talking to journalists stop actual facts getting in the way?
“In election time, Mr Clegg gets to use what looks like a ministerial car. Who knows – someone might offer him one.”
No “hung Parliament” framing for any Labour or Tory coverage.
22.13
Robinson: “I think both sides agree the Tories have won the politics of the first week, but Lab and Lib Dem hope they may yet lose the economics.” Only two sides. Bugger off, you biased Tory git.
Claims Lib Dems and others want to talk about gain, not pain: “You know what? There’s an election coming. They don’t want you to know the bad news.”
Flat-out lie – Vince Cable has set out large, definite cuts, not just vague “efficiency savings”.
BBC has two agendas: ‘Only two parties matter’ and ‘they’re all the same’. Disgusting abuse of ‘fair coverage’.
Note: no mention of Lib Dem tax plan – which is fully costed by taxing rich and pollution, and gives low and middle-income workers £700 back; nearly five times as much as the Tory plan they can’t pay for (except with VAT).
I can see why Labour and the Tories have a vested interest in not letting the Lib Dem policy be heard. What’s the BBC’s excuse? For more about how the tax system works than you will ever hear from the BBC, read Millennium’s latest General Election briefing.
22.14
“It was a dark day for motorists…” Next piece.
Still, we laughed on hearing “The Duchess of Cornwall…” on one TV news and the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen on the other in the next room! It’s a shame – we’re sad about Malcolm McLaren.
22.28
Plaid Cymru launches their campaign in Ynys Mon. “With just a handful of MPs they have at Westminster, there’s little change they can deliver.” One line from Leader, then more voiceover round marketplace.
Plaid wants £300 million for any deal.
A better piece than their first launch, the day before yesterday, which looked like it was on a hastily propped stage at a jumble sale.
22.30
Huw: “The Leaders’ Wives are likely to have a bigger impact…”
And on to a puff piece about Mrs Cameron – who “wasn’t doing interviews” – at a charity farm.
Is this the very definition of a photo-op? Someone who isn’t standing for election and can’t be held to account.
“This morning, Gordon Brown was repeatedly questioned about Sarah Brown’s role…”
“Nick Clegg’s wife says she’s too busy working.” One line from Miriam.
Asks people if they’re undecided and if wives will help them choose. No suggestion that it may be sexist; only a hint that anyone might be put off by using women as smiling clothes horses attached to their husbands.
22.33
Top London news: UKIPper Paul Whiffen ranting about slave trade and four different racial groups apologises if “he may have upset anyone.” You don’t say.
“When I read the lies about UKIP people a racist party, I just saw red…” And proved they were right.
Tory in Ilford South attacks him for being anti-monarchist, bizarrely; Labour sitting MP attacks him; Lib Dem says everyone gets on round here in different communities.
Whiffen won’t appear. Just gives statement.
Piece finishes 22.37
Opinion poll talking to people on streets about nothing in particular…
22.40
One line: “Well, the Liberal Democrats launched their London election campaign today.” No Lib Dems speaking, over in 15 seconds and on to next item. So, letting people make up their minds about the key issues, then?
And on to talk about house prices. Is this being written by the Daily Mail?
Even Alistair Campbell says: “Only 15 shots of Nick Robinson in his package on Clegg. Wonder if broadcasters might do away with politicians completely soon.” No big Lib Dem fan!
Note: On occasional nights when I’m feeling well enough, I’m volunteering at Lib Dem HQ in Central London. Amongst other things, I’m watching the news, and thought I’d share it with you. I’m not paid; I’m not contracted; I’m here because I’m a Lib Dem who’s been involved in several election campaigns and was asked if I could help from time to time. No-one sees – much less controls – what I write before I publish. No-one has asked me ‘Please don’t say that’. However, I am obviously not impartial. I believe, however, that I am no more biased than usual; I don’t think a robot would be any help. There are enough of those in the other parties – I hope Lib Dems are more idiosyncratic and, indeed, human.
Incidentally, I was Chair of my party’s youth wing for a year, some time back. So was Nick Robinson. I always make it clear I’m a Liberal Democrat: he is, of course, strangely reluctant to mention his high-flying Toryness, despite the fact that I don’t talk from Lib Dem press releases, while he often gets his lines from Tory ones.
Tories reveal more business backers (yawn – why are the BBC falling for this?)
Labour hits back, apparently
Clips of Brown and Cameron talking
Image of Nick Clegg – but no speech (11 seconds in first 4 minutes)
Samantha Cameron coming up. Sexist tripe warning.
22.02
More than 80 prominent businessmen (not a single woman, the BBC implies) now backing Tories. Amazing! Unions apparently backing Labour, too. Still treating this as if it’s news: good heavens. What, the Labservatives’ wealthy interest group backers are backing the Labservatives? Who else here fainted from sheer surprise?
Landale: Can Labour rebut, from back foot?
Imagine of Brown and Cameron – no Nick – on an NI card
Brown press conference – speaks
Cameron press conference – speaks (Caine in background). Significantly longer.
And on to Stuart Rose backing Tories on NI, to no-one’s surprise.
22.04
Nick C’s first words – on Tory tax bribes paid for by VAT bombshell
Under a minute
Back to pics of Brown and Cameron for roundup.
22.05
Huw: NI has underlined clear difference between Labour and the Conservatives.
Hugh Pym. “Hugh?” “Yes, Huw.” Descending into parody now.
Presents analysis of Tory spending plans, with “Reality Check” graphics.
£6bn isn’t much out of total public spending £704bn.
Bizarre quote from IFS – quotes Tories, but gives no view on whether or not they add up! Just BBC editing?
Labour says efficiency savings can’t be done.
“And they’ve been backed by some public spending experts.” Quote from one.
Not a peep about Lib Dems.
22.08
Cameron and Caine reported on national citizens’ service. Caine gets speech.
22.08
Huw “Now, in a month’s time, the LD Leader could find himself holding the balance of power…”
Nick ‘Mate of Dave Cameron’ Robinson: “Early morning in the home of the man who knows he won’t be our next Prime Minister – but could decide who is.”
Robinson says no voters in sight (camera swivels) to show cameras and Lib Dem candidates.
Says Tories say they don’t need VAT on voiceover. Doesn’t let Nick refute.
22.10
Finally a couple of words from Nick and Charles on Lib Dem Scotland launch. Less than 30 secs the both.
“Mr Clegg travels like an American tourist” taking in many stops in a day. Tiny clip of Nick speaking in Bristol.
One line from Nick C, then talks to voters. Robinson: “Did you know who he was before he came in? What’s his name?” Didn’t ask that of anyone else.
22.12
Nick R then asks about Nick C’s tax plans on the bus. At last, Nick C gets a word in edgeways.
Robinson allows a few answers, but talks over footage in ratio 3:1 over Nick C, even in the Nick C piece. Why bother having the politicians on at all? Wouldn’t making ‘news’ all journalists talking to journalists stop actual facts getting in the way?
“In election time, Mr Clegg gets to use what looks like a ministerial car. Who knows – someone might offer him one.”
No “hung Parliament” framing for any Labour or Tory coverage.
22.13
Robinson: “I think both sides agree the Tories have won the politics of the first week, but Lab and Lib Dem hope they may yet lose the economics.” Only two sides. Bugger off, you biased Tory git.
Claims Lib Dems and others want to talk about gain, not pain: “You know what? There’s an election coming. They don’t want you to know the bad news.”
Flat-out lie – Vince Cable has set out large, definite cuts, not just vague “efficiency savings”.
BBC has two agendas: ‘Only two parties matter’ and ‘they’re all the same’. Disgusting abuse of ‘fair coverage’.
Note: no mention of Lib Dem tax plan – which is fully costed by taxing rich and pollution, and gives low and middle-income workers £700 back; nearly five times as much as the Tory plan they can’t pay for (except with VAT).
I can see why Labour and the Tories have a vested interest in not letting the Lib Dem policy be heard. What’s the BBC’s excuse? For more about how the tax system works than you will ever hear from the BBC, read Millennium’s latest General Election briefing.
22.14
“It was a dark day for motorists…” Next piece.
Still, we laughed on hearing “The Duchess of Cornwall…” on one TV news and the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen on the other in the next room! It’s a shame – we’re sad about Malcolm McLaren.
22.28
Plaid Cymru launches their campaign in Ynys Mon. “With just a handful of MPs they have at Westminster, there’s little change they can deliver.” One line from Leader, then more voiceover round marketplace.
Plaid wants £300 million for any deal.
A better piece than their first launch, the day before yesterday, which looked like it was on a hastily propped stage at a jumble sale.
22.30
Huw: “The Leaders’ Wives are likely to have a bigger impact…”
And on to a puff piece about Mrs Cameron – who “wasn’t doing interviews” – at a charity farm.
Is this the very definition of a photo-op? Someone who isn’t standing for election and can’t be held to account.
“This morning, Gordon Brown was repeatedly questioned about Sarah Brown’s role…”
“Nick Clegg’s wife says she’s too busy working.” One line from Miriam.
Asks people if they’re undecided and if wives will help them choose. No suggestion that it may be sexist; only a hint that anyone might be put off by using women as smiling clothes horses attached to their husbands.
22.33
Top London news: UKIPper Paul Whiffen ranting about slave trade and four different racial groups apologises if “he may have upset anyone.” You don’t say.
“When I read the lies about UKIP people a racist party, I just saw red…” And proved they were right.
Tory in Ilford South attacks him for being anti-monarchist, bizarrely; Labour sitting MP attacks him; Lib Dem says everyone gets on round here in different communities.
Whiffen won’t appear. Just gives statement.
Piece finishes 22.37
Opinion poll talking to people on streets about nothing in particular…
22.40
One line: “Well, the Liberal Democrats launched their London election campaign today.” No Lib Dems speaking, over in 15 seconds and on to next item. So, letting people make up their minds about the key issues, then?
And on to talk about house prices. Is this being written by the Daily Mail?
Even Alistair Campbell says: “Only 15 shots of Nick Robinson in his package on Clegg. Wonder if broadcasters might do away with politicians completely soon.” No big Lib Dem fan!
Note: On occasional nights when I’m feeling well enough, I’m volunteering at Lib Dem HQ in Central London. Amongst other things, I’m watching the news, and thought I’d share it with you. I’m not paid; I’m not contracted; I’m here because I’m a Lib Dem who’s been involved in several election campaigns and was asked if I could help from time to time. No-one sees – much less controls – what I write before I publish. No-one has asked me ‘Please don’t say that’. However, I am obviously not impartial. I believe, however, that I am no more biased than usual; I don’t think a robot would be any help. There are enough of those in the other parties – I hope Lib Dems are more idiosyncratic and, indeed, human.
Incidentally, I was Chair of my party’s youth wing for a year, some time back. So was Nick Robinson. I always make it clear I’m a Liberal Democrat: he is, of course, strangely reluctant to mention his high-flying Toryness, despite the fact that I don’t talk from Lib Dem press releases, while he often gets his lines from Tory ones.
Labels: BBC, British Politics, Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Tax
Monday, April 05, 2010
Quatermass 2, Too! Plus Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour, Sex, and A Harry Potter Legal Opinion
Want something groovy on the telly – yes, obviously, Doctor Who’s back, and something on that below – want something groovy on TV tonight? After BBC2 was splendid enough to show Hammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment on Friday, tonight at 1.50 they’re showing the even more splendid Quatermass 2, probably the best and tautest of all the Quatermass film remakes. It was also a major inspiration for Doctor Who: Spearhead From Space, large chunks of which you may recognise in last night’s The Eleventh Hour. And I’ve got a Harry Potter question for you: who do laws against underage wizardry protect?
1953, 1955, 1958: the three original BBC Quatermass serials, as I’ve said before, granddaddies of all UK TV drama and of Doctor Who in particular. Each were such successes that Hammer remade them for the big screen – the first two promptly, but with one each title randomly one character short and with a terrible ‘big name’ American lead. Ignore him, and tune in to BBC2 tonight at 1.50am (come on, it’s a bank holiday, you can sleep in). Monsters on an industrial scale, possession, conspiracy theories… It looks terrific, it’s scary, it’s intelligent – after the first film was exciting but pretty much lobotomised, original writer Nigel Kneale helped script the second one and did a far superior job of trimming the plot while retaining the point – and if you know your Doctor Who, you’ll recognise more than a little of it. Then, when you’re done, buy the proper BBC versions. Go on, go on, go on. They’re brilliant.
If you’ve read the Harry Potter books… Why? What started you? Richard and I, having resisted the bandwagon for the first couple of years, were driving back home from our parents on Boxing Day 2000 when we discovered that Radio 4 had given over eight hours of the day to Stephen Fry reading the whole of the first book. I ask you, what could be a better introduction (though still, to this day, I prefer us discovering the strangeness along with Harry, as we did after missing the first couple of chapters)? It helped, too, that we were hearing it together – all the better to make us laugh – and that we were pleasingly wrong-footed on a couple of the twists. Having read all the books since, Richard recently bought the whole set of Stephen Fry’s unabridged readings (7 CDs for the first book, 812 for the last, that sort of thing), and we’ve made a start on listening to them. So the other night, we found ourselves discussing a couple of questions…
You probably know that, in Harry Potter’s world, there are laws against the “Improper Use of Magic” – particularly against using magic in the presence of non-magical people. In theory, this is to protect Muggles, though it’s often hinted that it’s more to keep magic secret and safe for the users (as carelessly wiping Muggle minds rather than actually helping them is the usual response). The best known law about not using magic is, however, the Decree For the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, 1875. If you’re a young and unqualified wizard, doesn’t it make sense to say you can’t use magic except under controlled conditions, to protect both yourself and any Muggles within spellcasting distance?
Anyway, the other day Richard raised a curio about underage wizards, which I’ll come to in a minute. But along the way, I thought of this particular law. Because, when you put it in the context of the rest of the wizarding world – and especially in the context of who makes the laws – it suddenly strikes me that the people who do best out of this law aren’t the ones it’s ostensibly there to protect at all. Because who tend to have the power and influence in the wizarding world? “Pureblood” wizards with money and power who don’t tend to care for Muggles and definitely don’t care for “Mudblood” wizards born to ordinary people.
So why not look at a law that saves Muggles from the “Improper Use of Magic” by underage wizards… When there are already laws protecting them against any wizard doing anything nasty to them? Why single out underage wizards for additional, unnecessary punishment if they perform any magic at all outside of school – and isn’t it convenient that, because enforcement relies on detecting the use of any magic by anyone in the area and not just the ‘accused’, that this law can only ever be enforced on young wizards living in Muggle homes?
It’s easy. The purpose of the Decree For the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery is to protect the interests of “pureblood” families and give them a leg-up against Muggle-born wizards (who, it appears, are more often than not more talented than families that have been wizarding for generations). If you live in a wizarding household, then… Hooray! You can use as much magic as you like, because the Ministry of Magic expects magic to ‘go off’ in your home and won’t notice if you add to it. But if your parents are Muggles… Oh dear. All that practicing magic that would be so handy for honing your skills for at least one-sixth of the year – longer if you go home for Christmas – is not just more difficult without other wizards to help you, but actively illegal. And if you break that law, you’re in danger of being expelled. Handy to keep those “Mudbloods” from being top of all the classes, eh? Wonder who thought that law up?
