In which, among other things I engage in ‘puerile, pseudo-demotic posturing’ as I recount what complete nutters some higher-ups in the rag trade – newspapers, matey, not the fashion industry – often are, ah la ‘Sir’ Jack Stack

Purely by chance, my last five posts on this ’ere blog have been two reviews of books about the newspaper industry, a review of a novel what sent up the newspaper industry and two complementary posts which began life as part of those reviews.

I then realised that although what I’d written in each review was to the point, parts of each of them made them a little too wordy overall and flabby, and we can’t have that, eh? Flabby book reviews? 

Can’t have that, can we! Lord, where might it end? America electing a totally corrupt, cretinous paedophile as its president who then goes on to fuck the world economically by starting a pointless war and reducing American’s more or less respected world reputation to that of a male, balding porn star? Good Lord know!

So I hived those parts to become the ‘complementary posts’ off – shades of British industry of 50 years ago when ‘hiving off’ part of one company was believed to cure many ills (though it never did).

Here is a ‘complementary post’ to my most recent review, and, yes, I do keep repeating that word merely to prove that I do know that distinction between complementary and complimentary. It’s a crucial distinction – in that they don’t mean the same thing – I learned like much else about the English language, spelling, grammar and word by being repeatedly bollocked on various subs’ benches (‘sub-editors’ desks) until I did not get it wrong again.

One distinction I’ve never mastered, though is that between discreet and discrete, and yes there is one, though look elsewhere for an explanation ’cos . . .

For example, until the day I die, I shall never misspell necessary – one c and two s – for the same reason: incessant bollockings eventually becoming more of a pain than getting it right. It didn’t help, however, that often there is no definitive spelling: newspapers, especially the nationals, have a ‘style book’, which must be followed.

They are not a guide to ‘correct’ spelling and grammar and are not intended as such, just a simple ‘this is how we do it, guys and gals, and if you don’t do it the way we like it and don’t learn soon, consider slinging your hook and finding a berth elsewhere’.

So the Daily Mail for some odd reason never used or uses double quote marks as in “double quotes” but always just ‘single quotes’, except when a quote comes within a quote. Thus:

In the main address, the guest speaker reminded the meeting:

‘We should always remember that there is no “typical human kind” and never was. So we should be prepared for all kinds of unexpected and often shocking, variation in human behaviour which might well surprise us. Perhaps to highlight those variations and the behaviour to which they might leads, Hamlet put it “What a piece of work is man!” ’.

Note the double quote marks used, consisting of one set of single quotes encompassing what the ‘guest speaker’ said, and two sets of double quotes when he / she quotes.

But before I disappear entirely up my own backside, let me add the pertinent bit: to this day when I write I always only use single quote marks, except of course, if there is a quote in a quote like above. And, for no good reason at all except habit I follow Mail ‘style’ in other respects, too.

The Mail insisted and that all numbers from one to nine are spelled out, but from 10 however they are represented in digits. Why? The fuck only knows, but that is what I now do.

Another oddity of style I have adopted, though this is not exactly Mail style but the practice of a friend and from subs’ desk boss of mine (Peter B.) is my use of commas. Again, some might insist there are ‘rules’ but sadly no one can quite agree on what they might be.

For some, I might seem to use commas excessively, but I take the very simple and reasonable view that punctuation exists purely for a practical purpose: to aid the reader – a comma will slow down the reader and subtly – you hope, of course – dictate how she or he reads a sentence / paragraph and make a sentence or paragraph clearer.

The hoary example I always use are these two sentences:

‘The doctors who live in the town make a better living’

and

‘The doctors, who live in the town, make a better living’.

Those two sentences, identical but for two commas have two distinct meanings. The first sentence informs us – its main point – that those doctors who live in the town make more money – by implication – than those doctors who don’t live in the town.

The second sentence with its two commas informs us of two things:

1) all the doctors live in the town 

2) those doctors make more money than folk who are not doctors

I’m sure I’m not the only one who reads a sentence or paragraph in a book, online or in a newspaper (remember them?) but doesn’t quite ‘get it’ – what’s this dude trying to say, it’s not clear?

So you read it again, possibly twice or even three times more until the penny drops. A comma inserted at one point will have slightly slowed you down in our reading and made the sentence very clear from the off

You might think me a boring old fart for writing all this and that I should long ago have been put out to pasture. Who knows? Nevertheless punctuation, as in commas and semi-colons – which perform more or less the same task as commas, but create a longer pause – help to clarify what we write. And depending upon what you are writing, clarity is the key to communication.

You might, of course, be writing something where ‘mood’ or ‘sentiment’ or ‘action’ are more important than ‘clarity’, and in that case where you stick your commas will not be as crucial. Up to you.

But one last point: I am one of those guys, though certainly not ‘of the right’ (which I do hope you have finally realised of you have read my blog before) who believes ‘rules’ are intended to assist us and socially keep discord, disruption, disagreement to a minimum and to promote harmony. They should be observed for those reasons, not as some believe because ‘they are the rules’.

To put it succinctly, rules began life as ‘descriptive’ are not necessarily ‘prescriptive’. Yes, they do evolved from the once state to the other but only by our consent. But I’ll leave it there as it is a topic which deserves more space and I am already way, way of track on what this blog post was intended to be

Which is . . .

If you get around to reading Shrimsley’s The Silly Season, you might assume it is largely too fantastical for words, a terrible exaggeration and should be taken with a pinch of salt. You would, though, be wrong. Sitting around on the subs desk gossiping and ’avenn a laff (Don’t you mean ‘having a laugh’? Please, less of this puerile pseudo-demotic posturing to gain readers – Ed) more than once we reflected that Joe Public would be aghast if they knew some of what really does go on in newspapers.

This might not be the best example but in my early days of working casual subbing shifts on the nationals, I was often on the features subs’ desk of the right-wing Daily Express and, for example, if subbing the letters’ page

Rogues gallery (from left): David English, Paul Dacre and Kelvin Mackenzie

delighted in coming up with the most rabid, ra-ra British Empire, cypto-fascist and all things white headlines I might get away with. And I was good at it.

I had and still have what can only be described as a love-hate relationship with newspapers: terminally appalled by their cynicism, hypocrisy, dishonesty, double-dealing, inconsistency and callousness – and please include the Guardian and New York Times as I don’t and never shall believe in saints – but am at the same time in love with, full of admiration for, delighted by, envious of and tickled pink by their utterly outrageous behaviour.

. . .

This post began life as a short catalogue of anecdotes about oddities I’ve come across, though not necessarily personally in my 28 years serving in the ranks of Her Majesty’s Press (and as Brenda was still alive after I retired I’ll stick with Her Majesty’s Press).

My first concerns David English who was one of those bods – and I was not – you hear about who had wanted to be ‘a newspaperman’ from a very young age. He started at 16 and made remarkable progress, 

In his mid-twenties he edited his first national paper, the Daily Sketch, and moved into the Daily Mail editor’s chair after the Mail merged with – as in took over and killed off – the Daily Sketch in 1971. He was still editor when I began working shifts on the Mail in 1990, but unlike his successor, English was not ‘hands-on’.

That successor, Paul Dacre, coincidentally exactly one year and one week older than me (and another Scorpio), was on the floor every evening, keeping an eye on pages as they went thorough the production and would certainly change headline he didn’t like it and often redesigned a page on the hoof (with a layout designer taking care of the details his changes). English? In the two years of his editorship I was shifting, I did not see him on the floor once and only say him about three times.

Another of English’s quirks, which might give an insight into his character, was that regularly pitted his senior editors against each other, giving both the same task to undertake and, crucially, making sure both new the other was in the game. This, English is reputed to have believed, kept them both on their toes. Well, perhaps it did, but it did not create a happy or pleasant working atmosphere.

