What’s sauce for the goose . . . the Guardian tries its hand at solving an ancient ethical conundrum. And one Vladimir Putin must decide: should he or shouldn’t he? But then he’s such a cutie at heart!

Well, well. Not only was the Guardian so thoroughly outraged by the News of the World hacking onto the mobile phones of various celebs and politicians that it launched an investigation into the whole scummy business, it also thought such hacking was such a good wheeze that it did a little itself. David Leigh, the paper’s assistant editor and head of investigations, has admitted that he, too, as hacked into voicemail messages in an, ultimately successful attempt to substantiate a story about a corrupt businessman.

Actually, the news is not quite as shocking as it might sound, and the Guardian isn’t shown up to by thoroughly hypocritical as my intro might have indicated. In fact, Leigh had already admitted in a piece for his paper in 2006 that he had also indulged in a spot of hacking and even admitted to feeling a ‘vicarious thrill’ while doing so, but his intention was to plead that there are exceptional circumstances in which such subterfuge is justified. And I seem to remember hearing on the radio yesterday that Leveson announced that when he makes his recommendations to as to what kind of journalistic practices he felt should be criminalised, he will also say that whatever laws are made should allow for exceptions. (I tried to find a link to press report on this but so far I haven’t been able to.)

So far, so good, although so far, so muddy. Because Leigh’s admission highlights a perpetial and perennial problem in - er - moral philosophy which is always best summed up in the question ‘does the end justify the means?’ Given what Leigh told Leveson’s inquiry and given Leveson’s subsequent comments on the matter, the answer would seem to be yes. But, as any keen sixth-form philosophy student will tell you, one can quickly think up any number of examples where the answer would seem to be an unequivocal no. For example, if a mother were told that the rest of her children would be saved if she year to murder her youngest, would that murder be justified? So, the answer to the question ‘does the end justify the means?’ would strictly become: sometimes. And that is worse than useless.

We are not dealing with dusty, theoretical philosophy here. The question of ‘when is immoral behaviour acceptable’ raised its ugly head several months ago when the Americans admitted they had resorted to the torture of Al Qaeda suspects. At the time, their response was ‘if a practice is acceptable, it is no longer immoral’, but in truth that is a pretty threadbare argument which merely shifts the burden of proof. A pound of flour is still a pound of floor whether it is weighed on an old-fashioned set a scales or a modern digital set.

Unusually, your resident loudmouth is not about to pronounce and suggest an answer. I’m merely going to take the easy way out and remark that it’s a tough one. I will add, though, that I am more inclined to play it safe and believe that, no, the ends don’t justify the means, for admitting that sometimes they might allows any number of thugs, such as one Joseph Stalin, for example, to justify themselves and their actions. But to point out just how tricky the question is: were the murders of occupying Germans committed by French Resistance more, less or equally as justified as the murders of U.S. and British troops in Afghanistan by the Taliban (or the murders of Soviet troops by the mujahideen)? Sticky, isn’t it?

. . .

If Vladimir Putin were a brand, his owners would be urgently considering a relaunch. If he were an ageing rock star, his managers would be urgently considering a comeback tour. As it is, he’s fucked and faces a huge dilemma: do the crackdowns on protesters in Moscow, St Petersburg and - somewhere called - Samara get heavier until they cease, or does he carry on with the ‘we’re all aspiring democrats now’ schtick and lose even more face? In all this, of course, I’m assuming that his position is safe within the ruling establishment, that he is not, perhaps, in part a placeman who could be replaced if and when those nominal folk pulling the strings decide. And that consideration takes us to an essential difference between the old Soviet regime and the new, it would seem quasi, dictatorship in Russia under Putin. At least the Soviets had the fiction of ‘the Communist Party’ and ‘the interests of the Party’ to fall back on and any reshuffle or internal realignment of power could be camouflaged. Putin has no such fig leaf, and it would seem he stands slap-bang in front of a dilemma.

A month ago I googled Putin’s biography as I realised I knew so little about him. The occasion was a curious story in the Daily Telegraph - you can find it here - about claims made by a former West German secret service agent that Putin used to beat his wife and had several affiars while he was working for the KGB and stationed in East Germany. The agent (whose codename as ‘Balcony’ - she had rather large breasts we are told, although I must be honest and say that is more a British than a German joke, or rather I have never heard it made by a German) had, in the course of her duties, managed to become a confidante of Mrs Putin, and Mrs Putin told her about her husband’s behaviour. Google took me to Wikipedia and, of course, I have the standard reservations about that site, but from what I read there it would seem to be that Putin was, initially, something of an accidental President. His biography doesn’t read as that of someone scheming to get his way to the top. Now he is there, of course, he most probably wants to stay there, but his initial appointment as a prime minister seems to have been something of a matter of chance. But there is now no doubt that he wants another two full terms in charge and will do a great deal to achieve it.

It would be misleading to claim that the people have other ideas. It would be more truthful to say that a number of liberal-minded, middle-class folk in Moscow, St Petersburg and Samara have other ideas, although the numbers who turned out to protest at what they regard were flawed elections can give us no indication at all as to whether there are a great many others in the whole of Russia who feel the same or just a few. (Incidentally, I have often wondered just how we British, or the French or the Germans, would react if the Russians announced they were sending monitors to our countries when an election is due to make sure it was all fair and above board. We might resort to crude language when telling them what to do with their election monitors.)

As that old roue Bill Clinton once remarked ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ when asked what made the voters tick, and the Russians will be no different. If things remain rather comfortable for a great many of them - and there is a great many of them - questions such as why are there no credible alternative candidates to Putin at the coming presidential election will remain unasked. If, on the other hand, the electorate’s standard of living does start to suffer badly, it could well be another matter. And in that case no amount of pictures of Putin strangling bears in the Urals, rolling around naked in Siberian snows, or fishing for shark in the waters of the Volga would soothe them. I have given a selection of Putin action man pictures below. And then, Lordy be!, I have also come across some pictures of Putin expressing his feminine side. He’s such a cutie!

On the lines of Putin PR stunts, one of the funnier videos I have recently seen was of Putin helping to promote a new Lada model. In he jumped to take the smart-looking car for a test drive and turned on the ignition. Sadly, the engine failed to spring to life for several minutes. I do hope he isn’t vain. Because he did look rather silly.

The Times they are a changin’ and have been for quite some time. If you want to make money, leave The Thunderer well alone. Oh, and things could well be looking up for the scruffs on the extreme Left/extreme Right. Now there’s an enticing prospect for another 50 years of peace in Europe

Years ago, about 24 although it doesn’t feel that long oddly enough, when I was more naive than I am now, I thought that it would be a good idea to try to get a documentary series about the Press barons onto TV. As far as I was concerned, they were a fascinating bunch, some completely off-the-wall, some not quite so off-the-wall, but all of them not at all like you and me. I still think so, but as for getting a documentary made, well forget it. It pains me to do so, but I shall do so again: I was very naive, though sadly no more naive than a great many other people.

This was in the early days of Channel 4 when it largely stuck to its brief of being ‘different’ (it doesn’t do so any more), and it did screen a lot of interesting stuff. I thought it might well be a natural home for such a series. Sadly, these days ‘different’ doesn’t ring any bells, and if it doesn’t involved celebrities cooking, celebrities dancing, celebrities buying bric-a-brac, celebrities eating nasty insects in some faux jungle a mile or two from Brisbane city centre it hasn’t got the faintest chance of making it to the small screen.

