Wednesday, September 12, 2007
What I Think of Jim Davidson’s Whingeing ‘Victim’ Act (go on, guess)
Paul Walter yesterday stirred a hornets’ nest with a Liberal Burbling on the self-destruction of Jim Davidson, who has bleated:
His ‘humour’ has always been based on a vision of “white, straight, Anglo-Saxon male” supremacy and putting down everyone who doesn’t meet all of those requirements. Now it’s the 21st Century and a lot of us (white or not, straight or not, Anglo-Saxon or not, male or not) are answering back, like every bully he whinges, pretends to be the victim, and then claims he didn’t mean it. What he’s complaining about is not that anyone wants to do down “white, straight, Anglo-Saxon males.” He’s no victim. He’s just outraged and terrified now no-one gives the time of day to his belief that those qualities alone entitle him to treat everyone else like dirt and have us all thank him for it. He demands special rights. He demands special treatment. And he screams especially loudly when he doesn’t get them any more. The only reason that Mr Davidson might feel he has to “go” anywhere is because he’s not willing to share space with everyone else here; and that, Mr Davidson, makes you a frustrated bully, not any kind of victim. It’s a tough life, Mr Davidson, but if you can’t take it, you shouldn’t dish it out.
The craven coward Mr Davidson and his whining apologists blame this on some alien “political correctness”. Rubbish. It’s a from a much older and very British set of values that are now receiving a much wider airing: tolerance; fair play; standing up for the underdog; simple good manners. I was a boy back in the 1970s, before ‘alternative comedy’ started the backlash against the nasty, mean-spirited ‘comedy’ of the likes of Mr Davidson, and long before the term “political correctness” was ever coined. When I was a boy, I’m quite sure that if my Mum and Dad had heard me taunting someone for being different, on whatever grounds, I’d have been told off in no uncertain terms. That’s bullying. That’s rude. That’s just plain nasty. And while in days gone by some nasty, rude bullies were celebrated, standing up to them has also always been a British value, and one to be proud of.
As I’m American as well as British – yes, my Mum’s an immigrant – no doubt this is the point at which Mr Davidson would tell me to get back to where I came from. Like most of the people he’d say that to, I was of course born here. Like most people in the current century, it would never occur to me to tell anyone I disagree with they have to “go” anywhere. We expect people to be able to disagree and still live together. Besides, for Mr Davidson to ‘go back to where he came from’ wouldn’t need a boat; it would need a time machine.
“What about white, straight, Anglo-Saxon males like me? Who cares about us? Where do we go?”I didn’t see any of Hell’s Kitchen, but I’ve found this man a loathsome, repellent bigot for about as long as I can remember; from my teens, I remember people being bullied with his ‘jokes’ (possibly including me, but the details go hazy at my age), and in his latest outbursts demanding pity and blaming political correctness he has, as ever, missed the point. “What about white, straight, Anglo-Saxon males like me? Who cares about us? Where do we go?” What a tosser. Just like everyone else, you should be judged not on what you are, but on what you say and do. That means that just like anyone else, if you’re worth caring about, people will care about you. Just like anyone else, you belong here. But just like everyone else, if you act like a git or judge people entirely on their skin, sex or sexuality, you can no longer expect not to be called on it. An awful lot more white, straight, Anglo-Saxon males than he imagines would treat his tick-box co-option into “us” with revulsion. I’ve never heard anyone say they dislike him because he’s a white, straight, Anglo-Saxon male; but I know plenty of white, straight, Anglo-Saxon males who dislike him because he’s Jim Davidson.
His ‘humour’ has always been based on a vision of “white, straight, Anglo-Saxon male” supremacy and putting down everyone who doesn’t meet all of those requirements. Now it’s the 21st Century and a lot of us (white or not, straight or not, Anglo-Saxon or not, male or not) are answering back, like every bully he whinges, pretends to be the victim, and then claims he didn’t mean it. What he’s complaining about is not that anyone wants to do down “white, straight, Anglo-Saxon males.” He’s no victim. He’s just outraged and terrified now no-one gives the time of day to his belief that those qualities alone entitle him to treat everyone else like dirt and have us all thank him for it. He demands special rights. He demands special treatment. And he screams especially loudly when he doesn’t get them any more. The only reason that Mr Davidson might feel he has to “go” anywhere is because he’s not willing to share space with everyone else here; and that, Mr Davidson, makes you a frustrated bully, not any kind of victim. It’s a tough life, Mr Davidson, but if you can’t take it, you shouldn’t dish it out.
The craven coward Mr Davidson and his whining apologists blame this on some alien “political correctness”. Rubbish. It’s a from a much older and very British set of values that are now receiving a much wider airing: tolerance; fair play; standing up for the underdog; simple good manners. I was a boy back in the 1970s, before ‘alternative comedy’ started the backlash against the nasty, mean-spirited ‘comedy’ of the likes of Mr Davidson, and long before the term “political correctness” was ever coined. When I was a boy, I’m quite sure that if my Mum and Dad had heard me taunting someone for being different, on whatever grounds, I’d have been told off in no uncertain terms. That’s bullying. That’s rude. That’s just plain nasty. And while in days gone by some nasty, rude bullies were celebrated, standing up to them has also always been a British value, and one to be proud of.
As I’m American as well as British – yes, my Mum’s an immigrant – no doubt this is the point at which Mr Davidson would tell me to get back to where I came from. Like most of the people he’d say that to, I was of course born here. Like most people in the current century, it would never occur to me to tell anyone I disagree with they have to “go” anywhere. We expect people to be able to disagree and still live together. Besides, for Mr Davidson to ‘go back to where he came from’ wouldn’t need a boat; it would need a time machine.
Labels: Bigotry, Blogs, British Politics, Gay
The Candidate For You?
Excitement is building up about potential candidates for the largest-franchise elected positions both in Britain and the United States – the Mayor of London and, somewhat more grandly if somewhat less directly elected, the President. Yesterday the Liberal Democrats announced their shortlist for the Mayoralty, while in the early hours of this morning Jonathan Calder linked to a handy guide to which Presidential candidate might suit you best. Anders Hanson has also written a piece about Brian Paddick which, as well as being jolly nice about me (thanks, Anders) raised two questions to which Mr Paddick has now supplied answers – do pop over and have a read. James Graham, while so far uncommitted, has also made some interesting comments about Brian Paddick, which I feel I must recommend by dint of the fact that one of the titles features an even worse pun than my own piece.
I thought I’d said it all in my big piece about Mr Paddick yesterday, but, of course, things have already moved on. I realise it’s unusual for me to jump into supporting a candidate I don’t know, particularly after I had such difficulty deciding between the three Lib Dem Leadership candidates last year, and even more particularly before I’d seen who his competition were to be. It’s possible that last year, because I knew quite a lot about all the candidates, I found it harder to see the big picture.
This time, I’m in the slightly contradictory position of being excited by all three candidates and wanting to know more about each of them, but having already decided to be committed to one. Each of the three have something distinctive about them that might help them get noticed, and each suggests a more diverse party than either of the other parties are offering – a gay man, an Asian man and an Asian woman. I vaguely know Fiyaz Mughal from the FPC and having seen him speak on occasion, and he comes across very well; if selected, he’ll be a good candidate and I’ll do my best for him. I don’t know Chamali Fernando at all, but we desperately need brilliant young candidates and to have been shortlisted she must be fantastic; if selected, she’ll be the Liberal Democrat Youth and Students’ finest hour, and I’ll do my best for her. But neither have the instant recognition and ability to be treated from the start as a ‘serious’ candidate that Brian Paddick does, so I’ve leapt in with both feet and hope to be meeting Mr Paddick in a few days’ time. If I get the chance to interrogate him for this blog, in a ‘critical friend’ way, I’ll post what he has to say here; if you come up with any brilliant questions to ask, as I’m not exactly an experienced interviewer, please e-mail them to me (address in the sidebar)!
Mr Paddick has, of course, already answered some questions posed by Anders Hanson, as I mentioned above; I thought Anders’ first was a very good question which needed answering, incidentally, while the second’s already been thoroughly dismissed by the police, CPS and libel court victory against the Hate Mail on Sunday, so I wasn’t fussed (besides, for a party to investigate someone more thoroughly than the police, CPS and newspapers, we’d have to run private Gestapos, and that would be both mad and wrong. And, for the Lib Dems at least, completely against our values). I was also taken to task by ‘Free School Milk’ for some of my flights of rhetoric the other day, and again, she or he is right and I was wrong. When I talked about the desirability of a candidate who’s “actually done something” – well, if I wasn’t blogging like a speech, I’d have said something more factual like “actually run a major public service for Londoners,” so I didn’t mean to do down candidates I, at the time, didn’t know about! And regular readers will know I’m not in favour of the alleged ‘sweeping clean honest non-politico approach’ either; I’m deeply suspicious of independents because I don’t know what they stand for, and as most politics is making it up as you go along, having a sense of what someone stands for is the only thing that gives you real warning of what they’d be like if they got in. Mr Paddick is different because – when he was a senior police officer and doing an important job – he gave a considerably stronger account of his values than I’ve heard from most Lib Dem MPs.
In case you’re a London Liberal Democrat who’s not just had an e-mail from the Returning Officer, the hustings at Conference is to be next Wednesday (the 19th) at 1pm in the Old Courtroom in Church Street (I wonder if that’s the one once squatted by a bunch of hippies against the Criminal Justice Act while our 1994 Conference was debating cannabis? Nice bunch. Nice brownies). There will also be a hustings for the prospective Mayoral and European Parliamentary candidates on Saturday 6th October at 1.30pm at Oxford House, Derbyshire Street, Bethnal Green, E2 6HG, as well as an online hustings that’s already running. Ballot papers should be with us all by the 22nd of October, and we should have a result in the second week of November…
Meanwhile, Jonathan Calder pointed us all to the Candidate Calculator. This tests your position on a number of issues against different Presidential runners – and, like Jonathan, my top match was with Democrat former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, at 93.10%. Not too far behind was Democratic firebrand Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, while the highest-placed ‘leading’ candidate for me on the issues was down at 62.07% - another Democrat, New York Senator Hillary Clinton. John Edwards came in at 58.62% (free trade counting for about 41%, then?), and Barack Obama only 55.17%, while I was unsurprised that my leading Republican match was libertarian Texas Representative Ron Paul, on 48.28%. I was even less surprised that he was more than 20% ahead of my next highest ‘match’ from the Labour Party’s best buddies! Special prizes to former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson (‘Senator, I knew Ronald Reagan… Senator, you’re not even a Ronald Reagan’) at 10.34% and, probably safely off my postal ballot, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee crawling in at just 6.90%. Not quite within the margin of error of agreeing with me on nothing at all, but pretty close.
The intimidatingly prolific (well, he would be intimidating if he wasn’t so nice) Paul Walter has another piece well worth reading on American politics over at Liberal Burblings, dealing with the not-the-Warner-Bros. He’s written a piece about Jim ‘Pity Me’ Davidson, too, but I’ve gone into that in sufficient length that my response has become a post of its own!
And finally, Paul has allowed a special correspondent to write about the Annual Horticultural Show, which bears some suspicious resemblances to the Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards. The piece is typically enthusiastic, other-flattering and self-deprecating, though with a considerably higher innuendo count than, well, just about anything on a Lib Dem Blog since my speech at last year’s Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards. As he said on that occasion, “Ooh missus!”
I would complete a set of links to the Blog of the Year 2007 finalists, but Millennium doesn’t seem to have written anything today. Last time I looked, he was too busy spinning round the room being a Toclafane.
Update: this was nearly ready to post yesterday evening, but then we spent some time installing a new ISP and marvelling over how much of an improvement it was, so I got distracted. Well, I say “we” were installing it, but technically Richard installed it while I sprawled on the sofa and offered such vital advice as “That looks a bit fiddly,” and “Ooh look! The bisexual one on Hollyoaks has been outed.”
Anyway, for the purposes of most of the above, “yesterday” means ‘Monday’ and “today” was ‘yesterday’. Clear? Since then, Millennium has posted a piece about Sir Mr the Merciless and a carnivorous plant which may or may not be from outer space (I thought the stage musical kind of implied that it was bred by Seymour, whowas very cute had a lot of talent, but also that it was to do from the mysterious total eclipse and therefore alien). Even more excitingly, Fiyaz Mughal has said hello on my previous Brian Paddick piece (hello Fiyaz!), which you can all read. He’s started a blog this morning, too. Quick, Mr Mughal, sign up to Lib Dem Blogs Aggregated! I’ve also found Mr Paddick’s website. I suspect both will soon be much busier (and let me know if you spot one for Ms Fernando).
Liberal Democrats For Mayor of London
I thought I’d said it all in my big piece about Mr Paddick yesterday, but, of course, things have already moved on. I realise it’s unusual for me to jump into supporting a candidate I don’t know, particularly after I had such difficulty deciding between the three Lib Dem Leadership candidates last year, and even more particularly before I’d seen who his competition were to be. It’s possible that last year, because I knew quite a lot about all the candidates, I found it harder to see the big picture.
This time, I’m in the slightly contradictory position of being excited by all three candidates and wanting to know more about each of them, but having already decided to be committed to one. Each of the three have something distinctive about them that might help them get noticed, and each suggests a more diverse party than either of the other parties are offering – a gay man, an Asian man and an Asian woman. I vaguely know Fiyaz Mughal from the FPC and having seen him speak on occasion, and he comes across very well; if selected, he’ll be a good candidate and I’ll do my best for him. I don’t know Chamali Fernando at all, but we desperately need brilliant young candidates and to have been shortlisted she must be fantastic; if selected, she’ll be the Liberal Democrat Youth and Students’ finest hour, and I’ll do my best for her. But neither have the instant recognition and ability to be treated from the start as a ‘serious’ candidate that Brian Paddick does, so I’ve leapt in with both feet and hope to be meeting Mr Paddick in a few days’ time. If I get the chance to interrogate him for this blog, in a ‘critical friend’ way, I’ll post what he has to say here; if you come up with any brilliant questions to ask, as I’m not exactly an experienced interviewer, please e-mail them to me (address in the sidebar)!
Mr Paddick has, of course, already answered some questions posed by Anders Hanson, as I mentioned above; I thought Anders’ first was a very good question which needed answering, incidentally, while the second’s already been thoroughly dismissed by the police, CPS and libel court victory against the Hate Mail on Sunday, so I wasn’t fussed (besides, for a party to investigate someone more thoroughly than the police, CPS and newspapers, we’d have to run private Gestapos, and that would be both mad and wrong. And, for the Lib Dems at least, completely against our values). I was also taken to task by ‘Free School Milk’ for some of my flights of rhetoric the other day, and again, she or he is right and I was wrong. When I talked about the desirability of a candidate who’s “actually done something” – well, if I wasn’t blogging like a speech, I’d have said something more factual like “actually run a major public service for Londoners,” so I didn’t mean to do down candidates I, at the time, didn’t know about! And regular readers will know I’m not in favour of the alleged ‘sweeping clean honest non-politico approach’ either; I’m deeply suspicious of independents because I don’t know what they stand for, and as most politics is making it up as you go along, having a sense of what someone stands for is the only thing that gives you real warning of what they’d be like if they got in. Mr Paddick is different because – when he was a senior police officer and doing an important job – he gave a considerably stronger account of his values than I’ve heard from most Lib Dem MPs.