My favourite David English story was told me by a Mail colleague and sadly – his decision – former friend Willie B, who for for many years held down to two full-time jobs, one on the Mail and the other on the Mail’s sister paper the Evening Standard.

One morning he turned up for work at the Mail’s office, then still in Carmelite Houe in Caremelit Street, two blocks south of Fleet Street, and found a long, long queue of readers at the Mail’s main entrance snaking down the street and round the corner. They – all of them! – had won a toaster as a top prize in the Mail’s most recent competition.

There has had obviously been a cock-up on a grand scale: instead of the usual ten or so winners, there were thousands through Britain, all of whom were know owed a ‘Mail toaster’ and were legally due to get one. But a crisis is always an opportunity and canny David English smelled an opportunity.

His paper was in need of several thousand toasters to hand out to winners and that same day (presumably through his staff and lawyers) he tracked down a factory in South Wales that made toasters, bought it – with his own money – then did a deal with the Daily Mail for his factory to supply the prizewinners each with toaster. So not only could the Mail honour its prizewinners, but English made a tidy sum for himself.

Here are two stories bout Paul Dacre, not yet a knight, but I don’t doubt sooner or later a peerage will come his way. English became ‘Sir David’ in 1982 and was due to take the ermine just three days before he died at an early age of a massive stroke.

Dacre lived and breathed: because I worked double shifts and turned up for work before 10am and was there until 10/11pm, I can vouch the Dacre turned up around 10.30am and did not leave until the first edition was ‘off-stone’. In the days of ‘hot metal’ it was literally ‘off the stone’ but now with new digital technology most people would better understand it as ‘off to the presses’.

The following two anecdotes have been verified by me by two execs (Roger W. and Jackie A.) who were present on each occasion:

In 1995, the Daily Mail’s Femail section carried a feature on one Ffyona Campbell who had apparently walked around the world between 1983 and 1995. As it later turned out she had cheated in some ways and hadn’t quite ‘walked around the world’ but that is here irrelevant.

The day after the Femail feature appeared, at the first morning conference, Dacre ruthlessly tore into the Femail editor and described the piece as the ‘worst piece of journalism [he] had ever read’. The Femail editor was baffled.

‘But why, Paul, why, I thought it was an excellent read!’

‘Well,’ says Dacre, ‘it commits one of the worst journalistic sins possible!’

‘What’s that, Paul?’ asked the very bemused Femail editor.

‘Well, in the stand-first [a brief par or two introducing a feature] it says that Campbell “went around the world on Shanks pony”. Yet you read on and there is not a single further mention of that fucking horse!’

The jaw of every exec in Dacre’s office hit the floor.

‘But Shanks’ pony, Paul!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s an expression that means to ‘walk, go by foot.’

‘Well,’ says Dacre, thereby drawing a line under the matter, ‘I’ve never heard it, ever!’

Another Dacre story which still makes me laugh is at another conference, this time only involving two or three Femail execs. Dacre had come across a reference in a Femail piece of a ‘toilet duck’:

‘What’s this, a toilet duck?’ he demanded.

‘Well, a toilet duck, Paul,’ Jackie A. told him.

‘What do you mean! What’s a toilet duck!’

‘Well, you know, a toilet duck.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, no one keeps a duck in their toilet!’

No, indeed they don’t, but many use a toilet duck.

The fact was that for man who edited in time the world’s most successful ‘middle-brow’ mid-market aspirational national newspaper, and seemed instinctively to know what his readers felt and believed, Dacre never met any of them.

Commuting during the week from his Knightsbridge mews home, chauffeur driven to Northcliffe House in Kensington, always entering and exiting using the Young Street back entrance, spending all dayon the third floow though now doubt taking the lift to the sixth floor where ‘Jonathan’ Lord Rothermere worked and where the board met, then being driven back to Knightsbridge at about 9pm, there was really no chance to meet them.

And if he did, Dacre, a tall and quite shy man (I who I like and liked though he would not known me from Adam) would not have a clue what to say to them. I am a million miles away from the politics and values of the Daily Mail, but I enjoyed every minute of my 28 years working there (except now and again when I was waiting for another bollocking from the chief sub) and can honestly say it was then the most professionally produced and – in industry terms – the best national newspaper in Britain, if not the world or, at least, sharing that distinction with the Sun. Care to disagree? Well, fuck off!

This is getting too long and I’ve decided not to split it in two, so just two last anecdotes, this time concerning one Kelvin Calder MacKenzie (I looked up the middle name), another legend in his own lunchtime and in his way something of a tabloid genius.

I did not work on the Sun half as much as the Mail and only in my first six years in ‘Fleet Street’ (so to speak – but then there were no nationals at all on Fleet Street). But I did work on the feature subs desk and later on the news subs’ Irish edition.

Mackenzie, like his fictional counterpart Jack Strap in The Silly Season, was another very, very hand-on editor. One day he happened to be want to talk to the Sun news desk but the guy he wanted to speak to was on the phone to someone. Kelvin took that phone out of his hand, found himself listening to a whingeing reader for a few minutes, then to cut the call short told the reader:

‘Right, you’re banned from reading the Sun!’ and hung up.

Ten minutes later a news editor knocked on his door and informed him a woman had called in saying her husband had just been banned from reading the Sun, and she wanted to know whether that meant she was also banned as she liked doing the bingo.

Then there’s the time Kelvin was off-for a day or two or a week or whatever and the paper was being edited by his deputies. He came back to find the Sun had launched a campaign agains some high-up City bigwig.

‘Why are we doing this, what’s he done,’ he asked.

‘He’s a cunt, Kelvin!’ he was told.

‘Right,’ says Kelvin, ‘let’s get him!’

An older ‘new technology’ more than 170 years ago got the newspaper industry as was, Britain’s trades union and the press barons up and running. Then, of course, even newer technology fucked up – oh, well

As I did earlier in a previous review, I’ve decided to extract part of the original review of Linda Melvern's The End Of The Street (review here) and publish it as a standalone post. I realised it made the review unwieldy and that left as one, both were not done justice. So here is that extract, rewritten and expanded a tad

To get a good take on ‘Wapping’ and Murdoch’s extraordinary achievement transferring production of his papers – the Sun, the News of the World, The Times and the Sunday Times to his new print plant in East London, some background and context is useful, and that is where Leapman and his book Treacherous Estate is useful, even though in 2026 it is in many ways irrelevant to the current state of the British newspaper industry.

The invention and adoption in the mid-to-late 19th century of the rotary press and the even more significant invention in Baltimore in America of the Linotype machine by a German immigrant, the former clockmaker Ottmar Mergenthaler, sparked an explosion of the popular press in the world.

Both markedly speeded up the process of typesetting and printing, and thus also helped to bring down production costs.

In the mid-19th century, for ten years The Times held the exclusive patent for the rotary press before other newspapers could get in on the act, and it was able to print and distribute tens of thousands of copies overnight where the other papers were restricted to 10,000 or fewer.

This monstrosity (above) and the rotary press which replaced the flat-bed press got the world’s newspaper industry heading for fabulous riches. Until it was invented, type for printing was laboriously set by hand – letter by sodding letter. This linotype – ‘line of type’ – machine speeded up the process remarkably. The typesetter sat at the keyboard – rather close to a vat of molten metal which would form the type – and could produced many lines of type in minutes

The extra income this brought in – and using the then ‘new technology’ of telegraphy – allowed The Times to work a large network of correspondents around the world, vastly improving its news coverage over its rivals and building the – eventually quite spurious – reputation of ‘the best paper in the world’ as ‘The Thunderer’.