The culture of TV has changed a great deal since then and there is far less money around, and what there is has to be spread so thinly because of the number of competing channels that if you can’t get your programme made for peanuts, it ain’t going to be shown. Thus we now have the proliferation of property programmes, cookery programmes and antiques programmes, as well as all the ‘reality’ TV crap. The one virtue they have as far as the TV luvvies are concerned is that they are cheap to make. But even in those days, pre Sky and all the other Freeview bollocks when there were only the two BBC TV channels and ITV (which was still flying high and which in those days still consisted of a number of regional companies, all under the ITV tent), getting a documentary made wasn’t just down to some bright spark having a good idea.

Before I contacted Channel 4 and three or four of the bigger ITV companies, I did what, were I to bullshit, I could call ‘research’. Actually, what it boiled down to was that I read a few books. And that is how I came to know a little of the history of The Times and why it has been something of a nine-bob note (nine dollar/euro/rubel bill) for the past 100 years. It was most certainly true that at one point The Times was not only the most pre-eminent paper in Britain, but also had a good worldwide reputation. But that was not necessarily down to its journalism. It was all rooted in something of a stroke of luck.

The rotary press was invented in the early 1840s and patented a few years later. It transformed the British newspaper industry. Until then, newspapers had been printed on flatbed press - type was laid out in a frame on a flat bed, inked and it was covered with a sheet of newsprint which had a page printed on it. Not only was the process time-consuming, it was also expensive, and the circulation of even the leading papers of the day was around 10,000. They simply couldn’t print enough in one night to sell any more. These papers were then distributed and as they were expensive, each edition was read by a great many people. But the rotary press changed all that. With a rotary press the number of copies which could be printed rose tenfold, and it was also a cheaper technology. And this is where The Times stroke of luck came in. For under its then editor John Delane, the Times managed to lease exclusive rights to use the rotary press for ten years. Suddenly it could print far more copies than its rivals and its production costs came down. And it made a great deal more money, which it used to extend its network of reporters and correspondents. (Incidentally, its nickname The Thunderer, which those self-regarding eejits at The Times like to refer to proudly, was originally a satirical gibe at how the The Times took itself so seriously.)

As usual, success begat success, and in the mid-19th century The Times really was top dog. What they won’t happily tell you was once their ten-year exclusive right to use the rotary press ended and all the other papers could get in on the act, their circulation also shot up as their costs also fell. And by the second half of the 19th century, the Daily Telegraph, even today, the only true rival to The Times, had already overtaken it in circulation. By the end of the century it was no longer making a profit and at the beginning of the 20th century it was even briefly owned by Lord Northcliffe, who had made his name and fortune with his new downmarket Daily Mail (‘written by office boys for office boys’ was the opinion of Lord Salisbury, then Prime Minister), but even his undoubted newspaper genius couldn’t get it back into the black. And it has not turned a profit in more than 110 years.

These days, under the ownership of News International (‘Britain’s No 1 Phone Hacker’) it is still subsidised by group profits, but there is talk of shutting it down now that those profits are massively dented by the closure of the News of the Screws. It’s circulation in October 2011 was a piss-poor 417,197. Ten years earlier it was 678,498. Maths isn’t my strong suit but I make that a decline of more than 38pc. It has, admittedly, been a bad decade for newspapers all round. The figures for the Telegraph are 974,362 and 603,901, also just over 38pc, for the Daily Mail 2,421,795 and 1,998,363, a decline of 17.5pc, and The Sun 3,451,746 and 2,715,473, a decline of 21.3pc. Most alarming of all are the figures for the Mirror, The Suns’ sworn rival: 2,180,227 and 1,118,120, a decline of a deeply alarming 51pc.

So much for The Thunderer.
. . .

The really silly thing about all this euro crisis nonsense is that the people who matter most, the very people on whose behalf the EU purportedly does all its good deeds - viz the plethora of regulations making life better, safer and prettier - are almost forgotten in all the argy-bargy. Yes, Merkel does this and suggests that, and Sarkozy suggests that and does this, but at the end of the day, they are only there on sufferance. And both face election. (Incidentally, in an EU of equals - well, in theory - where are all the other heads of state? One of the justifications for the EU was to end the dominance and rivalry of Germany and France in European affairs, a rivalry which had led to war on several occasions. Yet which two countries are now ‘taking the lead’ in trying to sort out the country? Latvia and Portugal? Try again. Netherlands and Cyprus? Er, not quite. Germany and France? Well, done! Give that man a chocolate!)

France goes to the polls to elect its new president at the end of April next year, and Merkel faces elections 18 months later in September 2013. The accepted wisdom is that membership of the EU is such a good thing that in all member states the sitting government and its opposition are in favour. Ah, but what about the people, those ordinary men and women who, so far in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland are having a very shitty time because of what they regard as the behaviour of EU placemen. Enda Kenny appeared on TV last night preparing the Irish for even further austerity measures, including raising VAT to 23pc. How to the ordinary people - let me remind you: the very people on whose behalf this is all being done - feel now? Are they really as well-inclined to the EU as once they were when those two letters were regarded as shorthand for an easy life of plenty at no cost whatsoever? When it comes to ticking the ballot paper, what will be uppermost in their minds: the easy life they once had or the shitty life they now have? But, I hear you cry, it doesn’t matter: both the incumbent government and the opposition are EU supporters, so there is no chance ...

Well, sadly, there is a chance, a rather frightening chance that some opposition might opt for political expediency and stop toeing the party line on all things EU. They might choose to destroy the cosy consensus which has always been part of the EU’s strength. But that would not be the worst scenario. Presented with the Hobson’s choice of voting to re-elect a government which is bringing them nothing but pain or to replace it with an opposition which also promises to continue the pain, the voters might be inclined to favour some of the scruffier individuals who exist on the margins of political consensus. And there are enough of those.

On the left, Greece, Spain and Portugal all have a thriving extreme left, and were that not to worry you, it is neatly balance in those countries by an extreme right. In Franct the Front National is doing rather well in the polls, now standing at 20pc. In Italy the Northern League has a great deal of support, and although it is not regarded as a right-wing party, it is on its way. The real problem for European democrats is that should any of these, whether on the left or the right, garner substantially more votes - and a protest vote is still a vote - and be in a position of holding the balance of power, they have no choice but to accept it. After all the people will have spoken. Trying the trick they used successfully in Ireland - holding a second ballot when the voters rather inconveniently did not give the EU the result it wanted - will not be possible. What to do? Aux armes citoyens! Now there’s a prospect for the institution which many claim has ensured peace in Europe for the past 60 years.

Am I being harsh or is Caitlin Moran just a tad pleased with herself?

I was listening to the radio this morning and as usual on that particular programme, the last item, just before 9am, takes the form of a general discussion. If the overnight news has been grave - euro not yet collapsed but for God’s sake start knitting, or Elton John loses cufflinks given him by the Queen - the big, authoritative guns are rolled out and we are treated to the wisdom of those thought to know what they are talking about.

The ‘names’ will be people who are relevant to the story - a highly respected diplomat who, now retired, can stop lying, some chap from the LSE (well, until recently - since they were caught selling a Phd to Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi for a very good price indeed, their stock has rather fallen and they will now count themselves lucky to get a gig on Countdown) or a German journalist from one of the serious papers who speaks English better than almost all of us who live in the United Kingdom.

That, in the interests of ‘balance’- the BBC is very keen on ‘balance’ - each authoritative side will utterly contradict the other and describe what is being put forward by his antagonist as nonsense means that once the discussion ends, we, the listeners are not one jot wiser and the whole excercise was largely pointless.

