Plus ça change . . . (or why dog can rarely resist the temptation to take a large chunk out of other dog)

Now here’s an odd thing: New York’s esteemed Times is undoubtedly a heavyweight and serious newspaper of record. It is unlikely to carry reports about the most recent breast enlargement of whichever TV starlet is elsewhere flavour of the month or, given the number of other newspapers in the world, that one has just sacked an assistant editor. Like vice-presidents in US corporations, assistant editors on British papers are two a penny despite their rather high-falutin’ title. As a rule, when a senior hack is pipped at the post for the deputy editor’s job, he or she is sweetened with the title ‘assistant editor’ and, doubtlessly a pay rise, to ensure they aren’t tempted to jump ship and take with them editorial secrets to a new berth on a rival. But back to the New York Times and its surprising decision to report on a sacking at Britain’s News Of The World. The Screws, as we call it as the mainstay of its content is stories of illicit sex by footballers, soaps stars, politicians and businessmen, is certainly on of Britain’s bigger titles, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that the Times should therefore take an interest. But two days ago, it carried the shocking news that one Ian Edmondson, an assistant editor on the Screws had been sacked. It went on to explain that Ian (who might well be fat, paunchy and balding, but I really don’t know, so don’t assume he is) knew about a practice engaged in by Clive Goodman, one of the paper’s reporters, of hacking into the voicemail of celebs’ mobile phones. This practice is now officially frowned upon though when it went on under Edmondson’s indulgent eye, it most certainly wasn’t and proved to be a lucrative source of stories. But times have changed and our Ian now got the chop.
This was not the first time the venerable, oh-so-proper New York Times reported on the phone hacking allegations. Two weeks ago, it reported that an official investigation into the allegations was being reopened by the Crown Prosecution
Service which had earlier decided there was not enough evidence to bring charges against Andy Coulson (pictured and looking far younger than he has any right to do), who was Screws editor at the time the practice was going on. Coulson resigned after Goodman was jailed for his journalistic initiative, although he denied then and has always since denied that he knew what Goodman was up to. He went on to work as prime minister David Cameron’s ‘communications director’ and is credited with sharpening up the Tories’ public performance considerably, but he resigned that post, too, after the story of the hacking allegations and questions as to whether he knew more than he says refused to go away.
Well, you might think, there’s the story the New York Times was interested in: the ‘communications director’ of Britain’s prime minister leaves under a cloud. Not exactly world-shattering news, but certainly something a paper of record can take an interest in. Well, funnily enough, the Times didn’t take an interest in that aspect of it at all. So why is the Times so concerned with a relatively minor, semi-criminal practice engaged in by at least one (though we all suspect far more) more than 3,000 miles away? All becomes obvious when you mention the name ‘Rupert Murdoch’. It is a name which is most probably familiar to many: he owns, or largely owns, a ‘media empire’ which most of the rest of us don’t. It is called News Corp and part of that empire is a company called News International which owns the News Of The World. Oh, and another part of that empire is Dow Jones & Company which owns and publishes the Wall Street Journal which just happens to be one of the New York Times’s arch rivals. Oh, and Murdoch also owns the New York Post, another of the Times’s rivals, although given the Post’s constituency, it would be silly to describe the paper as an arch rival. Rival will do.
So there you might have it: serious ‘paper of record’ not above a little commercial mischief-making. Perhaps. Certainly, the Times has ample wriggle room and could well deny it is up to nothing of the sort, but to that I would respond ‘pull the other one, it’s got bells on it’.

. . .