From the last decade of the 19th century, however, until Murdoch bought the paper in 1981 The Times did not turn a profit. Even Alfred Harmsworth, who became Lord Northcliffe and had successfully turned around several failing newspapers and bought The Times in 1908 couldn’t turn it around and sold it again in 1922.

In Britain, the early 20th century was very much a golden age for the press, both newspapers and magazines. Before the start of World War II several newspapers, which all worked out of London’s Fleet Street or nearby, were selling well into the millions. Certainly figures of several million copies sold each morning were often achieved with very expensive circulation drives which saw readers bribed with household gifts and even a set of Encyclopaedia Britannia to subscribe. These efforts did push up circulation but cost the proprietors dearly.

Pertinently, the early 20th century was also a time the then ‘the working class’ and especially the growing trades union movement found their voice and developed real muscle. Possibly, the First World War which ended in ‘victory’ but was otherwise a disaster all-round helped ‘the great unwashed’ find their confidence to speak out. The General Strike in 1926 might well have seemed like a defeat but it succeeded in showing the unions and their members where their strength lay.

Certainly, in the years after World War II as heavy industry in Britain began its slow slide to irrelevance as did ‘the British Empire’, the unions and their members made themselves heard: the old world of forelock-tugging ‘deference’ and ‘I know my place’ was coming to an end and more and more strikes began to plague British industry.

Especially odd were fallings out between unions themselves in ‘demarcation’ disputes over which member of which union should or should not be doing this and that, while piggy in the middle – and losing money – were management who in that particular dust-up were powerless and simply left holding their dicks.

This was also true of the Fleet Street unions producing Britain’s newspapers, though one difference was that management were, by necessity, pushovers. Given that a day’s paper lost because of industrial action meant a lot of money lost, management were always desperate to get the paper out and invariably caved in and bought off the unions with pay rises and a shorter working week.

For example (quoted by Melvern in her book), by 1981 Linotype operators in the Daily Express union chapel were raking in £1,100 (£3,973 in 2024) for a 16-hour week. Admittedly this was a little more than other chapels were being paid, so chapels were inclined to keep such matters to themselves. There was also little love lost between print union members in London and those in the same union in the ‘provinces’ who were certainly not in the clover.

The decline in British heavy industry also saw a slow decline in Fleet Street’s finest and within 20 years after the end of World War II several national papers which had thrived in the decades after the First World War had been obliged to shut up shop.

The broadsheet News Chronicle, whose politics were broadly Liberal, still had a healthy circulation of around one million in October 1960, but in that year it was taken over by its fellow broadsheet, the unashamedly right-wing Daily Mail.

From 1956 on it had been losing many readers after it condemned and opposed Britain’s military action in Egypt after President Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956.

The right-wing Daily Sketch was also a victim of falling circulation. It, too, was selling more than a million copies in 1952 when, then known as the Daily Graphic, it was bought by the Daily Mail which revived the paper’s original name the Daily Sketch. But readers were also deserting it, and in 1974 the paper was merged into the Daily Mail (with the Sketch’s editor David English taking over at the Mail).

Then there was the Daily Herald, one of the very few British national newspapers which took a left-of-centre line and another victim of declining circulation. In 1933 it was selling a daily two million copies a day, but by 1964 when was taken over the Daily Mirror, the only other left-wing British national – the Daily Worker, later the Morning Star was a communist mouthpiece read only by the comrades and doesn’t really as a commercial paper – circulation was in steady decline.

At the Daily Mirror, Welshman Hugh Cudlipp who had joined the paper in 1935 and is regarded as the brain’s behind the paper’s post-war success, re-launched the Herald as the Sun. Cudlipp, by then chairman of the

International Publishing Corporation (IPC) which owned the Daily Mirror, hoped to prevent the Herald/Sun from snaffling readers from the Daily Mirror by marketing that early Sun as a respectable, intelligent middle-of-the-road broadsheet, in contrast to the Mirror which revelled in a kind of gor-blimey irreverence, typified perhaps by its cartoon character Andy Capp (left).

The paper never sparked to life, however, limping on until 1969 by when it was losing £2m a year (£55m in 2026) and when Cudlipp pulled the plug. He sold it to Rupert Murdoch over Robert Maxwell (who eventually owned the Daily Mirror/The Mirror) as Murdoch had promised he would make fewer production staff redundant as Cudlipp wanted no trouble with the print unions.

By the mid-1970s Britain’s national newspaper industry had stabilised and was to remain stable for another twenty years before, another 20 years on, the internet began to evolve and piss on its parade: now in 2026 it would not be too dramatic to claim that Britain’s newspaper hard copy industry has died.

Compare the figures for the end of the 1970s with today’s circulation figures and you would both cry and laugh your socks off: the Daily Mirror was selling 3.2 million by the end of the 1970s: now it’s a pitiful 205,332. Murdoch’s Sun, a right-wing tabloid – with bare breasts on Page Three – had overtaken the Mirror by a cool half a million copies in the mid-1970s, but today it even refuses to reveal how many it sells – and that will not be out of modesty.

The Daily Express and it’s arch-rival the Daily Mail – Evelyn Waugh’s Daily Beast and Daily Brute, though I don’t know which was which – saw sales of just under 2 million a day collapse to around 128,551 (!) and 687,063 respectively. Even my subbing ‘alma mater’, Brum’s Evening Mail, one of about seven or eight large provincial evening papers in Britain was shifting 335,281 copies in 1976. Today? A fucking awful 8,628!

To cut those papers a little slack, though the courtesy cannot be extended to all of them, the internet has proved useful for some. The Daily Mail, the Guardian, The Times and the Daily Telegraph all have a very readable online presence and will be making money from subscriptions. On the other hand the online efforts of the Express, the Sun and the Mirror, on the other hand are a joke.

. . .

How's it going with gas prices, Donny? Oh, and inflation? Any good news? Then there’s the war in Iran? Working out OK, troops home by Christmas? Looks like you’re still making America great again, though so far only China is cheering you on – can’t trust those commie bastards!

Goodness, look here! The gas prices in the US are up $1.32 on average since Donny’s ‘limited military adventure’ (© V. Putin, left) began at the end of February. Well! Who would have thought it! That’s a 44% rise, though not

50%, mark you, so the news is not all bad.

The excellent news for the White House is that it can take a short breath of relief in between explaining why although Donny apparently ‘aced’ the four ‘cognitive’ tests he has taken since January 20, 2025 – that’s 16 months ago – his doctors thought it necessary that he should be tested – FOUR times.

I was born on November 21, 1949, so I’m exactly three years, five months and seven days younger than Americas’ smart, savvy, wise, thoughtful, youthful and statesmanlike [delete as applicable] president, but on the question of cognitive tests, no one has so far thought it wise that I should take one (except, perhaps, my wife, but she has what is politely called ‘an agenda’).

These two illustrations (one above this text, the second below) outlining the startling – and for Donny embarrassing – sharp rise in gas prices were added to my previous post just now to flesh out a point I was making.

But I am posting them here separately as the 13 bods who have so far viewed that previous post since it was posted at about 5pm yesterday and 2am (British Summer Time) might miss it as they are unlikely to reflect ‘Do you know, that post I read earlier was so well written, so incisive, so wise that I think I’ll read it again!’

As for that cognitive test, one it isn’t just the White House that can breath a sigh of relief: all good Americans can console themselves that when their president is shown a picture of a horse, he can name it, when he is asked that the date is, he is spot on and when asked his name, he scores over 50%. Something to be proud of, at least, and than the Good Lord for small mercies.