In case you’re a London Liberal Democrat who’s not just had an e-mail from the Returning Officer, the hustings at Conference is to be next Wednesday (the 19th) at 1pm in the Old Courtroom in Church Street (I wonder if that’s the one once squatted by a bunch of hippies against the Criminal Justice Act while our 1994 Conference was debating cannabis? Nice bunch. Nice brownies). There will also be a hustings for the prospective Mayoral and European Parliamentary candidates on Saturday 6th October at 1.30pm at Oxford House, Derbyshire Street, Bethnal Green, E2 6HG, as well as an online hustings that’s already running. Ballot papers should be with us all by the 22nd of October, and we should have a result in the second week of November…
Illiberals and Democrats for President of the United States
Meanwhile, Jonathan Calder pointed us all to the Candidate Calculator. This tests your position on a number of issues against different Presidential runners – and, like Jonathan, my top match was with Democrat former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, at 93.10%. Not too far behind was Democratic firebrand Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, while the highest-placed ‘leading’ candidate for me on the issues was down at 62.07% - another Democrat, New York Senator Hillary Clinton. John Edwards came in at 58.62% (free trade counting for about 41%, then?), and Barack Obama only 55.17%, while I was unsurprised that my leading Republican match was libertarian Texas Representative Ron Paul, on 48.28%. I was even less surprised that he was more than 20% ahead of my next highest ‘match’ from the Labour Party’s best buddies! Special prizes to former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson (‘Senator, I knew Ronald Reagan… Senator, you’re not even a Ronald Reagan’) at 10.34% and, probably safely off my postal ballot, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee crawling in at just 6.90%. Not quite within the margin of error of agreeing with me on nothing at all, but pretty close.
The intimidatingly prolific (well, he would be intimidating if he wasn’t so nice) Paul Walter has another piece well worth reading on American politics over at Liberal Burblings, dealing with the not-the-Warner-Bros. He’s written a piece about Jim ‘Pity Me’ Davidson, too, but I’ve gone into that in sufficient length that my response has become a post of its own!
And finally, Paul has allowed a special correspondent to write about the Annual Horticultural Show, which bears some suspicious resemblances to the Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards. The piece is typically enthusiastic, other-flattering and self-deprecating, though with a considerably higher innuendo count than, well, just about anything on a Lib Dem Blog since my speech at last year’s Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards. As he said on that occasion, “Ooh missus!”
I would complete a set of links to the Blog of the Year 2007 finalists, but Millennium doesn’t seem to have written anything today. Last time I looked, he was too busy spinning round the room being a Toclafane.
Update: this was nearly ready to post yesterday evening, but then we spent some time installing a new ISP and marvelling over how much of an improvement it was, so I got distracted. Well, I say “we” were installing it, but technically Richard installed it while I sprawled on the sofa and offered such vital advice as “That looks a bit fiddly,” and “Ooh look! The bisexual one on Hollyoaks has been outed.”
Anyway, for the purposes of most of the above, “yesterday” means ‘Monday’ and “today” was ‘yesterday’. Clear? Since then, Millennium has posted a piece about Sir Mr the Merciless and a carnivorous plant which may or may not be from outer space (I thought the stage musical kind of implied that it was bred by Seymour, who
Labels: American Politics, Blogs, British Politics, Liberal Democrat Conferences, Liberal Democrats, London, The Golden Dozen
Monday, September 10, 2007
Brian Paddick: He’s Not the Messiah, He’s a… Very Distinguished Police Officer
Today, the London Liberal Democrats announce their shortlist of potential candidates for London Mayor. I don’t know who’s applied, let alone been shortlisted, but there’s a candidate I’m taking a gamble on supporting… Despite not yet having met the guy, and the likelihood that, if shortlisted, he’ll be the only candidate without a long Liberal Democrat record. If all this makes me sound like the worst sort of fact-free blogger going off into fantasyland (and I sometimes am), there’s something remarkable about this potential candidate: he was a senior police officer with an outstanding, liberal, controversial record. He’s Brian Paddick.
Unlike the subjects of my profiles last year – Ming Campbell, Chris Huhne, Simon Hughes and David Laws – I’ve never met Brian Paddick, and I don’t really know what he’s like as a public speaker or his views on a lot of the issues. And it’s quite possible that the shortlist tomorrow will have brilliant candidates I don’t expect; it’ll certainly have Liberal Democrats I know and can, in more ordinary ways, feel more sure of. But I would be gobsmacked if any of them could have anything like the impact on eight million people, from a standing start, that I reckon Mr Paddick can. The two obvious pools of high-profile talent are our London MPs and our GLAMs. Well, after our best-known, best-loved, and probably most hard-working London MP came to grief last time, it’s no surprise that none of our MPs seem to want to do it. And none of our London Assembly Members look to me like they’ve been trying to run for it. Be honest; have any of our GLAMs made such an impact? The only one who did, and now our only MP who’s previously been a member of the London Assembly, is Lynne Featherstone. In some ways, she’d have been the obvious candidate – and, after she was one of the people I hoped in the last year or so might stand for Party President or Deputy Leader, I might have been very torn if the choice had been between her and Brian Paddick… But it isn’t. In fact, when her name came up on a poll of potential candidates on Lib Dem Voice, she suggested people vote for him in the poll instead.
Another Liberal Democrat attitude I’ve heard – behind closed doors, perhaps, but it’s what a lot of people are thinking – is that ‘Ken’s going to win anyway, and whoever we stand will get outspent, drowned out and pushed out, so why humiliate ourselves?’ Well, there are three answers to that. First, if we abandoned every campaign in which the smart money would be on us coming a glorious third, we’d have packed up and gone home… Oh, at least thirty years before I was born! And we’ve been on pretty much a constant up since then (NB: I had very little to do with it, though). This is the biggest directly elected job in the country, and we would be mad not to stand. The second, after sheer bloody-mindedness / finding that where we work, we often win despite the odds (take your pick), is that if we don’t choose someone for ourselves, as well as admitting we don’t matter (‘cheers for that,’ says every Lib Dem candidate actually standing anywhere), it invites the question every day until the Mayoral election: ‘So, are you backing Labour, or the Tories?’ The last answer is the most important, and it’s to do with why we bother standing even at those times when we feel it’s a lost cause. I live in London, along with eight million other people across 32 boroughs. And if you want to leave all of us to the Ken and Boris Show, you can f*** off!
Ken Livingstone has achieved quite a bit, of which the Congestion Charge is the most obvious example. But he’s also a bullying egomaniac who puts the Labour Party ahead of Londoners, and Ken Livingstone ahead of the Labour Party. Pretending our GLAMs can hold him to account is, I’m afraid, a pipe dream. He doesn’t believe in accountability, openness or letting anyone else have a say, and the typically control-freak, top-down system Labour devised gives him the thumbs-up for that. Of the 26 people making up the Greater London Authority, one has about 90% of the power concentrated in him or her. It’s not how I’d have designed it, but unfortunately, the Mayor is the bit of the GLA that really matters.
In the last Mayoral election, our candidate was Simon Hughes. Previously, Susan Kramer had run an excellent campaign from a starting point of total obscurity, and nearly beat Frank Dobson, puppet candidate for the smaller split of the Labour Party. Simon was well-known, well-liked, passionate, charismatic… And finished on 15%, just 3% ahead of Susan despite a much greater profile and a much greater growth in our opinion poll ratings between the two elections. So what went wrong? A radical, anti-establishment MP failed against two anti-establishment-seeming politicians from two bigger parties supported by more vested interests. The fact that Simon is more genuinely anti-establishment than either didn’t cut it; he’d have done far better against bland machine politicians, but even Labour and the Tories weren’t stupid enough to try that. He was squeezed into oblivion, and the world’s blandest manifesto didn’t help. That’s why I breathed a sigh of relief when the possibility of Lembit Öpik receded. Like Simon, I know him, I like him, I admire his work and I even sometimes agree with him. But he’s an MP for the middle of Wales, and if what Londoners really want is a carpetbagger who’s funny on Have I Got News For You, sorry, Lembit, but Boris Johnson is a bit closer to London, a bit funnier, and a bit better-known. So where else do we find a ‘name’ that can put up a fight so as not to get squeezed out?
The answer is to field a candidate whose background is outside politics. Now, ‘celebrity’ candidates often seem like booster rockets that run the risk of exploding shortly after take-off. The SDP by-election bandwagon piled up at Darlington when its TV presenter candidate couldn’t answer questions without a teleprompter. David Icke became as big a millstone to the Green Party as he was once an asset. And UKIP had the misfortune not just of Joan Collins endorsing them, then announcing she had nothing to do with them, but of Robert Kilroy-Silk, the unthinking man’s David Owen. Thankfully, unlike all of those people, Brian Paddick would be a well-known candidate who’s not an actor or presenter, but who’s actually achieved something. And, unlike a lot of ‘stunt casting’ options, he’s unlikely to fall apart under pressure; he’s already taken more questioning and had a tougher media ride than almost any other Liberal Democrat could have nightmares about, from his policing strategies, to his private life, to speaking daily for the Met at televised press briefings after the London bombings on the 7th of July 2005. Will he go ‘off-message’? He’s got a history of it, and thank goodness for that. Will he disagree with the Party on some issues? Almost certainly. But if we wanted candidates who’d stick absolutely to the party line, we wouldn’t have selected Simon Hughes last time. I can’t promise, then, that Mr Paddick won’t go off the rails. But that’s not a promise that can ever be made of any politician – even, in some cases, the most terminally dull.
The other big drawback to someone in Mr Paddick’s position is that he feels like an interloper. Liberal Democrats don’t like people who parachute in and declare themselves the messiah, still less the sense that the high-ups are trying to push him on us. So there are bound to be Lib Dems who’ll oppose him not on his own qualities, record or proposals, but on principle. I might have joined them, but I did a little bit of research to see how comfortable I’d feel with him (isn’t Wikipedia wonderful?). And, though he’d sounded pretty liberal from all I’d heard about him before, what I’ve read has convinced me more than many long-term Liberal Democrats do that he’s a conviction Liberal.
You will not be surprised to learn that my moment of epiphany came with Mr Paddick’s statement that had him most demonised (out of many things) by gutter press like The Sun and the Daily Hate Mail. They read his infamous post on Urban75 and decided he was their enemy; I read it and decided he was not just liberal, but my kind of Liberal:
Mr Paddick as a candidate might even make the Liberal Democrats hold our heads up over some issues the party’s been afraid of. We’re nervous on crime, because too many of us don’t see how we can sound Liberal and populist at the same time. The Party’s Leadership remains critically scared about drugs policy, and having such a high-profile candidate who’ll inevitably be asked about it might make them make up their minds. And, after twenty years of being the party with the best record by a mile on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights getting forced half-back into the closet by embarrassment by the badly handled outings of Simon Hughes and Mark Oaten last year, having an out and proud gay man as candidate for such a crucial post would do us a power of good (social historians of gay people in the British public view may marvel that he’s a distant relation of Hugh Paddick of Julian and Sandy fame). He’s fought off enough homophobic attacks from inside the police and the braying tabloids that, if a couple of Lib Dems feel stupidly uncomfortable or join a certain blogging ex-member in making up bigoted claims of a “gay mafia”, I doubt he’ll even break step. And more than in any other party, the overwhelming majority of Liberal Democrats will back him to the hilt on that.
Mr Paddick’s candidacy would carry certain inherent Liberal messages – gay-friendly, pro-liberalisation on drugs – but his most important qualification is his record in the Metropolitan Police. A Liberal approach to crime is more likely to work than knee-jerk authoritarian solutions, and his innovative, intelligent work helped prove it. The old Liberal Democrat election slogan ‘A record of action, a promise of more’ can rarely have been more true.
By the time Brian Paddick retired from the police in May, he was Deputy Assistant Commissioner in the Met. He was a sergeant on the front line during the 1981 Brixton riot, proof of the need for community policing, and rose through the CID and eventually to Commander in charge of policing in Brixton, where he pioneered new ways of policing by consent. Famously, he instructed his officers just to give on-the-spot warnings for cannabis possession rather than arrest or charge people, no longer wasting police time on victimless crime and allowing the police to tackle real crime, with the bonus of far greater community support. Despite massive attacks on him, the Government eventually followed his lead by reclassifying cannabis (something on which they’ve been trying to backtrack ever since). Despite all the controversy, that make him one of the best-known and best-loved police officers in the country, with one of the best records.
Can he win? It’ll be astoundingly difficult. If there’s one thing we should have learned from Simon’s campaign, it’s that we’ll never win merely by being everyone’s second choice. Brian Paddick is not the cuddly, fluffy, inoffensive candidate. Some people will hate him. After such a high-profile career, many people already do. But wouldn’t it be a relief to field a candidate who’s actually done something, rather than just talked about it?
In a recent interview with the Mail on Sunday – which shows quite a bit of chutzpah – he outlined some of his ideas for what he could now do for London:
So that’s why I want Brian Paddick to be the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London. A practical approach; a personal record; a strong philosophical base. There’s no doubt he’s a gamble. But some gambles are worth taking.
Unlike the subjects of my profiles last year – Ming Campbell, Chris Huhne, Simon Hughes and David Laws – I’ve never met Brian Paddick, and I don’t really know what he’s like as a public speaker or his views on a lot of the issues. And it’s quite possible that the shortlist tomorrow will have brilliant candidates I don’t expect; it’ll certainly have Liberal Democrats I know and can, in more ordinary ways, feel more sure of. But I would be gobsmacked if any of them could have anything like the impact on eight million people, from a standing start, that I reckon Mr Paddick can. The two obvious pools of high-profile talent are our London MPs and our GLAMs. Well, after our best-known, best-loved, and probably most hard-working London MP came to grief last time, it’s no surprise that none of our MPs seem to want to do it. And none of our London Assembly Members look to me like they’ve been trying to run for it. Be honest; have any of our GLAMs made such an impact? The only one who did, and now our only MP who’s previously been a member of the London Assembly, is Lynne Featherstone. In some ways, she’d have been the obvious candidate – and, after she was one of the people I hoped in the last year or so might stand for Party President or Deputy Leader, I might have been very torn if the choice had been between her and Brian Paddick… But it isn’t. In fact, when her name came up on a poll of potential candidates on Lib Dem Voice, she suggested people vote for him in the poll instead.
Leave It To Ken and Boris?