Often the discussion is what the BBC refers to as ‘light-hearted’ and ‘the names’ are allowed to make jokes and not take the topic of discussion entirely seriously. This morning, the discussion was about one Jeremy Clarkson who either outraged the nation a few days ago by claiming our striking public sector workers should be lined up and shot in front of their families or who played up to his professional persona as loudmouth at large and was merely joking.

What you believe on that score will be entirely down to your own political prejudice. The Left were, rather predictably, thoroughly outraged as only the Left can be outraged, whereas the rest of us know Clarkson was making a joke, although a weak one. And for the record, I think Jazzer is a pain in the arse but otherwise perfectly harmless.

So that was the topic, and to bat it around for five minutes or so until the 9am pips, Today rolled out Toby Young (a kind of well-trained, more diplomatic and classier sub-Jeremy Clarkson, who has also been known to speak out and frighten the horses, but who in recent years has chosen to acquire a more sober persona now that he is hoping to make his fortune by setting up private schools) and one Joan Burnie, who I have never come across before and who was trailed as an associate editor Scotland’s Daily Record for whom she also writes a column.

They made some good points, and Young mentioned how Dave Prentiss, a union leader - you’d be hard-pushed to find a Tory or someone from the respectable wing of the Lib Dems styling themselves Dave - revealed he was ‘seeking urgent legal advice’ on Clarkson’s comments. Yes, the whole thing is as silly as that. But at one point Young mentioned a Caitlin Moran and my ears pricked up.

Until that moment I had only heard her name and knew nothing more about her, but from Young’s comments it would seem she is, in part, that oddest of creatures, a right-of-centre feminist and I was intrigued. So I looked her up on the net and discovered that she is a ‘broadcaster, writer, TV critic and columnist’. And when I looked her up I realised just how out of touch I am with what’s happening, man. Even the fact that I had to look her up underlines rather sadly how much further down the road to fuddy-duddyland I have travelled than I have feared.

For Caitlin was, it turns out, something of a young media prodigy, winning the Observer’s Young Journalist of the Year in 1990 when she was still only 15, writing a novel at 16 and going on to present a Channel 4 rock show. Now that she is no longer a young media prodigy - you can’t be, really, at 36 - she has joined the media establishment (expect her to join the Booker Prize committee at some point in the next few yers) and her day job is to write for three columns for the Times, work which has won her Columnist of the Year for 2010, and BPA Critic of the Year 2011, and Interviewer of the Year 2011 (all, you will gather, curiously anonymous: who sponsors these awards? Would it surprise you to know that I am also an ‘award-winner’? I recently won Oldest Inhabitant of Lanke Cottage, St Breward, for the third year running and I am, my colleagues tell me, a strong contender for the prestigious Feature Sub-editor Nicks Most Biros From Stationery Cupboard Award 2011.)

What first turned me off was young Caitlin’s relationship with The Times. I worked regular shifts on The Times (which came to an abrupt halt when I was quite wrongly suspected of spending the night with one of the news editors’ wives, but that’s another story) and was rather taken aback by the paper’s self-image. To this day - seriously - it thinks of itself as the best paper in the world.

Worse, it regards those who, like me, don’t agree with that estimation as fundamentally stupid. Well, I’ll give it to you straight: I find The Times dull, dull, dull, uninformative and distressingly middle-brow. So that young Caitlin writes not just one but three columns, one rather ominously described by Wikipedia as ‘the satirical Friday column Celebrity Watch’, is not in her favour.

As is my wont, I also google-imaged her (sorry, sisters, but don’t pretend you don’t do the same with guys) and that was the nail in young Caitlin’s coffin as far as I am concerned. For in almost all the pictures in Google’s collection, she has a look of ineffable smugness and self-satisfaction.

But make up your own minds. Above is a selection. I’m afraid what we think of ourselves is very often reflected in our habitual expression and young Caitlin’s expressions rather convey, to me at least, that if she were chocolate she would just love to eat herself. But that’s media folk for you. If I had my way, I would have them all lined up in front of their families and shot. Not once, but twice!

Ah, the Indy, the eccentrics’ eccentric. Plus the best and clearest account I have yet come across of why the euro is going down the pan

Every country has its self-image, which is more often than not is rather flattering. The French like to see themselves as intellectuals, folk who would far, far rather discuss ontology than developments in the latest soaps. The Italians are convinced they are the great seducers, although apparently Italian women are the first group to pooh-pooh that one. (It doesn’t help that for economic reasons - largely - Italian men often live at home until they marry and expect their new wives to carry on where their mothers left off.) The Brits like to see themselves as quirky, slightly off-the-wall, the exception which prove most rules (which is just as well because portraying themselves as great intellectuals or great seducers would do nothing but elicit hoots of risible laughter from every other nation).

As it is, you can find eccentrics in every nation, not least, counter-intuitively, Germany: my sister once had a neighbour who thought his water company’s charges were getting too high and began drilling his own well in is back garden. He had got about 40ft deep before ‘the authorities’ - it’s always ‘the authorities’ - told him enough was enough and what he was doing was illegal under several laws, including one which stated that ‘borehole drilling, drilling boreholes, drilling any hole which might be interpreted as a borehole and which meets the different criteria leading to or leading from the definition of boreholes is not allowed if the area of land in which the borehole is being drilled is less than 20sq m, if work on drilling the borehole takes place predominantly between the hours of 5pm and 8am or at weekends, if the borehole driller cannot comprehensively demonstrate the need for a personal borehole (but see the section below on the impact of proposed new EU legislation) and the borehole/borehole drilling do not meet the general criteria of Safety At Work, Environmental Concerns and Tighter European Integration.’ As it was, he took ‘the authorities’ to court which ruled in his favour on all of those official objections except the last which we all know overrules every other law known to mankind.

Where was I?

It has to be said that if not the wackiest nation in the world, Britain is up there with the wackier ones. An example: to date we have here in Great Britain TWO parliaments and TWO assemblies. Both parliaments can raise taxes, although the second parliament (in Scotland) can only do so in some areas (taxes on litter, billboards, kerbstones, that kind of thing). Neither of the assemblies can raise taxes. In fact the assemblies, one in Belfast and one in Cardiff can do very little except meet and complain about the main parliament, the one which sits in Westminster, although I believe they do have limited responsibility for certain bye-laws - when folk can hang out their washing, the number of times you can spit in the street on weekdays, that kind of thing. The members of both parliaments and both assemblies, however, are reasonably content with the arrangement, and very good salaries, very generous expenses, subsidised restaurants and bars, very generous pensions and the insistence that it is all very, very democratic go a long way to ensure they don’t rock the boat too much.

My thoughts turned to wackiness when I logged on and did my morning trawl through the websites of the Telegraph, the Guardian, The Independent and the Daily Mail.
The Independent front page was especially puzzling, which is to say it was more puzzling than usual. Under the headline ‘Victory within reach - but cuts could spoil it all’ there are pictures of Hillary Clinton (looking rather old), Carla Bruni (still looking youngish and they call her Carla Bruni-Sarkozy) and Elton John (looking rather old). The overnight news was that all the rich folk in the U.S. have decided to make it easier for European banks to borrow their money (so good of them), Iran has decided it wants to be invaded by Britain, and our Chancellor has released a single (‘You Think It’s Bad? You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’ - quite catchy). What, I asked myself do Clinton, Bruni (‘Bruni-Sarkozy’) and Elton John have to do with any of that? The answer, of course, is nothing. For the Indy, as it is know to the few families in West London who still buy it, had decided to ignore the obvious news stories and lead on World Aids Day. Good on you, you might say, and I agree (after having read some of the pieces by the three involved) that it is timely to remember that aids is still a threat to many lives. But to splash on it in the run-up to Armageddon? That is eccentric.