(BTW The capital G and L are this confirmed atheist’s attempt to be polite, considerate, respectful, understanding and all the rest of the tiresome bullshit now demanded of those of a liberal-leaning:

You really do believe that frogs are uniting to organise the Second Coming for Jesus and hiring the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the occasion? Well, I am obliged to inform you that I disagree and think that is more than unlikely and doubt I shall change my mind but I certainly respect your right to hold unorthodox views though I must decline your kind invitation to debate the matter with you.

NB For an insight into how far ‘Middle America’ is falling into debt by living off their credit cards, take a look gat this in the Wall Street Journal.

The fairies at the bottom of the garden assure us that the stock market is soaring and all is well! Good news, eh? Back in the real world . . .

Here you go, from the respectable Wall Street Journal no less, so it must be true! Shame that it is more bullshit than anything you might might want to tell your dear old gran (though she’s seen a dick or two, don't kid yourself).

This is why the media all-too-often are not just not doing the job they piously proclaim they are doing, but are adding to the ever-growing stock of bullshit in the world. Mind, like God’s love, that stock is infinite, so no need to worry if you are worrying.

And speaking of bullshit, Donny has assured all those still willing to listen – not many now – that ‘an Iran deal is imminent’ and, presumably, will be announced at the same time he will reveal his new ‘health plan’.

‘Powering stocks’ (as in ‘powering the stock market’) gives many that warm ‘well, it’s not all bad then, is it?’ glow. This is followed by the – note, carefully worded – observation that the S&P500 is shooting ahead which ‘often means more good times ahead’.

The ‘more’ is dishonest: America is not in enjoying ‘good times’ and the outlook it looking ever bleaker: inflation is creeping up, groceries – especially fruit and vegetables largely imported from Mexico – are now almost 25% higher on average, energy prices have risen – gas up almost 35%, mortgages becoming dearer, no new jobs being created.

Crucially more Americans are using their credit card to pay for their weekly shopping and US consumer credit defaults are now as high as they were by the end of 2008. Remember 2008? Not a good year.

But the headline is worse: ‘The AI drive hits overdrive’ might also warm the cockles of many a cretin. 

But then the prices for tulips also ‘hit overdrive’ in The Netherlands in the 1630s, as did the South Sea Company stock price in the 1720s, the price of property in Japan in the 1980s and the stock price of innumerable Dot Com start-ups in the late 1990s.

Oh, and in the US in the mid-2000s buying up property to sell again soon was very attractive, especially as you and your goldfish could get a 100% mortgage just by asking, as prices just kept going up and up and up. That, if you recall, ended badly in 2008.

Similarly, buying and holding AI stock is very attractive because the price is continually rising – ‘hitting overdrive’. Traditionally, companies are seen as attractive, as in ‘profitable’, because they are earning money and passing much or some of it on to stockholders. To date, AI companies are not earning a sou, not a dime, penny, cent, fen or centavo – it’s all what they are expected to rake in.

Bollocks, say the cretins, we can wait! So they keep buying, pushing the price higher and so other cretins, worried they might lose out – so make that ‘other greedy cretins’ – also pile in and up goes the price even more.

‘You, matey,’ the cretins say (addressing me), ‘really don’t know what you are talking about! Just look at the stock market valuations of AI and tech companies! Look at them!’

Yes, dear hearts, look at them and try to understand what they are: NOT what you seem to think. A quoted companies ‘valuation’ is not the same as its ‘value’. It is simply the price of the company’s stock multiplied by the amount of the company’s stock. That’s it.

If 100 shares of ‘FillYourBoots.com’ are launched at 1p each, the stock valuation is £1. If a week later the price of each share shoots up to £10, FillYourBoots.com is now worth £10,000. Impressive, eh?

What assets does FillYourBoots.com have and how much has FillYourBoots.com earned in that week? Well, it has no assets at all and has earned nothing but don't quibble, don't be such a naysayer, don’t keep looking on the downside! Chill! Good times are on the way!

Thus I, the CEO, COO and CFF of FillYourBoots.com have managed to convince suckers that ‘good times are on the way’.

Word gets out that FillYourBoots.com looks like a winner – the proof: stocks have shot up in price tenfold! Imagine! Must be a good thing! Get in there!

So over the next week the price shoots up higher, and though some canny investors think they smell a rat sell up and cash in and walk off with a profit, less canny investors pile in further. And as there are more potential buyers than sellers, the price rises even further. Soon, with the price hitting £100 for each share, the valuation – though, note, not value – has hit £100,000.

I needn’t go on an labour the point as you grasped that point minutes ago and those who did not and will not have already left for a less challenging pastime. Anyway, isn’t the WSJ from which this headline comes talking about the S&P500 not just AI stocks? Well, yes it seems to but . . .

Overall, around ten AI and tech companies are grouped together as those whose stock is ‘hitting overdrive’ and two or three, e.g. Microsoft and Apple, do make a profit. But pertinently the AI companies do not.

The financial news they do release is misleading: certainly, the AI and tech companies have turnover and buy and sell, but simple analysis had shown that almost exclusively they trade with one another. Thus no ‘new’ money his being made – it is the same millions doing the rounds which looks impressive on a their balance sheet but de facto means fuck-all.

What is far worse and far more misleading is when, as here, the Wall Street Journal trumpets a soaring stock market, it is almost wholly the trading in the AI stocks which thriging: by ‘valuation’ these ten or so companies make up almost 40% and so their success makes the overall S&P500 look good.

Strip out the ‘gains’ – make that the spurious gains – made by the AI stock trading, and the rest of the S&P500 is barely limping along. It is what has been described as the ‘irrational exuberance’ of those soaking up AI stock bumping their prices ever higher which is skewing the picture.

The description ‘irrational exuberance’ was coined almost 30 years ago by former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan for the behaviour of those piling into any dot-com stock going and we know how that ended.

This is where the ‘P/E’ ratio is useful and gives broad-brush view of just how well a company is performing and whether it might be worth investing in. To establish it you just divide the price of a share by how much that share is earning. The rule of thumb is that the higher the P/E as in each share is earning pretty much fuck-all as are the AI companies, the more such a share should be avoided.

Certainly, there are wise-acres who insist – as always – that ‘this time it is different’. And to sound even more convincing the don’t put it in language most cretins are suckers for: this, they assure us, is a ‘paradigm shift’. More letters, certainly, but adds up to the same old bollocks: This Time It Is Different!

Well, it is your money, pal. Me, I’ll stick to backing the gee-gees – Kev down the pub passed on a dead cert which will start at 33/1 and make me a tidy sum. OK, he’s been wrong these past six or seven times but a broken clock is right at least twice a day.

Overall, the WSJ should know better and probably do, but with newspapers to sell who’s going to be that picky? It reminds me of advice all young reporters starting out are eventually given here in Old Blighty, but no doubt in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa (thought the yanks are perhaps a little too precious to abide by it).

Don’t let a couple of facts get in the way of a good story

It might not win you too many prizes for ethics and professional standards, but it sure does sell rather more copies of the rag you are working for (in the generic sense of ‘rag’ in that the winners have left ink and newsprint behind and are now all binary or digital or whatever the sodding word is. That’s it, ‘online’.

Piss-poor pay and an editor's conceit – I allow myself a well-earned rant. And what the fuck is happening to print circulations: from selling in the millions to just one or two now and then if the weather's good

The following is from my first draft of a review of Michael Leapman’s examination of Fleet Street and the British national newspaper industry after the Wapping dispute (look it up rather than me try to outline it here). In it I mention how substantially disparate were the wages national newspapers paid their reporters and sub-editors (US copy editors) and those paid to hacks in ‘the provinces’.

I have posted it separately (and as a blog entry) because did slow down and bloat the review rather. Here’s an example of how piss-poor wages in ‘the provinces’ were.