The question that Richard actually came up with was about magic without wands, and look away now if you’re offended by wandwork. If you’re very young and no-one knows you’re a wizard, you can do all sorts of thrilling things like fly, make panes of glass vanish and so on. Once you start learning to be a proper wizard at Hogwarts, you have a wand, and you can only do most types of magic through it. How come, asked my beloved, young wizards can unknowingly do all these fantastic and surprisingly powerful things, then get taught in such a way that they no longer can? Well, it’s possibly to do with social control, and stifling individuality, and making everyone just like everyone else – which is not impossible. But, personally, I think it’s rather like moving from having wet dreams to wanking. Once you’ve worked out how to, ah, perform your magic when you want to, you stop exploding at awkward moments without realising you’re doing it.
If you think it’s terrible to look for sexual innuendo in a children’s book, you really need toget out more read them. Why, in the second book there’s even a running joke about Percy wanking, which is cleaned up at the end of the book for the benefit of anyone who doesn’t get it. But, seriously, what are we meant to think on hearing that Percy spent all Summer locked in his room “polishing his Prefect’s badge”?
OK, OK, I know you’ve been waiting to find out what I’m going to say about the new Doctor Who. Well, in short: I loved him; I rather like her; I thought some of the early bits were a bit iffy but liked it better as it went along; I quite like the new titles but I’m not sold on the new theme music.
The trouble is, you see, that while Richard writes brilliant guest reviews on Millennium’s blog – here’s the link for Millennium’s Very Fluffy Diary, and here’s the link which, through time travel, will very shortly become his review, which I’d urge you to read as it will be far more well-argued and comprehensive than the following jumble of impressions – because Richard is good at getting his thoughts into coherent shape quite quickly, I like to sleep on my Doctor Who reviews for a couple of decades before saying something insightful.
Though, following on from the Harry Potter bit, there were a couple of elements in last night’s Doctor Who that I should bring to your attention: first, it may be just me, but the Doctor’s clearly enunciated capital letters for “Amy Pond – The Girl Who Waited” immediately called to mind Harry Potter – “The Boy Who Lived”; and second, my favourite series’ own wanking gags. In fact, what appears to be new Head Mekon Steven Moffat’s whole attitude to sex. I love his Press Gang, his Chalk, his Coupling, and much of his Jekyll, but I have more mixed feelings about his incredibly popular Doctor Who. Here’s where, incidentally, one of the 493 blog pieces I meant to write in the last couple of months but didn’t, provisionally entitled ‘Fear of Moffat’ in my head but marked to have a better title before I wrote it, might have come in useful. Anyway, the thing about Coupling is that it was a brilliant sitcom about heterosexual couples and male sexual embarrassment. And much as I loved it, it’s not the only perspective on sex (leaving aside for a minute whether you think Doctor Who should be about sex or not).
So… The Doctor notices what’s obviously porn on a laptop, and tells us so with his reaction and the embarrassed owner’s. Fine, liked it, funny. Then tells the owner to get a girlfriend, words straight from Steve, as the Doctor’s never been remotely interested in telling people how to make their relationships before. Then tells him to clear his Internet history, which could be about the Doctor’s top-secret science things, but comes across as Wanking: Point #3. Writer protests too much, I think – Steve likes wanking jokes but has the Doctor tell us off for wanking. Better point: Russell did ‘what’s on my hard drive’ more subtly, wittily and not preachily in his far less polished but far more inspired (and inspiring) Who re-launch Rose five years ago last week.
And if you claim the Doctor being suddenly censorious about people’s private lives might just be a one-off, what about his reaction on finding out Amy’s a kissogram: “You were a little girl five minutes ago!” So, more of the author having his cake and eating it: the new companion’s not a real woman, but something titillating – but just to make sure we don’t dwell on the author liking his women titillating, the Doctor tells her (and by extension us) off. Which has the effect of making her seem ‘naughtier’, and also not letting her own choices just go by as her own choices without an authority figure chiding her. She does get some plenty of good moments of standing up for herself, no doubt about that; I just winced when she’s thoroughly ‘put in her place’ about what she does for a living. And what about this Doctor, who suddenly acts like a censorious straight man, or possibly maiden aunt? He then does something more laid-back and alien, and – like Jon Pertwee’s Doctor before him (or indeed occasional Doctor Paul McGann in tonight’s Jonathan Creek with two of his Doctor Who co-stars) – strips off without any worries because he’s interested in trying on new clothes. Cue Coupling-style sexual embarrassment from bumbling implied-heterosexual man, and determination from spunky young woman: “Are you not going to turn your back?” “Nope.” I like the Doctor’s lack of concern about his own nudity (a subtle code that he’s not human; from a human perspective, he’s got a great face, and if he gets his kit off in a few years, when he’s had time to put on a bit of weight and a bit more chest hair…), but it simply doesn’t square with his ‘sex – oh, dear, it’s a bit naughty, I must chide you!’ attitude earlier in the episode, which is funny in a sit-com but wrong in a Time Lord’s mouth. Doctor, you don’t get embarrassed or disapproving about that sort of thing; you barely notice. Unlike humans, you don’t, if you’ll excuse the expression, give a toss.
If – and there’s no accounting for taste – you do want to see Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, just post-regeneration, in the buff in a hospital in mid-clothes-stealing, and if you think that sounds strangely familiar after last night’s episode, pick up a DVD of the excellent Spearhead From Space; you’ll spot that the bits of it that Russell T Davies didn’t use in Rose (and he used plenty of it) have now been used by Steven Moffat in The Eleventh Hour. It’s not just me that likes it, then. Even the hospital looks like it might have been picked to resemble the one in Spearhead. And it’s not just Pertwee’s first story that rang little bells in my head last night: as I watched Matt Smith’s debut, and wasn’t he brilliant, I thought, hmm, The Girl in the Fireplace / Castrovalva (even with a direct quotation) / Silence In the Library / Partners In Crime (or even The Stones of Blood, but more of that story later in the season, apparently) / The Empty Child / Aliens of London… And that criminal was very Zygon, though I loved the multiformness of it. If several of those earlier stories are Steven Moffat’s, well, that’s only to be expected. I’m not against Doctor Who writers who use the same themes and motifs over and over again – Robert Holmes and Russell T Davies spring to mind as among my favourites, among the most prolific, and among the most recyclable, but I am just slightly wary at how few stories Mr Moffat’s written before they start feeling samey-wamey. Come on, Steve, you wrote how many series of Press Gang all by yourself? You’re a brilliant writer; no-one can fit together an intricate plot like you do. Just try and fit together one that’s a bit less familiar once in a while. I do like your definition of Doctor Who as fairy tale, though – best ‘tone’ you could set for it. Keep that up!
Richard is currently sitting eleven feet in front of me writing something far more coherent, and I’d like to read it, so I’ll cut myself off before I wander over the entire episode. But here are a few more random thoughts. Lots of lovely character actors in the village (and back to a very traditional Doctor Who village; I loved the Doctor’s reaction to suddenly not having all the tools of a new Russell city about him – “No nuclear power station? Not even a little one?” Of course, even villages had nuclear power stations in the Pertwee days), and I bet we’ll be seeing them again. The one you probably didn’t recognise, but who had me cheering, was the old bloke with the car: I’ve met him, he’s a lovely chap, and he was once an overaged teenage rebel in a frock in a Doctor Who story in the 1960s. Points for getting which one. I greatly enjoyed the Doctor’s food-tasting and his shark-infested custard, but someone should have hit Murray Gold with the frying pan after doing the bacon in it. “And stay out!” No, no, mostly I love him too, at least when he’s not smothering a scene in ‘comedy’ plinky-plonks. I like his rousing new ‘Eleventh Doctor theme’ (if strangely un-strange), but think the new main theme arrangement’s a bit of a mess, like the different ‘moods’ released on ill-fated CDs in the late ’80s. And the Atraxi looked way cool. If also slightly like the Nestenes should have looked in Spearhead From Space…
Oh, look, what I’m trying to say is, I really liked it, but my head’s still full of too many impressions to nail it all down yet. I was instinctively prejudiced in favour of a much older Doctor, but Matt Smith’s first TV interview in the role won me over 15 months ago with his wild hands and dislocated but fiercely excited manner, and he’s really delivered with a Doctor that seems almost as strange as he does. Karen Gillan’s got real potential, and I hope she’s not always written in Steve Moffat’s ‘sexy woman’ niche. I cheered, fan that I am, when the new Doctor stepped out of the other Doctors to prove he’s exactly the same man – and while I groaned at the self-satisfied, ‘I can’t beat you so I’ll just tell you how hard I am’ ending of Silence In the Library, it worked for me to set up a new Doctor. That’s the one time you’re allowed it. Oh, and if you were looking at that endearingly eccentric (that is, not really thought through in a The Mind of Evil cut-outs sort of way) set of monster flashbacks, when I was suggesting an Eleven Faces of Doctor Who season the other day, I nearly but not quite chose The Two Doctors and The Sea Devils as options. Why not sit down and watch them now? I’m sure you want to find the exact couple of seconds each have just had repeated from their two and a half hours’ worth. And, oh! I nearly forgot! “Brand new TARDIS! Bit exciting.” All that metallic orange – doesn’t it look like the Dalek City from the Dr Who and the Daleks movie? But I’ll get used to it. Twelve years ago, I went off to the States for three weeks. When I came back, Richard had painted several of our walls bright orange. I love it now…
The most important thing is, it’s back, and I’m excited. That’s five ‘season openers’ this century in a row that have been lots of fun – and I can’t wait ’til next week. And, if you thought that was a late-night incoherent babble and a waste of your time, at least I wasn’t paid for it. Not a fairy tale, but a cautionary tale: the lovely Mr Simon Guerrier brings news of why paid reviewers simply aren’t worth the money…
Half-midnight update: I need sleep, but fortunately many, many Cadbury’s mini-eggs are sugar-rushing me to the finish. I must have prayed to Santa at some point (hopefully not a robot one).
Richard’s review guesting for Millennium is, of course, utterly clever, and insightful, and well-written, and well-structured, and, well… Fun. For all these reasons, you should scamper off and read it; for all these reasons, I’m very glad that I didn’t read it before I fired off my random observations. His pointing out that the Doctor may have unwittingly created his perfect companion, though, reminds me that Amy’s set up as the polar opposite of Rose and the other family-set Russell companions – the traditional orphan with an aunt who doesn’t care very much (though, unlike many of the Doctor’s past companions, her tragically deceased father was not a lord. As far as we yet know). And then, in as perfectly-falling-into-place a closing image as Steve Moffat wrote last time he did The Girl in the Fireplace, he overturns the whole thing. Or does he? Rory will hope so…
In other and still immensely exciting news, I’ve now just spotted two other reviews by dear friends of mine and incredibly clever people popping up: Jennie’s, who wasn’t much of a fan of Russell but loves this and makes a perfect point about the Lib Dems (no, no, it is on-topic); and Andrew’s, who hated Russell’s with a fiery passion, but likes this up to a point, tries not to “ruin your squee,” and is only slightly cheesed off about the similarities between The Eleventh Hour and a story he’s just written (and I’ve read Andrew’s story; I’m not sure if I prefer it to this one of Steve’s, but I definitely like it better than his last one…). Read them too! Now, time to up-end another tube of Mini-eggs (5 for £4 at Waitrose – bargain!).
Further update: the lovely Caron and Count Packula, Prince of Markness have also given their views on the new Who, while Simon Goldie wonders why Doctor Who has an appeal for so many Liberal Democrats (I have an idea). Wonder if any non-Lib Dems have any thoughts?
Time To Watch Quatermass 2
1953, 1955, 1958: the three original BBC Quatermass serials, as I’ve said before, granddaddies of all UK TV drama and of Doctor Who in particular. Each were such successes that Hammer remade them for the big screen – the first two promptly, but with one each title randomly one character short and with a terrible ‘big name’ American lead. Ignore him, and tune in to BBC2 tonight at 1.50am (come on, it’s a bank holiday, you can sleep in). Monsters on an industrial scale, possession, conspiracy theories… It looks terrific, it’s scary, it’s intelligent – after the first film was exciting but pretty much lobotomised, original writer Nigel Kneale helped script the second one and did a far superior job of trimming the plot while retaining the point – and if you know your Doctor Who, you’ll recognise more than a little of it. Then, when you’re done, buy the proper BBC versions. Go on, go on, go on. They’re brilliant.
Underage Wizardry Laws In Harry Potter: Protection or Protectionism?
If you’ve read the Harry Potter books… Why? What started you? Richard and I, having resisted the bandwagon for the first couple of years, were driving back home from our parents on Boxing Day 2000 when we discovered that Radio 4 had given over eight hours of the day to Stephen Fry reading the whole of the first book. I ask you, what could be a better introduction (though still, to this day, I prefer us discovering the strangeness along with Harry, as we did after missing the first couple of chapters)? It helped, too, that we were hearing it together – all the better to make us laugh – and that we were pleasingly wrong-footed on a couple of the twists. Having read all the books since, Richard recently bought the whole set of Stephen Fry’s unabridged readings (7 CDs for the first book, 812 for the last, that sort of thing), and we’ve made a start on listening to them. So the other night, we found ourselves discussing a couple of questions…
You probably know that, in Harry Potter’s world, there are laws against the “Improper Use of Magic” – particularly against using magic in the presence of non-magical people. In theory, this is to protect Muggles, though it’s often hinted that it’s more to keep magic secret and safe for the users (as carelessly wiping Muggle minds rather than actually helping them is the usual response). The best known law about not using magic is, however, the Decree For the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, 1875. If you’re a young and unqualified wizard, doesn’t it make sense to say you can’t use magic except under controlled conditions, to protect both yourself and any Muggles within spellcasting distance?
Anyway, the other day Richard raised a curio about underage wizards, which I’ll come to in a minute. But along the way, I thought of this particular law. Because, when you put it in the context of the rest of the wizarding world – and especially in the context of who makes the laws – it suddenly strikes me that the people who do best out of this law aren’t the ones it’s ostensibly there to protect at all. Because who tend to have the power and influence in the wizarding world? “Pureblood” wizards with money and power who don’t tend to care for Muggles and definitely don’t care for “Mudblood” wizards born to ordinary people.
So why not look at a law that saves Muggles from the “Improper Use of Magic” by underage wizards… When there are already laws protecting them against any wizard doing anything nasty to them? Why single out underage wizards for additional, unnecessary punishment if they perform any magic at all outside of school – and isn’t it convenient that, because enforcement relies on detecting the use of any magic by anyone in the area and not just the ‘accused’, that this law can only ever be enforced on young wizards living in Muggle homes?
It’s easy. The purpose of the Decree For the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery is to protect the interests of “pureblood” families and give them a leg-up against Muggle-born wizards (who, it appears, are more often than not more talented than families that have been wizarding for generations). If you live in a wizarding household, then… Hooray! You can use as much magic as you like, because the Ministry of Magic expects magic to ‘go off’ in your home and won’t notice if you add to it. But if your parents are Muggles… Oh dear. All that practicing magic that would be so handy for honing your skills for at least one-sixth of the year – longer if you go home for Christmas – is not just more difficult without other wizards to help you, but actively illegal. And if you break that law, you’re in danger of being expelled. Handy to keep those “Mudbloods” from being top of all the classes, eh? Wonder who thought that law up?