But the Indy has form. It was launched in October 1986 to universal goodwill. It would be fair to say it hit the ground running. It’s design was fresh, clear and attractive, its use of photography was imaginative and its philosophy of political non-alignment very welcome indeed by many of the newspaper reading public who were thoroughly fed up with the entrenched attitudes of British newspapers, and its launch ad campaign - We’re independent. Are you? - very clever indeed, playing as it did on the conceit and vanity of potential readers. And from that high spot it began a slow, slow, painfully slow decline.
If I remember rightly, its initial circulation was more than respectable at around 300,000, although this was, admittedly, in the days before the internet when the Telegraph was still selling over one million, The Times far more than half a million and the Guardian’s figures did not look as sickly as they do now. So, off to such a promising start, the Indy decided to shoot itself in the foot: for no very good reason, it underwent a redesign. There was nothing wrong with the old design and at the time circulation figures were holding up, even though they were no longer as high as at launch. Redesigns (and ‘relaunches’) are usually the first sign that ‘things are not healthy’. Sometimes they come off (and as in the case of the revitalised Marks & Spencer chain under Stuart Rose, they come of spectacularly) but that is the exception which proves the rule. At the Indy, however, things were going rather well (as far as I know) and the redesign was entirely superfluous. Be that as it may, it unsettled some readers and circulation started drooping a little.

Its attitude didn’t help, either. Like many, I started reading it when I was launched but was soon turned off by an indefinable smugness. I once met a reporter, on The Times at the time, who told me he was headhunted by the Indy. He went for the interview and was seriously considering jumping ship until he was told the salary the paper was offering him. ‘But that’s several thousand pounds less than I’m getting now,’ he told them. ‘Ah, yes,’ they replied, ‘but you would be working for The Independent.’ That attitude seemed to permeate the paper, by then six years old. When I was living and working in London in the early 1990s, I worked regular shifts on the Indy in its City Road offices. It seemed to me the people I worked with were split right down the middle: regular, very professional sub-editors and then a gang of hacks who really thought they were the bee’s knees. It was rather odd.

Since then the decline has been inexorable. It has had ten editors in the past 25 years, including many who should never have been allowed near the editor’s chair in a month of Sundays. I shall name names: Andrew Marr (him again), Rosie Boycott and the ever delightful Janet Street-Porter. Circulations among the broadsheets have, admittedly, fallen dramatically all round: in October 2011, the Telegraph sold just 603,901 (in Oct 2010 it was 655,006, a decline of -7.80pc), The Times (another paper which thinks the sun shines out of its arse) 417,197 (479,107, -12.92pc), 230,541 (276,428, -16.60pc) and the Indy 133,449 (182,412, -26.84pc). To be fair, I should add that the Indy has recently launched the i, a kind of Indy lite (the main paper without the pretentious bit?) I gave up on the Indy when I found that all too often I simply didn’t understand too many of its feature articles, not a sign of my stupidity, but that the paper was badly written: the first rule of communication is Don’t Baffle The Reader), and one can assume that of the one in four readers who stopped buying the Indy year on year, almost all will have instead gone for the i. And this is selling rather well: 211,467 in October 2011, more than its older sister paper and just 19, 074 fewer than the Guardian. Now if that isn’t wacky, I don’t know what is. For a fuller account of these figures as well as those for the tabloids, you can go to this page.

. . .

Here is the most succinct, clearest and best explanation of the euro crisis I have yet read. It explains everything.

My appointment with Death: any chance it could be sooner rather than later so that I can save a bit on bills?

I don’t know whether to be happy that I am over 60 and will die a little sooner than many of you and thus avoid must of the bad times on the way, or whether I should adopt the conventional attitude that death is quite simply awful and we should stave it off as long as possible. My English grandparents both died in their 70s, my German grandfather was taken by liver cancer just as the war ended. He was, I think 56. My German grandmother, on the other hand, made it to the ripe old age of 93 or 94. My mother died three months after her 60th birthday (of a heart attack) and my father was 68 when he popped his clogs (also of cancer, which began as prostate cancer and then spread).


It would seem that, my grandmother notwithstanding, we Powell/Hinrichs are not really a long-lived family. However, until just over seven years ago, I was convinced I would take after my German grandmother and annoy the world until I was well into my 90s. I had no very good reason for thinking as much as I had started smoking at more or less 14 and didn’t really stop until I was 50. There were times when I considered myself to be a non-smoker as I had stopped smoking cigarettes, but I carried on with my habit, acquired at university, of enjoying the wacky backy, and looking back it now seems obvious to me that when I thought I would like a toke or two of at any time during the day, in fact I was simply craving the nicotine hit smokers crave. Nevertheless, it was going to be a ripe old age for me, or so I thought until May 2, 2006, when I was carted off to hospital suffering from a heart attack. After that I slightly re-adjusted my plans.

Since then I have always told myself that I want to live long enough to see my children well-established and happily independent of their dad. That might be, say, when they are just short of 30. So that would give me another 18 years (Wesley turned 12 last May) and take me through to 80. But that seems rather unlikely given my grandparents’ fate, so maybe that would be 75 or 76. Who knows.

I am not being morbid – well, perhaps I am, but I don’t mean to be – when I write this. In fact, for some very odd reason I don’t have any ‘fear of death’ as many say they do. In fact, I’m rather curious to find out what happens afterwards, although, naturally, I shall be in no position to tell anyone still alive. But my thoughts turned to wondering how long I shall be around with the overnight news that economically things are going to get very, very bad over the coming ten years of so here in Britain, and that prognosis, cheerless as it is, is based on the assumption the euro will pull through, that the wise men and women who guide the countries which make up the Eurozone will finally – finally – get their act together and save the day and the euro at the last moment. Well, I have never been one to believe that pigs might fly. And that means that things will get far, far worse than the exceptionally awful future our esteemed Chancellor of the Exchequer predicted yesterday in the House of Commons. Great.

To make matters worse, some trigger-happy folk in Tehran decided to revive the old Iranian tradition of looting the British embassy. That is not a good sign. The British bulldog is not one to sit idly by while its dignity is injured and is apt to retaliate. The trouble is: with what will the British bulldog retaliate? At the last count its armoury consisted of two broken peashooters and a converted trawler. With exquisitely good timing, the Government has good rid of all our aircraft carriers, is sacking almost all of our Armed Forces and is in no state whatsoever to pick a fight with anyone. I think we’ll all know the game is finally up when it urges us all to knit for victory.

So that is why I’ve been wondering just how long I’ve got left. Not that I’ve ever been very convinced but the imperative to stay alive at all costs until the bitter end, because a bitter end it usually is. And on that cheery note I wish you all the best and enjoy the rest of your day.

Hacks on the rack and how, when our glorious Press does, for once, do a decent thing, it is only to protect its own hide

It would be untrue to claim that at present the United Kingdom is gripped by the ongoing Leveson Inquiry into Press behaviour because the public simply isn’t gripped by it in the slightest. What interest it shows stems from the same nosey-parker tendency which led to the Press behaving badly in the first place: the public has a seemingly unquenchable thirst for witnessing the bad fortune of others, and our newspapers know there is good money to be made from attempting to quench that thirst. But it would be true to say that the Press themselves – the tabloid Press that is, not the saintly broadsheets, which are read by intelligent people don’t you know, the kind who hold a knife properly and don’t call supper ‘dinner’– are gripped by the possible outcome, and very bloody worried they are, too, as to where it will all lead. I don’t think anyone us under any illusion any more that tabloid hacks can sometimes – note ‘sometimes’ not ‘always’ – behave like complete scum, making the lives of those, whether they are ‘celebrities’ or not, a total misery as they pursue ‘the story’.