Another Liberal Democrat attitude I’ve heard – behind closed doors, perhaps, but it’s what a lot of people are thinking – is that ‘Ken’s going to win anyway, and whoever we stand will get outspent, drowned out and pushed out, so why humiliate ourselves?’ Well, there are three answers to that. First, if we abandoned every campaign in which the smart money would be on us coming a glorious third, we’d have packed up and gone home… Oh, at least thirty years before I was born! And we’ve been on pretty much a constant up since then (NB: I had very little to do with it, though). This is the biggest directly elected job in the country, and we would be mad not to stand. The second, after sheer bloody-mindedness / finding that where we work, we often win despite the odds (take your pick), is that if we don’t choose someone for ourselves, as well as admitting we don’t matter (‘cheers for that,’ says every Lib Dem candidate actually standing anywhere), it invites the question every day until the Mayoral election: ‘So, are you backing Labour, or the Tories?’ The last answer is the most important, and it’s to do with why we bother standing even at those times when we feel it’s a lost cause. I live in London, along with eight million other people across 32 boroughs. And if you want to leave all of us to the Ken and Boris Show, you can f*** off!
Ken Livingstone has achieved quite a bit, of which the Congestion Charge is the most obvious example. But he’s also a bullying egomaniac who puts the Labour Party ahead of Londoners, and Ken Livingstone ahead of the Labour Party. Pretending our GLAMs can hold him to account is, I’m afraid, a pipe dream. He doesn’t believe in accountability, openness or letting anyone else have a say, and the typically control-freak, top-down system Labour devised gives him the thumbs-up for that. Of the 26 people making up the Greater London Authority, one has about 90% of the power concentrated in him or her. It’s not how I’d have designed it, but unfortunately, the Mayor is the bit of the GLA that really matters.
In the last Mayoral election, our candidate was Simon Hughes. Previously, Susan Kramer had run an excellent campaign from a starting point of total obscurity, and nearly beat Frank Dobson, puppet candidate for the smaller split of the Labour Party. Simon was well-known, well-liked, passionate, charismatic… And finished on 15%, just 3% ahead of Susan despite a much greater profile and a much greater growth in our opinion poll ratings between the two elections. So what went wrong? A radical, anti-establishment MP failed against two anti-establishment-seeming politicians from two bigger parties supported by more vested interests. The fact that Simon is more genuinely anti-establishment than either didn’t cut it; he’d have done far better against bland machine politicians, but even Labour and the Tories weren’t stupid enough to try that. He was squeezed into oblivion, and the world’s blandest manifesto didn’t help. That’s why I breathed a sigh of relief when the possibility of Lembit Öpik receded. Like Simon, I know him, I like him, I admire his work and I even sometimes agree with him. But he’s an MP for the middle of Wales, and if what Londoners really want is a carpetbagger who’s funny on Have I Got News For You, sorry, Lembit, but Boris Johnson is a bit closer to London, a bit funnier, and a bit better-known. So where else do we find a ‘name’ that can put up a fight so as not to get squeezed out?
Not Your Typical ‘Celeb’
The answer is to field a candidate whose background is outside politics. Now, ‘celebrity’ candidates often seem like booster rockets that run the risk of exploding shortly after take-off. The SDP by-election bandwagon piled up at Darlington when its TV presenter candidate couldn’t answer questions without a teleprompter. David Icke became as big a millstone to the Green Party as he was once an asset. And UKIP had the misfortune not just of Joan Collins endorsing them, then announcing she had nothing to do with them, but of Robert Kilroy-Silk, the unthinking man’s David Owen. Thankfully, unlike all of those people, Brian Paddick would be a well-known candidate who’s not an actor or presenter, but who’s actually achieved something. And, unlike a lot of ‘stunt casting’ options, he’s unlikely to fall apart under pressure; he’s already taken more questioning and had a tougher media ride than almost any other Liberal Democrat could have nightmares about, from his policing strategies, to his private life, to speaking daily for the Met at televised press briefings after the London bombings on the 7th of July 2005. Will he go ‘off-message’? He’s got a history of it, and thank goodness for that. Will he disagree with the Party on some issues? Almost certainly. But if we wanted candidates who’d stick absolutely to the party line, we wouldn’t have selected Simon Hughes last time. I can’t promise, then, that Mr Paddick won’t go off the rails. But that’s not a promise that can ever be made of any politician – even, in some cases, the most terminally dull.
The other big drawback to someone in Mr Paddick’s position is that he feels like an interloper. Liberal Democrats don’t like people who parachute in and declare themselves the messiah, still less the sense that the high-ups are trying to push him on us. So there are bound to be Lib Dems who’ll oppose him not on his own qualities, record or proposals, but on principle. I might have joined them, but I did a little bit of research to see how comfortable I’d feel with him (isn’t Wikipedia wonderful?). And, though he’d sounded pretty liberal from all I’d heard about him before, what I’ve read has convinced me more than many long-term Liberal Democrats do that he’s a conviction Liberal.
A Conviction Liberal (excuse the pun)
You will not be surprised to learn that my moment of epiphany came with Mr Paddick’s statement that had him most demonised (out of many things) by gutter press like The Sun and the Daily Hate Mail. They read his infamous post on Urban75 and decided he was their enemy; I read it and decided he was not just liberal, but my kind of Liberal:
“The concept of anarchism has always appealed to me. The idea of the innate goodness of the individual that is corrupted by society or the system. It is a theoretical argument but I am not sure everyone would behave well if there were no laws and no system.A lot of that philosophy is something I’ve said almost in the same words. Compare it to John Stuart Mill; compare it to the Liberal MP who said
“"Do as you will but harm none" is the principle that I try to work to, within the constraints placed upon me. I have the freedom of my own conscience to the extent of the priorities I place on what I and my officers do. Does smoking small amounts of cannabis harm anyone else other than the smoker? I do not think so. Can I, as a police officer not enforce the law and get away with it. Probably not. So I introduce a pilot scheme where we do not arrest people for cannabis in Lambeth.
“I do not treat all of anything as criminals - all protestors, all black people, all straight people (!) I try to treat each individual as an individual.
“I admire anyone who passionately believes in their cause and I will defend their right to promote that cause provided they "harm none".”
“A Liberal is an anarchist by instinct and a constitutionalist by necessity.”Brian Paddick believes in individual freedom, and can articulate that belief. He believes everyone should be free to live their own lives and fulfil their own potential, without infringing the rights of others. That’s pretty much the core of what Liberalism is about.
Mr Paddick as a candidate might even make the Liberal Democrats hold our heads up over some issues the party’s been afraid of. We’re nervous on crime, because too many of us don’t see how we can sound Liberal and populist at the same time. The Party’s Leadership remains critically scared about drugs policy, and having such a high-profile candidate who’ll inevitably be asked about it might make them make up their minds. And, after twenty years of being the party with the best record by a mile on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights getting forced half-back into the closet by embarrassment by the badly handled outings of Simon Hughes and Mark Oaten last year, having an out and proud gay man as candidate for such a crucial post would do us a power of good (social historians of gay people in the British public view may marvel that he’s a distant relation of Hugh Paddick of Julian and Sandy fame). He’s fought off enough homophobic attacks from inside the police and the braying tabloids that, if a couple of Lib Dems feel stupidly uncomfortable or join a certain blogging ex-member in making up bigoted claims of a “gay mafia”, I doubt he’ll even break step. And more than in any other party, the overwhelming majority of Liberal Democrats will back him to the hilt on that.
Mr Paddick’s candidacy would carry certain inherent Liberal messages – gay-friendly, pro-liberalisation on drugs – but his most important qualification is his record in the Metropolitan Police. A Liberal approach to crime is more likely to work than knee-jerk authoritarian solutions, and his innovative, intelligent work helped prove it. The old Liberal Democrat election slogan ‘A record of action, a promise of more’ can rarely have been more true.
By the time Brian Paddick retired from the police in May, he was Deputy Assistant Commissioner in the Met. He was a sergeant on the front line during the 1981 Brixton riot, proof of the need for community policing, and rose through the CID and eventually to Commander in charge of policing in Brixton, where he pioneered new ways of policing by consent. Famously, he instructed his officers just to give on-the-spot warnings for cannabis possession rather than arrest or charge people, no longer wasting police time on victimless crime and allowing the police to tackle real crime, with the bonus of far greater community support. Despite massive attacks on him, the Government eventually followed his lead by reclassifying cannabis (something on which they’ve been trying to backtrack ever since). Despite all the controversy, that make him one of the best-known and best-loved police officers in the country, with one of the best records.
Can he win? It’ll be astoundingly difficult. If there’s one thing we should have learned from Simon’s campaign, it’s that we’ll never win merely by being everyone’s second choice. Brian Paddick is not the cuddly, fluffy, inoffensive candidate. Some people will hate him. After such a high-profile career, many people already do. But wouldn’t it be a relief to field a candidate who’s actually done something, rather than just talked about it?
In a recent interview with the Mail on Sunday – which shows quite a bit of chutzpah – he outlined some of his ideas for what he could now do for London:
“Nobody else putting themselves forward as Mayor knows more about the issue of law and order than I do…Such solutions from him might include using technology to improve the timing of buses, or making the Congestion Charge could be much more sophisticated. I look forward to seeing more of what he has to say.
“I shall never be afraid of adopting a radical solution if it’s fully thought through, if it’s workable, affordable and gets the right result.”
So that’s why I want Brian Paddick to be the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London. A practical approach; a personal record; a strong philosophical base. There’s no doubt he’s a gamble. But some gambles are worth taking.
Labels: British Politics, Drugs, Gay, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, London, The Golden Dozen
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Missing the Boat
Now I’m doing more blogging, I’ve found myself thinking about some of the things I missed in those months while illness and a certain amount of indolence were intervening. There were two new Prime Ministers – one a scary, warmongering, manipulator who tolerates no opposition and wreaks a terrible vengeance on his enemies, and the other in truth the Master. Doctor Who was outstanding (and, in related news, I briefly became a model). Fabulously and astoundingly, the Traveling Wilburys topped the album charts. And one Lib Dem blog post in particular wound me up, so here’s an incredibly late reply…
So whose post was it?
Well, obviously there were plenty that I disagreed with over the months that I slowed to a trickle (still having arm problems, but they’ve eased a lot), but with all these awards doing the rounds, who else could I give my own special award to but (lower lights, cue sinister music)… Laurence Boyce, the notorious Phantom of the Voice. Yes, it’s that terrifying genius who, cruelly denied a blog of his own, haunts the cellars of Liberal Democrat Voice. Happy first birthday to it and the team, but like every grand edifice, the grandest of all Lib Dem Blogs hides a dark secret (well, he’s not exactly a secret. There’s no shutting him up, and long may he continue). Can it be a coincidence that Lib Dem Voice creator Rob Fenwick was visited by a ghastly punishment at theParis Opera House Royal Albert Hall on the eve of this very anniversary? Or that Ryan, Mark and Stephen always look upwards nervously in case the chandelier suddenly topples down on them? Ming, if you should visit the Voice, don’t sit in the middle!
Oddly enough, though Laurence Boyce is a terrific political blogger and delights in being a controversial one, it wasn’t really a political subject that got my goat. I’m sure Mr Boyce will still be delighted: with the article I’m talking about he had the grand ambition of “becoming the most reviled person in the country” but, as I can be frightfully old-fashioned and British at times, this is going to be a bit more of a tut, a pair of pursed lips and a ‘Well, honestly, that wasn’t very nice’. Sorry to leave my blazing torch at home but, you know, fire can be jolly dangerous. And speaking of my home, in true daytime TV fashion, I live on the Isle of Dogs, out by the Thames in East London. Walk a few minutes down the riverside and there’s the foot tunnel to Greenwich, coming out by the Cutty Sark. Though I’ve lived here with Richard for over a dozen years, I still have fond memories of the Cutty Sark from over a dozen years earlier, when we visited it on a family trip and first walked through to the Isle of Dogs, little thinking that I’d grow up to fall in love and go to live there. And I’ve also since childhood had a love of history, even if I’ve never done much about it. So when, at ten to seven on the morning of May 21st, I heard a bulletin on the Today Programme saying that the Cutty Sark was in flames, I was horrified. Richard felt the same, and together we walked down to see the old ship, more than once that day and in those that followed.
Cutty Sark Frame Prow May 2007
Mr Boyce’s opinion, on the other hand, was that “It’s only a boat”. There are certain phrases that tend to make me narrow my eyes. ‘Opinion polls say we have to do it,’ before dropping a policy or making one up to suit the Daily Mail.‘I’m not homophobic, but…’ before supporting discrimination or making us out to be sick (to be pitied or ‘cured’), criminal (to be condemned) or intrinsically immoral (to be consigned to Hell). ‘It’s only a TV show,’ as if that’s an excuse for demolishing or denying support to everything that’s fun in the world. It’s only a statue. Only a painting. Only a building. Well, life’s about more than things that make money, or do the government’s bidding, or are ‘good for you’. And now ‘It’s only a boat’. Mr Boyce “was not in the least bit upset” about the fire. Fair enough. There are plenty of works of art or treasures of history about which, really, I never spare a thought – but some people do, and if they’re significant, my instinct is to preserve them for more people to enjoy in the future. Whatever floats your boat, you know.
I don’t want you to think Mr Boyce has some specific vendetta against the Cutty Sark. No, he also piled into such “lunacies” of the Heritage Lottery Fund as baths, churches, moths, archaeological sites and Agatha Christie. What sort of moral deviant could possibly want any of them to survive, eh? Now, if you’ve not read his piece, I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. He fervently believes that some aspects of heritage should be preserved. Well, ‘fervently’ is exaggerating things slightly. He ‘mildly’ believes. Or, well, doesn’t actively oppose, providing absolutely no money is involved. Hmm. Now I look at it, the phraseology might be tiptoeing away from conceding any actual cases, and more in the direction of ‘covering one’s arse’. Let’s see what he has to say:
I wrote last year about why history matters to me. It’s always fascinated me, and I occasionally, say, dip into one of Conrad Russell’s Civil War books or just bounce around Wikipedia simply for the pleasure of it. There are few things sillier or more dangerous than a politician insisting that people share their pleasures, though; I just object to Mr Boyce calling for one of my pleasures to go up in flames. And, surely, for anyone with an interest in politics a sense of history is vital. It’s a cliché to say that you should learn history’s lessons or must repeat them, but it’s still true. When our world and our culture is changing so rapidly, though, it’s important to remember that history is a living thing and not just the fossil record. Know where you come from, cherish the best bits and remember the worst, but don’t hang onto them like grim death and let them prevent you going on anywhere else. Perhaps more importantly still, with so many of the world’s more intractable problems mired in history and grievances that sometimes go back centuries, in many cases the most important lesson of history isn’t who did what and who’s to blame, but that, if you can see that it’s all gone on so long and still nobody’s happy with it, perhaps it’s time to let go at last. History isn’t just the past; it’s about the future, too. And that, I think, is the fundamental flaw in Mr Boyce’s position. I don’t disagree that it’s impossible and even undesirable to preserve everything. It’s that, coming from the other instinctive end of the argument to me, he follows it almost to its natural conclusion and implies nothing about the past can be relevant to today, except in that it gets in the way. He seems to leave no room for learning from the past, still less (heavens forfend!) innocently enjoying it.