The question that Richard actually came up with was about magic without wands, and look away now if you’re offended by wandwork. If you’re very young and no-one knows you’re a wizard, you can do all sorts of thrilling things like fly, make panes of glass vanish and so on. Once you start learning to be a proper wizard at Hogwarts, you have a wand, and you can only do most types of magic through it. How come, asked my beloved, young wizards can unknowingly do all these fantastic and surprisingly powerful things, then get taught in such a way that they no longer can? Well, it’s possibly to do with social control, and stifling individuality, and making everyone just like everyone else – which is not impossible. But, personally, I think it’s rather like moving from having wet dreams to wanking. Once you’ve worked out how to, ah, perform your magic when you want to, you stop exploding at awkward moments without realising you’re doing it.
If you think it’s terrible to look for sexual innuendo in a children’s book, you really need to
After The Eleventh Hour…
OK, OK, I know you’ve been waiting to find out what I’m going to say about the new Doctor Who. Well, in short: I loved him; I rather like her; I thought some of the early bits were a bit iffy but liked it better as it went along; I quite like the new titles but I’m not sold on the new theme music.
The trouble is, you see, that while Richard writes brilliant guest reviews on Millennium’s blog – here’s the link for Millennium’s Very Fluffy Diary, and here’s the link which, through time travel, will very shortly become his review, which I’d urge you to read as it will be far more well-argued and comprehensive than the following jumble of impressions – because Richard is good at getting his thoughts into coherent shape quite quickly, I like to sleep on my Doctor Who reviews for a couple of decades before saying something insightful.
There Now Follow A Couple of Stream of Consciousness Paragraphs About Sex Which You May Wish To Skip Because I’m Not Certain I’ll Agree With Myself In the Morning
Though, following on from the Harry Potter bit, there were a couple of elements in last night’s Doctor Who that I should bring to your attention: first, it may be just me, but the Doctor’s clearly enunciated capital letters for “Amy Pond – The Girl Who Waited” immediately called to mind Harry Potter – “The Boy Who Lived”; and second, my favourite series’ own wanking gags. In fact, what appears to be new Head Mekon Steven Moffat’s whole attitude to sex. I love his Press Gang, his Chalk, his Coupling, and much of his Jekyll, but I have more mixed feelings about his incredibly popular Doctor Who. Here’s where, incidentally, one of the 493 blog pieces I meant to write in the last couple of months but didn’t, provisionally entitled ‘Fear of Moffat’ in my head but marked to have a better title before I wrote it, might have come in useful. Anyway, the thing about Coupling is that it was a brilliant sitcom about heterosexual couples and male sexual embarrassment. And much as I loved it, it’s not the only perspective on sex (leaving aside for a minute whether you think Doctor Who should be about sex or not).
So… The Doctor notices what’s obviously porn on a laptop, and tells us so with his reaction and the embarrassed owner’s. Fine, liked it, funny. Then tells the owner to get a girlfriend, words straight from Steve, as the Doctor’s never been remotely interested in telling people how to make their relationships before. Then tells him to clear his Internet history, which could be about the Doctor’s top-secret science things, but comes across as Wanking: Point #3. Writer protests too much, I think – Steve likes wanking jokes but has the Doctor tell us off for wanking. Better point: Russell did ‘what’s on my hard drive’ more subtly, wittily and not preachily in his far less polished but far more inspired (and inspiring) Who re-launch Rose five years ago last week.
And if you claim the Doctor being suddenly censorious about people’s private lives might just be a one-off, what about his reaction on finding out Amy’s a kissogram: “You were a little girl five minutes ago!” So, more of the author having his cake and eating it: the new companion’s not a real woman, but something titillating – but just to make sure we don’t dwell on the author liking his women titillating, the Doctor tells her (and by extension us) off. Which has the effect of making her seem ‘naughtier’, and also not letting her own choices just go by as her own choices without an authority figure chiding her. She does get some plenty of good moments of standing up for herself, no doubt about that; I just winced when she’s thoroughly ‘put in her place’ about what she does for a living. And what about this Doctor, who suddenly acts like a censorious straight man, or possibly maiden aunt? He then does something more laid-back and alien, and – like Jon Pertwee’s Doctor before him (or indeed occasional Doctor Paul McGann in tonight’s Jonathan Creek with two of his Doctor Who co-stars) – strips off without any worries because he’s interested in trying on new clothes. Cue Coupling-style sexual embarrassment from bumbling implied-heterosexual man, and determination from spunky young woman: “Are you not going to turn your back?” “Nope.” I like the Doctor’s lack of concern about his own nudity (a subtle code that he’s not human; from a human perspective, he’s got a great face, and if he gets his kit off in a few years, when he’s had time to put on a bit of weight and a bit more chest hair…), but it simply doesn’t square with his ‘sex – oh, dear, it’s a bit naughty, I must chide you!’ attitude earlier in the episode, which is funny in a sit-com but wrong in a Time Lord’s mouth. Doctor, you don’t get embarrassed or disapproving about that sort of thing; you barely notice. Unlike humans, you don’t, if you’ll excuse the expression, give a toss.
…And I’m Back In the Room
If – and there’s no accounting for taste – you do want to see Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, just post-regeneration, in the buff in a hospital in mid-clothes-stealing, and if you think that sounds strangely familiar after last night’s episode, pick up a DVD of the excellent Spearhead From Space; you’ll spot that the bits of it that Russell T Davies didn’t use in Rose (and he used plenty of it) have now been used by Steven Moffat in The Eleventh Hour. It’s not just me that likes it, then. Even the hospital looks like it might have been picked to resemble the one in Spearhead. And it’s not just Pertwee’s first story that rang little bells in my head last night: as I watched Matt Smith’s debut, and wasn’t he brilliant, I thought, hmm, The Girl in the Fireplace / Castrovalva (even with a direct quotation) / Silence In the Library / Partners In Crime (or even The Stones of Blood, but more of that story later in the season, apparently) / The Empty Child / Aliens of London… And that criminal was very Zygon, though I loved the multiformness of it. If several of those earlier stories are Steven Moffat’s, well, that’s only to be expected. I’m not against Doctor Who writers who use the same themes and motifs over and over again – Robert Holmes and Russell T Davies spring to mind as among my favourites, among the most prolific, and among the most recyclable, but I am just slightly wary at how few stories Mr Moffat’s written before they start feeling samey-wamey. Come on, Steve, you wrote how many series of Press Gang all by yourself? You’re a brilliant writer; no-one can fit together an intricate plot like you do. Just try and fit together one that’s a bit less familiar once in a while. I do like your definition of Doctor Who as fairy tale, though – best ‘tone’ you could set for it. Keep that up!
Richard is currently sitting eleven feet in front of me writing something far more coherent, and I’d like to read it, so I’ll cut myself off before I wander over the entire episode. But here are a few more random thoughts. Lots of lovely character actors in the village (and back to a very traditional Doctor Who village; I loved the Doctor’s reaction to suddenly not having all the tools of a new Russell city about him – “No nuclear power station? Not even a little one?” Of course, even villages had nuclear power stations in the Pertwee days), and I bet we’ll be seeing them again. The one you probably didn’t recognise, but who had me cheering, was the old bloke with the car: I’ve met him, he’s a lovely chap, and he was once an overaged teenage rebel in a frock in a Doctor Who story in the 1960s. Points for getting which one. I greatly enjoyed the Doctor’s food-tasting and his shark-infested custard, but someone should have hit Murray Gold with the frying pan after doing the bacon in it. “And stay out!” No, no, mostly I love him too, at least when he’s not smothering a scene in ‘comedy’ plinky-plonks. I like his rousing new ‘Eleventh Doctor theme’ (if strangely un-strange), but think the new main theme arrangement’s a bit of a mess, like the different ‘moods’ released on ill-fated CDs in the late ’80s. And the Atraxi looked way cool. If also slightly like the Nestenes should have looked in Spearhead From Space…
Oh, look, what I’m trying to say is, I really liked it, but my head’s still full of too many impressions to nail it all down yet. I was instinctively prejudiced in favour of a much older Doctor, but Matt Smith’s first TV interview in the role won me over 15 months ago with his wild hands and dislocated but fiercely excited manner, and he’s really delivered with a Doctor that seems almost as strange as he does. Karen Gillan’s got real potential, and I hope she’s not always written in Steve Moffat’s ‘sexy woman’ niche. I cheered, fan that I am, when the new Doctor stepped out of the other Doctors to prove he’s exactly the same man – and while I groaned at the self-satisfied, ‘I can’t beat you so I’ll just tell you how hard I am’ ending of Silence In the Library, it worked for me to set up a new Doctor. That’s the one time you’re allowed it. Oh, and if you were looking at that endearingly eccentric (that is, not really thought through in a The Mind of Evil cut-outs sort of way) set of monster flashbacks, when I was suggesting an Eleven Faces of Doctor Who season the other day, I nearly but not quite chose The Two Doctors and The Sea Devils as options. Why not sit down and watch them now? I’m sure you want to find the exact couple of seconds each have just had repeated from their two and a half hours’ worth. And, oh! I nearly forgot! “Brand new TARDIS! Bit exciting.” All that metallic orange – doesn’t it look like the Dalek City from the Dr Who and the Daleks movie? But I’ll get used to it. Twelve years ago, I went off to the States for three weeks. When I came back, Richard had painted several of our walls bright orange. I love it now…
The most important thing is, it’s back, and I’m excited. That’s five ‘season openers’ this century in a row that have been lots of fun – and I can’t wait ’til next week. And, if you thought that was a late-night incoherent babble and a waste of your time, at least I wasn’t paid for it. Not a fairy tale, but a cautionary tale: the lovely Mr Simon Guerrier brings news of why paid reviewers simply aren’t worth the money…
Half-midnight update: I need sleep, but fortunately many, many Cadbury’s mini-eggs are sugar-rushing me to the finish. I must have prayed to Santa at some point (hopefully not a robot one).
Richard’s review guesting for Millennium is, of course, utterly clever, and insightful, and well-written, and well-structured, and, well… Fun. For all these reasons, you should scamper off and read it; for all these reasons, I’m very glad that I didn’t read it before I fired off my random observations. His pointing out that the Doctor may have unwittingly created his perfect companion, though, reminds me that Amy’s set up as the polar opposite of Rose and the other family-set Russell companions – the traditional orphan with an aunt who doesn’t care very much (though, unlike many of the Doctor’s past companions, her tragically deceased father was not a lord. As far as we yet know). And then, in as perfectly-falling-into-place a closing image as Steve Moffat wrote last time he did The Girl in the Fireplace, he overturns the whole thing. Or does he? Rory will hope so…
In other and still immensely exciting news, I’ve now just spotted two other reviews by dear friends of mine and incredibly clever people popping up: Jennie’s, who wasn’t much of a fan of Russell but loves this and makes a perfect point about the Lib Dems (no, no, it is on-topic); and Andrew’s, who hated Russell’s with a fiery passion, but likes this up to a point, tries not to “ruin your squee,” and is only slightly cheesed off about the similarities between The Eleventh Hour and a story he’s just written (and I’ve read Andrew’s story; I’m not sure if I prefer it to this one of Steve’s, but I definitely like it better than his last one…). Read them too! Now, time to up-end another tube of Mini-eggs (5 for £4 at Waitrose – bargain!).
Further update: the lovely Caron and Count Packula, Prince of Markness have also given their views on the new Who, while Simon Goldie wonders why Doctor Who has an appeal for so many Liberal Democrats (I have an idea). Wonder if any non-Lib Dems have any thoughts?
Labels: Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Jon Pertwee, Matt Smith, Obscure Doctor Who Jokes, Quatermass
Friday, April 02, 2010
Flash! Douglas Adams Meets Professor Quatermass
It’s an exciting day for sci-fi; you know’ll that Doctor Who returns tomorrow evening, and that tonight the final series of Ashes To Ashes begins. But there are also several other goodies on today which have had less of an advertising blitz. The three closest to my heart are on Radio 4 at 11 this morning – The Doctor and Douglas, celebrating Douglas Adams’ work on Doctor Who – and then competing for your attention at 1.30am on BBC2 and ITV1, the movies The Quatermass Experiment (five years to the day since BBC4’s later remake) and the fabulous Flash Gordon.
Just as The Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy kicked off on radio in 1978, Douglas Adams finally had a Doctor Who script accepted for Tom Baker’s Doctor – The Pirate Planet, one of the finest stories in one of Doctor Who’s finest series, 1978-79’s The Key To Time. So impressive were his ideas, and so far undiscovered were Douglas’ unhappy relationships with deadlines, that he was offered the job of script editor on the show – a slightly less powerful and certainly less prestigious but in most ways identical job to the modern Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat ‘lead writer’ / Executive Producer. His year as script editor, Season 17, still splits Doctor Who fans to this day; cheap and silly, or witty and brilliant? It’s certainly cheap – late ’70s inflation had just inflicted the series’ biggest ever budget cuts – but I love it to bits (and I’m one of the very few fans who seems to love the 1980-81 right after Douglas left, in many ways a reaction against the season before, every bit as much. They tend to be a bit polarising).
When another of Doctor Who’s most wonderfully playful authors, David Fisher, wasn’t able to do the rewrites on one of his two scripts for Douglas’ time as script editor, Douglas and producer Graham Williams took over the redrafting, lending the resultant story a unique collaborative quality. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward are both effortlessly wonderful in it (or at least they seem to be; by all accounts they put the effort into rewriting large chunks of it in rehearsals, too), Julian Glover is a superb villain, the musical score is gorgeous, much of it is filmed in Paris – in Paris! – and it’s the only story of the year that looks like it’s had much money spent on it. Thanks to an ITV strike meaning it was on against nothing but BBC2 and the test card, it won the highest viewing figures in Doctor Who’s history. It’s called City of Death, and it’s still today one of the most highly-regarded of all Doctor Who stories (but can I be heretical and say that Douglas’ The Pirate Planet is even better?).
The Pirate Planet is available on DVD as part of the marvellous The Key To Time box set – recently reissued, so if you hadn’t got it already, you can now – and City of Death, too, is out on DVD (complete with opinion from Steven Moffat, who likes City of Death but thinks Douglas wasn’t a good script editor. In another strike of heresy, I disagree with the Grand Moff, but I don’t have time to go into why here, except to say, watch his stories and aren’t the scripts great?). Of the other stories Douglas script-edited, Destiny of the Daleks is already available on DVD, the extras including grand tales of Douglas’ drinking tours, while another was released just this very week in a box with two other stories. The latest Doctor Who DVD boxed set is titled Myths and Legends, and includes three stories which have in common that each was inspired by Greek myths and each isa bit rubbish not completely at the top end of my favourite Doctor Whos. It’s all a cunning plan to get you to watch them first, and so lower your impossibly high expectations of the new series, you see. The Horns of Nimon, however, is by far the most entertaining of the three for me, and while the budget may be showing and a few of the performances are a little de trop, it’s worth it for Lalla Ward’s blistering Romana, one of the few times the Doctor’s companion is essentially playing the Doctor (while he dosses about), and – as you might expect from rather good former script editor Anthony Read writing the script and Douglas Adams overseeing it – a strong underlying story and some very sharp lines.