I married a woman in North Cornwall, south-west Britain in February 1996 and our first child was born six months later, but I carried on working on the nationals in London, commuting by train to spend four days a week subbing on the Daily Mail. With a second child on the way, I was under continual pressure to ‘work locally’ though I really did not relish the thought of working a local paper.

I was earning the annual equivalent of around £28,000 ($37,000, today about £51,000 / $76,000), though travelling costs other expenses of spending four days week soaked up some of that. But I finally gave in and I wrote to the Plymouth Herald, the city’s evening paper, asking whether they were looking for sub-editors. They were (and were always short-staffed) and took me on immediately, but could only pay me their top whack of £18,000.

Cynics might suggest I could have negotiated for more, but in this case – unusually, I have to say – the cynics might be wrong. As it turned out I was the best paid of the ‘down-table subs’.

I found out that two of my younger colleagues, both graduates of art college and about 23 years old (though untrained in any form of journalism – papers are not as particular as they like to make out and so much for the hoary bullshit the cited to justify shit wages that ‘journalism is a  vocation’) were on one-third of what I was getting – £6,000 / $8,000 (£11,000 / $14,500)!

Far worse and wholly typical ‘newspaper reasoning’, when they were fired, both had been promised that although they would start out on that very lowly £6,000, after six months their salary would be reviewed and presumably bumped up a little as no doubt the two twenty-something woman, hoped, expected and, frankly, will have been led to believed.

Their salary was reviewed by the Herald’s totally useless editor Rachael Campey, but she or possibly upstairs management had decided not to increase it. I’m pretty sure that was no reflection of the work of the two young women, just the standard provincial paper penny-pinching.

. . .

Campey and I did not get on. She had an extraordinary high opinion of herself and her abilities, and had been hired to edit the Evening Herald after she had edited the Exeter Express & Echo and raised its circulation a little. Her stint on the Herald was not as successful, and she was eventually sacked when circulation fell rather badly under her editorship.

Her conceit might be gauged from a memo she sent around reminding subs to check spelling in the dictionary even if they thought they knew a word. ‘Even I sometimes have to look up words,’ she wrote. The ‘even I’ did it for me.

Then a little later, when for some reason we were really down on numbers, she joined us on the subs’ desk as a ‘revise sub’ (a sub-editor who checks subbed stories before they are sent for typesetting).

NB later: That is not correct. working on Apple Macs (or, I suppose PCs on other newspapers though in those days Apple had the lead, the ‘typesetting’ – chosen font and size etc – was done by the sub: that was what ‘direct input’ was all about. 

The subbed and formatted copy was then output on sheets of bromide and then individual stories would be pasted onto a layout. This pasted-up page was then – don't know the technical term – converted into a photopolymer plate which was used for printing on a rotary press.

I had subbed a pretty typical local paper picture story about some guy who had built something or other – a cathedral, a battleship, some kind of bollocks – out of several tens of thousands a matchsticks. My headline – above or below a large piccy of the work of art so it was clear what the story was about – was something along the lines of ‘Strike a light! Mutley [or whatever part of Plymouth he lived in] man show’s how it’s done’.

That is just an indication of my heady, though pertinently I did use the colloquial phrase ‘strike a light’. Here’s how Collins Dictionary describes it . . .

When the story appeared in the paper a few hours later, Campey had revised it and changed the headline to ‘Don’t strike a light! Mutley . . .’ etc. I asked her why, for God’s sake!

Well, she explained, because the model was made of matches, it would go up in flames if you did strike a light – so better not!

Collapse of stout party as was once said: the woman – the editor – had less newspaper nous than a slow-witted hedgehog.

Around that time, I was tactless enough in private conversation with another older sub – I was then 46 – to describe Ms Campey as an amateur, a slight that was overheard by some snitch or other and passed back to her. I know this because a little later she threw it back in my face as in ‘you think we are amateurs’.

But Campey certainly was an amateur: a month or two after I left and returned to working in London, she was sacked because circulation had cratered so badly. She then eventually became ‘a deputy news editor’ on The Times in London, impressive on the face of it, but her position was certainly not as grand as that might sound and I don’t doubt after being booted out of the Herald top spot, she was on her uppers.

A friend who was working on The Times at the time told me Campey’s ‘deputy news editor’ gig consisted of admin duties, organising reporters’ rotas, holiday cover and hiring casuals. Eventually, she got a second chance and landed the job of editing the Yorkshire Post, then and possible now a highly respected provincial morning newspaper. That also ended unhappily and did her rep no favours at all.

She resigned after just a year and a half in the job soon after a motion of no confidence in by editorial staff who were members of the paper’s National Union of Journalism chapel was passed unanimously. She later moved on to be an ‘associate editor’ (which usually means very little and is a title usually a sop to salve feelings) of the very short-lived weekly the North-West Enquirer. That packed up barely a few months in. 

NB A taste of some of the bull that hacks can come out with is this from the Enquirer’s editor, quoted in the UK Press Gazette in the run-up to the paper’s launch in spring 2007:

‘[Waterhouse] told Press Gazette in December “The paper will be editorially led and stand or fall on the quality of its reporting and of its whole editorial”.’

This begs the obvious question: in which universe is a newspaper not ‘editorially led and does not stand or fall on the quality of its reporting and of its whole editorial’?

. . .

Finally, let me tackle the obvious question: is the above a hissy fit? Make your own mind up. Campey treated me like dirt and was a sodding amateur, so I’m not just not here best friend but don’t want to be. I began on a three-month contract, but when that came to an end, she had to offer me a new three-month stint as someone was leaving.

What got to me that, although I was certainly not the best sub in London, I did learn a little about standards and how high standards all-round tend to encourage everyone to try to raise their own. When I got to the Herald, I tried to write good headlines and not make do with the usual boring shit and stale puns. But when your work – my work – sat side-by-side be a crock of crap, it was more than a little dispiriting.

So life on the Herald was a chore (not least that every now and then some sub or other was obliged to hang one for 90 minutes after the end of their sting at 5.30 to wait for the Press Association weather report. This was unpaid, but we had no choice in the matter.

It all had a happy ending, however. When my six months were up and I was cast adrift, I had a call from the chief-sub of the Daily Mail features desk to come back and work shifts in London. I did, for the next 18 years.

The Herald – it has to be said like all other provincial papers at the time – knew every trick in the book to chisel and pare, always at the staff’s expense. At some point long before, the paper had negotiated reducing the hour-long lunch-break to just 30 minutes for an extra pound or to. That arrangement carried on, though the ‘extra’ dosh in our pockets by then amounted to zilch of fuck-all.

The Express & Echo was demoted from appearing daily to a weekly in September 2011. The Herald is still a daily print circulationg is pitiful: when I worked there for six months in 1999, it was around 15/16,000 a day.

In 2023 it had plummeted to just 3,872 copies, though, like all local paper groups, it has an online presence.

What we don’t know and sure as hell will not find out is how much it earns from online advertising. Speaking or circulation, it has collapsed all-round. When I joined the Birmingham Evening  Mail as a trainee sub in January

1980, it was selling more than a quarter of a million copies every day and proud it was – though just – the top-selling provincial evening paper.

Now? Take a look (right). (ABC is the Audit Bureau of Circulation.)

What is Melanie Knauss so afraid off? Might it be what here once long-time friend Amanda Ungaro knows from her past? Might well be. Collapse of the Trump regime began on April 9 when Melania opened her big mouth.

Who is Amanda Ungaro? Like thousands around the world, but especially in the United States, I had no idea until about four day ago when one Melania Knauss inadvertently brought her to global attention.

Why ‘global’ attention? Well, Mel baby is better known to the world as Mrs Donald Trump, and surely her nonce of a husband no longer needs introduction.