When the Press is under attack for its methods, it will often trot out that hoary old cliché ‘the public interest’, that it was behaving in ‘the public interest’, but that is, as so much else Press-related, a load of old cack. Years ago, a judge summed it all up rather well when he pointed out that there is a great difference between ‘the public interest’ and ‘what interests the public’. So, for example, the newspaper which published a story that the latest romance of actor Hugh Grant was on the rocks because of his close friendship with a ‘plummy-voiced’ studio executive would be extremely hard-pressed to substantiate any claim that had it not published the story the democracy of Britain was under threat. As a rule the Press tries to justify some of its worst behaviour by claiming – spuriously in my opinion – that any curtailment of its methods, even those used to gather stories which are not directly related to the well-being of the country’s democracy, would, in the long run, curtail its acknowledged role as guardian of democracy. In short, they claim that if we, the public, want a watchdog Press, we are obliged to take the rough with the smooth. And that, dear reader, dear member of the public, is, in my views, 24-carat bollocks. France, for example, not only has quite stringent privacy laws, but its Press is apt to give its politicians a very easy ride indeed when it comes to their private lives. So, for example, it was common knowledge that Francoise Mitterand not only had multiple mistresses, but that he also had a secret parallel family. Not a word of this ever appeared in print, yet would anyone seriously suggest that French democracy is under threat?


In a world of untruths and half-truths, it is wholly true that the public is unforgivably prurient: it has an insatiable appetite for tittle-tattle, and the more shocking that tittle-tattle is, the better. So it is wholly unsurprising that the Press is not disinclined to make good dough by satisfying that demand for the prurient details of the lives of others. And please don’t make the mistake in thinking that such a business model is restricted to the tabloid Press: the broadsheets also get in on the act as they know their readers, too, want to know every scummy detail. The wheeze they use which allows them to print it all yet appear to be above that kind of gutter behaviour is simply to run stories along the lines of: just look how shocking our gutter Press is – this is the kind of thing they are now publishing. They then publish the lot and their readers, too, can get their rocks off.


The trouble is that whereas 20 or 30 the News of the World could, say, splash on ‘The vicar of Little Magna is a homosexual’, in an age when that is no longer shocking – as someone pointed out, the love that dares not speak its name is now shouting it from the rooftops – it keeps having to go the extra mile. And given advances in technology and the new ways we choose to communicate with each other, it is no surprise that it will resort to using that technology to go that extra mile. That’s how this whole investigation into Press methods started: unscrupulous hacks were – er – hacking into the voicemails of celebrities, politicians, businessmen and our Glorious Royals (God bless The Queen and all who sail in her). As the boundaries of what shocked the public were further pushed outwards, the stories intended to shock the public into buying your paper in order to get the latest details had to become ever more outlandish. And if you didn’t have a good story, just make it up. Simple. That is apparently what happened in the case of the abduction of Maddy McCann, with the Press inventing stories they knew Maddy’s parents were in no position to discredit because It might compromise the investigation into their daughter’s disappearance.


. . .


By chance we are today reading a story on which, given the Leveson Inquiry into appalling Press behaviour, the Press cannot progress any further. It is a very sad story: Gary Speed, a well-liked and well-respected former Premier League footballer and the current manager of the Wales international team, hanged himself yesterday. His suicide came out of the blue (long gone are the days when we had to wait for an inquest into a death to rule it was an act of suicide before it could be described as such) and is described as ‘a mystery’ by the papers.


Actually, they all know it is no mystery whatsoever. Last night, I heard in the newsroom what is most likely to be the true explanation (and if I heard it, you can bet your bottom dollar it had already been round Fleet Street twice). Out of the blue Speed, a married man and the father of two young teenage sons, was informed that a tabloid ‘had proof’ that he was a closet gay and was going to publish its story. Speed told his wife, the couple had a blazing row, Speed spent the night sleeping in his car and in the morning took his own life. Normally, in reporting such a suicide, the Press would have no compunction whatsoever in reporting ‘the allegation’ – always a useful word for Fleet Street’s finest – that Speed was, in fact, gay.




Yet in none of the reports this morning is there so much as a hint of that allegation. As far as Fleet Street is concerned, Speed’s suicide is a complete mystery. So why the reticence? Obvious, really: no editor in his or her right mind would print such a tacky story while their highly paid briefs are attending an inquiry into their behaviour and doing their damndest to persuade the world and its inquiry that as a rule the tabloids are as pure as the driven snow and that any bad behaviour was only down to a couple of rogue reporters. That would have been another suicide. So, for once, they are doing the decent thing. But let it not be thought they are sparing the feelings of Mrs Speed and her sons. They are simply so far in the shit, it would be bloody stupid to see whether they might not get even deeper by printing ‘the allegation’ that Gary Speed was gay.


. . .

I’ve been posing as a hack for the past 37 years, five months and 24 days – I started my first job on June 4, 1974, taken on as a reporter by the Lincolnshire Chronicle. The paper was part of the then Lincolnshire Standard Group and had several sister papers. It had vacancies for trainee reporters on the Chronicle based in Lincoln, the Lincolnshire Standard which was based in Boston, and the Louth Standard, based in Louth. It was still a family-controlled group and I was interviewed by one of the family. I can no longer recall his name, but he had a big white beard and a very bad stammer. I was taken on by the Chronicle in Lincoln because I ‘was a graduate and Lincoln was a cathedral city’. To this day I don’t know whether he really was serious.

But this entry is not supposed to be about me. Some readers who have delved into the murky depths of previous entries will have gathered that I have a pretty low opinion of my fellow hacks when they are hacks. I must stress that: personally I like many a great deal, but when they turn up for work, something happens and they get very odd. To a man and woman they seem to believe that the world revolves around them. But I do have a great deal of respect for any number of men and women around the world who risk a great deal in their professional lives as journalists even their lives. To see why these people deserve our respect visit this site for more information. It makes gripping, though sad, reading. You could also try this site


I have never once described myself as ‘a journalist’ when asked what I do for a living. Ever. I’m not one. Being a journalist is not just something they decided to do afer watching Lou Grant on the telly or thinking it must be really amazing to have your own telly show and, like, actually interview Rhianna.


By the way, if you're thinking of taking a ‘media studies’ course at university, don’t bother. Absolutely no one in the industry takes them seriously and you'll only find yourself - if your’re lucky - drudging away writing copy for a local authority tourism website. It'll be that or working in a call centre. Do a proper course, such as history, law, languages, sciences. Don’t believe all the cack colleges tell you. Oh, and don’t bother with a college which is less than 30 years old - The University of Tring, that kind of thing. It is a real scandal how the previous Labour governments have short-changed school-leavers into thinking getting a degree is vital. Now every nurse ‘must be a graduate’ and no longer does much of the hands-on nursing. For all the arse-wiping etc. the NHS employs ‘nursing auxiliaries’ – who don’t have to have a degree. Can no one else spot the intellectual legerdemain in that piece of ‘policymaking’? Get a degree only if it’s a real degree, sweethearts. A BA in Sandwiching-making and Domestic Appliances will only see you making sandwiches and selling kettles for less than the non-graduate who is your manager. And follow your heart as well as your head. Don’t be strongarmed into ‘going to uni’ if what you really want to do is make a career for yourself in retail or become a mechanic or a properly trained plumber/electrician/carpenter. Remember, it’s your life.


. . .