Next month, The Creature From the Pit is to be released on DVD, possibly the most hated of all the stories Douglas had a hand in, regarded as terrible science fiction with an embarrassingly badly designed monster. While the eponymous ‘creature’ is indeed hilarious, he’s terribly well-characterised, while the Doctor, the principal villains and Geoffrey Bayldon’s supporting character are superb. It’s a terrific script from David Fisher, too, an intelligent fable about free trade – and you don’t get many of them to the pound – that deconstructs the ‘monster’ story. In short, buy it and make up your own mind, and I’m confident that you’ll find every other fan on Earth is wrong and I am right that is in fact brilliant. Yes, I’m coming out heretic all over today (and speaking of heretics, look out for one of Oolon Colluphid’s books turning up in one of Douglas’ stories, and find out for yourself how important Douglas turned out to be to Richard Dawkins). That just leaves the as-yet-unreleased Nightmare of Eden, which again doesn’t look terribly impressive but is rather a good story, and Shada.
Shada… Shada… Shada… That one went a bit wrong. Douglas’ six-part finale was only half-shot before a BBC strike called it off for ever. Ish. I have to say, it’s far from Douglas’ best script, but it has its moments, so there are two versions worth looking out for. BBC Video released the half of it that had been completed along with some linking narration from Tom Baker a couple of decades ago, and hopefully that, too, will one day emerge on DVD. Alternatively, the lovely people at Big Finish produced an audio adaptation a few years ago starring Paul McGann instead of Tom, and while it’s not nearly as much fun as the ‘original’, it’s not at all bad, and has the undeniable virtue of being finished. Best of all, you can watch their Shada for free on the BBC website, with some flash animation making it a jerky sort-of cartoon and a fabulous song from Lalla Vs Kylie (click “Full screen” if it doesn’t work immediately; if anyone can save it onto a DVD for me, I’d be terribly grateful)!
Douglas never novelised his Doctor Who scripts – in part because he was rather busy avoiding other publishers’ deadlines, in larger part because Target Books couldn’t quite come to terms with a multi-million-selling author’s advance – but, though you can’t technically read them, you can in some practical ways manage it. Douglas, an early practitioner of recycling, put large amounts of City of Death and much larger ones of Shada into some of his books, notably Dirk Gently, while a rejected Doctor Who script forms the basis of Life, the Universe and Everything (as I wrote yesterday). You can also read ebooks of his three Doctor Who stories and the only other two Twentieth-Century Who TV stories that were never released by Target, available as labours of love from New Zealand fan site TSV. They’re not a patch on Douglas’ writing, but some of them are by professional authors themselves, and they’re not bad (though steer clear of another fan adaptation of City of Death produced by Zerinza magazine; I read it once, and it was ghastly).
Anyway, 11 o’clock’s caught up with me, so turn on Radio 4 and you’ll hear Jon Culshaw probably going through all the same sort of things.
There’s newer Doctor Who on BBC3 tonight, of course – a double bill of David Tennant’s grand finale, The End of Time, to get us all ready for Matt Smith tomorrow – but if you want to go back to the week when David got the job, how about The Quatermass Experiment – and if you want to see Timothy Dalton being another aristocratic bastard, how about Flash Gordon…?
The first ever BBC TV science fiction – in fact, the BBC’s first ever specially commissioned original drama serial – was written by another of the Twentieth Century’s most inspired authors, Nigel Kneale, back in 1953. Like Shada, though for different reasons, you can only see parts of the original, and yet there are remakes of this, too. The original series in fact went out live, television being in its infancy, and they only recorded the first third of it as it was broadcast (you can still see that much on the terrific DVD The Quatermass Collection, along with a pdf of the script).
If you’ve seen The Quatermass Experiment today, the chances are it was one of the two remakes: one a movie made in the mid-’50s by Hammer Films; the other a live broadcast that took place on BBC4 on 2nd April 2005. That was just days after news broke that Christopher Eccleston was to leave Doctor Who almost as soon as he’d started, and rumours abounded that David was to get the job. So, when his Dr Briscoe walks on to tend to a patient with a strange, alien infection in BBC4’s The Quatermass Experiment, Jason Flemyng’s Professor Quatermass very deliberately greets him not with the scripted “Hello, Gordon,” but with “Hello, Doctor.”
By one of those lovely quirks of TV scheduling, Hammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment is on tonight at 1.35am on BBC2. You can celebrate today’s Quatermass anniversary by making a double bill of them to see how they compare: the 2005 version is available to watch for free on MSN.
I’ve written about all four of the Quatermass serials before, and while the existing Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit are still among some of the best TV ever produced, I can’t help wondering what the rest of The Quatermass Experiment would have been like: the first episode is rather staid; the second suddenly leaps forward in pace and quality; what might the other four have done? But, instead, there are two complete (though both hugely abridged from the original) versions to judge. The film is often well-shot and atmospheric; it’s a thriller with a superbly played hunted man. But the star casting of Quatermass himself is a terrible mistake (Nigel Kneale’s views about actor Brian Donlevy were, on a good day, only just printable), while too much of the script becomes generic B-movie – not least the ending, which while exciting, entirely misses the point. The BBC4 version, on the other hand, is occasionally a little slow and worthy and, being a live production, it’s a little too obvious that most of it’s taking place in the same warehouse. It does, however, have an excellent cast – Jason Flemyng, David Tennant and Indira Varma, as well as a notably fine performance from Mark Gatiss – and the last ten minutes or so are absolutely gripping, remaining entirely true to the human spirit of the original script.
One day, I might watch the surviving two episodes of the 1953 serial, then the middle of the Hammer movie, then the climax of the BBC4 remake and see if that adds up to the best approximation of the story as written…
Hmm, well, this hasn’t gone in a flash, has it? I was dashing to write a few paragraphs before 11, and now I’ve listened to that Douglas programme – listen again on the BBC iPlayer if you missed it – which was just as I thought it would be, with a particularly fine set of interviewees and several opinions I disagreed with, while this article has grown from something crawling along my arm to the size of Westminster Abbey (if not the Tate Modern). But there was one more thing I was going to talk about for tonight. ITV1 is showing the 1980 Flash Gordon movie at 1.30am. I love Buster Crabbe and Charles Middleton; I sigh with disdain at macho later remakes; but this brightly coloured camp extravaganza is one of the most entertaining films ever made.
Peter Wyngarde steals it from behind a mask as the evil Klytus; Max von Sydow has the time of his life as the louchest emperor in the galaxy; the gorgeous red and gold design and Queen and Howard Blake’s score makes it sumptuous sensory treat. There are some lines you must know from the Queen title song that you can’t resist saying along, I know – put your hands on your hips to do the fabulous Kala:
But best of all are three screen legends giving enormous and each differently entertaining performances: Topol’s Dr Zarkov, a performance more like Tom Baker’s Doctor than any other I can think of on the big screen; future Bond Timothy Dalton, who on being cast in the campest film of the year as a character in green tights, under the mistaken impression this would be something as gritty as the same director’s Get Carter, tries single-handedly to make the movie macho and serious, shouting random swear-words – in fact, all the film’s swear-words – such as “Freeeeeze! …You bloody bastards!” and as a result becomes more hilariously camp than the ones camping it up; and, of course, in the role he was born for, Brian Blessed. Oh, Brian Blessed. All together now:
Super fact: both Flash Gordon and The Horns of Nimon feature soon-to-be-Blue-Peter-presenters in scenes of deadly peril! Only one of them survives…
Oh, and tune in to BBC7 of an evening for more Doctor Who on the wireless, too. On Sunday at 6pm and 12am there’s the second part of former Doctor Who producer and writer Barry Letts’ memoir, Who and Me; on weeknights at 6.30pm and 12.30am Tom Baker reads Terrance Dicks’ novelisation of Tom’s first (and my first) story, Doctor Who and the Giant Robot.
Douglas Adams and Doctor Who
Just as The Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy kicked off on radio in 1978, Douglas Adams finally had a Doctor Who script accepted for Tom Baker’s Doctor – The Pirate Planet, one of the finest stories in one of Doctor Who’s finest series, 1978-79’s The Key To Time. So impressive were his ideas, and so far undiscovered were Douglas’ unhappy relationships with deadlines, that he was offered the job of script editor on the show – a slightly less powerful and certainly less prestigious but in most ways identical job to the modern Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat ‘lead writer’ / Executive Producer. His year as script editor, Season 17, still splits Doctor Who fans to this day; cheap and silly, or witty and brilliant? It’s certainly cheap – late ’70s inflation had just inflicted the series’ biggest ever budget cuts – but I love it to bits (and I’m one of the very few fans who seems to love the 1980-81 right after Douglas left, in many ways a reaction against the season before, every bit as much. They tend to be a bit polarising).
When another of Doctor Who’s most wonderfully playful authors, David Fisher, wasn’t able to do the rewrites on one of his two scripts for Douglas’ time as script editor, Douglas and producer Graham Williams took over the redrafting, lending the resultant story a unique collaborative quality. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward are both effortlessly wonderful in it (or at least they seem to be; by all accounts they put the effort into rewriting large chunks of it in rehearsals, too), Julian Glover is a superb villain, the musical score is gorgeous, much of it is filmed in Paris – in Paris! – and it’s the only story of the year that looks like it’s had much money spent on it. Thanks to an ITV strike meaning it was on against nothing but BBC2 and the test card, it won the highest viewing figures in Doctor Who’s history. It’s called City of Death, and it’s still today one of the most highly-regarded of all Doctor Who stories (but can I be heretical and say that Douglas’ The Pirate Planet is even better?).
The Pirate Planet is available on DVD as part of the marvellous The Key To Time box set – recently reissued, so if you hadn’t got it already, you can now – and City of Death, too, is out on DVD (complete with opinion from Steven Moffat, who likes City of Death but thinks Douglas wasn’t a good script editor. In another strike of heresy, I disagree with the Grand Moff, but I don’t have time to go into why here, except to say, watch his stories and aren’t the scripts great?). Of the other stories Douglas script-edited, Destiny of the Daleks is already available on DVD, the extras including grand tales of Douglas’ drinking tours, while another was released just this very week in a box with two other stories. The latest Doctor Who DVD boxed set is titled Myths and Legends, and includes three stories which have in common that each was inspired by Greek myths and each is
Next month, The Creature From the Pit is to be released on DVD, possibly the most hated of all the stories Douglas had a hand in, regarded as terrible science fiction with an embarrassingly badly designed monster. While the eponymous ‘creature’ is indeed hilarious, he’s terribly well-characterised, while the Doctor, the principal villains and Geoffrey Bayldon’s supporting character are superb. It’s a terrific script from David Fisher, too, an intelligent fable about free trade – and you don’t get many of them to the pound – that deconstructs the ‘monster’ story. In short, buy it and make up your own mind, and I’m confident that you’ll find every other fan on Earth is wrong and I am right that is in fact brilliant. Yes, I’m coming out heretic all over today (and speaking of heretics, look out for one of Oolon Colluphid’s books turning up in one of Douglas’ stories, and find out for yourself how important Douglas turned out to be to Richard Dawkins). That just leaves the as-yet-unreleased Nightmare of Eden, which again doesn’t look terribly impressive but is rather a good story, and Shada.
You Can Look at the Lost Bits For Free…
Shada… Shada… Shada… That one went a bit wrong. Douglas’ six-part finale was only half-shot before a BBC strike called it off for ever. Ish. I have to say, it’s far from Douglas’ best script, but it has its moments, so there are two versions worth looking out for. BBC Video released the half of it that had been completed along with some linking narration from Tom Baker a couple of decades ago, and hopefully that, too, will one day emerge on DVD. Alternatively, the lovely people at Big Finish produced an audio adaptation a few years ago starring Paul McGann instead of Tom, and while it’s not nearly as much fun as the ‘original’, it’s not at all bad, and has the undeniable virtue of being finished. Best of all, you can watch their Shada for free on the BBC website, with some flash animation making it a jerky sort-of cartoon and a fabulous song from Lalla Vs Kylie (click “Full screen” if it doesn’t work immediately; if anyone can save it onto a DVD for me, I’d be terribly grateful)!
Douglas never novelised his Doctor Who scripts – in part because he was rather busy avoiding other publishers’ deadlines, in larger part because Target Books couldn’t quite come to terms with a multi-million-selling author’s advance – but, though you can’t technically read them, you can in some practical ways manage it. Douglas, an early practitioner of recycling, put large amounts of City of Death and much larger ones of Shada into some of his books, notably Dirk Gently, while a rejected Doctor Who script forms the basis of Life, the Universe and Everything (as I wrote yesterday). You can also read ebooks of his three Doctor Who stories and the only other two Twentieth-Century Who TV stories that were never released by Target, available as labours of love from New Zealand fan site TSV. They’re not a patch on Douglas’ writing, but some of them are by professional authors themselves, and they’re not bad (though steer clear of another fan adaptation of City of Death produced by Zerinza magazine; I read it once, and it was ghastly).
Anyway, 11 o’clock’s caught up with me, so turn on Radio 4 and you’ll hear Jon Culshaw probably going through all the same sort of things.
There’s newer Doctor Who on BBC3 tonight, of course – a double bill of David Tennant’s grand finale, The End of Time, to get us all ready for Matt Smith tomorrow – but if you want to go back to the week when David got the job, how about The Quatermass Experiment – and if you want to see Timothy Dalton being another aristocratic bastard, how about Flash Gordon…?
The Quatermass Experiment
The first ever BBC TV science fiction – in fact, the BBC’s first ever specially commissioned original drama serial – was written by another of the Twentieth Century’s most inspired authors, Nigel Kneale, back in 1953. Like Shada, though for different reasons, you can only see parts of the original, and yet there are remakes of this, too. The original series in fact went out live, television being in its infancy, and they only recorded the first third of it as it was broadcast (you can still see that much on the terrific DVD The Quatermass Collection, along with a pdf of the script).
If you’ve seen The Quatermass Experiment today, the chances are it was one of the two remakes: one a movie made in the mid-’50s by Hammer Films; the other a live broadcast that took place on BBC4 on 2nd April 2005. That was just days after news broke that Christopher Eccleston was to leave Doctor Who almost as soon as he’d started, and rumours abounded that David was to get the job. So, when his Dr Briscoe walks on to tend to a patient with a strange, alien infection in BBC4’s The Quatermass Experiment, Jason Flemyng’s Professor Quatermass very deliberately greets him not with the scripted “Hello, Gordon,” but with “Hello, Doctor.”
By one of those lovely quirks of TV scheduling, Hammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment is on tonight at 1.35am on BBC2. You can celebrate today’s Quatermass anniversary by making a double bill of them to see how they compare: the 2005 version is available to watch for free on MSN.
I’ve written about all four of the Quatermass serials before, and while the existing Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit are still among some of the best TV ever produced, I can’t help wondering what the rest of The Quatermass Experiment would have been like: the first episode is rather staid; the second suddenly leaps forward in pace and quality; what might the other four have done? But, instead, there are two complete (though both hugely abridged from the original) versions to judge. The film is often well-shot and atmospheric; it’s a thriller with a superbly played hunted man. But the star casting of Quatermass himself is a terrible mistake (Nigel Kneale’s views about actor Brian Donlevy were, on a good day, only just printable), while too much of the script becomes generic B-movie – not least the ending, which while exciting, entirely misses the point. The BBC4 version, on the other hand, is occasionally a little slow and worthy and, being a live production, it’s a little too obvious that most of it’s taking place in the same warehouse. It does, however, have an excellent cast – Jason Flemyng, David Tennant and Indira Varma, as well as a notably fine performance from Mark Gatiss – and the last ten minutes or so are absolutely gripping, remaining entirely true to the human spirit of the original script.