For non-British readers, excluding Aussies and Kiwis, I should explain that a ‘nonce’ is our slang for a paedophile (or, as Donny is a Yank, I’ll make that pedofile) as in ‘a kiddie fiddler’, ‘a child molester, that kind of delightful thing.

For little by little is seems to be becoming clear that Donny also did a little part-time kiddie-fiddling in his time, though – and this is not a mitigating factor – not on the scale of his one-time best friend in the world, Jeffrey Epstein.

For the record Donny now likes to pretend he barely knew Epstein. Yes, Donny, sure, Donny, and bears don’t shit in the woods.

The word ‘nonce’ began life as the acronym N.O.N.C.E said to have originiated in Her Majesty’s Clink Wakefield where it appeared alongside the names in lists of various kinds of several inmates banged up for convicted of sex offences, primarily against children.

It stood for ‘Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise’ as in ‘keep these men away from other prisoners as they are likely to have the living shit beaten out of them’.

A recent victim of prisoner retribution was Ian Huntley who had been locked up in HMP Frankland in 2003 and serving two life sentences for the murder of two ten-year-old schoolgirls in Cambridgeshire UK. He had his head stoved in by another prisoner with a metal bar and died nine days later.

As for Ungaro, who she is and why she is relevant, it all kicked off on Thursday, April, 9 in the White House, when out of the blues Melania called a press conference to rail against ‘lies being told about her that were circulating on the internet.’

Her address to the media was brief, lasting barely five minutes, and it left everyone who attended, everyone who watched the live coverage and swiftly every sodding interest analysts and pundit under 

sun baffled. It could be summed up: ‘What the fuck is she talking about?’ and ‘why exactly did she think something is important enough to call a special press conference.’

No one had heard any ‘lies’ about Melania, and many of the claims made about her which she might like to pretend are ‘lies’ were not new – that her ‘modelling’ in New York thirty years ago included not a little soft porn and that her green card permit was obtained illegally. So, frankly, nothing to see here so move along, please.

No, these were new lies – but what were they and who was spreading them? And was Mel perhaps protesting too much and thereby adding credibility to claims about to be made? If her intention was to damp down speculation, it

failed completely: holding her speech and addressing the media might be likened to inviting a gaggle of alkies to a well-stocked bar but insisting they should not drink a drop. Good luck with that, Mel.

It would seem you didn’t think this through rather as hubby Donny didn’t think through his plan to attack Iran and now doesn’t know how to exit the whole sorry mess. (The current clichéd phrase is that ‘he doesn’t have an off-ramp’.)

Mel’s speech was, surprise, surprise larded with untruths: she insisted it wasn’t Jeffrey Epstein who had introduced her to Donald at New York’s Kit Kat club but it was a chance meeting. That ‘explanation’ would hold a lot more water if Mel herself hadn’t previously provided other explanations.

A long-time Trump friend, Paul Zampolli, claimed it was he who introduced Mel to Donny, so who knows the truth, though frankly in most maters involving Donald Trump ‘the truth’ is a very moveable feast.

Brazilian Ungaro enters the scene and Mel’s life after she was flown from Paris where she had been working to the US aboard what is now referred to as Epstein’s ‘Lolita express’. She was sixteen at the time and began a modelling career in New York.

In 2002 she met Zampolli who was then still running his own modelling agency, ID Model Management, and they eventually married and has a son. By all accounts the Zampollis – Paulo and

 

From left: Paulo Zampolli, Melania Knauss aka Mrs Melania Trump, Donny and the lass who might be causing all this very entertaining fuss, the former Mrs Paulo Zampollia aka Amanda Ungaro

Amanda – were thicks as thieves with the Trumps – Donald and Mel who he married in 2005 once he had got shot of his second wife Marla Maples – and the inevitable Jeffrey Epstein.

Mel is now very keen to play down here friendship and closeness to Amanda but it seems it was a close on for many years. At Donny’s inauguration dinner in Amanda sat at Melania’s table and they socialised, both in New York and Palm Beach. Amanda also claims Mel sent her son annual birthday greetings – though that’s not quite as significant – and once even had them delivered by the secret service – though that is.

It all went pair-shaped when Zampolli and Amanda separated in 2003 and are still battling in court for custody of their son. Amanda remarried but last year ICE agents arrested Amanda and kept here in a detention centre for three months before deporting here to her native Brazil. And those most recent episodes seem to be the root cause which have led to Amanda spitting blood and threatening to reveal the dirt on Melania.

What might it be? Was Mel also moonlighting as a top-dollar call girl? Who knows, but it has to be ‘juicy’ for ‘the first lady’ to be shitting bricks in public.

Hold this space . . .

Is anyone home in the White House? The lights are on but it seems empty there. Think about it - do you really want to waste American lives for nothing but an old man's fantastical pipe-dreams?

 

We should tread carefully when we condemn to Hell that ‘nasty imperialist’ Rudyard Kipling who might well not be the villain we choose to make of him

 This post began as a short review of Kim, but somehow grew and grew. It is no longer a review of Kim – which I have still to write – but a wondering at why Rudyard Kipling is still, it seems almost uniformly, written off because he was an’ imperialist’.

I am at present reading Kim, or rather re-reading the novel, and came across a short commentary by googling ‘views and comments’ about Kim. As it turns out there are surprisingly few such commentaries, if you ignore The Kipling Society website, and frankly I was hoping for non-partisan views. I suspect Kipling Society members might not be as neutral as I might like.

I am re-reading the novel because I was not overly impressed at my first reading (and still have to finish the second) and wondered whether I had missed something. From experience I know that an almost immediate second reading often does pay off.

Perhaps the failing is mine, but my second reading is proving to be useful. I am not sure (and if you do have the time, consider also doing second readings and you might understand what I mean). I doubt, though, that I shall much be changing my opinions of Kim and suspect I shall be making the same points that first occurred to me.

Incidentally, some novels – I’m thinking of the English translation of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls - do not tempt enough to encourage a second reading. In that case it didn’t help that I was wholly unfamiliar with the early-19th century Russian culture and milieu it was satirising and I discovered some time ago that translations all-too-often do not convey intended subtleties.

One pertinent point, although ironically not one particularly relevant to the novel as ‘literature’, is Kipling’s supposed imperialism and, ninety years after his death, how he is still, more or less in passing, written off as ‘an

imperialist’ as in ‘an unacceptable imperialist’ (and, as is the joke, ‘not in a good way’).

The observation is almost a tacit invitation to condemn him wholesale as a novelist, short story writer and poet.

And the ‘fact’ of Kipling’s ‘imperialism’ has to be added to the ‘Everybody knows’ file, as in almost all folk ‘know it’ and are suitably put off by the man and his work.

Yet, I suspect that many, perhaps most, who cleave to that view have not read a great deal of his work, if any perhaps, and would be hard-pressed to tell you why ‘Kipling's imperialism’ was ‘a bad thing’, except that ‘imperialism is a bad thing’ as – ‘everybody knows’ – are ‘slavery’ and ‘homosexuality’.

I add the last two to underline how much ‘morality’ is more malleable than it or we might care to admit, and that we can never quite rule out backsliding and a ‘re-evaluation’ of our current moral presets if pragmatism and circumstance so demand.

For example, at present for ‘vital’ economic and commercial reasons – and, no doubt, ‘national security’ which seems to be this year’s sexy new concern – Britain is desperately wooing China and in its desperation to be an acceptable new pal to Beijing is very keen indeed to ignore that China is engaged in a kind of updated imperialism and is none to observant of what we in the West regard as ‘universal human rights’. That, in anyone’s book, might qualify as a very clear case of double standards.