There is no denying that, whether you love him hate him or – surely the view of the vast majority of people – you are indifferent to him, Rupert Murdoch has achieved a great deal in building up a his media empire. It has to be said that he did not do so from scratch but built it from a comparatively small newspaper group his father had owned. But before he inherited the business, he did spend a little time getting to know what life as a hack was like. I know this because around 1955, the writer and journalist Michael Green (The Art Of Coarse Rugby and The Art Of Coarse Acting, and the Squire Haggard column in the Daily Telegraph) spent some
time as a sub-editor on the Birmingham Post where, for a short time, Murdoch (pictured) was a fellow sub after graduating from Oxford. His time on the Post was quite short because his father died, and Rupe returned to Melbourne to take over the family business. I mention this because 25 years later, I spent two years working as a sub on the Birmingham Evening Mail, the post sister paper. So Rupe and I have a connection. Spooky.
I know Murdoch is the bête noir of loads and loads of people, but there is one comment he made which somehow endeared me to him for life. The Times is now part of News International and, as far as I know, still not making a profit. In fact, the last time it did make a profit, again as far as I know, was in the 19th century when it lease the patent for the then revolutionary roller press and was able to produce, distribute and sell far more copies than its rivals who still had to make do with laborious flatbed press. Eventually, the patent expired and the good times were over for The Times. It slipped into making a loss and even when it was taken over by Lord Norhtcliffe in 1908 (though he was then still Alfred Harmsworth and arguably the Rupert Murdoch of his day), it could not be coaxed into making a profit.
In 1981, two years after the Times was closed because of an 11-month strike, the Thomson Organisation realised it could not carry on and the paper (with its sister title The Sunday Times) was bought by Murdoch. By then it had firmly sunk into the habit of believing its own bullshit and regarded itself (though few others did) as the world’s premier newspaper. Murdoch’s British profits were firmly base on the decidedly downmarket Sun and News Of The World, and the maiden aunts who predominantly staffed The Times were horrified to be associated with such folk. It has long been regarded and had long regarded itself as the Establishment’s newspaper and there were even ‘questions in the House’ as to whether it was advisable that a paper of such a pedigree should be allowed into the soiled hands of some such upstart as Murdock. So its ‘editorial board’ demanded an undertaking from Murdoch that ‘he would not interfere editorially with the paper’. To which Murdoch, now perhaps the holder of a Yankee passport but in spirit forever an Australian, replied: ‘I didn’t spend fucking £5 million pounds buying a newspaper not to interfere editorially’. Even now it makes me smile with pleasure.

I am a man: An apology

I can’t speak for the rest of Europe, the US or the rest of the world, but something very odd has happened in Britain in these past 20 years. Once women were regarded as the skivvies of the world, when a vacuum cleaner and washing machines were seen as a great present for a man to give to the wife to help her ‘do the

housework more efficiently’. So thoughtful. Sadly, a woman’s lot has changed very little in almost every part of the world, and women still get the thin edge of the wedge. The Taliban diktat that women should be locked away from the age of 12 is just a very extreme manifestation of the attitude of many cultures.But here in Britain the boot is, in many ways, very much on the other foot, and we have apparently progressed in leaps and bounds to a situation where women are now equal. In fact, make that ‘more than equal’ Women professionals in the broadcasting media in particular delight in what they regard as a complete reversal of fortune. Well, bugger that because, incredibly, in 2011 many women are still paid less than men for doing exactly the same job, many women. However, that is no barrier to a very British pseudo-feminist triumphalism that the sisters have now finally come out on top. And boy do they like to let you know it. There is not even a pretence that ‘equality’ has been achieved. No, sir, they are now das Damenvolk. Tune into Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on any day of the week and you won’t have to wait long until you come across the unshakable conviction that all men are pretty useless. And it is a conviction which has also become a mainstay of much radio drama and of the routines of quite a few women stand-up comedians.
Attitudes purveyed in the media, whether in factual or fictional programming or in TV advertising are very rarely a true reflection of real social attitudes. They are more a kind of wishful thinking or something akin to a political manifesto. But given our habit of imitating what we see on the small screen, such highly artificial poses soon gain a broader currency. To put it another way, it is a question of life imitating art.
Without a second thought young and not so young lasses up and down the land will strike attitudes in imitation of what they see in their favourite soaps and sitcoms. And the prevailing attitude in a great many of these is that men are hopeless, hopeless, hopeless, fickle, unreliable and self-centred, and many a cheap laugh can be had from saying so. ‘Typical of a man’ is a refrain one has increasingly heard, and it is one which is repeated so often that anyone querying the observation is liable to have his intelligence as well as his integrity questioned. But beware the man who is foolish enough to say ‘typical woman’ — a shitstorm of biblical proportions is liable to explode and engulf him in such self-righteous anger that a six-month spell in jail would seem far more preferable.
Professional feminists, by which I mean those hacks and TV types for whom being feminist strikes me as being solely a strategy for career development, are still probably in the minority and their numbers are wholly disproportionate to the noise they make. And most certainly they do the real sisters no favours at all. The drive to ensure woman are treated equally has achieved a great deal in these past 40 years, and few women will allow themselves to be condescended to as once they were, and we should always remember that in many areas a woman is paid less than the man she works next to, so there is still quite a lot still to be done. But trying to do so by insisting, and apparently believing, that men are complete and total wankers isn’t doing it.

. . .