One day, I might watch the surviving two episodes of the 1953 serial, then the middle of the Hammer movie, then the climax of the BBC4 remake and see if that adds up to the best approximation of the story as written…
Flash Gordon
Hmm, well, this hasn’t gone in a flash, has it? I was dashing to write a few paragraphs before 11, and now I’ve listened to that Douglas programme – listen again on the BBC iPlayer if you missed it – which was just as I thought it would be, with a particularly fine set of interviewees and several opinions I disagreed with, while this article has grown from something crawling along my arm to the size of Westminster Abbey (if not the Tate Modern). But there was one more thing I was going to talk about for tonight. ITV1 is showing the 1980 Flash Gordon movie at 1.30am. I love Buster Crabbe and Charles Middleton; I sigh with disdain at macho later remakes; but this brightly coloured camp extravaganza is one of the most entertaining films ever made.
Peter Wyngarde steals it from behind a mask as the evil Klytus; Max von Sydow has the time of his life as the louchest emperor in the galaxy; the gorgeous red and gold design and Queen and Howard Blake’s score makes it sumptuous sensory treat. There are some lines you must know from the Queen title song that you can’t resist saying along, I know – put your hands on your hips to do the fabulous Kala:
“What do you mean, Flash Gordon approaching?”And surely most people watching will fancy either Ornella Muti or Sam J Jones? Flash flashing those tiny leather shorts and that hairy chest. Mmmmm. Er… Where was I? While Star Wars was surely a better film, and a great modern legend, this film realised that it could do one thing better: never mind the purity of the Force, Flash Gordon positively drips with pervy sex, and yet never quite enough that could be complained about, so I could still be taken to the cinema to see it aged 8. Fabulous.
But best of all are three screen legends giving enormous and each differently entertaining performances: Topol’s Dr Zarkov, a performance more like Tom Baker’s Doctor than any other I can think of on the big screen; future Bond Timothy Dalton, who on being cast in the campest film of the year as a character in green tights, under the mistaken impression this would be something as gritty as the same director’s Get Carter, tries single-handedly to make the movie macho and serious, shouting random swear-words – in fact, all the film’s swear-words – such as “Freeeeeze! …You bloody bastards!” and as a result becomes more hilariously camp than the ones camping it up; and, of course, in the role he was born for, Brian Blessed. Oh, Brian Blessed. All together now:
“GORDON’S ALIVE?!?!”
Super fact: both Flash Gordon and The Horns of Nimon feature soon-to-be-Blue-Peter-presenters in scenes of deadly peril! Only one of them survives…
Doctor Who on BBC7
Oh, and tune in to BBC7 of an evening for more Doctor Who on the wireless, too. On Sunday at 6pm and 12am there’s the second part of former Doctor Who producer and writer Barry Letts’ memoir, Who and Me; on weeknights at 6.30pm and 12.30am Tom Baker reads Terrance Dicks’ novelisation of Tom’s first (and my first) story, Doctor Who and the Giant Robot.
Labels: Big Finish, Books, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Douglas Adams, James Bond, Julian Glover, Matt Smith, Quatermass, Radio, The Key To Time, Tom Baker
Thursday, April 01, 2010
The Eleven Faces of Doctor Who
On the day after tomorrow, we’ll have a new Doctor Who episode and a new Doctor. Are you as hugely excited as I am? And as desperate to avoid spoilers (though the 70-second preview on Freeview 301’s OK)? Then why not distract yourself with the other Doctors instead? The last time the most popular Doctor ever left he was Tom Baker in 1981, and to ready you for the youngest Doctor ever when he was Peter Davison the BBC mounted a repeat season, The Five Faces of Doctor Who. Here’s how to spend your Easter holiday weekend doing the same. Just don’t tell your local Lib Dem campaign team…
If you’ve had the misfortune never to see , by the way, and don’t know what it’s all about, click over for a couple of minutes to So Who is This Doctor Bloke Anyway? which reveals that the series’ essentials are actually very simple. Just very strange. A couple of the names have changed since – it was written exactly three years ago – but all the meaning’s still the same. And once you’re done, you should be all primed to want to watch some of it… Which is what today’s article is about.
Before DVDs, videos and more than three TV channels, five old Doctor Who stories – or even four old stories and one that had been on a few months earlier – was almost unbearably exciting. We had a William Hartnell story, a Patrick Troughton story, a Jon Pertwee story, one with all three, and then the final one of Tom Baker’s… Complete with eight seconds of freshly-regenerated Peter Davison looking around blearily at the end (making it five faces, even though technically none of Peter’s stories had been broadcast yet, you see?). These days, of course, you can easily amass an enormous Doctor Who DVD collection, or watch old stories online through legal means or others Lord Mandelson wants to cut your head off for, so a repeat season’s both less exciting and far easier to put together at home.
For today’s exciting suggestions, girls and boys, it’s best have an enormous Doctor Who DVD collection to hand. If you are unaccountably missing such an obvious household necessity, there’ll be a free selection along tomorrow, all sourced in a BBC-authorised way that Lord Mandelson won’t cut you off for except in the case of some horrendous ‘punish first, ask questions later’ cock-up (O noes!).
To get into the spirit of the thing, imagine that you’re a BBC channel controller. What if you were designing an exciting proper repeat season to go out on proper telly and everything? And so – as BBC1 is for brand new Doctor Who and BBC3 is for endless repeats of slightly less brand new but definitely from this century Doctor Who, followed by as many different permutations of young people copping off with each other as can fill up the schedules – you can opt for either The (action-packed with famous baddies) BBC2 Schedule or The (very very slightly more intelligent) BBC4 Schedule. Or make up your own, of course, but that would be insanity.
Of course, if I really were a BBC channel controller, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I’d find it impossibly tempting not either to start at the beginning of Sir Thomas Baker and show his whole lot (his stories being, in general, my favourites), or – ideally – to pour the channel’s entire budget for the year into making swish animated versions of the Doctor Who stories from the ’60s the BBC carelessly burnt and showing all of those (the first two Doctors being, in general, my favourites, and the stories damn well deserving to be brought back to life). But with a new Doctor, you should be balanced, really, shouldn’t you?
For that properFive Eleven Faces feel, just as they did in 1981, you should start at the beginning with the very first story, An Unearthly Child, and finish with the very latest so far, The End of Time – so you can plunge breathlessly into the TARDIS when it was shiny, new, and utterly incredible, then get those breathless few seconds of shiny, new, and utterly incredible Matt Smith as the battered old TARDIS plunges towards… Where? But unlike the original repeat season, I’m going to recommend other William Hartnell and David Tennant stories to show them off as well – because the Tenth Doctor deserves a story of his own rather than just a big run-up to the Eleventh, and because… Well, because William Hartnell is utterly, sublimely brilliant in An Unearthly Child, but so scarily otherworldly that he’s not quite ‘the Doctor’ yet. That first story, incidentally, was four episodes long and for me the whole thing is terrific, but the very first episode – also called An Unearthly Child – makes an ideal introduction on its own, starting with two ordinary people in our own world who stumble across a futuristic time machine and then travel deep into the past. For either channel, I’d show those first twenty-five minutes as a standalone prologue to the whole series, probably back-to-back with a ‘Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?’ half-hour celebration piece. I can’t make the latter for you, but I can suggest you start with the series’ first ever episode, perhaps the single greatest piece of television of the 1960s.
BBC2’s The Eleven Faces of Doctor Who would be shown on Saturday afternoons or evenings, each story roughly an hour and a half long (four old episodes / two new ones) and edited together into a movie format to grab people’s attention in one go and fit into the same slot each week. As one of the main channels, it would be quite populist, with infamous enemies people new to Twentieth Century Doctor Who would recognise from the last five years. So would you watch it…?
Tune in to BBC Radio 4 tomorrow at 11am, incidentally, for a programme that will almost certainly feature parts of The Pirate Planet and City of Death – because each was either written or co-written by Douglas Adams. I suspect there may be a remarkable amount about Life, the Universe and Everything, too, Douglas’ novel adapted from an unused Doctor Who script, with bits of several other Who stories flashing into it too. What I always notice is that the two characters who occupy a vaguely Doctorish space in Douglas’ novels – Ford Prefect and Slartibartfast – are squeezed in different directions for the rewritten Doctor Who story, Ford suddenly becoming far more louche and Slartibartfast far more driven… Because if either had kept their usual characters, you’d have noticed them competing (just not very hard) for the same sort of role in the narrative. Somewhere in some alternate universe, there’s a version of the book in which Ford decides to save the Universe with the reluctant aid of a Slartibartfast who wants to sit about just looking at fjords. That is, as you may have guessed, The Doctor and Douglas, Radio 4, 11am, 2nd April.
BBC4’s The Eleven Faces of Doctor Who would be shown on weekday evenings, repeated as the original episodes rather than re-edited, but with two shown back-to-back each night to fill the best part of an hour’s slot, and again made up of stories lasting in total roughly an hour and a half long (four old episodes / two new ones), making each spread across two nights or so. As one of the smaller channels, it could find an audience for Doctor Who that’s perhaps more thought-provoking, more satirical and more just downright strange. So would you watch it…?
Finally, if you don’t have time for all of those, to warm up for Saturday why not just go for the epic of time-travelling warlords, where the Time Lords catch up with the Doctor and prove to be utter bastards, that ends in long goodbyes and the Doctor’s regeneration? No, not The End of Time, but the finale for Matt Smith’s favourite Doctor – The War Games.
Where To Start?
If you’ve had the misfortune never to see , by the way, and don’t know what it’s all about, click over for a couple of minutes to So Who is This Doctor Bloke Anyway? which reveals that the series’ essentials are actually very simple. Just very strange. A couple of the names have changed since – it was written exactly three years ago – but all the meaning’s still the same. And once you’re done, you should be all primed to want to watch some of it… Which is what today’s article is about.
Before DVDs, videos and more than three TV channels, five old Doctor Who stories – or even four old stories and one that had been on a few months earlier – was almost unbearably exciting. We had a William Hartnell story, a Patrick Troughton story, a Jon Pertwee story, one with all three, and then the final one of Tom Baker’s… Complete with eight seconds of freshly-regenerated Peter Davison looking around blearily at the end (making it five faces, even though technically none of Peter’s stories had been broadcast yet, you see?). These days, of course, you can easily amass an enormous Doctor Who DVD collection, or watch old stories online through legal means or others Lord Mandelson wants to cut your head off for, so a repeat season’s both less exciting and far easier to put together at home.
For today’s exciting suggestions, girls and boys, it’s best have an enormous Doctor Who DVD collection to hand. If you are unaccountably missing such an obvious household necessity, there’ll be a free selection along tomorrow, all sourced in a BBC-authorised way that Lord Mandelson won’t cut you off for except in the case of some horrendous ‘punish first, ask questions later’ cock-up (O noes!).
To get into the spirit of the thing, imagine that you’re a BBC channel controller. What if you were designing an exciting proper repeat season to go out on proper telly and everything? And so – as BBC1 is for brand new Doctor Who and BBC3 is for endless repeats of slightly less brand new but definitely from this century Doctor Who, followed by as many different permutations of young people copping off with each other as can fill up the schedules – you can opt for either The (action-packed with famous baddies) BBC2 Schedule or The (very very slightly more intelligent) BBC4 Schedule. Or make up your own, of course, but that would be insanity.
Of course, if I really were a BBC channel controller, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I’d find it impossibly tempting not either to start at the beginning of Sir Thomas Baker and show his whole lot (his stories being, in general, my favourites), or – ideally – to pour the channel’s entire budget for the year into making swish animated versions of the Doctor Who stories from the ’60s the BBC carelessly burnt and showing all of those (the first two Doctors being, in general, my favourites, and the stories damn well deserving to be brought back to life). But with a new Doctor, you should be balanced, really, shouldn’t you?
For that proper
The BBC2 Schedule
BBC2’s The Eleven Faces of Doctor Who would be shown on Saturday afternoons or evenings, each story roughly an hour and a half long (four old episodes / two new ones) and edited together into a movie format to grab people’s attention in one go and fit into the same slot each week. As one of the main channels, it would be quite populist, with infamous enemies people new to Twentieth Century Doctor Who would recognise from the last five years. So would you watch it…?
Introducing the Doctor in An Unearthly Child, starring William Hartnell…That was awfully difficult, you know. I was torn between several for most Doctors, and many for Tom. I jotted down my instinctive choices, then thought, ‘but how balanced is that selection?’ With the most varied and marvellous series ever imagined, can any selection show every angle – a dash of horror, adventures in history, enough wit to make you smile, enough ideas and strangeness and to make you think, and enough action to get you excited…? So, raising my inner geekdom to heroic proportions, I made a great big table of all the elements that needed to be in a repeat season, so it wouldn’t all be the same, and make sure I had stories that balanced out neatly… Which is why I’ve ended up with two pairs of consecutive stories by the same authors, and two set in World War II, two mummy pastiches, and lots of scary ones and probably not enough funny ones, and, and, and… Oh, just watch ’em. The last to be crossed out, incidentally, were Tom’s Planet of Evil (another scary one, with the series’ most stunning alien world), The Robots of Death (a murder mystery with more gorgeous design), and The Pirate Planet, The Androids of Tara and City of Death, simply because all of them are fabulously playful fun.
William Hartnell is the Doctor in The Dalek Invasion of Earth
First of all the alien invasion stories, with scenes of a deserted London under Dalek occupation it would be impossible to shoot today. There’s grim horror, a famously marvellous closing speech from the Doctor, and some rather splendid DVD extras – including a fab CGI flying saucer that I’d show the story with rather than the slightly disappointing original. And yes, this is one of two stories here that are rather longer than my ‘limit’, but Daleks are a good draw for audiences, and this one was remade as a movie with Peter Cushing… So the idea of re-editing the proper version into movie form entertains me.
Patrick Troughton is the Doctor in The Tomb of the Cybermen
An ancient alien world, superb design, terrific villains and a trap laid by monsters who aren’t as dead as everyone thought… Suspense, eerie music and memorable images are all here, but the heart of it is the Doctor comforting his companion in a simply gorgeous quiet conversation. Introduced to all the old Doctors, Matt Smith saw this story and decided that Pat was his favourite – it’s where he gets the bow tie from – and Pat is so spellbinding in this story that it might just be my favourite single performance from any Doctor.
Jon Pertwee is the Doctor in Spearhead from Space
A newly regenerated Doctor crashes to Earth with a knackered TARDIS and takes a while to find his feet… You might find this influential, with Autons too taking the high street by storm in one of the series’ most memorable sequences. It’s also very witty, with the show almost stolen by the Doctor’s two companions, the bluff Brigadier and sharp scientist Dr Liz Shaw.
Tom Baker is the Doctor in Pyramids of Mars
Horror a hundred years ago, with stiff upper lips pitted against walking mummies and a dark god with the voice of the Beast – perhaps the series’ most chilling villain. All this, plus Michael Sheard (Mr Bronson), Bernard Archard and the wonderful Sarah Jane Smith. The DVD’s packed with marvellousness, too.
Peter Davison is the Doctor in Earthshock
The Cybermen are on the march in a brilliantly directed future war story with a famously tragic ending… In one of the series’ most macho stories – there are many roles for women, but most of them are written as if they could be Arnold Schwarzenegger – it’s also fantastic that the aggressive space captain is played not by Sigourney Weaver but Beryl Reid. This could only be Doctor Who.