Cutty Sark Frame Main May 2007
Over the summer, Radio 4 broadcast a series called National Treasures, in each of which an artificial choice was posed between two different aspects of British heritage, new or old, built or natural, large or small, and let experts and a guest politician – Edwina Currie, Julia Goldsworthy – decide which should get an imaginary investment. The week they pitted Canterbury Cathedral and Damien Hirst’s Bling Skull against each other for £50 million left me a little cold; an interesting debate, but neither much moved me. The one that grabbed my attention was a fight between the Cutty Sark and the National Archive of the British Film Institute for £30 million of hypothetical restoration money. I cared about each of those and, if I won half a billion or so on the Lottery, I’d have been tempted to give £30 million to both. And yet, if I really was faced with that dilemma… Well, I’d have gone for the BFI Archive, surprisingly enough. Three-quarters of a million film and television programmes, described as “A library of moments of time” and the greatest archive of film in the world (though nowhere near as great as the British Library is for books) – I’d just have to restore all those before that single ship. But again, why always pose that artificial choice? And why can history and innovation not go together?
One of the most important pieces of television ever made was The Quatermass Experiment, the first British drama serial originated for television and looking into the future. Stretching the BBC’s technical innovation further than anything else by then, it featured the British Experimental Rocket Group’s ill-fated first expedition into space. Part of it was broadcast 54 years to the day before that edition of National Treasures, but it isn’t in the BFI archive – most of it no longer exists at all (though if you hurry down to your local WH Smith, they’re currently flogging off the DVD set of the third of it that’s left and the two complete follow-up serials for just £12). And I’m not rambling completely off the point, because the Cutty Sark, with its combination of the highest technology and speed of the time, is almost a Victorian precursor to the Quatermass rocket; I’m fond of it for some of the same reasons I’d like us to build spacecraft (though I think I’m more likely to get a Cutty Sark fund past Vince Cable). It doesn’t just stand for heritage, but as a reminder of the advantages of scientific advances. All that, and it’s named after the Eighteenth Century equivalent of a Carry On film, to continue the BFI comparisons – in Rabbie Burns’ poem, a ‘cutty sark’ means a short undergarment (before I read about the ship and saw this, I just knew the word from ‘bare sark’, stripping off and literally going berserk), and it’s about a man getting into trouble for peeping at a scantily-clad witch. Which you would.
The Cutty Sark is well worth restoring. It’s given pleasure to millions of tourists, even if it may have bored millions of schoolchildren (well, no bit of heritage is perfect). Despite the fire – and in part because much of it had already been removed for renovation – only about 5% of the ship has been lost, and the hull was untouched, with much of the fabric surviving from her original construction. With 95% of our trade coming by sea, the only remaining tea clipper is a part of our technological, cultural and economic heritage – and is also preserved in part as a memorial to the merchant seamen who lost their lives in the world wars. And if you wander down to Greenwich, though you’ll find a great big white tent covering the ship itself for quite a while longer, there’s a little spiky-tented visitors’ centre where you might learn a thing or two, or buy some tea, cuddly rats, tea chests, books, tea towels, electrolysed salt, teacups and t-shirts. Alternatively, you can just donate to the restoration fund directly.
Laurence Boyce mockingly talked of
So whose post was it?
Well, obviously there were plenty that I disagreed with over the months that I slowed to a trickle (still having arm problems, but they’ve eased a lot), but with all these awards doing the rounds, who else could I give my own special award to but (lower lights, cue sinister music)… Laurence Boyce, the notorious Phantom of the Voice. Yes, it’s that terrifying genius who, cruelly denied a blog of his own, haunts the cellars of Liberal Democrat Voice. Happy first birthday to it and the team, but like every grand edifice, the grandest of all Lib Dem Blogs hides a dark secret (well, he’s not exactly a secret. There’s no shutting him up, and long may he continue). Can it be a coincidence that Lib Dem Voice creator Rob Fenwick was visited by a ghastly punishment at the
Oddly enough, though Laurence Boyce is a terrific political blogger and delights in being a controversial one, it wasn’t really a political subject that got my goat. I’m sure Mr Boyce will still be delighted: with the article I’m talking about he had the grand ambition of “becoming the most reviled person in the country” but, as I can be frightfully old-fashioned and British at times, this is going to be a bit more of a tut, a pair of pursed lips and a ‘Well, honestly, that wasn’t very nice’. Sorry to leave my blazing torch at home but, you know, fire can be jolly dangerous. And speaking of my home, in true daytime TV fashion, I live on the Isle of Dogs, out by the Thames in East London. Walk a few minutes down the riverside and there’s the foot tunnel to Greenwich, coming out by the Cutty Sark. Though I’ve lived here with Richard for over a dozen years, I still have fond memories of the Cutty Sark from over a dozen years earlier, when we visited it on a family trip and first walked through to the Isle of Dogs, little thinking that I’d grow up to fall in love and go to live there. And I’ve also since childhood had a love of history, even if I’ve never done much about it. So when, at ten to seven on the morning of May 21st, I heard a bulletin on the Today Programme saying that the Cutty Sark was in flames, I was horrified. Richard felt the same, and together we walked down to see the old ship, more than once that day and in those that followed.
Cutty Sark Frame Prow May 2007
“It’s Only a Boat”
Mr Boyce’s opinion, on the other hand, was that “It’s only a boat”. There are certain phrases that tend to make me narrow my eyes. ‘Opinion polls say we have to do it,’ before dropping a policy or making one up to suit the Daily Mail.‘I’m not homophobic, but…’ before supporting discrimination or making us out to be sick (to be pitied or ‘cured’), criminal (to be condemned) or intrinsically immoral (to be consigned to Hell). ‘It’s only a TV show,’ as if that’s an excuse for demolishing or denying support to everything that’s fun in the world. It’s only a statue. Only a painting. Only a building. Well, life’s about more than things that make money, or do the government’s bidding, or are ‘good for you’. And now ‘It’s only a boat’. Mr Boyce “was not in the least bit upset” about the fire. Fair enough. There are plenty of works of art or treasures of history about which, really, I never spare a thought – but some people do, and if they’re significant, my instinct is to preserve them for more people to enjoy in the future. Whatever floats your boat, you know.
I don’t want you to think Mr Boyce has some specific vendetta against the Cutty Sark. No, he also piled into such “lunacies” of the Heritage Lottery Fund as baths, churches, moths, archaeological sites and Agatha Christie. What sort of moral deviant could possibly want any of them to survive, eh? Now, if you’ve not read his piece, I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. He fervently believes that some aspects of heritage should be preserved. Well, ‘fervently’ is exaggerating things slightly. He ‘mildly’ believes. Or, well, doesn’t actively oppose, providing absolutely no money is involved. Hmm. Now I look at it, the phraseology might be tiptoeing away from conceding any actual cases, and more in the direction of ‘covering one’s arse’. Let’s see what he has to say:
“Look, I don’t want to sound like a total Philistine,”No, no, seriously, folks.
“and I’m sure that the Heritage Lottery Fund helps out many deserving causes,”Though he doesn’t in fact come up with any at all, or even any notion of what sort of thing that might cover, excepting the aforementioned hindquarters. And on that subject, do you feel a ‘but’ coming on?
“but there has to be a limit to the amount of old tat we might wish to preserve for future generations. Surely it would make sense, given how space is at such a premium, to allow a number of old buildings and churches to gently decay, before respectfully bulldozing them.”
History Matters
I wrote last year about why history matters to me. It’s always fascinated me, and I occasionally, say, dip into one of Conrad Russell’s Civil War books or just bounce around Wikipedia simply for the pleasure of it. There are few things sillier or more dangerous than a politician insisting that people share their pleasures, though; I just object to Mr Boyce calling for one of my pleasures to go up in flames. And, surely, for anyone with an interest in politics a sense of history is vital. It’s a cliché to say that you should learn history’s lessons or must repeat them, but it’s still true. When our world and our culture is changing so rapidly, though, it’s important to remember that history is a living thing and not just the fossil record. Know where you come from, cherish the best bits and remember the worst, but don’t hang onto them like grim death and let them prevent you going on anywhere else. Perhaps more importantly still, with so many of the world’s more intractable problems mired in history and grievances that sometimes go back centuries, in many cases the most important lesson of history isn’t who did what and who’s to blame, but that, if you can see that it’s all gone on so long and still nobody’s happy with it, perhaps it’s time to let go at last. History isn’t just the past; it’s about the future, too. And that, I think, is the fundamental flaw in Mr Boyce’s position. I don’t disagree that it’s impossible and even undesirable to preserve everything. It’s that, coming from the other instinctive end of the argument to me, he follows it almost to its natural conclusion and implies nothing about the past can be relevant to today, except in that it gets in the way. He seems to leave no room for learning from the past, still less (heavens forfend!) innocently enjoying it.
“National pride has got to comprise something greater than being in possession of old ships with rigging and everything. Perhaps the sad demise of the Cutty Sark marks an appropriate moment to take stock of our collective sense of priorities, and to remind ourselves that the future is always more important than the past.”Does anyone seriously doubt that “National pride has got to comprise something greater than being in possession of old ships”? And it’s absurd to suggest that spending on all forms of heritage combined amounts to any more than the teeniest fraction of national expenditure; it’s hardly a “priority”. So it wasn’t Mr Boyce’s Philistinism or different tastes that got on my wick. It was that startling combination of straw man, false choice and post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Liberals shouldn’t abandon emotion, or history. I thought we’d gone way past the caricature of every progressive as someone who wants to start everything at year zero and tear down everything that’s not in their grand new utopian design. I suppose that, when talking about getting rid of old stuff in favour of ‘progress’, there should be a special version of Godwin’s Law: not the first to mention the Nazis, but the first to mention ’60s tower blocks should be told off for resorting to cliché. Still, I’m going to go for it anyway. Not everything old is bad, or unloved; not everything new is better, or will win people over. Why should society choose right down the middle? My Liberalism’s rarely been attracted to ‘Neither one thing nor the other, but somewhere in between,’ but I’ll happily go along with ‘Neither one thing nor the other, but both’. The Cutty Sark is a famous London landmark that I look at and go ‘Ooh’ – so is the Gherkin. And what’s wrong with that?
Cutty Sark Frame Main May 2007
National Treasures
Over the summer, Radio 4 broadcast a series called National Treasures, in each of which an artificial choice was posed between two different aspects of British heritage, new or old, built or natural, large or small, and let experts and a guest politician – Edwina Currie, Julia Goldsworthy – decide which should get an imaginary investment. The week they pitted Canterbury Cathedral and Damien Hirst’s Bling Skull against each other for £50 million left me a little cold; an interesting debate, but neither much moved me. The one that grabbed my attention was a fight between the Cutty Sark and the National Archive of the British Film Institute for £30 million of hypothetical restoration money. I cared about each of those and, if I won half a billion or so on the Lottery, I’d have been tempted to give £30 million to both. And yet, if I really was faced with that dilemma… Well, I’d have gone for the BFI Archive, surprisingly enough. Three-quarters of a million film and television programmes, described as “A library of moments of time” and the greatest archive of film in the world (though nowhere near as great as the British Library is for books) – I’d just have to restore all those before that single ship. But again, why always pose that artificial choice? And why can history and innovation not go together?
One of the most important pieces of television ever made was The Quatermass Experiment, the first British drama serial originated for television and looking into the future. Stretching the BBC’s technical innovation further than anything else by then, it featured the British Experimental Rocket Group’s ill-fated first expedition into space. Part of it was broadcast 54 years to the day before that edition of National Treasures, but it isn’t in the BFI archive – most of it no longer exists at all (though if you hurry down to your local WH Smith, they’re currently flogging off the DVD set of the third of it that’s left and the two complete follow-up serials for just £12). And I’m not rambling completely off the point, because the Cutty Sark, with its combination of the highest technology and speed of the time, is almost a Victorian precursor to the Quatermass rocket; I’m fond of it for some of the same reasons I’d like us to build spacecraft (though I think I’m more likely to get a Cutty Sark fund past Vince Cable). It doesn’t just stand for heritage, but as a reminder of the advantages of scientific advances. All that, and it’s named after the Eighteenth Century equivalent of a Carry On film, to continue the BFI comparisons – in Rabbie Burns’ poem, a ‘cutty sark’ means a short undergarment (before I read about the ship and saw this, I just knew the word from ‘bare sark’, stripping off and literally going berserk), and it’s about a man getting into trouble for peeping at a scantily-clad witch. Which you would.
The Cutty Sark is well worth restoring. It’s given pleasure to millions of tourists, even if it may have bored millions of schoolchildren (well, no bit of heritage is perfect). Despite the fire – and in part because much of it had already been removed for renovation – only about 5% of the ship has been lost, and the hull was untouched, with much of the fabric surviving from her original construction. With 95% of our trade coming by sea, the only remaining tea clipper is a part of our technological, cultural and economic heritage – and is also preserved in part as a memorial to the merchant seamen who lost their lives in the world wars. And if you wander down to Greenwich, though you’ll find a great big white tent covering the ship itself for quite a while longer, there’s a little spiky-tented visitors’ centre where you might learn a thing or two, or buy some tea, cuddly rats, tea chests, books, tea towels, electrolysed salt, teacups and t-shirts. Alternatively, you can just donate to the restoration fund directly.
Laurence Boyce mockingly talked of
“A majestic ship, which for years ruled the South China Sea, as she conveyed to the nation that most essential of commodities – a nice cup of tea.”I’m happy with most of that description taken straight, and if that was all the Cutty Sark was about, I’d still want it restored. But in addition to that combination of homeliness and a seagoing sense of wonder, the old ship stands for something else. It proudly symbolises both technological innovation and free trade. And for a Liberal who cares about the future, that isn’t an irrelevance. It’s an inspiration.
Labels: Blogs, British Politics, History, Quatermass
Saturday, September 08, 2007
We Know We Shouldn’t, But We Can’t Resist…
…Talking about Mark Oaten or coalitions (well, it’s appropriate; Mr Oaten talks about both subjects incessantly, but then, he can’t resist anything). What do they have in common? That at the next General Election, we all hope nobody’ll mention either of them! Still, Lib Dem bloggers just can’t resist talking about them either because, well, we all love a good gossip, and I’ve read all the blog pieces doing the rounds, too. Some of them have been serious and very sound (Jonny Wright and his floppy yellow sponge come to mind), but the one most worth reading is Liberal Mafia. It’s a brilliant and highly educational piece, despite, gasp, plugging a rival Blog of the Year nominee (gets you to a tee, though, James), and every party member should read it for moral instruction. I know I reached to protect my own values when I read it.