I see the ‘eurozone ministers’ are getting together in Brussels later today to discuss ‘expanding the bailout fund’. With a bit of luck they’ll agree on a tearound order and after several hours of intense discussion we can no doubt expect a jointly agreed communiqué reassuring the world that they are ‘committed to finding a solution’ to the current crisis and ‘have every confidence that the euro will survive’. Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive, but to be young is very heaven! Or something like that. Anyone care to remind me what it is like to be young? I’ve rather forgotten. Oh, yes, now I do: I spend several years in my mid-teens petrified that I would never lose my cherry and that I would die a virgin.

Thank the Lord for children. Perhaps they will do better than we did. And I come clean: I might no longer be a cunt, but I was once. Oh, and I plan a racy, though tacky, list of conquests

Every so often, I simply have an itch to write, and I am not particularly fussed about what to write. The trouble is, of course, that any old bollocks will probably bore the pants of most people, so I try to resist the temptation to rattle off at will. Then there is the fact that the euro crisis, the one ongoing story here in Europe which rather preoccupies us and on which I have been giving my two ha’porth ad nauseam for several months, is not necessarily of much interest to folk in Indonesia, Russia, Australia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea or any of the other places in which people who have dropped into this blog live and which are ‘not in Europe’. They, I am obliged to concede, have their own preoccupations. In fact, it is a universal fault that we believe everyone else is fascinated by our every fart: I farted, Lord, I’d better tell the world! And as, I hope, I am not only aware that that is the universal fault but that there is really no reason why I, too, do not suffer from it I try to resist simply blethering on about myself. Usually I succeed. But tonight - well, what the hell. So here goes.

I have two children, Elsie, now 15 years and four months old, and Wesley, 12 years and six months old. They are everything to me as and, it has to be said, that is something only a parent will completely understand. There are, obviously, exceptions, but as a rule having a child changes your life, and it most certainly changed mine. I was middle-aged when Elsie was born, and until I met her mother, now my wife, my life was going nowhere and I was not at all happy. The genesis of our union was not the most romantic, although I suspect it was less unusual than the purveyors of romantic fiction would like. I got her mother pregnant. I had not been going out with her. It was no great love match, although it turns out she had had a crush on me for many years, although I did not know that.

To cut a long story short, when she told me she was pregnant, I asked myself whether I would be happy if she had an abortion. I decided I wouldn’t, although had she wanted one, I would not have opposed her. But she didn’t want one. I then asked myself whether I would be happy being an absent father, the sort of chap who turned up every so often carrying expensive presents in the hope that their extravagant cost would somehow compensate for the fact that he had not relationship with the child at all. I decided didn’t. Then I asked myself whether I felt I would be happy asking the woman to marry me. I decided that although I didn’t love her, I liked her well enough and so I would ask her to marry me. I did. She accepted. A few months later, she miscarried the child she was carrying, and, to put it bluntly, I had a ‘get out’ clause. I was now under no obligation to ‘do the right thing’.

But I was 45, lonely, would loved to have had a family, and - to my shame - also realised that I would very much enjoy living in her 16th-century granite cottage situated in a pleasant spot on the edge of Bodmin Moor a quarter of a mile or so out of the village. So our plans carried on, she became pregnant again, our daughter Elsie was born on August 7, 1996, and our son Wesley was born a year and a half later on May 25, 1999, 110 years to the day on which my German grandmother was born. My - our? - marriage is not the most successful, but without wanting to sound too dramatic, I love my children more than life itself. They are no longer the cuddly babies, then toddlers they once were, but they are still the joy of my life.

. . .

Years ago, when I was 25 years old, I got a young woman pregnant, and when she told me she was pregnant, in one and the same breath she told me she would be having an abortion. She was 18 and due to go to university. She did not ask me whether I wanted her to have an abortion, she simply told me she was going to have one. And when Katie, the 18-year-old involved, told me, I remember two strong feelings: I was relieved that she was going to have an abortion and felt dumb relief that she had not considered asking me whether she should have one or not.

To this day, I firmly believe that whether or not to abort an embryo is essentially the choice of the woman. I don’t believe the father of the embryo has any rights at all. On the other hand, a woman who finds herself pregnant and realises she would prefer not to have the child needs as much support as she can get. Had Katie asked me whether she should abort the child or whether she should bear it, I have no idea what I would have said. For when she told me she intended to abort her foetus, I realised that in many ways I did not much like abortion. Hence, my relief that I was not asked to help make a decision. I’ll repeat: I firmly believe that it should solely be a woman’s choice whether or not she aborts the child she is carrying (and many would argue that the ‘embryo’ is not recognisably a ‘child’ for many months after conception). But I do feel a distaste for what might be described as the British abortion industry: having an abortion seems to have become a means of contraception. The difference is, of course, that there is a huge difference between ensuring that no life is created and terminating a life which is unwanted.

Many years ago, I was trying to flog feature ideas to magazines and I came up with the idea of whether or not a man should have any say in a woman’s intended abortion, the particularly ‘angle’ to the feature being whether or not a man had a right to demanding that a woman did not have an abortion. I interviewed various women in preparation - those ‘pro choice’ and those ‘pro life’ - and neither camp supported the idea that a guy had the right to such a demand. But what I particularly remember was an interview with a Scottish woman who ran a ‘pro life’ group.

First of all, she was no fanatic. We have a tendency to pigeonhole folk, and many ‘pro life’ activists are portrayed as right-wing religious nutters. Perhaps some are, but this woman most certainly wasn’t. She told me that when she was younger, she had had an abortion and subsequently felt a huge loss. She told me that gradually she had become active in counselling women who were considering having an abortion and that although she did not try to change the minds of those who were intent on aborting their child, she did warn them that, like her, they might subsequently regret it. I shall repeat: she did not strike me as a fanatic. Perhaps her ‘pro life’ views were shaped by her upbringing (whatever that was), but then that cannot be regarded as a drawback, for who is to say that it is ‘wrong’ that our upbringing should not influence what principles we espouse. Exactly why should the intellect hold the whip hand when it comes to deciding what we feel is ‘right’ and what ‘wrong’? And who can guarantee that those who espouse more ‘liberal’ and more ‘progressive’ principles aren’t ultimately equally influenced by their upbringing?

When Katie told me she was planning to abort the foetus, I was relieved. For I realised then and there that had she wanted to keep the child, I would have gone along with her wish. Furthermore, being (this is a very, very difficult admission but) inclined to doing the ‘right’ and ‘honourable’ thing (did I really claim that? Yes, I did. Please don’t think me a completely conceited toe-rag. It might well not be true), I would at the very least have acknowledged the child and supported it. But it never got that far. Katie told me that she was going to have an abortion and I was very, very relieved. (She had it on August 29, 1975, a date I remember especially well, as it was also the birthday of Annette, the girl I was going out with who lived near my parents in Oxfordshire. And it is also the day I did what I regard as the most shameful thing I have ever so far done. Katie went off to a clinic in Leamington Spa to have her abortion. I can’t remember whether she went on the Thursday (August 28) and was due to come back on the Friday, or whether it was a day trip. Either way, she asked me whether I would be there in at Lincoln station to meet her off the train. I said I wouldn’t be.

At the time I was working for as a reporter on the Lincolnshire Chronicle and was due to take the Friday off to travel down to Henley-on-Thames where my parents lived to celebrate Annette’s birthday with her. Whether or not I told Katie why I would not be meeting her I don’t know. But it really doesn’t matter. To this day I feel completely and utterly ashamed of my selfishness.

