I was in Leeds yesterday for an excellent conference organised by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom North on the theme of ‘Post Election Policies for Media Reform.’ In the current climate never was the subject more relevant yet the concept of reform less achievable. The word ‘reform’ was itself questioned, since it could loosely be interpreted as leading to improvement, but when the government for example talks of BBC reform, that’s not what thy have in mind. More Murdochisation and commercialisation is the driving force there. Not that the BBC could do without reform, for example by trying harder to understand its duty to deliver balance. That’s hard to achieve when it takes its cue from the right wing media, which so far as print is concerned is almost wholly dominant. Nicholas Jones, the BBC’s former industrial and labour correspondent gave an insider’s view of the forces at work within the Beeb. Little things that shift the narrative—for example, how the business and finance agenda has overwhelmed the old industrial and labour agenda with a concomitant shift in staff resources. I don’t think he was lamenting the demise of some golden age, but there seems little doubt that what the BBC presents us with, at least in its news bulletins and some current affairs coverage is gripped by the ubiquitous force of capital. And whilst there are many ways of getting the ‘news’ these days, apparently 78% of us still trust the BBC to deliver it to us. Jones also presented a slide show illustrating the vile election content of the tabloids—I saw their headlines every time I went to the newsagent, but clearly their inside pages amounted to a form of pornography—setting the tone and providing legitimacy for the even worse stuff on social media. Yes, we now have election porn, or perhaps it should be called propaganda porn, since it is not confined to election periods.
The hard part of any debate about media reform for the left is to envisage what reforms could realistically be achieved. The merest hint of wanting a responsible press leads to hysteria in editors’ offices, with all the usual guff about attacks on press freedom (in reality press baron freedom). In the meantime the Labour Party and particularly its new leadership must not be cowed by the Tory press, and should not be defensive and apologetic when falsehoods are splattered around. They deserve robust rebuttal rather than silent contempt. The British press will only be on our side when it can stand on our grave.
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As one who supported John Bercow to become Speaker of the House of Commons in 2009 I have taken an interest in how his career has developed. It looks like he has acquired quite a few enemies (what a surprise). Back in 2009 it was understood, following the as usual unwritten convention of choosing alternating party nominees that a Tory should get the job of Speaker. But Labour MPs, suspecting their pending annihilation, at least wanted to bequeath a Speaker who had the gumption (I almost said the balls) to hold the next (assumed Tory) administration to account. All this we know, and so it turned out. Funnily enough I might have lent my support to Sir George Younger, but he was too aloof to garner support. I bumped into him once in the members’ cloakroom during the period of the contest and he didn’t think it worthwhile to simply say ‘hello would you support me?’ I am quite sure he would have made a reasonable Speaker of the old school. Perhaps he felt entitled. Anyway, in one of those curious twists of fate, a former member of the Monday Club got my vote. And he won. And, in my opinion, so did parliament. Bercow shook up the establishment and now he is paying the price.
What is this establishment? When I was there, there was no doubting the condescension of the higher up employees of the people’s elected servants towards their temporary ‘bosses.’ MPs were to be kept in check generally speaking, and the reek of convention oozed out of every pore of the beloved old palace. I am not in anyway impugning the integrity or professionalism of these public servants, but there is no doubt that particularly for backbenchers, your minor role was patronised to the hilt - to be subservient, like galley slaves in the great battle fleet of state. Naturally, such an existence could not have persisted without the connivance of senior party apparatchiks, that is those whose personal ambition bled them of any questioning spirit. Such is reality. So along comes Bercow, who simply seemed intent on casting aside so many of the palace’s conventions. That in itself would not only be hurtful but also offensive to the custodians of the old order. Now they, the ghosts of the old order want to thrust their rusty knives into the one who sought to be that order’s nemesis. This is a rare occasion when I am fully aligned with Diane Abbott. She has wondered how a Lt. General of the British Army, who became Black Rod (the House of Lords senior official) could imagine he was ‘bullied’ by Bercow. Black Rod managed, Queens’ speech after Queen’s speech to bang on the door of the Commons and then march to the Clerk’s table and request that Her Majesty’s Honourable Commons attend the House of Lords for the big speech, and each time he was barracked in lively form by the Beast of Bolsover, Dennis Skinner—wasn’t that a form of bullying? There were no complaints. That this Black Rod now complains (loudly in the press against the possibility of Bercow’s ennoblement) merely tells me that he expects obedience, nay, discipline in the ranks, that motley crew of ungrateful, potentially mutinous disrupters who believe (depending on who has a majority) that things have to change. I would love to know what the substance of this ‘bullying’ was. What was in contention? I feel it will have been somehow related to the sheer effrontery of a diminutive pleb upstart saying no to something or other the tights-wearing Black Rod deemed of supreme, overarching importance. The treatment of Bercow reminds me of the treatment of Julian Assange, only in respect of the malignant abuse of character appraisal (playing the man not the ball). These days, your heroes are meant to be likeable, indeed it would be preferable if they were saints albeit with some lovable humanising flaws. But they are flawed, so regardless of what they do they can be condemned for being ‘bad characters.’ I am reminded that George W. Bush was somebody who was lauded for being regarded as a person you could get on with in a bar. Look what he did. The new Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle I doubt will have any rows with Black Rod, nor the Sergeant At Arms (the Commons equivalent with his NCO’s rank). I was very impressed by Lindsay’s smile as he played the part of ‘resisting’ his election—it put the rings of Saturn to shame. I doubt there’ll be many—or any—reforms emanating from his office. Things will be allowed to quietly settle down again whilst the government sets about ripping up parliamentary protections. Bercow deserves his peerage (whether or not the upper chamber should continue in its current form, which it obviously will for the foreseeable future). As a dutiful citizen I devoted some time yesterday to reading the Guardian’s ‘long read’ about the Thoughts of the Philosopher King Dominic Cummings. The Prime Minister's serially brained right-hand man clearly deserves a long read. But I wondered, it has to be said, whether this Oxford history graduate had somehow missed out on doing a PPE, and in his rejection made a virtue of his more obscure learning. It seems he is fond of citing all the names in intellectual history to bolster his present dominion over all he surveys. Thucydides (that’s Thucky did e’s where I cum from) through Hume, Descartes, Heraclitus, Anaximander, Smith, Darwin, Hayek, Joe Bloggs, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Mrs Gubbins — they all get a mention in this great man’s synthesis of world thought. This no doubt gives him the insolent authority to slouch around No. 10 dressed with the sartorial elegance of Jimmy Saville,* a person whose proximity is accepted in the PM’s residence like an honoured, beneficent presence, bestowing his generosity on the unfortunates who without him couldn’t wheel their own trolley. The splashing around of his gravitas reminds me of American generals with their breasts splattered in medals, some of which will have been earned merely for assiduously flicking the switch off at lights out at West Point. The important lesson that Dominic has to learn here is that like Steve Bannon, supplicating a boss with a massive ego can be a short lived experience. When the shit hits the fan, the Svengali will be the first to feel the heat. And like Rasputin one has to be constantly on guard against those who are right behind you. I would like to think it’s only a matter of time. The only thing working against my optimism is Johnson’s sheer laziness. And in some regards I wouldn’t accuse Trump of being lazy.
*I do not imply here anything more than a reference to ‘sartorial style.’ +If you get into Who’s Who, you’re in there for life. Hence, even if you only served one day as an MP, your entry is assured (yeah, and why not?). And each year you are asked to update your entry. In my case I now describe myself as an artist, which obviously is not the reason my name appears in Who’s Who. So far as Who really is Who, I am very happy to accept that even a passing reference to me in the past tense might be a flattery too far. But as things stand if I were currently working as a shelf stacker at B&Q, that could appear as the first line of my entry. I quite like the idea that such an iconic record of the supposed ‘great and the good’ could permit such a levelling down, such that the first line of one’s entry could be for outstanding shelf stacking services at B&Q. The chances of this observation being of note are slim. The next volume of Who’s Who is priced at £330.
+Harvey Weinstein must be cursing that he can’t be tried by the US Senate. Perhaps he needs to call in some favours. +I feel reassured that the Coronavirus has not merited a call from Johnson to the Chinese, as revealed by an email sent by his dad by mistake to the BBC. If it’s not that important, it’s not that important. Nothing to worry about. But I wonder. Is this an illness that’s covered by private health insurance? Or will BUPA beds be made available to all and sundry? That’ll be another test of how serious this really is. +It’s been a couple of weeks since I sent a reminder to the Equality and Human Rights Commission to send me the actual definition of anti-Semitism they will use in determining whether the Labour Party is anti-Semitic. A response seems overdue. I will have to jolt their memory. Interesting to note that according to the Labour Party General Secretary Jennie Formby, one third of all complaints came from just one individual. +I had to struggle through my supper tonight, accompanied by the BBC PM Programme. I could have choked several times. First up was Andrea Leadsom, a Cabinet minister (no less) for business and energy. She was explaining the government’s newly announced ‘policy’ to phase out the sale of new diesel and electric cars five years early in 2035. Turns out it’s not a policy at all, but merely the start of a consultation. The period of this chat with the car industry will no doubt extend well beyond the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow later this year. Following the sacking of former junior minister Claire O’Neill as the UK nominated president of the summit there’s now a good chance that Leadsom could take the role. The name of the messiah comes to mind, many times over.