I’d love to tell amusing stories from the Winchester by-election about Mark Oaten to titillate your desire for gossip, but I only saw him briefly on polling day when he was looking very nervous (because Chris Rennard wouldn’t show him the figures). The only embarrassing story I can actually remember from Winchester involves me and Mark Pack – thinking about it, mainly me – so perhaps I’ll keep that to myself for a little while longer.
On the other hand, I did once persuade Mr Oaten to toughen one of his lines against ID cards by telling him I’d heard from a source that if he didn’t do something quickly, that very issue was about to be claimed by the Tories, back when he was our Shadow Minister for Schadenfreude. It may not have been strictly true, but it was remarkable how he suddenly paid attention and changed his mind on whether he wanted to follow my suggestion when the T-word was dangled in front of him…
Is that OK, Don Liberali? As long as I pay you protection of a glowing write-up every month and keep omertà that you’re really Ming Campbell writing under a pseudonym, you promise I won’t wake up next to an elephant’s head (any more than usual)?The only new thing I’ve discovered from reading all those articles (the MP for Winchester a bit of a prat? Hold the front page) is that, apparently, the only person who agrees with Mr Oaten is Iain Dale. That doesn’t entirely surprise me; call me old-fashioned, but I sometimes feel just a smidgeon of suspicion about Lib Dems whose main fans are Tories… Is it possible their fans might have some ulterior motive?
I’d love to tell amusing stories from the Winchester by-election about Mark Oaten to titillate your desire for gossip, but I only saw him briefly on polling day when he was looking very nervous (because Chris Rennard wouldn’t show him the figures). The only embarrassing story I can actually remember from Winchester involves me and Mark Pack – thinking about it, mainly me – so perhaps I’ll keep that to myself for a little while longer.
On the other hand, I did once persuade Mr Oaten to toughen one of his lines against ID cards by telling him I’d heard from a source that if he didn’t do something quickly, that very issue was about to be claimed by the Tories, back when he was our Shadow Minister for Schadenfreude. It may not have been strictly true, but it was remarkable how he suddenly paid attention and changed his mind on whether he wanted to follow my suggestion when the T-word was dangled in front of him…
Labels: Blogs, Liberal Democrats, Stupid Ideas
Friday, September 07, 2007
The Tortoise, the Hare and the Witchfinder General
Last week, the BBC’s British film season showed still-alarming horror classic Witchfinder General. Almost as famous as the film itself was the quarrel between director Michael Reeves and star Vincent Price. When their clash of personalities came to a head, Mr Price brought his massive tally of work to bear against the man he saw as an upstart:
In other news, congratulations to Tom ‘Liberal Polemic’ Papworth, who stormed to victory in the Crystal Palace by-election last night – I’m sure his intelligent criticism will hold Bromley Council to account. With luck, he may find a few free moments to return to blogging at some point… I didn’t always agree with his pieces, but when he did find time to post he was always worth reading. For me, he’s the saddest omission from the Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year Awards shortlists, and a brilliant example of someone who aims, like Michael Reeves did, for quality at his own speed.
Between you and me, I need to do something about my own output, you know… I haven’t written anything about Doctor Who for ages!
“I’ve made 87 films,” he boasted. “What have you done?”
“I’ve made three good ones,” replied Mr Reeves.Like the old fable The Tortoise and the Hare, it’s a comforting moral for those of us who don’t churn out as much as Vincent Price – because, despite his bitching about it at the time, Michael Reeves’ direction resulted in what many people regard as Mr Price’s finest performance, playing one of East Anglia’s most intolerant sons.
In other news, congratulations to Tom ‘Liberal Polemic’ Papworth, who stormed to victory in the Crystal Palace by-election last night – I’m sure his intelligent criticism will hold Bromley Council to account. With luck, he may find a few free moments to return to blogging at some point… I didn’t always agree with his pieces, but when he did find time to post he was always worth reading. For me, he’s the saddest omission from the Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year Awards shortlists, and a brilliant example of someone who aims, like Michael Reeves did, for quality at his own speed.
Between you and me, I need to do something about my own output, you know… I haven’t written anything about Doctor Who for ages!
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Tory Party Unveils Its Soul: Children and Small Animals Flee
Gosh. I’m delighted to have been nominated in the Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year Awards category that I was secretly wishing for, and also in the big one… Where I’d anticipated four of the shortlist, but definitely not me! I reckon I was a rather better (or at least more frequent) blogger last year, so I’m very happily surprised. Thank you very much, those of you who nominated me, and I’ll take it as a punt up the posterior to propel me into more persistent punditry. So while I work on some serious number-crunching, here’s a Michael Ancram moment…
Michael who, you ask?
He used to be Chairman of the Conservative Party.
No, doesn’t ring a bell – Chairman? I can’t even remember all the Leaders they’ve got through between them doing away with the last one they really worshipped and getting in the oily new salesman.
Fair enough. Actually, he stood for Leader, too. Came a magnificent fifth against a field of talent headed by Iain Duncan Smith?
You’ve got to be kidding.
No, straight up. As a consolation prize, he became the Tories’ Shadow Foreign Secretary and – you must remember this – Deputy Leader!
What, for about five minutes, was that?
No, er, four years, actually.
Crikey. I only remember that Ming Campbell being the opposition on Foreign Affairs, the Iraq War and that.
Well, to be fair, the Tories were saying exactly the same as the Government except that they should be just a little bit more gung-ho for the Americans, so it would have been difficult to be very memorable.
I’ll say.
Anyway, he’s the man who used to be the Tories’ answer to John Prescott. Bit rotund, talks rubbish, ludicrous class stereotype to keep the old-fashioned wing of their party on board.
In what way?
Well, he’s not really called “Michael Ancram”.
No?
It’s the Most Honourable (don’t worry, it doesn’t mean he has to be honourable) Michael Andrew Foster Jude Kerr, Thirteenth Marquess of Lothian and Earl of Ancram. QC. PC. MP.
Oh, that Michael… No, no, sorry, still don’t remember him.
Well, he wasn’t as funny as John Prescott.
No, that would be difficult. So why’s he in the news?
He’s just made an attack on David Cameron that’s got in the way of a Tory policy launch.
David Cameron? Policies? Now I know this is a wind-up. Everyone knows he hasn’t got any of those.
Well, he never promised to actually stick to any of them. Just talk about them and see if they looked popular, in which case he could claim credit, or if they didn’t, in which case he could say they were nothing to do with him.
That sounds more like him.
Anyway,Mr Lord Earl Marquess Michael Ancram didn’t agree with Mr Cameron having no policies, and thought he was a bit of an oik – but then, Michael Ancram’s the only person in the country other than the Queen more posh than David Cameron (and Mr Cameron’s a closer relative of the Queen than Michael Ancram is, anyway, so the Marquess is probably jealous).
So what new policies does this Ancram Kerr Thing person want?
‘New’ isn’t really the word. Now – and you may hide behind the sofa if you wish – he says they had a perfectly good set of policies in the Eighties, and Mr Cameron’s been trashing them.
Brrr. But wasn’t the Tory Party all about homophobia, and xenophobia, and slash and burn back then?
And that’s exactly why Michael Ancram liked them. He said so.
Yikes! What else did he say? I’ve braced myself.
Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Launching his personal manifesto ‘Conservatives Standing Still’, he said David Cameron must “unveil the party’s soul”.
Aaaggh! Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
I think I am.
That scene at the end of the movie…
When mild-mannered, ineffectual David Cameron unwinds the camouflage wrapping round his head to reveal the ghastly shade of Lady Thatcher still clinging to his party?
That’s it. Help!
So you remember who Michael Ancram is now?
No. But I remember what the soul of the Conservative Party looks like.
PS I hope Millennium wins! The big one, anyway. I admit I’d quite like the Best Posting Award… Well, I’m only human.
Michael who, you ask?
He used to be Chairman of the Conservative Party.
No, doesn’t ring a bell – Chairman? I can’t even remember all the Leaders they’ve got through between them doing away with the last one they really worshipped and getting in the oily new salesman.
Fair enough. Actually, he stood for Leader, too. Came a magnificent fifth against a field of talent headed by Iain Duncan Smith?
You’ve got to be kidding.
No, straight up. As a consolation prize, he became the Tories’ Shadow Foreign Secretary and – you must remember this – Deputy Leader!
What, for about five minutes, was that?
No, er, four years, actually.
Crikey. I only remember that Ming Campbell being the opposition on Foreign Affairs, the Iraq War and that.
Well, to be fair, the Tories were saying exactly the same as the Government except that they should be just a little bit more gung-ho for the Americans, so it would have been difficult to be very memorable.
I’ll say.
Anyway, he’s the man who used to be the Tories’ answer to John Prescott. Bit rotund, talks rubbish, ludicrous class stereotype to keep the old-fashioned wing of their party on board.
In what way?
Well, he’s not really called “Michael Ancram”.
No?
It’s the Most Honourable (don’t worry, it doesn’t mean he has to be honourable) Michael Andrew Foster Jude Kerr, Thirteenth Marquess of Lothian and Earl of Ancram. QC. PC. MP.
Oh, that Michael… No, no, sorry, still don’t remember him.
Well, he wasn’t as funny as John Prescott.
No, that would be difficult. So why’s he in the news?
He’s just made an attack on David Cameron that’s got in the way of a Tory policy launch.
David Cameron? Policies? Now I know this is a wind-up. Everyone knows he hasn’t got any of those.
Well, he never promised to actually stick to any of them. Just talk about them and see if they looked popular, in which case he could claim credit, or if they didn’t, in which case he could say they were nothing to do with him.
That sounds more like him.
Anyway,
So what new policies does this Ancram Kerr Thing person want?
‘New’ isn’t really the word. Now – and you may hide behind the sofa if you wish – he says they had a perfectly good set of policies in the Eighties, and Mr Cameron’s been trashing them.
Brrr. But wasn’t the Tory Party all about homophobia, and xenophobia, and slash and burn back then?
And that’s exactly why Michael Ancram liked them. He said so.
Yikes! What else did he say? I’ve braced myself.
Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Launching his personal manifesto ‘Conservatives Standing Still’, he said David Cameron must “unveil the party’s soul”.
Aaaggh! Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
I think I am.
That scene at the end of the movie…
When mild-mannered, ineffectual David Cameron unwinds the camouflage wrapping round his head to reveal the ghastly shade of Lady Thatcher still clinging to his party?
That’s it. Help!
So you remember who Michael Ancram is now?
No. But I remember what the soul of the Conservative Party looks like.
PS I hope Millennium wins! The big one, anyway. I admit I’d quite like the Best Posting Award… Well, I’m only human.
Labels: Blogs, British Politics, Conservatives, Harry Potter
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
No Ming, Polls, Defections, Selections, Outrageous Confections, and Definitely No Iain Dale… Just a Bit of Radio
I’ve been busy with other things than blogging over the bank holiday, and if Stephen Tall’s spectacular return to the Interweb is true, I’ve just constructed the least interesting headline* possible for Lib Dem Blogs. Two of you still here? Good. My erratic performance on last Wednesday’s Simon Mayo Show will disappear from the BBC’s currently even more erratic Listen Again tomorrow, so you’ll have to listen sharpish to get in your own critique. Getting in before that deadline, I shan’t give as much depth as Millennium’s lovingly partial write-up, but I will say who I think came out best…
The best on the Five Live discussion panel: well, obviously, that would be me. I had the best lines, I had the most passion, I occasionally displayed a sense of humour and – this is the decider – curiously enough, I agree with what I said. As the topics were crime, immigration and Europe, rather than join the de facto party line by keeping my head down, my contribution boiled down to ‘This won’t win a lot of votes but, oh, bugger it, I’m a Liberal’.
The most terrifyingly on-message: Tim the Tory. He had an impressive stack of colour Tory Party press releases, but, to be fair, I don’t think he was actually reading from them; they were just piped straight into his brain. Calm, intimidatingly loud in the studio without raising his voice, brilliant at delivering contentious put-downs then bulldozing through, and clearly thinking it was Christmas come early with the choice of topics. Main drawback for me: I disagreed with almost every word he said. Main drawback for listeners: while they probably agreed with him more often that I did, he did sound like a robot.
The one whose point of view was a little vague: Labour Kerron. He had a smaller bunch of print-outs, mostly in black and white (I had one tatty sheet with nothing on it but my own brainstorming; I admit I chatted for a couple of minutes to someone at Cowley Street, but I suspect asking them “Have our MPs said anything about this? I’d rather be forewarned than ambushed when I disagree with them” wasn’t too slavish). General line: ‘The Tories are pandering to a vile, shocking right-wing Daily Mail agenda… And I agree with them.’ I found one of his answers so shocking that I didn’t press him on it in the studio, but just asked if he really meant it afterwards… Still, at least he likes the TARDIS, so he’s not all bad.
The worst on the panel: well, obviously, that would be me, too. I may be consistent in philosophy, but as far as performance goes… The others didn’t say “Um” as every fourth word, I missed several opportunities, and I was the one most likely to be completely derailed. More than once. On the plus side, no-one could have mistaken me for a Tory, and I somehow wasn’t derailed by the classic attack question, ‘So, Alex Wilcock, Mr Angry from just outside Cheltenham [see, I do know where Winchcombe is] wants to know how you personally will solve all his personal anti-social problems this very minute?’
Despite all that, my favourite line I’ve heard on the radio all week was not on BBC Radio 5 but on BBC7, in a 1920s play by Arnold Ridley (long before he was the most sympathetic old gent in Dad’s Army), The Ghost Train. An appallingly rude woman summons the guard to accuse a young man of molesting her after she refuses to make way in the corridor and he attempts to get by:
I’ve also added quite a few new blogs that I read regularly. Not as many as I’d like, though, as I decided there had to be a limit: I started cutting Lib Dem Bloggers off so that bit of the list’d still fit at one glance on my usual screen resolution. You may be able to spot three links I might have dropped but retained in the hope they’ll start writing again, too. But imagine my distress when I noticed the lovely Antony Hook had started blogging just after the updates… Sorry, Antony, but I think your link’ll have to wait until I next steel myself to pick someone else for the chop!
*Apart from one mentioning local casework, obviously. Er, sorry, councillors ;-)
The best on the Five Live discussion panel: well, obviously, that would be me. I had the best lines, I had the most passion, I occasionally displayed a sense of humour and – this is the decider – curiously enough, I agree with what I said. As the topics were crime, immigration and Europe, rather than join the de facto party line by keeping my head down, my contribution boiled down to ‘This won’t win a lot of votes but, oh, bugger it, I’m a Liberal’.
The most terrifyingly on-message: Tim the Tory. He had an impressive stack of colour Tory Party press releases, but, to be fair, I don’t think he was actually reading from them; they were just piped straight into his brain. Calm, intimidatingly loud in the studio without raising his voice, brilliant at delivering contentious put-downs then bulldozing through, and clearly thinking it was Christmas come early with the choice of topics. Main drawback for me: I disagreed with almost every word he said. Main drawback for listeners: while they probably agreed with him more often that I did, he did sound like a robot.