I have never told anyone that before but even writing it down here doesn’t in any way ease my shame. And nor should it. I hope to Christ that if I am ever faced with a similar situation I will have the strength of character to behave rather better. A little earlier, I wrote - and thought myself embarrassed for doing so - that I was the kind of chap who was inclined to the ‘right’ and ‘honourable’ thing. At the end of the day, I was, of course, nothing of the kind.

. . .

This might sound like the tackiest idea possible, but just as a year or two ago I listed and wrote about all the cars I have owned, I intend, here in this blog, doing the same with all the girls I have ‘slept with’. This list will be a little bit longer than a list of all the girls I ‘went out with’. The idea for such a blog entry occurred to me a many months ago, but at the time I rejected it as being far too tacky. So what has changed? Well, nothing really, except that having turned 62 five days ago, I feel in the mood for looking back. Then there is the fact that I have not had sex for more than ten years (not my choice) and, since, my heart attack have, unfortunately, not had a hard-on to speak of. I would dearly, dearly, dearly love to go to bed with a woman again (and I am one of those who insists there is a great deal more to ‘going to bed’ than simply having sex), but must sadly admit to myself that the chances of that happening are growing slimmer by the day. And those who ask: what about your wife? all I can say is to remind them of the most ancient of ancient philosophical conundrums: is there life after marriage?
Check back for a ‘that list’. It will feature not only those women who were all the love of my life, but the black girl who spoke impeccable German I briefly met on a train (I was getting off, she was getting on), the girl from the gym I went to who offered to beat me up (I said, thanks, but no thanks) and my fastest seduction ever (or was it hers? Seven minutes from our the exchange of a few words in the pub to bonking away in bed. It helped that my flat was right next to the pub).

Don’t panic, Mr Mainwaring, don’t panic. And please, please, please lay off the Germans

I thought I might start this entry with a cartoon (UPDATE: picture - couldn't find a useful cartoon) which strikes me as wholly apposite given the latest news on the euro crisis. Years ago when I still used to lie (I came to realise that in the long run lying is actually pretty pointless and self-defeating). I would find myself, as others did and those who are foolish enough to carry on the practive, always will, in an ever more complex, ever more unmanageable tissue of untruths. It was all very easy at first: the first lie would get you out of a fix, and the second lie would tidy up matters. Then came a third lie which became necessary because of an inconsistency between the first and second lies. This was usually swiftly followed by a fourth and fifth to iron out further problems, while the second lie was recalled to base because of a design fault. In no time at all, lies six, seven and eight were launched to give the whole fabrication some kind of cohesion, but they, of course, also brought further confusion as at this point exactly what was said became wholly unclear and the reason for telling that first lie was completely forgotten. You can see why I gave up lying.

I am not suggesting that Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, David Cameron, Enda Kenny, the two chaps from somewhere or other who have been parachuted in to run Italy and Greece and the rest of the stalwarts intent on saving the world (no, sorry, that’s global warming, on saving Europe) are lying. But what they are doing is fire-firefighting on a grand scale, scurrying here, there and everywhere from one small blaze to another to keep each under control, but don’t seem to see that each measure is simply adding to the overall conflagration and that the overall conflagration is way beyond control. And, yes, I do realise that as a simile ‘fire-fighting’ sits rather uncomfortably with the simile in the cartoon with which I started this entry, but if it really does bother you, you can bugger off and read someone else’s blog.

There is a relevant piece of bad news every morning, and today’s bad news is that those investors and banks in Asia have decided that enough is enough and are selling any bonds they hold issued by European countries. (Incidentally, ‘selling’ would imply that someone is ‘buying’, but in view of the almost total fuck-up this has now become, I should imagine that no one in their right mind is ‘buying’. How someone is able to ‘sell’ when no one wants to ‘buy’ has always baffled me, although I realise it is perfectly possible, and I can only blame my confusion on this particular aspect of ‘the markets’ on the fact that my ‘knowledge’ of economics was gleaned over the years from breakfast cereal packets and suchlike, and what I don’t actually ‘know’, I make up. In my defence, however, I must stress that it doesn’t necessarily make me at all unrelieable: one of the better definitions of ‘an economist’ I’ve come across is that he is someone who can convincingly explain today why what he predicted yesterday didn’t happen.)

There are several entertaining sideshows to the Asian shrugging of shoulders and getting the hell out of it: Germany now sees salvation in speeding up plans for ‘full political and fiscal integration’ of the eurozone area. And, on paper, they have a point. But I stress ‘on paper’. Given that Germany is now pre-eminent in the EU - and given the geography of Europe, that was pretty unavoidable - it is pretty certain that if ‘political and fiscal integration’ did come about, Germany would once again be the loudest voice. And here I must come clean: granted that I think the question is wholly hypothetical, I really don’t think that would be a bad thing. Many might see the Germans as ponderous and unimaginative, and broadly they might have a point. But there’s no denying that they are at heart far better at organising themselves than many other countries and if there is a secret to their prosperity, that is it. If anyone were to run the show, I would be far happier if it were the Germans than, say, the Italians or Greeks. But, of course, that is pure fantasy. It well never get to that point and all talk about it is pie in the sky. Trying to establish ‘political and fiscal integration’ in Europe - or rather the eurozone - would be as futile as trying to herd cats.

Sadly, despite all the original hullabaloo of peace on Earth and goodwill to all men, every European country is reverting to the role ordained for it by history and geography. And that is especially true of what might crassly be seen as The Big Three: Britain, France and Germany. I know we Brits make jokes in poor taste about The Teutons, but when push comes to shove we get on rather better with them than with The Frogs. They in turn have been cosying up for these past 30 years with Les Boches, but that was always only a summer romance and the tiffs are now getting ever more spiteful. And The Frogs, in turn, still can’t - Lord knows why not! - drum up much trust in the treacherous Rostbifs. Time for a cliché? Of course, never one better: Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.

. . .

It might be that although I sprang from the loins of a stout Worcestershire man, I was nurtured in and emerged from the womb of a stout German woman, but I must come clean: in this whole very sorry saga, my sympathies are with the Germans. As far as I am concerned, a sober, not to say cold-blooded analysis of who has done what would be forced to conclude that they haven’t done much wrong. And the worst charge that can be levelled against them is that they are sticking to their guns and insisting on not doing the stupid thing.

From the dust and rubble of World War I and the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic, they emerged to resume a reasonable existence, although one in time blighted by the jumped-up little corporal from Linz (where, bizarrely, he went to the same school at the same time as one Ludwig Wittgenstein), only for it all to got to pot again. Yet once again, they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, re-established themselves and now once again live in peace, comfort and prosperity. And they are utterly paranoid about inflation.

They are also very put out that - well, the only appropriate word here is ‘feckless’ - Med types should threaten it all and all and sundry are now demanding that they should now do what they sincerely regard as utterly, utterly stupid to rescue nations not half as neat and tidy as themselves. What exactly have they done wrong? How exactly is the vilification which is now coming their way justified? Answers, please, on a postcard or even in an email. I should like to be enlightened.