+Then, forcing me to rise from my healthy pizza eating came an interview with a health minister about the case of the surgeon who was imprisoned for his criminal activities, particularly for his unnecessary treatment of women suspected of having breast cancer. This health minister is none other than Nadine Dorries, previously notable for taking off from her duties as an MP to appear on ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.’ The name of the messiah comes to mind again. What a state of affairs. The anti freedom for women to chose campaigner earned the title ‘Nadine Bonkers’ when I had an office on the same floor as hers back in the noughties. Just before I switched the radio off she was extending her condemnations to the health service generally, even though the surgeon in question also worked in the private sector. +With some justification Trump can have a good laugh at the Democrat’s inability to count the votes in the Iowa primary. If there’s one thing the Republicans have learnt it is how to count votes at the local level. The former speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill is credited with the phrase ‘all politics is local.’ This really means ‘all vote counting is local’ and never was there a truer statement in the context of US politics, where the Republicans have embraced gerrymandering whilst the Democrats have comparatively been too sniffy about such tricks. These lessons are being learnt post-haste with our own new administration, we can expect to see a free trade deal on this front very soon. +Part of my studies as an elderly student of fine art has led me to the work of Alfred Jarry, the strange avant garde figure of fin de siécle France, who invented Pataphysics, wrote ground breaking plays and novels, lived life to its alcoholic extremes in a largely impoverished (financially) existence and died at the age of 34 in 1907. He was both a pain in the arse yet a good companion in equal measure it seems. Thinking about a trip to Paris, I wondered about visiting the site of one famous occasion when he and his friends had a riotous time at the Taverne du Pantheon, on Rue Saint-Michel. The book I'm reading gave the precise location so I looked it up on Google Maps to see if the establishment was still there. The result couldn’t be worse. Instead of a classic Parisian taverne, there is now nothing more than a Burger King. It is impossible to imagine anyone having a riotous time in a Burger King, least of all in Paris, least of all on the Left Bank. The UK is now in limbo. I’m trying to think of an analogy. Perhaps it’s going to be like Californians wondering whether (if ever) the San Andreas fault is going to do its worst. The earthquake must be overdue by now, but in the meantime nobody pays too much attention to the threat. Or perhaps it’s like being Robert Redford in All Is Lost, in which his yacht sinks and eventually he exhausts every diminishing option of saving himself and eventually gives up. But yay! Let’s not get too depressed about this (reading the Guardian’s commemorative supplement this morning was a very depressing experience). We can now look forward to a future beyond the immediate wreckage. As Johnson said in his homily to the nation last night, the curtain is going up on a new act in 'our great national drama' . . . ‘to deliver the changes people voted for. Whether that is by controlling immigration or creating freeports or liberating our fishing industry . . . ’ Creating FREEPORTS?! When did freeports ever come up in the referendum campaign? Fishing did (not least here in Scarborough) but since fishing represents just 0.01% of the UK economy it is purely symbolic, and being so will be sacrificed at the first sniff of hoped-for bigger fish to fry elsewhere.
I received a final report from Yorkshire and Humber Labour MEP Richard Corbett. Here’s a small taste of what 'taking back control' means: On the economy: EITHER we distance ourselves from the EU (our neighbours and main trading partners), causing huge damage to our economy, losing thousands of jobs and hurting our public finances. OR we stay close to the EU, especially the customs union and the single market (both of which have non-EU countries participating), but then have to follow the rules without having a say on them anymore. Neither is good for Britain, although the second is less economically damaging. The government currently says it wants the former. On security: EITHER we leave the joint police databases, the shared criminal records, the common efforts to find and catch crossborder gangs, traffickers and terrorists, etc. OR we ask the EU to let us stay in them anyway, but we’d not have a say anymore on how they’re run or the rules and safeguards that apply. It’s the same choice again on the EU technical agencies where we currently pool resources to cut costs on things like the testing of medicines (European Medicines Agency), of chemicals (European Chemicals Agency) or of aircraft (European Air Safety Agency): EITHER we set up our own separate agencies, at great cost, recruiting the necessary expertise, duplicating work already done and having to get them recognised across the world. OR we ask if we can stay in the EU agencies anyway, but without a say anymore on how they’re run or the standards they apply. Taking back control? What a delusion. |
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