The one whose point of view was a little vague: Labour Kerron. He had a smaller bunch of print-outs, mostly in black and white (I had one tatty sheet with nothing on it but my own brainstorming; I admit I chatted for a couple of minutes to someone at Cowley Street, but I suspect asking them “Have our MPs said anything about this? I’d rather be forewarned than ambushed when I disagree with them” wasn’t too slavish). General line: ‘The Tories are pandering to a vile, shocking right-wing Daily Mail agenda… And I agree with them.’ I found one of his answers so shocking that I didn’t press him on it in the studio, but just asked if he really meant it afterwards… Still, at least he likes the TARDIS, so he’s not all bad.
The worst on the panel: well, obviously, that would be me, too. I may be consistent in philosophy, but as far as performance goes… The others didn’t say “Um” as every fourth word, I missed several opportunities, and I was the one most likely to be completely derailed. More than once. On the plus side, no-one could have mistaken me for a Tory, and I somehow wasn’t derailed by the classic attack question, ‘So, Alex Wilcock, Mr Angry from just outside Cheltenham [see, I do know where Winchcombe is] wants to know how you personally will solve all his personal anti-social problems this very minute?’
Despite all that, my favourite line I’ve heard on the radio all week was not on BBC Radio 5 but on BBC7, in a 1920s play by Arnold Ridley (long before he was the most sympathetic old gent in Dad’s Army), The Ghost Train. An appallingly rude woman summons the guard to accuse a young man of molesting her after she refuses to make way in the corridor and he attempts to get by:
“Don’t believe a word he says. He is probably a member of the Liberal Party!”In other blogging news, I’ve just got round to updating my sidebar links for (cough) the first time this year. So my selection of what I reckon are my best posts so far – no stats, just personal preference – is now up-to-date again (though I couldn’t work out how to get two links on one line, as in both the ‘Best of Politics’ and the ‘Best of Fun’ lists I had two posts that went together).
I’ve also added quite a few new blogs that I read regularly. Not as many as I’d like, though, as I decided there had to be a limit: I started cutting Lib Dem Bloggers off so that bit of the list’d still fit at one glance on my usual screen resolution. You may be able to spot three links I might have dropped but retained in the hope they’ll start writing again, too. But imagine my distress when I noticed the lovely Antony Hook had started blogging just after the updates… Sorry, Antony, but I think your link’ll have to wait until I next steel myself to pick someone else for the chop!
*Apart from one mentioning local casework, obviously. Er, sorry, councillors ;-)
Labels: Blogs, British Politics, Personal, Radio, The Golden Dozen
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
‘Mr Balloon’ Gets Back to Blandness
This morning’s interview with David Cameron was a typical example of the pointless tedium now provided by the Today Programme’s once-sharp cross-examinations of senior politicians. Bland evasions and trad-Tory dog whistles by Conservative Leader? Check. Lumbering efforts to make pre-prepared cheap points by Jim Naughtie, so he misses the live slips? All present. Not in any way illuminating, nor remotely as entertaining as Mr Cameron’s shell-shocked performance a fortnight ago, in which he fell spectacularly to pieces. Yes, I’m afraid today’s Today was merely dull, which was a definite step up for the beleaguered ‘Mr Balloon’. Remember the last time? Mr Cameron dropping clangers about his dismal by-election third places, grammar schools, plummeting opinion polls, donors complaining, candidates attacking and his embarrassing choice of the wrong traditional Tory vote dog-whistle issue (yes, he called for more school discipline while his Eton-educated party were rioting). Oh, and he impressively denied all responsibility for “David Cameron”, which may be a contender for some sort of award.
I’ve taken until a little later in the day to deal with his latest performance, because this time it wasn’t a disaster. It had good bits, it had bad bits, it even had a bit where I agreed with him – well, he does try to be all things to all people, so statistically it was bound to happen eventually – but mostly it had boring bits. Last time, I was inspired by the uselessness of Sarah Montague’s interviewing and David Cameron’s shaky inability to deal with her, and I have to admit I rather enjoyed sounding off about it. Several other people were kind enough to say they enjoyed that, too, including that week’s editions of Liberal Democrat Voice’s Top of the Blogs and the Britblog Roundup – though the latter had a funny idea that I was displaying “an unusual sense of irony for a Lib Dem”. Tsk! Honestly, when we’ve lost as many elections as we’ve managed in the last hundred years, irony is all that keeps a lot of us Lib Dems going. But I digress. No, I have to further admit, vanity was one of the things that delayed me writing this post: it’s just not going to be as amusing as the last one, is it?
I’d say that, technically, Jim Naughtie is a better interviewer than Sarah Montague. He gives a significantly greater impression of knowing what he’s talking about, and is more likely to press a slippery interviewee when they dodge a question. Despite that, he has his drawbacks, and I can’t help thinking that it was a mistake to field him against Mr Cameron this morning. He may seem more a bully than an airhead, but he can be just as superficial, and the previous encounter suggests Mr Cameron may find it much more difficult to do his usual shtick against a female interviewer. His favourite trick is to sound like a reasonable, nice guy put upon by a great big bully (‘Please don’t hurt me’), and while last time he’d clearly lost his grip anyway, his inner nastiness was bound to be more exposed when he couldn’t pretend to be a victim. The BBC’s strategy of sending a great big bully to tackle him is one that almost always fails, because it plays to Mr Cameron’s oily strengths, as it did this morning.
Can anyone have thought Jim Naughtie would achieve anything by opening his attack this morning by quoting the words “hug a hoodie” (not the more talented blog), and immediately saying that he wasn’t going to let Mr Cameron answer back on them? No, Mr Cameron reasonably interrupted him, “I never said it.” Mr Naughtie then blustered that if you asked most people, they’d say they thought he did, as if that mattered. So… Let me paraphrase: ‘I’m going to repeat something I know is a lie, and try to bully the person I’m talking to so he can’t tell the listeners it’s a lie. Then I’m going to admit it’s a lie, but say that most people believe it anyway, so I’ll act as if it’s true.’ This was an experienced Today interviewer so doggedly determined to take a cheap shot that, if you’ll forgive the mixed metaphor, he dug a great big elephant trap for himself and seemed surprised when he got pushed into it. Mr Cameron probably couldn’t believe his luck that he’d been gifted the opportunity to pose as Mr Nice, the reasonable chap who the beastly unscrupulous journo wants to do over, quite so early in the interview.
Mr Cameron’s luck held, I have to say, when pressed by Mr Naughtie’s Daily Hate Mail agenda on culture and the drinking age. Astoundingly, he stood up to Mr Naughtie’s authoritarian scorn, declined the opportunity to tickle the Tory grassroots’ g-spot and even took a policy position. Even more astoundingly, I agreed with it: a handful of younger violent criminals are no excuse to penalise every 18-, 19- and 20-year-old. For that fleeting instant, he sounded like the “Liberal Tory” (of a piece with being a Christian Satanist, a carnivorous vegetarian and a scientific alternative medical practitioner) he’d once posed as, firm, with a brain in his head, and potentially dangerous. But then his nerve failed him, and he reached straight back to the basic Tory vote. That might have been more damaging if Mr Naughtie had noticed, obviously. Perhaps he was having a bad day, perhaps he’s not really that bright and his researcher was asleep, perhaps he’d simply realised how badly his opening gambit had misfired and it was putting him off his stride… For whatever reason, Mr Cameron was about to be allowed to get away with a bit of spin that any competent interviewer should have pounced on.
So what did they talk about next? Mr Cameron was going to tackle knife crime. He didn’t say how, of course, but it was, well, bad. Very firm, that. Oh, and he’d had a bet with one of his chums that he could mention the Sex Pistols, so he shoehorned in the alarming hyperbole of “anarchy in the UK”. This one was so risible that even Mr Naughtie pounced on it and Mr Cameron immediately started retreating from it, but it did make me wonder if “broken society,” his previous attempt at a Tory meme and now largely abandoned except in theTory press release BBC news story (edit: it’s vanished even from that now. Do you think the Tories have realised people thought it was rubbish?), had been taken from a song as well. Perhaps it’s a competition. He did claim:
There’s something that needs to be nailed here. Nobody likes family break-up. Divorces are traumatic and tragic, and I’d much rather than everyone lived happily ever after. But in real life, rather than in Tory back to basics campaigns, not everyone does. And people don’t get divorced because the government has failed to shove a couple of tenners their way to bribe them to stay married. If loving parents love their kids and each other, it’s going to be a loving family and good for the kids. To most people, that’s a truism; to a Tory politician, it’s treated like an astounding revelation they can trot out to prove they’ve been right all along. Gosh, people who are happy together give their kids a happier life than people who aren’t happy together? Stop the presses! But the answer isn’t for the state to order the latter to pretend to be happy.
I’m a Liberal Liberal, so I don’t support the state bossing people around in their private lives: I think people know better about how they can live their own lives, and that even if they make mistakes, nine times out of ten they’ll make smaller ones than the government would make on their behalf. By contrast, Mr Cameron thinks he knows better than the rest of us. But go back to making divorce harder – which Mr Cameron doesn’t support – and adults and their children will be forced into old-fashioned Victorian misery. Go back to punishing people who live together without being married – which Mr Cameron doesn’t support – and you’ll hurt millions of people without making them believe the morality you’re trying to force on them. Go back to any sort of heavy incentive in favour of marriage and penalties for people who aren’t – which Mr Cameron doesn’t support – and you encourage lies, state-sponsored infidelity and have people marrying for greed rather than love. So what does Mr Cameron support? A very small financial bonus for marriage. Does he really think a tiny bung will “solve the family problem”? It won’t even cover a fraction of the costs of most weddings. All it’s there for is for him to sound like he supports some back to basics ‘solution’ without any pain, but aside from favourable noises in the Daily Hate Mail, it’s impossible to see any gain either. This is the homeopathic version of back to basics: big on the sales pitch, a placebo to the true believers, but so watered down that no objective observer thinks it’ll make the faintest bit of difference. Perhaps Mr Cameron has finally become both a lame duck and a quack?
The rest of the interview was an even greater waste of space: yet another tour around John Redwood’s tax proposals, the ones even Mr Cameron is unlikely to be foolish enough to commit to but would like to have his cake and eat by teasing his traditional voters with the possibility of. Yes, it’s another golden oldie, back to helping out poor people by suggesting a whopping tax break for the richest one-sixteenth of the population (no, I can’t say I’m completely convinced, either), and Mr Naughtie tried for a moment to pin down Mr Cameron to coming out on one side or another, pressing him on the desirability of “a low-tax economy”. “Well, why not give us one?” demanded the interviewer. “Well, because…” There! Did you spot what Mr Naughtie didn’t? Yep, Mr Cameron’s answer began by conceding that he wasn’t going to give those tax cuts. And the BBC’s star man didn’t even notice. Give me strength!
Hey ho. Well, the tide of blandness was unstoppable by that point, and Mr Cameron was clearly on a roll; not sounding impressive, you understand, but back to his old vacuity and clearly delighted that he was getting away with it. And, astoundingly, he really is the only interviewee who sounds much less rattled without Sarah Montague. Then he blathered about hospitals, completely ignoring the question of what if health professionals (whom he’d normally say should make the decisions) think people will get better care through smaller, non-specialist hospitals being closed. Obviously, Mr Naughtie should have challenged him on that when it was obvious he was just coming out with a pre-prepared and quite different statement but, well, you can imagine what actually happened. All I can think of was that the Today interviewer was losing the will to live as well as this listener by this point. No idea what the actual Tory policy is, though, aside from ‘Wouldn’t it be better if things were vaguely a little bit more like they used to be?’ So, while Mr Cameron was technically far more accomplished today than on his previous Today, and while he still lacks all policy substance, it may be significant that the feel of all his statements was of U-turn and abject surrender to his traditionalists. The mood music of his leadership has now changed in just the way that those of his ill-fated predecessors did: less ‘Today’ and more ‘back to yesterday’.
More back to basics: this afternoon, BBC2 showed World War II propaganda piece Lady Hamilton, in which Europe is saved from dictatorship by That (rather marvellous) Hamilton Woman. In the early hours of tomorrow morning, it’s going to be Nell Gwyn (narrated by Seventeenth-Century blogger Samuel Pepys). But the sanctity of marriage has only been undermined by these dreadful liberals who’ve been in power ever since the 1960s, you know.
Nicholas’ LiveJournal brings news that it isn’t just Today; famous Newsnight interviewers may not be as bright as they think they are, either.
In other news, today – or, rather, yesterday, as it’s just slipped past midnight as I attempted to post this and suddenly ran into Blogger being unco-operative, curses (edit: though now it’s showing the time I attempted to post, rather than when it deigned to do it) – I received the latest e-mail from the Metro newspaper, with one of their every-couple-of-monthly ‘Urban Life’ polls. One of the results of the previous poll amused me. 76% of reader respondents agreed with Mr Blair that the media is a “feral beast”… But, unaccountably, they didn’t agree with him that the herbivorous Independent was top predator. Fancy! Instead, they placed the ardently-Blair-loyalist Sun at the top of the guilty list among national newspaper publications (no mention of where the Daily Hate Mail came in, of course). Who’d have thunk?
I’ve taken until a little later in the day to deal with his latest performance, because this time it wasn’t a disaster. It had good bits, it had bad bits, it even had a bit where I agreed with him – well, he does try to be all things to all people, so statistically it was bound to happen eventually – but mostly it had boring bits. Last time, I was inspired by the uselessness of Sarah Montague’s interviewing and David Cameron’s shaky inability to deal with her, and I have to admit I rather enjoyed sounding off about it. Several other people were kind enough to say they enjoyed that, too, including that week’s editions of Liberal Democrat Voice’s Top of the Blogs and the Britblog Roundup – though the latter had a funny idea that I was displaying “an unusual sense of irony for a Lib Dem”. Tsk! Honestly, when we’ve lost as many elections as we’ve managed in the last hundred years, irony is all that keeps a lot of us Lib Dems going. But I digress. No, I have to further admit, vanity was one of the things that delayed me writing this post: it’s just not going to be as amusing as the last one, is it?
I’d say that, technically, Jim Naughtie is a better interviewer than Sarah Montague. He gives a significantly greater impression of knowing what he’s talking about, and is more likely to press a slippery interviewee when they dodge a question. Despite that, he has his drawbacks, and I can’t help thinking that it was a mistake to field him against Mr Cameron this morning. He may seem more a bully than an airhead, but he can be just as superficial, and the previous encounter suggests Mr Cameron may find it much more difficult to do his usual shtick against a female interviewer. His favourite trick is to sound like a reasonable, nice guy put upon by a great big bully (‘Please don’t hurt me’), and while last time he’d clearly lost his grip anyway, his inner nastiness was bound to be more exposed when he couldn’t pretend to be a victim. The BBC’s strategy of sending a great big bully to tackle him is one that almost always fails, because it plays to Mr Cameron’s oily strengths, as it did this morning.