Part of the problem is, I think, that we always try to impose our ideas on life rather than accept what life tells us. Years ago, I heard the following short parable: A young boy and a young girl, still children of about seven or eight, are happily playing around a pond stark naked, with the lad strutting around as though he were king of the castle. So the girl asks him what he is so proud of. He points to his willy and tells her: ‘I’ve got one of these.’ So the young girl points to here mary and tells him: ‘My mummy says that because I’ve got one of these, I’ll always have one of those.’ Too true. For unless a man is homosexual and not in the slightest interested in women, they can, in many situations, run rings around a man purely because they have what he wants. Our professional feminists (and I stress that by that somewhat dismissive term I do not mean those many women who have worked very hard to change our thinking and ensure that woman are treated less like skivvies) might not like it and deny that it is true, but they are all too often inclined to deny, if it suits their agenda, that water is wet.
At this point the reader might feel I am being rather crude. Not at all. For when I talk of ‘man’, I mean the male of the species. And the prime purpose in nature for the majority of the male of the species is to reproduce as often as possible to ensure the survival of his genes. The female of the species, on the other hand, is not interested in reproducing with any old male who might be in the mood, but wants to ensure that the male she does choose to mate with has the best possible genes. To put it bluntly, the male is interested in quantity and the female in quality. So she chooses, but he doesn’t. And so, I suggest, there is not, as we seem to suppose, symmetry between the sexes. Each gender has his and her strengths and weaknesses, but in our intellectual arrogance we try to impose our views on life.
So I have always thought it rather ironical that in this ostensible feminist age men are urged to ‘find their feminine side’ and are applauded when they do. But were we similarly to urge women to ‘find their masculine side’, we would, quite rightly, I think, be accused of talking complete cobblers. (I was going to write ‘complete bollocks’, but in context that might not be the most useful phrase to use.) But in many ways that is exactly what has happened. One of the ‘achievements’ of the past 20 years (NB yet again: it still hasn’t been to ensure wage parity between the sexes), all in the name of ‘equality’, means that woman are now allowed to emulate men. And that, ironically, means that it is more or less officially sanctioned that they can behave just as badly as men: they can now, without attracting opprobrium, get just as rat-arsed, use just as much bad language and sleep around just as much. And this is seen as progress, this is regarded as improving the lot of the sisterhood. Give me a break.

. . .

In the interests of quality and assisting women with their choice of mate, I offer the following. I have been made aware that there are doubts that I was ever young. This is a libel which hurts and offends me deeply, so here (pic gone missing, but O shall find it, don't worry) I offer definite proof that I was not always an old, semi-balding fart with grey hair (dear American reader, that’s ‘gray hair’) and a very short beard, but a youngish, reasonably dashing blade about town. It is a photo I came across recently after many years and which I cherish deeply. And you think I’m joking. Think again. My best wishes to old farts and fartesses the world over. I feel your pain. Fan mail and, more pertinently, very welcome invitations to join suitable women in bed to the usual address, please.

You forgot your long spoon, Andy, Fleet Street in a funk and Blair off the hook (more or less)

I’ve never really known when using a proverb or a saying shades off into using a cliché, so I shall leave it to my reader (how are you, by the way?) to decide whether the following is still a quaint precautionary saying or just a tawdry common or garden cliché: When you sup with the Devil, us a long spoon.

Whether or not it is a cliché or still a venerable piece of good advice is, however, pretty irrelevant in the case of Andy Gray, one-time Dundee United, Aston Villa, Wolves and Everton player as well as regularly turning out for Scotland (he was born in Glasgow), who then became the regular football pundit for Sky Sports when he retired. For Gray it is too late to do the wise thing and sit at the far end of the table when breaking bread with Lucifer. Yesterday, Sky sacked Gray over ‘sexist remarks’. Preparing for a touchline
interview at which one of the ‘assistant referees’, once known as linesman, was Sian Massey (right), Gray and made several ‘sexist’ comments about her. These were not broadcast publicly and would not have come to the undoubtedly profoundly horrified public’s attention if Sky had not decided to release the material on which these comments were made.

That was rather an odd thing for Sky to do, but I’ll get to that a little later. Sky then discovered two other instances when Gray made ‘sexist’ remarks – one to, Charlotte Jackson, a fellow sports presenter who was a woman – and decided that enough was enough and that Gray had to go. Pretty straightforward, you might think: man makes comments which, in 2011, are too off-colour, and his employer decides they cannot be tolerated.

The comments are, it must be said, rather low on the scale of what not to say, and I would be extremely surprised if Ms Jackson was in the slightest discomfited, although I shall be equally extremely surprised if the sisters who belong to our commentariat, many employed on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, don’t make a full and quite substantial meal of this issue. I don’t work in broadcasting and for all I know it is a very different environment, although I doubt it.

But here in the wacky world of our female colleagues are not only treated with respect professionally, but they also hear – and dish out in equal measure – appallingly sexist comments every day they turn up for work. (A few years ago, I and two or three colleagues were on our way across the road to The Greyhound (aka The Rottweiler) for a drink before 11pm closing time. I passed a female colleague who had not been there when a visit to the pub was suggested and asked her: ‘Do you fancy a quickie?’ She said she didn’t. So I then said: ‘Well, why don’t you come across to the Rottie with us, then?’ Quite appalling.)