Colin Baker is the Doctor in Revelation of the Daleks
A stunning black comedy, with a gurglingly delighted Davros plotting away at the heart of it, some great guest stars, really rather a lot of death and one nearly-Dalek that you will never forget. The director’s so good he’s the only one to direct Doctor Who in both centuries, too.
Sylvester McCoy is the Doctor in The Curse of Fenric
Vampires and counterplotting in World War II, with a story that’s both action-packed and intelligent. It’s also the easiest of all the choices – for Doctors where there’s a choice – for a season of movie-length repeats, as a rather brilliant movie-length special edition has already been created for the DVD. Pop it on, then.
Paul McGann is the Doctor in Doctor Who – The TV Movie
Another newly regenerated Doctor faces a fight on slightly-ahead-of-modern-day Earth, this time in America and against the Master. Admire the Doctor, enjoy the Master, see how pretty it all is, and try to ignore the script. While I took a while to decide on stories for some of the Doctors, with at least a dozen rattling around my head from The Tom Baker Years, sadly there aren’t many to choose between from The Paul McGann Early Evening… Though if I was doing a repeat season on BBC7, he’s had some fabulous audio adventures.
Christopher Eccleston is the Doctor in The Empty Child
Mysterious zombies stalk the night in a very different World War II story written by new Grand Mekon Steven Moffat – witty, scary, uplifting, even award-winning, and introducing Captain Jack. Featuring Richard Wilson as you’ve never seen him before (well, unless you’ve watched it in any of the 832 times it’s been shown on BBC3).
David Tennant is the Doctor in Last of the Time Lords
And, again, I cheat. I could have gone for The Impossible Planet, perhaps the most movie-like Doctor Who story I can think of – or the terrific Daleks-Cybermen-Torchwood battle of Doomsday. So a three-part season finale that adds up to well over two hours, where each episode is so different from the one before that it would make a very oddly-structured movie, seems a peculiar choice. And yet… It has one of the show’s three most stunning regenerations, and the only one of those that isn’t the Doctor. It’s funny, it’s shocking, it’s downright peculiar; David Tennant suffers outstandingly; Martha is heroic; it encapsulates the series’ travels through time and space by going from an alien world at the end of the Universe to our own Earth to Earth gone terribly wrong – most of all, despite its faults, it’s the single one of Russell T Davies’ stories that I keep coming back to watch over and over again for the sheer joy of it. Not least in that the return of the Master is the perfect scene-setter for…
David Tennant is the Doctor in The End of Time, which is on BBC3 again tomorrow night if you don’t have the DVD… And introducing Matt Smith!
Tune in to BBC Radio 4 tomorrow at 11am, incidentally, for a programme that will almost certainly feature parts of The Pirate Planet and City of Death – because each was either written or co-written by Douglas Adams. I suspect there may be a remarkable amount about Life, the Universe and Everything, too, Douglas’ novel adapted from an unused Doctor Who script, with bits of several other Who stories flashing into it too. What I always notice is that the two characters who occupy a vaguely Doctorish space in Douglas’ novels – Ford Prefect and Slartibartfast – are squeezed in different directions for the rewritten Doctor Who story, Ford suddenly becoming far more louche and Slartibartfast far more driven… Because if either had kept their usual characters, you’d have noticed them competing (just not very hard) for the same sort of role in the narrative. Somewhere in some alternate universe, there’s a version of the book in which Ford decides to save the Universe with the reluctant aid of a Slartibartfast who wants to sit about just looking at fjords. That is, as you may have guessed, The Doctor and Douglas, Radio 4, 11am, 2nd April.
The BBC4 Schedule
BBC4’s The Eleven Faces of Doctor Who would be shown on weekday evenings, repeated as the original episodes rather than re-edited, but with two shown back-to-back each night to fill the best part of an hour’s slot, and again made up of stories lasting in total roughly an hour and a half long (four old episodes / two new ones), making each spread across two nights or so. As one of the smaller channels, it could find an audience for Doctor Who that’s perhaps more thought-provoking, more satirical and more just downright strange. So would you watch it…?
Introducing the Doctor in An Unearthly Child, starring William Hartnell…This choice seemed easier, though again I drew up a great big grid to make sure it was terribly well-balanced – and so, of course, ended up with several stories by one author, and a clutch of postmodern satires about TV. Rather than The Time Warrior and Vengeance on Varos, by the way, I nearly opted for Carnival of Monsters and The Two Doctors; the former making a slightly better TV satire, though the latter with noticeably worse Sontarans. I probably enjoy the latter two stories more – all four are funny, and often tasteless – but, while The Two Doctors has Colin at his very best, it also goes on a bit too long and has some rather iffy morals… Besides, that would have ended up with four in a row from the same writer, and while he may indeed be my favourite, that’s a bit much for variety.
William Hartnell is the Doctor in The Aztecs
Pure history, with marvellous dialogue and a central moral dilemma – Barbara, perhaps the strongest of all the Doctor’s companions, seems to have been put in a position where she can change history and sets out to do it. The Doctor sets out to stop her. Both Jacqueline Hill and William Hartnell are simply stunning… And, if you’re a Shipper for the Twenty-first Century stories, here the Doctor gets engaged (but no tongues).
Patrick Troughton is the Doctor in The Mind Robber
The TARDIS explodes into the Land of Fiction in one of the weirdest, most brilliant of all Doctor Who. From sci-fi to superheroes, mythology to mind games, the inventiveness keeps going – and wait ’til you see the Doctor’s companion losing face. It might fit a little awkwardly into a BBC4 slot, as it’s actually in five episodes – but, as they’re each shorter than usual, the whole thing is barely longer than an ordinary story.
Jon Pertwee is the Doctor in The Time Warrior
Though starting off in Pertwee’s comfort zone of the-just-after-present-day, with a little help from the Brigadier, before long he’s travelling back to a castle in the Thirteenth Century to fight the original Sontaran. It’s the first story for Sarah Jane Smith, too, and she really grabs it – in a very funny story, she also gets the best deadpan joke without meaning to… Oh, and it’s got Dot Cotton and Boba Fett in it! While two of these stories have new effects on DVD that are must-sees, and two more have new effects that I can take or leave, this one puts me in a quandary: mostly, the added CGI offers greatly improved effects that I’d prefer to broadcast – but the final one replaces a stock great big explosion with a feeble one that resembles a dragon sneezing through a gateway.
Tom Baker is the Doctor in The Deadly Assassin
Death strikes on the planet of the Time Lords, as the Doctor and the Master return in a serial that’s exploding with ideas for both story and storytelling. It starts as film noir political satire, then swerves into virtual reality and gritty surrealism, with great cliffhangers along the way and even inspiring The Matrix movies… What more could you ask for?
Peter Davison is the Doctor in The Caves of Androzani
An extraordinary mixture of ‘arthouse’ and ‘macho’ styles, with a terrific script, dazzling direction, rattlesnake-eerie music and compelling actors. A cynical desert war, noirishly twisted love and graveyard humour meet for a revenge drama where everyone’s destroyed in a chain reaction from picking on an innocent – the Doctor. And it kills him: at the end, nice Peter explodes into Colin in a striking regeneration.
Colin Baker is the Doctor in Vengeance on Varos
Politics meets reality TV before reality TV was invented – with an irresistibly horrible new alien villain. Sharp, funny and violent, it’s just the thing to watch before a General Election: Martin Jarvis isn’t every voter’s favourite (though Jason Connery with his top off might be).
Sylvester McCoy is the Doctor in Ghost Light
A Nineteenth Century Darwinian fable that’s witty, intelligent and looks rather splendid, if you like spooky old houses, this is the one for you. It’s the shortest of my picks, at just three episodes, but worth watching over and over (and perhaps necessary), with the Doctor’s friend Ace put to the test not just by alien angels and icy screen legend Sylvia Syms but by the Doctor himself. And apologies to the author, who I know’s read this blog on occasion and doesn’t like one-line reviews; I’ll return to it properly eventually!
Paul McGann is the Doctor in Doctor Who – The TV Movie
Another newly regenerated Doctor faces a fight on slightly-ahead-of-modern-day Earth, this time in America and against the Master. Admire the Doctor, enjoy the Master, see how pretty it all is, and try to ignore the script. While I took a while to decide on stories for some of the Doctors, with at least a dozen rattling around my head from The Tom Baker Years, sadly there aren’t many to choose between from The Paul McGann Early Evening… Though if I was doing a repeat season on BBC7, he’s had some fabulous audio adventures.
Christopher Eccleston is the Doctor in Bad Wolf
The Doctor regenerates again to get you in the mood for Matt, this time giving us a glimpse of David at the end – but it’s Chris’ story, and he’s fantastic. Along the way, there’s more savage TV satire, the most memorable cry of “Exterminate!” you’ll never hear, and the series’ most stunning Dalek action (if you’ve watched my William Hartnell choices, here’s a still more brutal Dalek invasion of Earth and still more groovy saucers, as well as another companion becoming a goddess).
David Tennant is not the Doctor in Human Nature
The Doctor turns human, and his adventures turn into dreams. But the aliens chasing the inner him turn them into nightmares… A gorgeous, moving story in the looming shadow of World War I, John Smith is torn between love and war, while wild-eyed young Son-of-Mine has super, super fun. Perhaps my favourite of all the Twenty-first Century TV stories so far, and a small-scale, heartfelt moment to treasure before the epic that is…
David Tennant is the Doctor in The End of Time, which is on BBC3 again tomorrow night if you don’t have the DVD… And introducing Matt Smith!
Finally, if you don’t have time for all of those, to warm up for Saturday why not just go for the epic of time-travelling warlords, where the Time Lords catch up with the Doctor and prove to be utter bastards, that ends in long goodbyes and the Doctor’s regeneration? No, not The End of Time, but the finale for Matt Smith’s favourite Doctor – The War Games.
Labels: Christopher Eccleston, Colin Baker, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Douglas Adams, Jon Pertwee, Matt Smith, Patrick Troughton, Paul McGann, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy, Tom Baker, William Hartnell
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
New Soiled Labour: A Cautionary Tale
With excruciating timing, just as the bloated zombie of the “New” Labour Government is (hopefully) due at last to lumber into its grave, one of the main reasons to bury it at a crossroads with a stake through its heart returns from the dead. Long-term readers may remember that I was never fond of the pure poison to the body politic that was for too long Prime Minister, so Mr Blair’s resurrection today in a body that (like Lord Voldemort’s) is no longer quite human started me thinking of the terrible lessons to learn from the fable of New Labour…
Wasn’t it astounding to see Gordon Brown, surely one of the few people on Earth who loathes Tony Blair more than I do, calling him back after all the hate everyone knows they’ve spat at each other to give one last lie for the gitter?
Wasn’t it astounding to see Labourites on Twitter pretending they’re pleased to see him again, with the celebratory hasbeentag #BlairsBack (still with #BrownsKnives?) fighting for attention with the competing #TheMummyReturns, #SendHimToTheHague and #MoneyTalks?
And wasn’t it astounding to see a man who’s not standing for election – who can’t be held to account – fly in on a tide of money and order us all what to do, as if he still had absolutely power? Wasn’t it just like old times for the Labservatives to assume that we must all do what they say, as long as they’re rich and arrogant enough, and no need for them to be elected? And wasn’t it absolutely bloody typical of the man who lied our country into an illegal war at the behest of God and George Bush – and with the full support of the Labservative Parties – to make his grand declamation, tell us all what to do… Then refuse to answer a single question, ordering out anyone who tried to hold him to account?
As you may have gathered, Mr Blair descending to Earth to lay his holy hand on us miserable sinners is reminding me just how much I loathe him. I disliked him very much even before he became Labour Leader; he fulfilled all my grim expectations as Prime Minister; and then as war criminal and George Bush cheerleader he became someone who I could no longer look at without feeling muscles clenching and teeth grinding.
It’s one of the paradoxes of politics that, although I dislike Mr Cameron far more than I do Mr Brown, I suspect that Dave (in his vacuous nebulosity) would be easier to deal with. Gordon Brown is a bullying, egomaniacal control freak and not up to the job, but I can’t help thinking that he means some of what he says – unlike Mr Blair, bar his warmongering. If there’s one good thing to say about the (looks at watch) still current Prime Minister, it’s that while he always wanted to have Mr Blair’s job, he never wanted to be Mr Blair. One reason I detest Cameron more of today’s two Labservative Leaders is that he desperately wants to be Mr Blair, only without the talent (which means, grudgingly, that he probably has less capacity for evil, though not for want of trying).
None of this is to deny Tony Blair’s abilities. He was a phenomenal talent, leaving his two Labservative successors standing. But having talent isn’t enough – it’s what you do with it. And he used his flair and his power to preach at the powerless and suck up to the powerful. He was a poisonous, hypocritical, sanctimonious liar. Mr Blair reminds me of the joke told by Denis Healey about David Owen, in the style of Sleeping Beauty:
The other cautionary tale to take from New Labour is simply this. The moment they were elected, they started tugging their hardest at all the levers of power, only to find they weren’t connected to anything. Their solution?
Build more levers! More levers! Always more levers*!
Still, after all that, if you’re a better person than Tony Blair – and that’s not hard – you might find it in your heart to pity him. Just a little. Have you seen pictures of him speaking today? The poor** man. Wearing those burning pants so long has finally barbecued him all the way up to his face.
Count Packula, Prince of Markness – yes, the Lib Dems have our own undead forces – has applied his razor-sharpteeth and discovered that, in endorsing Gordon Brown, Tony Blair has been careful to leave his own ‘plausible deniability’ in place. You think that’s an exaggeration? Seriously.
Update: having been unable to bear actually watching Mr Blair’s speech, I sat down to read some of it. It was worse than I expected.
He still has chutzpah; he attacks Mr Cameron’s message of “change” as “the most vacuous in politics”. It’s bizarre to hear the truth from Tony Blair, and yet a truth that can only ever reflect on his opponents, and not himself:
But the line that really turned my stomach – the one that the Liberal Democrats should shout from the rooftops, because it should make everyone still considering voting for the Labour Party ashamed – is when he finally came out and revealed what he really believes, deep in his shrivelled soul.
For all Labour’s attempt to be all things to all people, for all their attempt to chat up Lib Dems in 1997 and, again, now that they fear they need our votes, their record is of a savagely authoritarian party that has turned back the clock at almost every point to state power against individual choice, that has tried again and again to destroy the Rule of Law. One that has been, incredibly, far worse and more repressive than the Conservatives of the 1980s and 1990s. But who could have guessed that even Mr Blair would choose so revealing a selling-point as to shout that we must choose Mr Brown over Mr Cameron – because the Conservatives are TOO LIBERAL.
*The Labour Party has created more than 4,300 new laws since it came to office, at a rate greater than any government in the history of Britain.
**Tony Blair’s definition of poor does not exclude wealth beyond the dreams of githood.
Wasn’t it astounding to see Gordon Brown, surely one of the few people on Earth who loathes Tony Blair more than I do, calling him back after all the hate everyone knows they’ve spat at each other to give one last lie for the gitter?
Wasn’t it astounding to see Labourites on Twitter pretending they’re pleased to see him again, with the celebratory hasbeentag #BlairsBack (still with #BrownsKnives?) fighting for attention with the competing #TheMummyReturns, #SendHimToTheHague and #MoneyTalks?