So what does our current pragmatic sidelining of ‘universal human rights’, making them, when necessary, less ‘universal’ than we otherwise insist they are, tell us about our ‘moral values’ (and our intellectual consistency)? 

It seems, then, that if and when – as in ‘look, we need a more sophisticated relationship with China' (and not at least for the Chinese to buy a lot more from us)’ – ‘imperialism’ is not always such a bad thing when it suits, the crucial yardstick being whether condemning it or not is in our ‘national interests’.

I should make clear that I am not attempting and shall not attempt to ‘defend’ imperialism. It was an aspect of its age, and pretty much all European nations had an ‘empire’ at one time or another (as, of course, did several African, American and Asian nations over the centuries and, so, marking Africa down as ‘essentially primitive and undeveloped’ is very much uninformed, but best not muddy to waters too much, eh? Take a look here at Africa's history of civilisations and ‘imperialism’).

How badly or very badly these imperial nations, their rulers, their place-men and their elites behaved is neither here nor there and even today there are not a few apologists for British imperialism.

‘Yes,’ the argument runs ‘we might have subjugated many nations, plundered their resources and killed quite a few of their folk. But so did the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and if you look at it overall, we were certainly not as half bad as they were. Oh no!’

Often such apologists go on to insist that British imperialism was not – could not have been! – ‘all bad’, as for example, what subborned nation got in return for our – I suppose the word they would like to use is ‘benign’ – imperialism.

Look, they declare, we gave them a working model civil service and a fantastic railway network.

So they will carry on, often in the manner of a bar / pub bore [delete as applicable] or a barrack room lawyer, and demand to know why, if British imperialism was so terrible, why did so many of its former colonies adopt Britain’s parliamentary and legal systems?

‘Answer me that, eh!’ they will insist, and follow up with triumphalist ‘. . . and doesn’t that prove something?’

To that the only response is that ‘no, it doesn’t prove anything all’. All it does is to demonstrate that those systems were, in the opinion of the newly free colonies, rather good and useful and thus worth emulating. And note, it was because pragmatically they were thought to be worthwhile that they were copied, not because they were British.

. . .

Putting aside for a moment the matter of considering how ‘imperialist’ Kipling was, the immediate question remains if we are considering him as an artist: why on earth should the man’s ‘imperialist’ views have any bearing at all on the quality of his art?

Do we castigate Shakespeare for misogyny in The Taming Of The Shrew? Was Will of Stratford possibly anti-semitic given his portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant Of Venice. Might Will, given today’s current preoccupation with ‘trans issues’, be accused of some kind of arcane transphobia in Twelfth Night? Was he defending paedophilia in Romeo And Juliet?

Why is Edward Elgar (right), he of Land Of Hope And Glory, a very popular piece then played all over the British Empire and still played in Britain essentially celebrating Britain’s might, not similarly castigated? It makes no sense at all.

Consider the ‘celebrated’ British sculptor Eric Gill, celebrated the world over (at least by those who celebrate sculpture and sculptors) who, it was revealed in 1989, almost 50 years after his death in 1940 was a paedophile who had sex with at least one of his daughters and, apparently, also the family dog.

His sexual behaviour was common knowledge among his family and some friends, and he recorded details of it in his diaries.

Yet in the first biography of the man, published in 1966, there was silence on the matter, and it wasn’t until a second biography was published in 23 years later, in 1989 that it was made public.

There was certainly ‘outrage’ – folk delight in being outraged, it diverts attention from their own none-too-admirable behaviour – but not over Gill's incestuous paedophile but that the biographer published while a Gill daughter was still alive. The cad! How could he! 

So, was his ‘art’ less ‘good’ once all that was known and that Gill was a nonce? Can art lose in artistic value under such circumstances? If two people viewed a work of Gill’s art where one knew about his paedophilia and the other did not, would the piece ‘not be art’ for the one viewer, but a magnificent piece for the other? Discuss at your convenience.

And what are we to make of the continuing reluctance of churches, galleries and the BBC to remove Gill’s works now we know he liked to shag young children, including a daughter, and animals?

Obviously, these are all rhetorical question and, as obviously – I hope – the answer were one still to be demanded, is ‘no, of course, not. Now stop wasting my time’.

Yes, there is a dilemma, but it is not the dilemma we hypocritically choose to believe it is. But I don’t wish – here - to sideline myself into a complex and pointless discussion of ‘the nature of art’, although, as always I have lot to say on the matter, and please alert me if you really do want me to waffle on about it.

That of course, leaves us with the condemnable alleged ‘imperialism’ of Kipling and the suggestion that because of it, he should be ruled out of court. But would it really be equitable to banish Kipling for not opposing imperialism but to give Gill a pass (for some reason or other)? Yet again, discuss.

. . .

The introduction to my Wordsworth edition of Kim, by a Professor Cedric Watts, usefully quotes the novelist Julian Barnes when he observes ‘What a curious vanity it is of the present
to expect the past to suck up to it’.

Quite, and with that observation, Barnes gets right to the essence of ‘what to do with Rudyard Kipling and his imperialist views?’

I suggest the answer is not just ‘nothing at all’, but that we might add ‘and try to read Kipling more carefully before you make your silly snap judgments’.

More clearly: Kipling did broadly support the imperial status quo – he was born in the middle of the 19th century in 1865 and already over 50 when with the end of World War I the ‘British Empire’ was well on its way to collapse (though that wasn’t for another few decades and, for example, the nations fo the Indian subcontinent did not regain their freedom to rule themselves for another 31 years).

But a more attentive reading of Kipling’s work demonstrates he had a far more nuanced take on Britain, India, the British and the ‘Indians’, and he was and is far more even-keeled than those who condemn him for his ‘imperialism’ might care to admit.

In Kim, Kipling certainly did – and as a matter of course as in ‘there can be no doubt at all!’ assume without question that ‘British rule of India’ was worthwhile and all-round for the best.

And, yes, he does present us with ‘ethnic’ Indian characters who appear to agree with him about British rule being very much for the best. And, yes, he does for example and uncomfortably for some, talk of the Asiatic mind, the ‘native’ mind and, for example, how the native prefers to sleep.

None of which is too promising for anyone attempting to get Kipling off the hook. And, of course, all of us, whether we live in Old Blighty, China, Singapore, Vietnam, Europe, the US, Argentina, India and, I don’t doubt the bloody Moon, suffer badly from what I have very recently come to know as ‘chronocentrism’, that the age in which we live is most certainly the best of any that have come before and without any doubt the world has been leading up to this perfection.

It follows from that, or better for those suffering from ‘chronocentrism: that everything about our age is ‘right’ and so our current abhorrence for imperialism is pretty much the final say on the matter!

Really? No, not really. In fact, complete nonsense. The sad fact is that ‘morality’, ‘moral systems’ and the like are as much subject to weekly, monthly, annual vagaries as are hemlines and beards in fashion. You want to ‘prove’ that ‘some values are universal’, go ahead. And get in touch as and when you have done so, though I doubt I’ll hear from you this side of Armageddon.

So yet again one might wonder, with Barnes, at the ‘curious vanity’ of the present ‘to expect the past to suck up to it.’

Frankly, it gets worse: implicit in that vanity is the unassailable conviction that ‘we are right and those who disagree are simply wrong’ – essentially and not least ironically the exact same attitude British imperialists adopted and its apologists adopt and which we now choose to abhor. Funny old world, eh?

. . .

Kipling had an unusual childhood: as a youngster of five he was shipped out of India by his parents when he was five to be fostered in England (which was apparently the common practice for Anglo-Indians). Why, I don’t know, as there were many excellent ‘English schools’ in Bombay, where he first grew up, and elsewhere in India.