Can anyone have thought Jim Naughtie would achieve anything by opening his attack this morning by quoting the words “hug a hoodie” (not the more talented blog), and immediately saying that he wasn’t going to let Mr Cameron answer back on them? No, Mr Cameron reasonably interrupted him, “I never said it.” Mr Naughtie then blustered that if you asked most people, they’d say they thought he did, as if that mattered. So… Let me paraphrase: ‘I’m going to repeat something I know is a lie, and try to bully the person I’m talking to so he can’t tell the listeners it’s a lie. Then I’m going to admit it’s a lie, but say that most people believe it anyway, so I’ll act as if it’s true.’ This was an experienced Today interviewer so doggedly determined to take a cheap shot that, if you’ll forgive the mixed metaphor, he dug a great big elephant trap for himself and seemed surprised when he got pushed into it. Mr Cameron probably couldn’t believe his luck that he’d been gifted the opportunity to pose as Mr Nice, the reasonable chap who the beastly unscrupulous journo wants to do over, quite so early in the interview.
Mr Cameron’s luck held, I have to say, when pressed by Mr Naughtie’s Daily Hate Mail agenda on culture and the drinking age. Astoundingly, he stood up to Mr Naughtie’s authoritarian scorn, declined the opportunity to tickle the Tory grassroots’ g-spot and even took a policy position. Even more astoundingly, I agreed with it: a handful of younger violent criminals are no excuse to penalise every 18-, 19- and 20-year-old. For that fleeting instant, he sounded like the “Liberal Tory” (of a piece with being a Christian Satanist, a carnivorous vegetarian and a scientific alternative medical practitioner) he’d once posed as, firm, with a brain in his head, and potentially dangerous. But then his nerve failed him, and he reached straight back to the basic Tory vote. That might have been more damaging if Mr Naughtie had noticed, obviously. Perhaps he was having a bad day, perhaps he’s not really that bright and his researcher was asleep, perhaps he’d simply realised how badly his opening gambit had misfired and it was putting him off his stride… For whatever reason, Mr Cameron was about to be allowed to get away with a bit of spin that any competent interviewer should have pounced on.
So what did they talk about next? Mr Cameron was going to tackle knife crime. He didn’t say how, of course, but it was, well, bad. Very firm, that. Oh, and he’d had a bet with one of his chums that he could mention the Sex Pistols, so he shoehorned in the alarming hyperbole of “anarchy in the UK”. This one was so risible that even Mr Naughtie pounced on it and Mr Cameron immediately started retreating from it, but it did make me wonder if “broken society,” his previous attempt at a Tory meme and now largely abandoned except in the
“I think if people break the law, the law should come down on them very hard indeed.”…Except for taking coke for rich kids, obviously. Anyway, the suggestion came – unsurprisingly – that tackling violent crime (or, at least, announcing he would like to, without saying how) was not a particularly unusual thing for a Tory to go on about. Oh no, said Mr Cameron smoothly, of course that’s “the traditional Tory thing to do,” but he would “also” introduce measures to support marriage. And Mr Naughtie let that sleight of hand pass without a question. Er, excuse me? Since when has the back to basics faux-Victorian wish-fulfilment of blaming all the ills in the world on single parents and pretending the government can wave a magic wand that’ll make every married couple stay together not been traditional Toryism? It even came pre-labelled with the words “…from Iain Duncan Smith”.
There’s something that needs to be nailed here. Nobody likes family break-up. Divorces are traumatic and tragic, and I’d much rather than everyone lived happily ever after. But in real life, rather than in Tory back to basics campaigns, not everyone does. And people don’t get divorced because the government has failed to shove a couple of tenners their way to bribe them to stay married. If loving parents love their kids and each other, it’s going to be a loving family and good for the kids. To most people, that’s a truism; to a Tory politician, it’s treated like an astounding revelation they can trot out to prove they’ve been right all along. Gosh, people who are happy together give their kids a happier life than people who aren’t happy together? Stop the presses! But the answer isn’t for the state to order the latter to pretend to be happy.
I’m a Liberal Liberal, so I don’t support the state bossing people around in their private lives: I think people know better about how they can live their own lives, and that even if they make mistakes, nine times out of ten they’ll make smaller ones than the government would make on their behalf. By contrast, Mr Cameron thinks he knows better than the rest of us. But go back to making divorce harder – which Mr Cameron doesn’t support – and adults and their children will be forced into old-fashioned Victorian misery. Go back to punishing people who live together without being married – which Mr Cameron doesn’t support – and you’ll hurt millions of people without making them believe the morality you’re trying to force on them. Go back to any sort of heavy incentive in favour of marriage and penalties for people who aren’t – which Mr Cameron doesn’t support – and you encourage lies, state-sponsored infidelity and have people marrying for greed rather than love. So what does Mr Cameron support? A very small financial bonus for marriage. Does he really think a tiny bung will “solve the family problem”? It won’t even cover a fraction of the costs of most weddings. All it’s there for is for him to sound like he supports some back to basics ‘solution’ without any pain, but aside from favourable noises in the Daily Hate Mail, it’s impossible to see any gain either. This is the homeopathic version of back to basics: big on the sales pitch, a placebo to the true believers, but so watered down that no objective observer thinks it’ll make the faintest bit of difference. Perhaps Mr Cameron has finally become both a lame duck and a quack?
The rest of the interview was an even greater waste of space: yet another tour around John Redwood’s tax proposals, the ones even Mr Cameron is unlikely to be foolish enough to commit to but would like to have his cake and eat by teasing his traditional voters with the possibility of. Yes, it’s another golden oldie, back to helping out poor people by suggesting a whopping tax break for the richest one-sixteenth of the population (no, I can’t say I’m completely convinced, either), and Mr Naughtie tried for a moment to pin down Mr Cameron to coming out on one side or another, pressing him on the desirability of “a low-tax economy”. “Well, why not give us one?” demanded the interviewer. “Well, because…” There! Did you spot what Mr Naughtie didn’t? Yep, Mr Cameron’s answer began by conceding that he wasn’t going to give those tax cuts. And the BBC’s star man didn’t even notice. Give me strength!
Hey ho. Well, the tide of blandness was unstoppable by that point, and Mr Cameron was clearly on a roll; not sounding impressive, you understand, but back to his old vacuity and clearly delighted that he was getting away with it. And, astoundingly, he really is the only interviewee who sounds much less rattled without Sarah Montague. Then he blathered about hospitals, completely ignoring the question of what if health professionals (whom he’d normally say should make the decisions) think people will get better care through smaller, non-specialist hospitals being closed. Obviously, Mr Naughtie should have challenged him on that when it was obvious he was just coming out with a pre-prepared and quite different statement but, well, you can imagine what actually happened. All I can think of was that the Today interviewer was losing the will to live as well as this listener by this point. No idea what the actual Tory policy is, though, aside from ‘Wouldn’t it be better if things were vaguely a little bit more like they used to be?’ So, while Mr Cameron was technically far more accomplished today than on his previous Today, and while he still lacks all policy substance, it may be significant that the feel of all his statements was of U-turn and abject surrender to his traditionalists. The mood music of his leadership has now changed in just the way that those of his ill-fated predecessors did: less ‘Today’ and more ‘back to yesterday’.
More back to basics: this afternoon, BBC2 showed World War II propaganda piece Lady Hamilton, in which Europe is saved from dictatorship by That (rather marvellous) Hamilton Woman. In the early hours of tomorrow morning, it’s going to be Nell Gwyn (narrated by Seventeenth-Century blogger Samuel Pepys). But the sanctity of marriage has only been undermined by these dreadful liberals who’ve been in power ever since the 1960s, you know.
Nicholas’ LiveJournal brings news that it isn’t just Today; famous Newsnight interviewers may not be as bright as they think they are, either.
In other news, today – or, rather, yesterday, as it’s just slipped past midnight as I attempted to post this and suddenly ran into Blogger being unco-operative, curses (edit: though now it’s showing the time I attempted to post, rather than when it deigned to do it) – I received the latest e-mail from the Metro newspaper, with one of their every-couple-of-monthly ‘Urban Life’ polls. One of the results of the previous poll amused me. 76% of reader respondents agreed with Mr Blair that the media is a “feral beast”… But, unaccountably, they didn’t agree with him that the herbivorous Independent was top predator. Fancy! Instead, they placed the ardently-Blair-loyalist Sun at the top of the guilty list among national newspaper publications (no mention of where the Daily Hate Mail came in, of course). Who’d have thunk?
Labels: British Politics, Conservatives, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Quackery, Radio, The Today Programme
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Caitlin Della Hill Is Lovely!
For my 250th post, I have fantastic news and, unusually, even pictures. While Richard and I were up north with our parents last week, we got to see my brand-new niece (then just a week old)! Congratulations to my sister Helen and her husband Jay, and little Caitlin is lovely. The evening we arrived, I walked over with Mum to see the new mum. I know it’s wrong of me, but I have to share with you that, while Mum criticised my awkward holding style, Caitlin stopped crying when her uncle rocked her delightedly but not when her granny did. If Mum ever gets round to reading this blog, I’ll suffer for that… Congratulations are also due to my eldest nephew, Sam, who’s my brother’s son and turned fourteen three days after Caitlin was born.
Alex with Helen and Caitlin – awwhhh!
The following morning, Richard and I went over together on our way to his parents’ fortieth wedding bash (congratulations, June and Tom!). “She’s just been sick all down one side,” said Helen, “so you might not want to hold her right now.” Well, one uncle jumped over, beaming, and took her, while the other stepped back and decided just to take the photos rather than get vomit all over his tie. See if you can guess which was which.
Proud Uncle Alex with Caitlin – awwhhh!
Yes, all right, Richard has now discovered that I am not immune from babies (awwwwhhh! She’s lovely!) while he definitely is (except for elephants). On the other hand, he’s still very fond of her, and we teamed up to look for early indulgences. As she’s already quite a big girl – eight pounds at birth, half a pound heavier a week later when most babies lose a bit – we’d been warned not to go for the very tiniest little clothes, as not only had she already been given quite a few but several were already too small to fit. So when we looked out for clothes in the 6-9 month range for her to grow into (and not grow very far, at that), it was Richard who spotted the little sun outfit that looked like a miniature Emmapeeler from The Avengers, and the cutest little hoodie. Being us, we worried a bit about the Emmapeeler, because most of it was in vivid pink, and we’d been determined not to buy pink things for a girl. It turned out my sister doesn’t like pink, either, but she loved the outfit – because all the other pink clothes she’s been given are pale, pastel, dainty pinks, while ours was screaming. We didn’t hesitate over the hoodie, though, and Helen liked that, too. Almost equally delightfully, my Mother was a bit wary of it (though I should point out right now that Mum is lovely too, and really not remotely like the Daily Mail. Hello Mum!). I should almost certainly also not point out that my Grandma, Caitlin’s great-granny, sent a card from New Hampshire giving her middle name as “Bela,” which caused her wicked uncle to make swooping motions at her with fingers raised as vampire fangs. Because that would be wrong.
…And this was just on the way there
Lots of fun was also had at June and Tom’s fortieth wedding anniversary do, where the food was splendid and Richard and I in no way over-indulged in it. We spent a lot of the time entertaining our middle nephew and niece, Jamie and Holly, who are Richard’s sister’s children and very lively. Richard’s much better at the entertaining than I am, in part because he gets the hang of Jamie’s computer games. They’re also big Doctor Who fans – being proper wicked uncles, we’d primed Jamie with lots of Tom Baker DVDs from well before the new series started – and always have plenty of questions. It’s often said that boys just do lists, while girls are interested in the characters. Well, Jamie always wants to know why people do things, while Holly asks “How many Doctors have there been? …How many companions? …How many stories with the Master? …How many monsters?” until even Richard’s head is exploding.
Richard menaced by the Empress of the Racnoss – scary, eh?
Fortunately, we had a morning with Jamie and Holly which was almost entirely visual, as we made it to the Doctor Who exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester – albeit slightly delayed as their mum and nana went straight into town while Richard picked me up and then hit the joy of A6 roadworks.
There’s a minor spoiler coming up in the last photo you’ll scroll down to, by the way, though it’s already been in all the papers…
The exhibition’s great fun, though take your time going through it, or it’ll all seem over in a flash. Its array of new series costumes and sets is constantly evolving, and much better-laid-out than the more plentiful supply of old series oddments to be found in Blackpool (both are worth a visit, naturally).
Alex and a big old Face
Highlights include a shattered Big Ben (smaller than you’d think), the Face of Boe himself, the alarmingly huge Empress of the Racnoss, Professor Lazarus’ experimental booth – not spinning – and, of course, the Daleks. Go on, treat yourself.
Do you think someone else was with us in secret…?
The main museum has some cool science to play with upstairs, too, as we found out with Jamie.
The Beast shall rise from the Pit and make war on his uncles…
Of course, some highlights may find their own reasons to slip away…
Alex with Helen and Caitlin – awwhhh!
The following morning, Richard and I went over together on our way to his parents’ fortieth wedding bash (congratulations, June and Tom!). “She’s just been sick all down one side,” said Helen, “so you might not want to hold her right now.” Well, one uncle jumped over, beaming, and took her, while the other stepped back and decided just to take the photos rather than get vomit all over his tie. See if you can guess which was which.
Proud Uncle Alex with Caitlin – awwhhh!
Yes, all right, Richard has now discovered that I am not immune from babies (awwwwhhh! She’s lovely!) while he definitely is (except for elephants). On the other hand, he’s still very fond of her, and we teamed up to look for early indulgences. As she’s already quite a big girl – eight pounds at birth, half a pound heavier a week later when most babies lose a bit – we’d been warned not to go for the very tiniest little clothes, as not only had she already been given quite a few but several were already too small to fit. So when we looked out for clothes in the 6-9 month range for her to grow into (and not grow very far, at that), it was Richard who spotted the little sun outfit that looked like a miniature Emmapeeler from The Avengers, and the cutest little hoodie. Being us, we worried a bit about the Emmapeeler, because most of it was in vivid pink, and we’d been determined not to buy pink things for a girl. It turned out my sister doesn’t like pink, either, but she loved the outfit – because all the other pink clothes she’s been given are pale, pastel, dainty pinks, while ours was screaming. We didn’t hesitate over the hoodie, though, and Helen liked that, too. Almost equally delightfully, my Mother was a bit wary of it (though I should point out right now that Mum is lovely too, and really not remotely like the Daily Mail. Hello Mum!). I should almost certainly also not point out that my Grandma, Caitlin’s great-granny, sent a card from New Hampshire giving her middle name as “Bela,” which caused her wicked uncle to make swooping motions at her with fingers raised as vampire fangs. Because that would be wrong.