And wasn’t it astounding to see a man who’s not standing for election – who can’t be held to account – fly in on a tide of money and order us all what to do, as if he still had absolutely power? Wasn’t it just like old times for the Labservatives to assume that we must all do what they say, as long as they’re rich and arrogant enough, and no need for them to be elected? And wasn’t it absolutely bloody typical of the man who lied our country into an illegal war at the behest of God and George Bush – and with the full support of the Labservative Parties – to make his grand declamation, tell us all what to do… Then refuse to answer a single question, ordering out anyone who tried to hold him to account?
As you may have gathered, Mr Blair descending to Earth to lay his holy hand on us miserable sinners is reminding me just how much I loathe him. I disliked him very much even before he became Labour Leader; he fulfilled all my grim expectations as Prime Minister; and then as war criminal and George Bush cheerleader he became someone who I could no longer look at without feeling muscles clenching and teeth grinding.
It’s one of the paradoxes of politics that, although I dislike Mr Cameron far more than I do Mr Brown, I suspect that Dave (in his vacuous nebulosity) would be easier to deal with. Gordon Brown is a bullying, egomaniacal control freak and not up to the job, but I can’t help thinking that he means some of what he says – unlike Mr Blair, bar his warmongering. If there’s one good thing to say about the (looks at watch) still current Prime Minister, it’s that while he always wanted to have Mr Blair’s job, he never wanted to be Mr Blair. One reason I detest Cameron more of today’s two Labservative Leaders is that he desperately wants to be Mr Blair, only without the talent (which means, grudgingly, that he probably has less capacity for evil, though not for want of trying).
Blairytales of New Labour
None of this is to deny Tony Blair’s abilities. He was a phenomenal talent, leaving his two Labservative successors standing. But having talent isn’t enough – it’s what you do with it. And he used his flair and his power to preach at the powerless and suck up to the powerful. He was a poisonous, hypocritical, sanctimonious liar. Mr Blair reminds me of the joke told by Denis Healey about David Owen, in the style of Sleeping Beauty:
When Tony was born, fairies gathered round his crib to shower every possible gift on him. He would be successful, intelligent, lucky, handsome, charismatic…The moral of this story, as always, is that it’s not what you have that counts – it’s what you do with it.
But, unfortunately, the bad fairy also turned up. And she said, ‘He will have all those gifts, and more. But he will also be… A shit.’
The other cautionary tale to take from New Labour is simply this. The moment they were elected, they started tugging their hardest at all the levers of power, only to find they weren’t connected to anything. Their solution?
Build more levers! More levers! Always more levers*!
Still, after all that, if you’re a better person than Tony Blair – and that’s not hard – you might find it in your heart to pity him. Just a little. Have you seen pictures of him speaking today? The poor** man. Wearing those burning pants so long has finally barbecued him all the way up to his face.
Count Packula, Prince of Markness – yes, the Lib Dems have our own undead forces – has applied his razor-sharp
Update: having been unable to bear actually watching Mr Blair’s speech, I sat down to read some of it. It was worse than I expected.
He still has chutzpah; he attacks Mr Cameron’s message of “change” as “the most vacuous in politics”. It’s bizarre to hear the truth from Tony Blair, and yet a truth that can only ever reflect on his opponents, and not himself:
“Is there a core…? Think of all the phrases you associate with their leadership and the phrase ‘you know where you are with them’ is about the last description you would think of.”Is that just out-and-out hypocrisy from the man who “changed” the Labour Party by turning into a vacuum, precisely as Mr Cameron attempted to do with his own half of the Labservatives? Or is it the disdain of a convert who finally found something to believe in – conquering the world with George Bush – and so embodying a very particular cautionary tale, that if you elect someone who’s ditched everything they ever believed in, you never know what hideous monstrosity is going to crawl into the vacuum left behind?
But the line that really turned my stomach – the one that the Liberal Democrats should shout from the rooftops, because it should make everyone still considering voting for the Labour Party ashamed – is when he finally came out and revealed what he really believes, deep in his shrivelled soul.
For all Labour’s attempt to be all things to all people, for all their attempt to chat up Lib Dems in 1997 and, again, now that they fear they need our votes, their record is of a savagely authoritarian party that has turned back the clock at almost every point to state power against individual choice, that has tried again and again to destroy the Rule of Law. One that has been, incredibly, far worse and more repressive than the Conservatives of the 1980s and 1990s. But who could have guessed that even Mr Blair would choose so revealing a selling-point as to shout that we must choose Mr Brown over Mr Cameron – because the Conservatives are TOO LIBERAL.
“On law and order, they've gone liberal when actually they should have stuck with a traditional Conservative position.”Like yours, Mr Blair? And yet he hacked apart our liberties in ways even traditional Conservatives wouldn’t have dreamt of – and now, at last, he boasts about it, like the murderer returning to the scene of the crime. A monstrously illiberal Prime Minister, finally turned from dissembling to proclaiming his monstrosity with sneering pride. The man who believes he is always right has finally made a statement of such appalling hubris that it deserves to be repeated over and over until every Labour voter knows exactly what foulness they’re supporting.
*The Labour Party has created more than 4,300 new laws since it came to office, at a rate greater than any government in the history of Britain.
**Tony Blair’s definition of poor does not exclude wealth beyond the dreams of githood.
Labels: British Politics, Iraq, Labour, Labservative
Thursday, February 25, 2010
EXCLUSIVE: BBC Denies Another Question Time Panel ‘Unbalanced’
The BBC today* denied accusations (again) that stuffing Question Time with five authoritarian egomaniacs (again) displayed a jaw-dropping lack of political balance (again). ‘We apportion panellists according to the votes political parties receive,’ a spokesperson said. ‘By winning about one in four votes, the Liberal Democrats get one place in four. Hang on, does that say one place in four weeks? Shit! I mean, no comment.
‘With Peter Hain, Liam Fox, Elfyn Llwyd, Nigel Farage and Janet Street Porter [see our EXCLUSIVE advance photograph] representing, er, Liberal Democrat-run Cardiff, the audience can be assured a full range of political colours.’
‘As you can see, this is a completely different panel to any previous one this month that omitted any Liberal Democrats (or that other one, too).’
DISCLAIMER: The Daleks wish it to be known that they dissociate themselves from the far-right authoritarianism of Peter Hain and the inarticulate screaming hatred of Nigel Farage.
*All right, you’ve caught me. The BBC responded “today”? I’ve obviously made that up – they only responded to my last complaint a few days ago, and that with a bland mass e-mail that failed to answer any of my questions. Good job they’re not responsible to the public, right?
For viewers who aren’t Daleks, you can complain directly to the BBC about their consistent and outrageous political bias. As they’re frightened of their viewers being able to get in touch, you can’t do so by e-mail – though if anyone wishes to supply me with the personal e-mails of, say, the director and producer of Question Time, the head of BBC1, the Director-General or the BBC Trust, I will very happily republish them here – and must instead jump through five pages of hoops on their website. Even to ‘reply’ to their insultingly vacuous excuses for responses (they e-mail you, but won’t let you e-mail back).
So, to repeat, you can complain to the BBC here. You can also read what Welsh Liberal Democrat bloggers think about the BBC ignoring the voters of Cardiff who elected a Liberal Democrat council, a Liberal Democrat AM and a Liberal Democrat MP.
It is a fact that, although the Liberal Democrats average over 20% of the vote across all elections, they’ve been represented on only one of the last four editions of Question Time – and only one of the last three editions of its radio sister programme Any Questions.
By contrast, Labour and the Conservatives have each been represented on every single edition of Question Time – even the broadcast from Northern Ireland included a Labour Minister and a Unionist peer who takes the Tory whip, yet omitted the liberal Alliance Party – often by two or even three supporters on one panel. Even BBC maths must be able to work out that, if their method for calculating Liberal Democrat representation is “fair,” by the same standard Labour and the Conservatives must each average well over 100% of the votes across all elections. Newsflash: this is not, in fact, true.
Even the Liberal Democrat blogosphere’s most ardent devotee of Question Time, the unluckily named Mark Thompson, is so disgusted by this bias that instead of staying in to watch the programme and host his usual live webchat he’s gone to the trouble of being candidate in a local by-election and will be out for the count. I hope you’re satisfied, BBC (and good luck, Mark)!
Come on, BBC, sort it out! Or I’m going to have to buy more Daleks.
‘With Peter Hain, Liam Fox, Elfyn Llwyd, Nigel Farage and Janet Street Porter [see our EXCLUSIVE advance photograph] representing, er, Liberal Democrat-run Cardiff, the audience can be assured a full range of political colours.’
‘As you can see, this is a completely different panel to any previous one this month that omitted any Liberal Democrats (or that other one, too).’
DISCLAIMER: The Daleks wish it to be known that they dissociate themselves from the far-right authoritarianism of Peter Hain and the inarticulate screaming hatred of Nigel Farage.
*All right, you’ve caught me. The BBC responded “today”? I’ve obviously made that up – they only responded to my last complaint a few days ago, and that with a bland mass e-mail that failed to answer any of my questions. Good job they’re not responsible to the public, right?
For viewers who aren’t Daleks, you can complain directly to the BBC about their consistent and outrageous political bias. As they’re frightened of their viewers being able to get in touch, you can’t do so by e-mail – though if anyone wishes to supply me with the personal e-mails of, say, the director and producer of Question Time, the head of BBC1, the Director-General or the BBC Trust, I will very happily republish them here – and must instead jump through five pages of hoops on their website. Even to ‘reply’ to their insultingly vacuous excuses for responses (they e-mail you, but won’t let you e-mail back).
So, to repeat, you can complain to the BBC here. You can also read what Welsh Liberal Democrat bloggers think about the BBC ignoring the voters of Cardiff who elected a Liberal Democrat council, a Liberal Democrat AM and a Liberal Democrat MP.
It is a fact that, although the Liberal Democrats average over 20% of the vote across all elections, they’ve been represented on only one of the last four editions of Question Time – and only one of the last three editions of its radio sister programme Any Questions.
By contrast, Labour and the Conservatives have each been represented on every single edition of Question Time – even the broadcast from Northern Ireland included a Labour Minister and a Unionist peer who takes the Tory whip, yet omitted the liberal Alliance Party – often by two or even three supporters on one panel. Even BBC maths must be able to work out that, if their method for calculating Liberal Democrat representation is “fair,” by the same standard Labour and the Conservatives must each average well over 100% of the votes across all elections. Newsflash: this is not, in fact, true.
Even the Liberal Democrat blogosphere’s most ardent devotee of Question Time, the unluckily named Mark Thompson, is so disgusted by this bias that instead of staying in to watch the programme and host his usual live webchat he’s gone to the trouble of being candidate in a local by-election and will be out for the count. I hope you’re satisfied, BBC (and good luck, Mark)!
Come on, BBC, sort it out! Or I’m going to have to buy more Daleks.
Labels: BBC, British Politics, Daleks, Pictures, Questionable Time, Stupid Ideas
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
So, You Want To Repeat Doctor Who…
BBC3’s endless but cheery rotation of Doctor Who hits a particular highlight with Utopia tonight at 7 – the episode that closes with, for me, the most thrilling 16 minutes of 21st Century Who so far (while last night’s featured BAFTA-winning Carey Mulligan). The two tiny clips from much older Who in tonight’s episode, though, made me wonder how I might devise a repeat schedule for the rest of the Doctors. Which would you pick? The lot, or a run of just one or two? Surely it’s not too much to ask for in the run-up to the new series…
Well, this would be the obvious one – a story from every Doctor so far, rather than just the last four and a bit seasons. And, yes, as yet you might think we only have a minute’s forthcoming season’s trailer boggling into 3D for Matt Smith, but remember how they showed a story for Peter Davison in 1981’s warm-up repeat season The Five Faces of Doctor Who? So it can be done.
The trouble is, there are so many stories to choose from – even if you kept it down to those running about an hour and a half so they could all fit in the same sort of slot – that I can easily think of, ooh, at least two for poor old Pat whose episodes were largely tossed away by the BBC (imagine if they still did such things today), three for Colin, four or five for Billy, Jon, Peter and Sylv, and fifteen for Tom that I’d want to show. So you get your thinking caps on for a set of eleven, and I’ll get mine. In the meantime, there are other options…
Update: rather belatedly, I did devise my own set for The Eleven Faces of Doctor Who. Almost at The Eleventh Hour, you might say (groan).
Who was the most famous, longest-lasting, most iconic of all the Twentieth Century Doctors? Who does everyone still recognise? Who isn’t quite my favourite, but has my favourite set of stories? If I were a BBC channel controller – look, even BBC Parliament, it needs the ratings somehow, but these would probably be BBC2 or BBC4, wouldn’t they – I’d be sorely tempted just to start with Robot, and show the whole of Tom Baker’s Doctor. In order.
It’s not just my personal bias – from a practical point of view, every episode of Tom’s still exists, in its original format, in colour, while the first three Doctors all have bits missing or knackered (thanks, BBC). And I do love Tom’s first season. And Genesis of the Daleks seems like it’s hardly been repeated at all after Chris and David’s daily outings…
But, if I really were a BBC channel controller, I know which repeats would be my secret desire, and they wouldn’t exactly be repeats at all. And I’d probably have to be a channel controller to order them, because unlike ordinary repeats, they’d take quite an allocation of budget.
Imagine, if you will, the determination, the commitment, and most of all the money to show a good long run of Doctor Who repeats. Surely, you want two things to get attention and pull in your viewers: Daleks, and a unique selling point.
You may be aware that the BBC carelessly tossed many of the 1960s Doctor Who stories into skips and burnt them. Fortunately, people were audio-recording them from the first, so all the soundtracks survive, and are available on BBC CDs. Now, some of them are terrific, but the pictures would be better, wouldn’t they (and some of those narrations are very intrusive)?
So here’s what I’d do. I’d commission animation to replace the missing stories, starting with the twenty-six episodes of Daleks that need doing (twenty-two missing ones, and four that still exist without the episodes on either side of them and wouldn’t match the new versions. You can release them as extras on the DVDs, just as they are now on the Lost In Time box set). The BBC did the same for the two missing parts of Patrick Troughton’s The Invasion on DVD, and it became one of their biggest sellers – but the cost of animation still means only a channel can really afford to stump up the cash.
My perfect Doctor Who repeat season, then, would set out its stall with the newly re-animated The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, Mission To the Unknown and The Daleks’ Master Plan. Each is a terrific story, not a single dud amongst them, each starring a terrific Doctor, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell – or in one case, starring no Doctor at all, which is why I’d start with the one that introduces a new Doctor rather than confusingly omitting him – and each would look fantastic with all the Daleks you can eat and fabulous new designs and special effects.
How about trailing them heavily immediately after each BBC3 repeat, saying, ‘turn over now to BBC2 / BBC4 for more exciting Doctor Who you’ve not seen before’? Show two episodes back-to-back every night, and you can have a regular two-hour multi-channel Doctor Who slot.
And, when those have been an enormous success, you can commission another set, Doctor Who and the Monsters – I for one would love to see The Macra Terror – and keep on until all 108 ‘missing’ episodes had been renewed, along with new versions of the ‘orphaned’ episodes that would stick out too much in a story mostly made up of animation.
Then, once the whole series is complete again… It’s simple.
Just start your repeat season starring William Hartnell as the Doctor in An Unearthly Child, and show the whole lot. Just in time for the Twelfth Doctor.
And, yes, I know this is a strange flibbertigibbet sort of post to break my block of the last few weeks, but anything to get me back on the treadmill, eh? I’m sure I can get into even more outrageous wish-fulfilment once I start writing about the General Election.