Raised until then, as were many British children, by ‘native servants’, he first spoke ‘native languages’ and Urdu was his first language English was at first his second. From his childhood and later his work in India, in fact, he was very taken with ‘the natives’ and ‘the Asiatic mind’, and portrays both as often far more intellectually agile, sharper and more cunning than their British overlords.

With the exception of Colonel Creighton (who speaks perfect Urdu, which in itself indicates an implicit respect for an aspect of Indian culture), ‘the white man’ is shown to be something of a clodhopper, prone to drunkenness and slow wits.

A variety of ‘Indians’ pose with their British ‘overlords’ just before the ‘Indian’ mutiny in 1857 and 1858

Though he is clear of the distinction between the European and the Oriental, never does he state, or even hint, that the former is superior to the latter.

Kipling is always keen to stress the sheer diversity of the many different ethnic groups in India, and at no point does he crassly deal with ‘Indians’ as though the ‘Indians’ were some kind of unit: there are Pathans, Afghans, Sikhs, the hill people, those who live in the plains and others, and many, many more, and each has a distinct identity, outlook and often culture. And although for us lazy white honkeys it is easiest to refer to the ‘Indians’, it seems to be a certain kind of nonsense, even today.

He describes the different groups, their virtues and vices, from the untrustworthy Brahmin priests (a common trope among ‘Indians’ themselves) to the kind and generous village folk always ready to feed a passing stranger, suspicious farmers, duplicitous and murderous employees, proud women, kind prostitutes, a jealous young boy prepared to kill Kim who he regards as a rival and many more.

None is presented as ‘a type’. None is reduced to a caricature: the delight Kipling feels in their company and the people they are is palpable and, I suggest, wholly at odds with what one might expect of an overbearing imperialist who considers the folk he is ruling as somehow Untermenschen. That might well have been the attitude of many British in imperial India, perhaps most, but it was not Kipling’s.

That still leaves the question of why Kipling was tarred and feathered with that brush and is still written off today as ‘an imperialist’ and all that conveys or many, whereas others of his time were and are not. 

And to that question I have no answer at all.

Me, I’m not much one for reverence – too much often does more harm than good, especially when folk insist on ‘authenticity’. Fuck ‘authenticity’

It’s odd how an interpretation or performance of some toons can make or break that toon. And how we all vary in which interpretation or performance we like and dislike. I’ve just heard Send In The Clowns on Radio 3 and as almost - almost - always with that song, I cringed a little.

It seems almost always to be done with reverence (as in ‘with total fucking reverence’), thus upping the cringe factor a quite a bit. In my book - and I stress these things ARE personal - most cringey are when female thesps (the ones who are not primarily singers) sing it, as in Ms J Dench at ‘the Proms’, natch.

Unfortunately, I can’t off-hand think of an example which has zero cringe, though in the right hands it is a great song. It’s just with that song the right hands seem to be rare as hens teeth.

Here’s another example: watching Turn: Washington’s Spies a few years ago (and re-watching it now), I first came across the long-traditional sailors’ shanty Spanish Ladies sung by the Australian Sarah Blasko. For me Blasko hits just the right note, understated melancholy and fuck-all reverence.

In the video it’s the first one, followed by, several crass fuckers bleeding reverence from every pore, and then another female singer who again misses by a country mile, though not quite as as badly.

It’s a delicate thing: like almost everything, get it right and spot on and you’re laughing. Get it wrong . . . well, take up bowls or something.

What to do about Donny’s threat to back him or else? Tell him to fuck off – politely, of course, by simply ignoring it and him. Yes, America’s economic power is still mighty, but he is becoming an irrelevant figure of fun more and more by the week (and thus screwing things for his White House cronies)

Occasionally, I am asked on Quora to answer this or that question. One of the most recent was

Does Europe, including the United Kingdom, have any realistic option other than acceding to President Trump’s demand to take over Greenland? It would help if he could say why exactly he wants Greenland.

Here is my response, and I am posting it here and now, because if I am right and Donny will be carted off shouting and screaming sooner rather than later, it would help. It might even gain me the, wholly spurious, of course, reputation as a visionary. And if I am wrong – who’s going to remember this post?

We certainly do, and it is simple: defy Trump and carry on defying him until he is no longer in power, and that might well be sooner than many think.

Trump faces a range of enormous problems, most political and some personal. Imminently, the Supreme Court will rule on the appeal against a court’s judgment that he does not have the constitutional authority unilaterally to impose tariffs.

Their decision is likely to go against him and cause him all kinds of problems. He might – he is not the sharpest blade in the box – try to tough it out, but that would compound his growing problems

Perhaps worse, if that is possible, what seemed like an iron grip on the Republican right is weakening considerably with a growing divided in MAGA with many supporters, for example, upset with many of his recent actions, not least that the man who assured them ‘no more foreign wars’ bombed Caracas, kidnapped the Venezuelan president and is talking, apparently seriously, of invading Greenland.

It also doesn’t help Trump that despite his, wholly fantastical claims that the US economy is thriving and he grades it A+++, relevant economic data, little by little, his demonstrating the opposite: it is not thriving and inflation is creeping up.

When prices for basic groceries, second-hand cars and rents (due to a decline in new home sales) are rising, it doesn’t matter what the man in the Oval Office is assuring you – most recently that it will all come good by the end of 2026! – it ain’t true!

MAGA men and women are reportedly also increasingly uncomfortable with the antics of ICE agents – yes, they might agree that ‘illegals’ should be apprehended with a view to deportation, but not like this. Some knuckle-draggers (with whom I have been mixing it on Truth Social until my accounts are banned) don’t mind at all, but many more don’t like the violence.

This creeping erosion of MAGA support also loosens Trump’s grip on the several hundred spineless Representatives who hitherto had bowed and cowed to him at every turn with both eyes on the threat that if they,

Demented? I’m not demented! I’m a wholly stable genius and I’ll bomb anyone who doesn’t agree with me, then I’ll sue what’s left of them for billions!

did not, they would be ‘primaried’. So what? they ask themselves, it doesn’t look certain look all that certain I would lose my seat. And, of course, those congressme and women who will not be standing anyway and the senators who will not be up for election and now casting about to establish where they left their spine.

Furthermore, although the ‘mid-terms’ are still nine months away, it seems very unlikely they will not become an electoral disaster for the Republicans, not least because, apart from the possibility that alternative non-MAGA Republican candidates might stand for election, the crucial independents have long lost faith with Trump and given they swung the vote his way on November 5, 2025.

What should worry Trump is that talk of ‘the 25th’ – invoking the constitutional amendment allowing for a president to be removed from office if he (no she, so far, natch, this is the macho ol’ US of A) – is also being whispered in Republican circles, the principle being ‘save what can be saved’. The far-right – Miller, Vought and Thiel – have a ready-made stood in VP Vance to replace Trump if and when, and when is looking more likely.

There is not doubt Trump suffered a mild stroke a month or two ago, and it is disconcerting that he now has visibly to fight off falling asleep in meetings. But arguably worse is that he shows definite signs of not being ‘all there’, unhinged, if you like, hence his, frankly, inexplicable recent decisions.

Talk that he might be suffering from frontal lobe dementia – as his father did in the last ten years of his life – are not mere Democrat mischief-making. So, the White House movers and shakers ask themselves, can we take the risk? Maybe it is time to put Donny out to pasture?

Thus, in short, what options does the UK and Europe have about Trump’s demand to own Greenland? Just the one – hold out till the old fraud is well under lock and key in some very comfortable, secure hospital in rural Pennsylvania. The new regime might show itself to be just as fascist but perhaps not quite as looney as the current one.