Entschuldigen Sie mir bitte, Frau Riedel. Das habe ich nicht so gemeint

When we lived in Berlin in the early Sixties, my older brother Ian and I had piano lessons with Frau Riedel. I was just 12 and she seemed ancient to me, but could nor really have been more than 60 or 65. She was employed by the ‘British Military Government of Berlin’ as it was known - this was, remember, just 17 years after the end of the war and Berlin, divided into its four sectors, was at the centre of the Cold War - to give free piano lessons to service children or those somehow associated with the Brits in Berlin. My father worked as the BBC’s representative, not the Army, but somehow we got quite a few of the service benefits. For example, we lived in one of the houses especially built for service families (as did those working at the embassy - I think they had simply built too many houses).
Frau Riedel had been a concert pianist when she was younger, and whether she took the job giving piano lessons because she needed the money or whether she just liked to keep her hand in and enjoyed the work, I don’t know. My brother Ian was, as in so many things he turned his hand to, a rather gifted player. He seemed to master it, it seemed to me, effortlessly. I wasn’t. I was then and am now something of a plodder. (It used to bother me for years, but no longer does. In fact, I now think there is a certain virtue in taking your time and getting it right. That, at least, is my take on ‘plodding’, and if you feel I am being too easy on myself, I’m sure you can find it in your hearts to forgive me.) Ian learnt to sight-read, I didn’t. I simply memorised the pieces I was learning, which Frau Riedel didn’t like. I finally gave up my lessons, I think because I wasn’t very good, but I do remember the occasion when I told Frau Riedel, and it embarrasses me to this day. I told her that I ‘wanted to play jazz’. The point is that I had hardly heard any jazz and barely knew what jazz was. I was also rather fed up with upping sticks in the afternoon, getting the tram from where we lived in the Heerstraße down to what was then still known as the Reichskanzlerplatz, where the Brits had the NAAFI and all the other facilities, having an hour-long piano lesson and then coming home. All that took the best part of  two and a half hours, much of which would have been taken up with waiting for a tram.
But telling Frau Riedel that I didn’t want to carry on with lessons also embarrasses me because I recall inadvertently insulting and upsetting her. I wanted to tell her that ‘my piano lessons are a pain’ and meant to say ‘Sie [die Klavierstunde where Stunde = lesson in this case, not hour] ist mir eine Plage.’ But what I recall saying is ‘Sie sind mir eine Plage’ which is not quite the same thing at all. And saying ‘Sie sind’ rather than ‘sie ist’ had me saying ‘you are a pain’/I find you a pain’.
I can’t actually recall whether that is what happened or not. But Frau Riedel was very, very upset, and I can’t think why I would subconsciously invent such an incident. And she was a really nice woman, too. Sorry, Frau Riedel.

. . .

I have since grown to like jazz more and more. In fact, when talk is of ‘modern music’, I always think ‘yes, jazz’ rather than much of the - to me ears - oh-so-contrived ‘modern classical music’ which would-be great composers are churning out. It’s as though these men and women feel obliged to create music which is ever more arcane in order to qualify to be called ‘classical music’. But what the hell.
As for jazz, I am sadly - or not even sadly - not one of those who can reel of names about this pianist, that trumpeter, this drummer, that bassist as though from a list. I just like listening to it. I can understand the enthusiasm of those who do know the name of every man jack who played on this or that recording, but, well, I don’t. And as with ‘classical music’, I am also like Thomas Beecham’s Englishman: I don’t understand it, but I like the noise it makes. (It is quite untrue that British people don't appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.) I have just been listening to the latest edition of Kenneth Clarke’ Jazz Greats - this one was about the trumpeter Lee Morgan (who I had never heard of until now, yes, I’m that much of a fan), and at one point his playing was described as ‘accessible first, intellectual second’. Fair enough. But for the life of me I have cloth ears as far as any ‘intellectual’ dimension to either jazz or ‘classical music’ is concerned. I simply haven’t a clue what they are talking about. Sorry. I don’t deny it isn’t there, it’s just that I’ll just settle for the, often quite sublime, noise it makes.

Of mice and men: how Robbie Burns predicted the demise of the EU. Oh, and two silly jokes, just for the craic

I have never read a poem by Robbie Burns and quoting him here might give the impression that I am quite well-read when all along I have been perfectly honest by admitting that given a book, I would need written instructions on what to do with it (and those instructions would, in any case, have to be read out aloud to me slowly). But given the most recent development on the combined euro-crisis/EU endgame/end of the world situation, a line from Burns came to mind. (Incidentally, I was reading up about the latest fuck-up - the Germans are demanding an imminent British surrender or else they will shoot us out of the skies - in the Guardian rather than the Telegraph or the Mail because I was keen to read a sober account of what is going on, whereas the Telegraph and the Mail are so apt to overegg the eurosceptic pudding.)
When I say ‘a line from Burns came to mind’, what I mean is that a saying came to mind, which I then googled and discovered is from Burns’s poem To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough. It begins Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie / O, what a panic's in thy breastie! and in it are the familiar lines The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley. That sums up very neatly indeed the situation the European Union finds itself in. And when considering what looks increasingly like the EU’s undignified slow disintegration, the phrase ‘overreached itself’ comes to mind.

At the heart of it all is the eternal truth that you cannot legislate sentiment. You can’t by law oblige the common man to love his king. Well, you can try but you have as much chance of succeeding as you would have of nailing jelly to the wall (US: gello to the wall). It’s all very well for assorted bien pensant social democrats to wax lyrical about an end to war in Europe and a common purpose through the pan-European institution, but unless you carry the people with you, you’re pissing in the wind. Most certainly the EU was popular in the days of milk and honey, but even at the first squall of trouble - and that was long ago, we now have gales blowing about our heads - national self-interest rules supreme. Funny that.

The EU overreached itself by trying to evolve from what almost everyone was happy with - a common economic community - into a political union, with which rather fewer agreed. In those fabled days of milk and honey, those who were caught dragging their feet were roundly castigated for their lack of enthusiasm and the charge of ‘not being a European’ was sufficiently serious to dragoon most politicians into line. No more. It is only a matter of weeks, if not days, that there is quite open talk of the EU as we know it coming to an end, whereas even two months ago any such suggestion would have been regarded as the raving of a mad man.

I always thought the starry-eyed wouldn’t-it-be-wonderful if we all got together and really, really, really tried awfully hard to find a universal cure for cancer and brought about peace on Earth was a load of cack - and, dear reader, I am only slightly exaggerating - but on the other hand I am

always wholeheartedly for co-operation, pulling together and seeking out the common good. And as I touched upon the central difficulty of the EU - that allegiance must come from the heart - I should add that my inclination to work together with others for the common good does, in my case, come from the heart. But as I have got older, I have also realised that in any decision the head should - must - also be consulted. And that is where the EU went wrong. Too many blind eyes were turned to too many problems.

Not least of these, of course, was that although everyone knew the Italians and Greeks had cooked the books in order to qualify for membership of the precious euro, they chose to ignore it. All for the common good. I mean, we were about to enter Heaven on Earth, so why let an inconvenient detail or two spoil the party?
We’re not there yet, of course. The EU hasn’t collapsed and it will trudge on for a while yet. But I’m certain that the EU those who supported the project knew and loved for these past few years will be a completely different animal in, say, five years time.

. . .

Apropos nothing at all, no not even the euro shambles, Germany’s alleged attempt to take over the universe or the origins of World War III as they are now taking shape in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia – pray the Lord I’m wrong – here are two jokes I’ve remembered from way back. They're not original, you might well be familiar with both or either, but what the hell:

An Englishman, a real Major Thompson type, is sitting in a bistro in Paris when he spots a fly in his soup. Appalled, he calls the waiter.
‘Garcon, garcon, ici. Guardez, le mouche dans le soupe,’ he declares in his heavily accented French.
‘Non, monsieur,’ the waiter replies, ‘la mouche.’
‘Good God, man,’ says the Englishman, ‘you’ve got good eyesight!’

Or how about:
Q. Why does President Sarkozy eat only one egg for breakfast?
A. Because one egg is un oef!

Awful, I know, but it’s 6pm on a Wednesday night and I am about to hit the road for my four-hour drive back home.