The Eleven Faces of Doctor Who
Well, this would be the obvious one – a story from every Doctor so far, rather than just the last four and a bit seasons. And, yes, as yet you might think we only have a minute’s forthcoming season’s trailer boggling into 3D for Matt Smith, but remember how they showed a story for Peter Davison in 1981’s warm-up repeat season The Five Faces of Doctor Who? So it can be done.
The trouble is, there are so many stories to choose from – even if you kept it down to those running about an hour and a half so they could all fit in the same sort of slot – that I can easily think of, ooh, at least two for poor old Pat whose episodes were largely tossed away by the BBC (imagine if they still did such things today), three for Colin, four or five for Billy, Jon, Peter and Sylv, and fifteen for Tom that I’d want to show. So you get your thinking caps on for a set of eleven, and I’ll get mine. In the meantime, there are other options…
Update: rather belatedly, I did devise my own set for The Eleven Faces of Doctor Who. Almost at The Eleventh Hour, you might say (groan).
Tomtastic!
Who was the most famous, longest-lasting, most iconic of all the Twentieth Century Doctors? Who does everyone still recognise? Who isn’t quite my favourite, but has my favourite set of stories? If I were a BBC channel controller – look, even BBC Parliament, it needs the ratings somehow, but these would probably be BBC2 or BBC4, wouldn’t they – I’d be sorely tempted just to start with Robot, and show the whole of Tom Baker’s Doctor. In order.
It’s not just my personal bias – from a practical point of view, every episode of Tom’s still exists, in its original format, in colour, while the first three Doctors all have bits missing or knackered (thanks, BBC). And I do love Tom’s first season. And Genesis of the Daleks seems like it’s hardly been repeated at all after Chris and David’s daily outings…
But, if I really were a BBC channel controller, I know which repeats would be my secret desire, and they wouldn’t exactly be repeats at all. And I’d probably have to be a channel controller to order them, because unlike ordinary repeats, they’d take quite an allocation of budget.
Doctor Who and the Daleks
Imagine, if you will, the determination, the commitment, and most of all the money to show a good long run of Doctor Who repeats. Surely, you want two things to get attention and pull in your viewers: Daleks, and a unique selling point.
You may be aware that the BBC carelessly tossed many of the 1960s Doctor Who stories into skips and burnt them. Fortunately, people were audio-recording them from the first, so all the soundtracks survive, and are available on BBC CDs. Now, some of them are terrific, but the pictures would be better, wouldn’t they (and some of those narrations are very intrusive)?
So here’s what I’d do. I’d commission animation to replace the missing stories, starting with the twenty-six episodes of Daleks that need doing (twenty-two missing ones, and four that still exist without the episodes on either side of them and wouldn’t match the new versions. You can release them as extras on the DVDs, just as they are now on the Lost In Time box set). The BBC did the same for the two missing parts of Patrick Troughton’s The Invasion on DVD, and it became one of their biggest sellers – but the cost of animation still means only a channel can really afford to stump up the cash.
My perfect Doctor Who repeat season, then, would set out its stall with the newly re-animated The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, Mission To the Unknown and The Daleks’ Master Plan. Each is a terrific story, not a single dud amongst them, each starring a terrific Doctor, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell – or in one case, starring no Doctor at all, which is why I’d start with the one that introduces a new Doctor rather than confusingly omitting him – and each would look fantastic with all the Daleks you can eat and fabulous new designs and special effects.
How about trailing them heavily immediately after each BBC3 repeat, saying, ‘turn over now to BBC2 / BBC4 for more exciting Doctor Who you’ve not seen before’? Show two episodes back-to-back every night, and you can have a regular two-hour multi-channel Doctor Who slot.
And, when those have been an enormous success, you can commission another set, Doctor Who and the Monsters – I for one would love to see The Macra Terror – and keep on until all 108 ‘missing’ episodes had been renewed, along with new versions of the ‘orphaned’ episodes that would stick out too much in a story mostly made up of animation.
Then, once the whole series is complete again… It’s simple.
Just start your repeat season starring William Hartnell as the Doctor in An Unearthly Child, and show the whole lot. Just in time for the Twelfth Doctor.
And, yes, I know this is a strange flibbertigibbet sort of post to break my block of the last few weeks, but anything to get me back on the treadmill, eh? I’m sure I can get into even more outrageous wish-fulfilment once I start writing about the General Election.
Labels: BBC, Daleks, Doctor Who, Matt Smith, Patrick Troughton, Recons, Tom Baker, William Hartnell
Thursday, February 04, 2010
EXCLUSIVE: BBC Denies ‘Unbalanced’ Question Time Panel
The BBC today denied accusations that filling Question Time with five authoritarian egomaniacs displayed any lack of political balance. ‘Last week we had three Tories – today, three Labour people,’ a spokesperson said. ‘How much more balanced could we be? It’s not as if the Liberal Democrats have anything distinctive to contribute about tonight’s topics of Iraq and electoral reform. I’m sorry, what?
‘With Lord Falconer, Theresa May, Clare Short, George Galloway and Melanie Phillips on tonight’s panel [see our EXCLUSIVE advance photograph], the audience can be assured a full range of political colours.
‘We reject accusations that two embittered, self-aggrandising ex-Labour MPs with minuscule public support are in some way likely to agree. Everyone knows they consider each other “splitters”.
‘In fact, Clare Short will tonight join Theresa May in representing the Conservative Party, as a cheerleader for the war who voted it through and then, when it all went pear-shaped afterwards, angrily said that it wasn’t her fault, she’d been deceived, and how could she possibly have been expected to exercise any individual judgment (something that’s a lot easier to say in the absence of any awkward Liberal Democrats).’
DISCLAIMER: The Daleks wish it to be known that they dissociate themselves from the far-right authoritarianism of Melanie Phillips and the support for genocidal maniacs offered by George Galloway.
Update: and again…
‘With Lord Falconer, Theresa May, Clare Short, George Galloway and Melanie Phillips on tonight’s panel [see our EXCLUSIVE advance photograph], the audience can be assured a full range of political colours.
‘We reject accusations that two embittered, self-aggrandising ex-Labour MPs with minuscule public support are in some way likely to agree. Everyone knows they consider each other “splitters”.
‘In fact, Clare Short will tonight join Theresa May in representing the Conservative Party, as a cheerleader for the war who voted it through and then, when it all went pear-shaped afterwards, angrily said that it wasn’t her fault, she’d been deceived, and how could she possibly have been expected to exercise any individual judgment (something that’s a lot easier to say in the absence of any awkward Liberal Democrats).’
DISCLAIMER: The Daleks wish it to be known that they dissociate themselves from the far-right authoritarianism of Melanie Phillips and the support for genocidal maniacs offered by George Galloway.
Update: and again…
Labels: BBC, British Politics, Conservatives, Daleks, Iraq, Labour, Pictures, Questionable Time, Stupid Ideas
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Love and Liberty VI – Equal Voices, Different Choices (#LibDemHeart #LibDemValues 1.6)
Today’s somewhat belated instalment of my series on what the Liberal Democrats stand for moves on to Liberty in Love and Liberty, a 1999 booklet exploring my own Liberalism. From Locke in 1689 to the Liberal Democrat Constitution (and headed by my favourite home-made Lib Dem slogan), I summarise the Liberal view of the state – why it’s necessary, but why it also has to be kept in check. What should be the balance between Liberalism’s different values, or between the power of the state and everyone else? And what was Conrad Russell’s simplest statement of what Liberalism’s there for?
Even eleven years later, I recognise a lot of today’s piece as incredibly familiar – I suspect it flew straight out of what I’d always been saying the Liberal Democrats stood for, and I know that it owes an enormous debt to Conrad Russell, reading his work, listening to him and sometimes arguing with him. My friend, my Liberal guru and an outstanding historian of the Seventeenth Century, few FPC meetings a decade ago would go by without his finding a parallel to some Seventeenth Century political event and opening a contribution with something along the lines of, “In 1647…”
I’ve also often written on the Rule of Law. Neither Labour nor the other Tories believe in it, because they’ve never believed in any limits to their own power – for them it’s ‘do as I say, not do as I do’. Labour thinks laws are only part of their ‘cause’, to order society as they want it, and they ignore laws that get in the way of their higher purpose; for the Tories, laws have always applied only to the ‘little people’. You might be interested in a new study about just how power corrupts and powerful people make excuses for why they can get away with things, but others can’t which I read about the other day via Paul Simpson.
You can find the evolving links to the whole of Love and Liberty with an introduction here. Over the following days, I’ll be expanding on the liberty at the heart of my Liberalism – check back to that contents list and watch for those links to spring into life. Oh, and don’t forget to give your opinion on whether #LibDemHeart or #LibDemValues makes the better tag!
Back to V
Forward to VII
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Liberty: Equal Voices, Different Choices
Liberals put freedom first. To make freedom real for everyone, it can’t be separated from love for every individual. That’s why the Preamble to the Liberal Democrat Constitution seems such a wise balance. In practice, liberty is dependent on a measure of equality and community. To guarantee universal liberty requires a degree of universal restraint, one of many paradoxes that Liberalism embraces. Otherwise, liberty can’t be widespread or secure; unbridled individualism results in too many individuals being crushed, but even the rich and powerful would be forced to guard against the fear of constant attack. To guarantee liberty, you need certain level playing fields – in particular, equality of opportunity and equality before the law. To exercise freedom and create equality, communities must be formed, then carefully watched to ensure they themselves do not arbitrarily remove liberties.Liberalism and the State
Liberals don’t see the state as a bad thing in itself. Neither increasing nor reducing state power or ownership can be viewed as an absolute good, for every circumstance; it depends what it’s there to do, and whether (and how) it works in doing it. Conrad Russell described Liberalism as not about minimum government, but minimum oppression. In more vivid words, he said Liberalism is around to stop bullying. That is the key reason why Liberals need the state, however drawn we might be in theory to the raw liberty of anarchism. There are too many bullies which are too powerful for individuals to fight on their own; in any case, the state can’t duck out and leave everyone to oppress each other. This issue of power is a central one for Liberals, going to the heart of the protecting and enlarging of liberty.
Liberty must be protected by and from the state. The state must have the power to create opportunity, and prevent bullying. Poverty and unemployment, for example, are barriers to liberty that the state can help break down by offering opportunities. Law can restrain bullies from thieves to bad employers, and defence exists to protect a state’s citizens being bullied by aggressors they have given no consent to – while governments must band together to stand up to giant, transnational, corporate bullies. However, Liberals are not starry-eyed supporters of state power. The state itself can threaten freedom of speech or action, make unfair or simply over-prescriptive laws, or bully people out of choices through offering too conditional opportunities. An over-strong state has always been the biggest bully for British Liberals, and Liberals from the proto-Liberal philosopher Locke onwards have sought ways to restrain its power.Since 1689, Liberalism Has Been Making the Philosophical Case To Check State Power
John Locke’s first way to limit the state’s power to bully was the ascending theory of power; power comes from the individuals governed. This rises naturally from the Liberal view of the importance of every individual, and explains why Liberalism is so closely connected with democracy, and with limits to what even a democracy should be allowed to do. The radical Liberal idea of the 1960s, community politics, is still all about working with people to take power and use it. It means actions should be taken at the lowest level they can be decided, with a pluralism of power structures – the best way to stop one centre of power bossing everyone around is to set up another centre of power so that no one level can greedily exercise total authority. Liberals are dead-set against monopolies of power, monopolies of ideas and economic monopolies – all are at best unhealthy and often a positive danger.
Liberal internationalism has understood for a long time that if power starts with the individual, it can be shared at any level without threatening identity. For many actions, the lowest appropriate level will remain the individual. It’s simply not the state’s business to stop people choosing their lives for themselves where possible; as people are so much more likely than a remote government to know their own neighbourhoods, work and private lives, the state would only cock them up anyway.
Locke’s other key notion was that power must be bound by rules. That is why the Rule of Law is so important for Liberalism, hanging vitally not on subjection to the law, but equality before the law to prevent arbitrary force – applying the same rules to strong as to weak, majorities as to minorities and governments as to citizens, and not applying any rules specifically to penalise a particular group. If the law singles out one set of people to pick on unfairly, what reason do they have to obey it? Every individual must be treated on an equal basis, as an individual, by the law for a Liberal society to win respect for law and society, not compel it. Laws made in secret or for partisan advantage, or which are enforced selectively, are fundamentally ilLiberal, and increase people’s insecurity – as Shirley Williams said:“The rule of law becomes hypocrisy if it means the ruler’s law.”Breaking the Chains
Liberals are more than sceptical of revolutions unless there is absolutely no other way to change things; too many people get trampled along the way, and there’s no guarantee things will come out better the other side. I once wrote that Liberalism was an ideology of permanent revolution. I was wrong. It must be, however, an ideology of permanent evolution, always adjusting to new circumstances, but rarely at such a breakneck speed that people lose their security. Liberals see their work will never be finished – opposed to utopianism right from the proposition that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance”. Rather than only looking as far as knocking things down, Liberals are builders and refashioners, looking for a better way and willing to listen to all ideas for one, aiming for structures that are open and adaptable enough to change, not have to be broken. The purpose of those structures, though, should be to break the chains on individuals.
In a Liberal society, each person must have the information to make their own choices. Everyone must be equipped with skills, involved in decisions, encouraged and enabled to be an active, questioning individual. For people to make confident choices about their lives, they will be interdependent as well as independent; active government and thriving communities must provide the security, and often the resources, to take up opportunities. But merely providing is never enough. To have the chance to fulfil their lives, people must be guaranteed the power of self-reliance and taking action responsibly on their own behalf, without being told what they can or can’t do when it doesn’t harm other people. For that reason, when the Preamble to the Liberal Democrat Constitution talks of balancing liberty, equality and community, it sets out guidelines on how to achieve this: it says that“no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.”Liberalism’s approach is made clear from this great line; these three evils are evil not just in abstraction, but still more so because they block freedom.
Even eleven years later, I recognise a lot of today’s piece as incredibly familiar – I suspect it flew straight out of what I’d always been saying the Liberal Democrats stood for, and I know that it owes an enormous debt to Conrad Russell, reading his work, listening to him and sometimes arguing with him. My friend, my Liberal guru and an outstanding historian of the Seventeenth Century, few FPC meetings a decade ago would go by without his finding a parallel to some Seventeenth Century political event and opening a contribution with something along the lines of, “In 1647…”
I’ve also often written on the Rule of Law. Neither Labour nor the other Tories believe in it, because they’ve never believed in any limits to their own power – for them it’s ‘do as I say, not do as I do’. Labour thinks laws are only part of their ‘cause’, to order society as they want it, and they ignore laws that get in the way of their higher purpose; for the Tories, laws have always applied only to the ‘little people’. You might be interested in a new study about just how power corrupts and powerful people make excuses for why they can get away with things, but others can’t which I read about the other day via Paul Simpson.
You can find the evolving links to the whole of Love and Liberty with an introduction here. Over the following days, I’ll be expanding on the liberty at the heart of my Liberalism – check back to that contents list and watch for those links to spring into life. Oh, and don’t forget to give your opinion on whether #LibDemHeart or #LibDemValues makes the better tag!
Back to V
Forward to VII
Labels: Conrad Russell, History, Ideas, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Personal, What the Lib Dems Stand For