…And this was just on the way there
Lots of fun was also had at June and Tom’s fortieth wedding anniversary do, where the food was splendid and Richard and I in no way over-indulged in it. We spent a lot of the time entertaining our middle nephew and niece, Jamie and Holly, who are Richard’s sister’s children and very lively. Richard’s much better at the entertaining than I am, in part because he gets the hang of Jamie’s computer games. They’re also big Doctor Who fans – being proper wicked uncles, we’d primed Jamie with lots of Tom Baker DVDs from well before the new series started – and always have plenty of questions. It’s often said that boys just do lists, while girls are interested in the characters. Well, Jamie always wants to know why people do things, while Holly asks “How many Doctors have there been? …How many companions? …How many stories with the Master? …How many monsters?” until even Richard’s head is exploding.
Richard menaced by the Empress of the Racnoss – scary, eh?
Fortunately, we had a morning with Jamie and Holly which was almost entirely visual, as we made it to the Doctor Who exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester – albeit slightly delayed as their mum and nana went straight into town while Richard picked me up and then hit the joy of A6 roadworks.
There’s a minor spoiler coming up in the last photo you’ll scroll down to, by the way, though it’s already been in all the papers…
The exhibition’s great fun, though take your time going through it, or it’ll all seem over in a flash. Its array of new series costumes and sets is constantly evolving, and much better-laid-out than the more plentiful supply of old series oddments to be found in Blackpool (both are worth a visit, naturally).
Alex and a big old Face
Highlights include a shattered Big Ben (smaller than you’d think), the Face of Boe himself, the alarmingly huge Empress of the Racnoss, Professor Lazarus’ experimental booth – not spinning – and, of course, the Daleks. Go on, treat yourself.
Do you think someone else was with us in secret…?
The main museum has some cool science to play with upstairs, too, as we found out with Jamie.
The Beast shall rise from the Pit and make war on his uncles…
Of course, some highlights may find their own reasons to slip away…
Labels: Doctor Who, Richard
Banning Things Is Insane, Except When Not Banning Them Is Insane – BBC
There’s nothing better to wake up to in the morning than The Today Programme. Not because it’s any good, but because the exasperating rubbish they spout gets me properly awake and raring to have a go. This morning saw a particularly silly example of their usual editorial stance, where the programme adopts a tone that is either vociferously in favour or vociferously against something and implies that to hold any other opinion would be sheer insanity. Today, Today thought it was both entirely ludicrous and completely reasonable to ban things, without spotting the minor flaw in holding both positions simultaneously.
After the opening headlines of today’s tragedy in Iraq, the lead story was a follow-up to the dreadful killing of a man by a group of youths, in which the Chief Constable of Cheshire has made the knee-jerk reaction that the legal age of consent for alcohol should be raised to 21. You can see it on the BBC website, illustrated with not at all misleading pictures of gentlemen apparently rather younger than the 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds who the Chief Constable wishes to waste his force’s time by criminalising. During the course of the day, the BBC has at least improved its English from the initial caption that
You might think, then, that The Today Programme gave out strong signals in its news agenda this morning that banning things because a few people had a problem was absolutely the right thing to do. And they did. So it would be ludicrous, wouldn’t it, for them also to adopt the editorial line at the same time that only some insane busybody would start banning things because a few people had a problem. But they did that, too.
Yesterday morning, there had been an item about, as far as I recall (‘Listen Again’ is very patchy when you have steam-powered dial-up), balloon animals being banned at children’s parties for fear of latex allergies. There was maximum sneerage at this absurd state of affairs, and again this morning when – it all having been blamed on “health and safety” – someone representing a health and safety officers’ professional organisation came on to deny that his lot had anything to do with it. We were treated to Jim Naughtie pouring scorn on the decision, and the official saying that, yes, this was absolutely wrong, and wasn’t it awful that his members always got the blame for such things, constantly citing what he called the problem of “Bonkers Conkers”. Obviously, two people fighting to let loose their invective by proving in ever more wild terms how much they agreed with each other wasn’t the most illuminating of interviews, however much I agreed with them.
Aside from the bizarreness of clearly facing both ways along their arbitrary, binary editorial position, the problem with the BBC doing the Daily Mail is that they’re so bad at it. Richard and I both goggled at the wireless when Mr Naughtie blithely announced that this was “health and safety gone mad” and that everyone had used the phrase: no, the well-known cliché he was reaching for and which a Hate Mail hack would have known by heart is “political correctness gone mad” (UK Google results for the former number 1,040, while for the latter it’s 34,100, and that seems astoundingly low), while people attacking this sort of thing usually use the term “compensation culture” (59,400, and jackpot). But perhaps I’ve been too kind by merely labelling the BBC’s two-facedness as bizarre. No, it’s actively harmful, and symptomatic of how the whole thing works, just as the health and safety official’s wish to deny everything is.
Who actually does all this banning? Well, New ‘New Laws Every Day’ Labour love it, of course, but for once it’s not all the government’s fault. No, it’s a vicious circle, in which no one takes responsibility. Look at the Daily Mail, which this morning screams for alcohol to be banned for people younger than its readership, but which will no doubt tomorrow be back to saying that calls for something it approves of (should there be such a thing) to be banned is “political correctness gone mad”, with exactly the same binary stupidity displayed by its Little Sir Echo Mr Naughtie this morning. Then there are officials, the well-meaning kind who genuinely believe all – or some – adults must be treated like children, and the probably more common kind who are fearful that they’ll be sued should anything unpleasant happen to anyone, ever. And then there are the companies that make a packet out of doing the suing, who advertise with nice-looking young women on the television, and the people who then ring Ambulance-Chasers Direct because, let’s face it, they want some free money and don’t care who pays for it.
The thing is, I just don’t like banning things. So railing against all this appeals to both the social Liberal and the economic Liberal sides of my invective. The stereotype of a social Liberal thinks everything’s the fault of heartless, rapacious big businesses who hurt everyone else in their scramble for cash. The stereotype of an economic Liberal thinks everything’s the fault of well-meaning do-gooders with no concept of reality who want to stop anyone doing anything ‘for our own good’. Well, the villains here include both. Hurrah for all Liberals!
I may not agree with everything John Stuart Mill ever said – what’s the point of a Liberal who entirely agrees with another Liberal? – but my instincts are ever likely to side with him over Roy Hattersley, and even when there are things I disapprove of or which are bad for me, I’d need a far, far stronger reason to ban them than just bleating that I don’t like what someone else is doing or that I don’t have the courage to take responsibility for my own mistakes. Drinking isn’t one of my regular vices, despite Richard’s parents’ fortieth anniversary bash, but I strolled over to my local supermarket earlier today to buy a bottle, just to stick some Vs up at the headlines. And, gosh! A little red light came on so I was challenged to make sure I looked over 21 (I do, and yes, it’s been quite a few years since anyone took a second look). So if someone of 16 gets sold booze, it’s not the fault of lax laws, but greedy suppliers. I have quite a few allergies – though not latex, fortunately for one of my regular vices – but I don’t feel the urge to ban things to make life easier for me. I don’t approve of the smoking ban, though it’s helpful to my asthma. I’m allergic to dogs, but I’d do nothing to outlaw them. It might be very helpful indeed if the government banned household dust, and sent a team round to vacuum every trace of it from under me to spare my allergic reaction. But no, they’d only send an inspector round to fine me because I don’t clean the flat thoroughly enough, and that wouldn’t stop me coughing, would it? And pretty much any kind of food can make me ill, but I know that certain kinds are much more likely to make me more unwell than others. But I still eat them from time to time, and the results aren’t something I’d sue the manufacturer for or that I’d want to campaign for a ban on so I won’t be tempted and no-one else can enjoy it – it’s simply an ill-effect that I know is largely my own fault.
So when bandwagon-jumping politicians, fear-stoking journalists, fearful safety officials, ambulance-chasing lawyers, anxious parents, authoritarian police officers and greedy citizens all say ‘It’s not my fault, guv,’ look at them askance. I can’t quite decide whether it’s ironic or appropriate that people who want to stop anyone being able to take responsibility for their own actions keep dodging responsibility for wanting to do so. Still, not my responsibility, is it?
The item on the balloons, incidentally, was followed by an item that regularly prompts an allergic reaction – the so-called Thought For the Day. So when I heard that the speaker was director “…of the thinktank Ecclesia,” I considered suing them for the dangerous lack of health advice: ‘Warning: may not contain real thoughts’.
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After the opening headlines of today’s tragedy in Iraq, the lead story was a follow-up to the dreadful killing of a man by a group of youths, in which the Chief Constable of Cheshire has made the knee-jerk reaction that the legal age of consent for alcohol should be raised to 21. You can see it on the BBC website, illustrated with not at all misleading pictures of gentlemen apparently rather younger than the 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds who the Chief Constable wishes to waste his force’s time by criminalising. During the course of the day, the BBC has at least improved its English from the initial caption that
“The chief constable called for the legal drinking age to be raise,”though, so that’s an improvement (perhaps the early morning typist was still a bit hung-over). The BBC has adopted a Daily Mail / Labour-esque line that all young people fall into the category either of ‘angel’ or ‘devil’, that there is nothing wrong with younger adults being given less money, fewer freedoms, more responsibilities and judged not on the basis of how their actions harm other people but arbitrarily by their tastes in music, clothing or recreational drugs. Well, despite the editorial line you may have heard this morning, I blame the killers rather than everyone in their age group, still less advocate prohibition as the panacea it has never proven to be in practice.
You might think, then, that The Today Programme gave out strong signals in its news agenda this morning that banning things because a few people had a problem was absolutely the right thing to do. And they did. So it would be ludicrous, wouldn’t it, for them also to adopt the editorial line at the same time that only some insane busybody would start banning things because a few people had a problem. But they did that, too.
Yesterday morning, there had been an item about, as far as I recall (‘Listen Again’ is very patchy when you have steam-powered dial-up), balloon animals being banned at children’s parties for fear of latex allergies. There was maximum sneerage at this absurd state of affairs, and again this morning when – it all having been blamed on “health and safety” – someone representing a health and safety officers’ professional organisation came on to deny that his lot had anything to do with it. We were treated to Jim Naughtie pouring scorn on the decision, and the official saying that, yes, this was absolutely wrong, and wasn’t it awful that his members always got the blame for such things, constantly citing what he called the problem of “Bonkers Conkers”. Obviously, two people fighting to let loose their invective by proving in ever more wild terms how much they agreed with each other wasn’t the most illuminating of interviews, however much I agreed with them.
Aside from the bizarreness of clearly facing both ways along their arbitrary, binary editorial position, the problem with the BBC doing the Daily Mail is that they’re so bad at it. Richard and I both goggled at the wireless when Mr Naughtie blithely announced that this was “health and safety gone mad” and that everyone had used the phrase: no, the well-known cliché he was reaching for and which a Hate Mail hack would have known by heart is “political correctness gone mad” (UK Google results for the former number 1,040, while for the latter it’s 34,100, and that seems astoundingly low), while people attacking this sort of thing usually use the term “compensation culture” (59,400, and jackpot). But perhaps I’ve been too kind by merely labelling the BBC’s two-facedness as bizarre. No, it’s actively harmful, and symptomatic of how the whole thing works, just as the health and safety official’s wish to deny everything is.
Who actually does all this banning? Well, New ‘New Laws Every Day’ Labour love it, of course, but for once it’s not all the government’s fault. No, it’s a vicious circle, in which no one takes responsibility. Look at the Daily Mail, which this morning screams for alcohol to be banned for people younger than its readership, but which will no doubt tomorrow be back to saying that calls for something it approves of (should there be such a thing) to be banned is “political correctness gone mad”, with exactly the same binary stupidity displayed by its Little Sir Echo Mr Naughtie this morning. Then there are officials, the well-meaning kind who genuinely believe all – or some – adults must be treated like children, and the probably more common kind who are fearful that they’ll be sued should anything unpleasant happen to anyone, ever. And then there are the companies that make a packet out of doing the suing, who advertise with nice-looking young women on the television, and the people who then ring Ambulance-Chasers Direct because, let’s face it, they want some free money and don’t care who pays for it.
The thing is, I just don’t like banning things. So railing against all this appeals to both the social Liberal and the economic Liberal sides of my invective. The stereotype of a social Liberal thinks everything’s the fault of heartless, rapacious big businesses who hurt everyone else in their scramble for cash. The stereotype of an economic Liberal thinks everything’s the fault of well-meaning do-gooders with no concept of reality who want to stop anyone doing anything ‘for our own good’. Well, the villains here include both. Hurrah for all Liberals!
I may not agree with everything John Stuart Mill ever said – what’s the point of a Liberal who entirely agrees with another Liberal? – but my instincts are ever likely to side with him over Roy Hattersley, and even when there are things I disapprove of or which are bad for me, I’d need a far, far stronger reason to ban them than just bleating that I don’t like what someone else is doing or that I don’t have the courage to take responsibility for my own mistakes. Drinking isn’t one of my regular vices, despite Richard’s parents’ fortieth anniversary bash, but I strolled over to my local supermarket earlier today to buy a bottle, just to stick some Vs up at the headlines. And, gosh! A little red light came on so I was challenged to make sure I looked over 21 (I do, and yes, it’s been quite a few years since anyone took a second look). So if someone of 16 gets sold booze, it’s not the fault of lax laws, but greedy suppliers. I have quite a few allergies – though not latex, fortunately for one of my regular vices – but I don’t feel the urge to ban things to make life easier for me. I don’t approve of the smoking ban, though it’s helpful to my asthma. I’m allergic to dogs, but I’d do nothing to outlaw them. It might be very helpful indeed if the government banned household dust, and sent a team round to vacuum every trace of it from under me to spare my allergic reaction. But no, they’d only send an inspector round to fine me because I don’t clean the flat thoroughly enough, and that wouldn’t stop me coughing, would it? And pretty much any kind of food can make me ill, but I know that certain kinds are much more likely to make me more unwell than others. But I still eat them from time to time, and the results aren’t something I’d sue the manufacturer for or that I’d want to campaign for a ban on so I won’t be tempted and no-one else can enjoy it – it’s simply an ill-effect that I know is largely my own fault.
So when bandwagon-jumping politicians, fear-stoking journalists, fearful safety officials, ambulance-chasing lawyers, anxious parents, authoritarian police officers and greedy citizens all say ‘It’s not my fault, guv,’ look at them askance. I can’t quite decide whether it’s ironic or appropriate that people who want to stop anyone being able to take responsibility for their own actions keep dodging responsibility for wanting to do so. Still, not my responsibility, is it?
The item on the balloons, incidentally, was followed by an item that regularly prompts an allergic reaction – the so-called Thought For the Day. So when I heard that the speaker was director “…of the thinktank Ecclesia,” I considered suing them for the dangerous lack of health advice: ‘Warning: may not contain real thoughts’.
Labels: British Politics, Drugs, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Radio, Stupid Ideas, The Golden Dozen, The Today Programme