Back to Gray and how this tale of outrage over sexism is a tad murkier than might at first seem. Sky is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation which also owns News International which, in turn owns our very own News Of The Screws.

Now, the Screws is in the shit because the saintly Guardian discovered a year or two ago that its reporters had been hacking into the mobile phone message boxes of rather a large number of celebrities and politicians. At the time, a token reporter and private investigator were jailed for doing it, but the story didn’t go away. Surely, everyone asked, the practice was far more widespread among Screws staff? And surely, they asked, the then editor Andy Coulson knew what his reporters were getting up to? Coulson denied it – to universal disbelief and cries of ‘well, he wasn’t much of an editor, then, if, as he claims, he didn’t know’ – but the it all caught up with him this week when, by now chief spokesman to Prime Minister David Cameron, he decided to resign because the story ‘wouldn’t go away’.

Next, the heat is on Scotland Yard to reveal exactly what its investigation into the phone hacking revealed; and, more pertinently, rather a lot of celebs are suing News International for apparently allowing the Screws staff to do what they did or, at the very least, not putting an end to the practice. And among those suing News International is one former footballer and, until yesterday, star football pundit Andy Gray. This did not go down well with News Corp. But bear with me, as it might even be murkier than that, although being murky it is not too clear what is going on and just how it relates to Gray’s sacking.

News Corp wants to buy the shares in Sky (or Sky BSB as it officially is) it doesn’t yet own. It wants full control of the satellite television station. But as News Corp ultimately owns The Sun, The News Of The World, The Times and the Sunday Times as well as holding a majority share in Sky, many claim gaining full control of Sky would not be healthy for competition in the media industry and the Government has been asked to take a look at it all.

Well, the Government has done so and might well refer the matter to our Competitions Commission. But it has first asked News Corp to take another look at its holdings and perhaps consider getting rid of some. So there is talk the Sky News might be sold (which I think is pretty unlikely, but then I have absolutely no specialist knowledge in these matters) or that Murdoch (OK, News Corp if you want to be pedantic) might rid himself of The Times and the Sunday Times. That, I think, would make more sense, because the The Times makes a loss and circulation is falling, although I think the Sunday Times still turns a profit.

As I say, I can’t for the life of me imagine how the desired complete takeover of Sky by News Corp would fit in with the sacking of one of Sky Sports football pundits, so I offer the above as background. What is, however, rather clearer is that News Corp, which is wholly embarrassed by the continuing phone hacking saga, is none too pleased with having one of its star pundits suing another part of its empire for potential millions. So the next time Murdoch, or more realistically one of his underlings, turns up on your doorstep to join you for supper, do remember the long spoon you would be advised to use.

. . .

You can believe that it was just the one rogue Screws reporter in cahoots with a private investigator who hacked into mobile phones or you can assume, as I think most of us do, that the practice was more widespread. After all, if he got stories that way and didn’t keep it too himself (something which hacks are utterly incapable of doing – if you want to spread a rumour, tell a hack and tell him to keep it secret), every other hack who heard about it will have tried the same schtick. And that is what other newspapers are worried about. Because if not just one Screws hack, but several did it, you can bet your bottom dollar that hacks on the Mirror, the Sunday Mirror, The People and the Daily Star were up to the same.

I can’t speak for the Daily Express or the Daily Mail, although yesterday I asked the chap who was news editor at the time the practice was rife whether the Mail got up to it, and he told me, no it hadn’t. Well, as Ms Rice-Davies would have said, he would, wouldn’t he. And it is not at all impossible that the Daily Telegraph would have been tempted to do the same. And if they did, it will all come tumbling out.

Which is rather bad news, because any number of MPs still smarting from being discovered with their fingers in the expenses till – claiming for duck islands, antique bookshelves, second homes which turned out to be a kennel in Govan - who are very keen indeed to get their own back for the mauling Fleet Street’s finest handed out. In the long run, with everyone looking like a loser over this one, I should imagine it will be brushed under the carpet, the Guardian will huff and puff and search its cliché dictionary for suitable descriptions of what has happened, the dogs will bark and the caravan will move on.

. . .

Speaking of caravans moving on, that would seem to have been the salvation of Tony Blair, who might perhaps be rather relieved, if not a little peeved, that he is now yesterday’s man and the invasion of Iraq is now yesterday’s news. We have far more modern issues to anguish over.

In evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry, Lord Turnbull, one of his Cabinet Secretaries, more or less implied Blair was lying through his teeth when he claimed that at all times his Cabinet was kept fully informed of plans to invade Iraq. Not so, said Lord Turnbull, they knew very little about it until three days before the invasion when they were asked to rubber stamp it all.

But – apart from the friends and family of the estimated 100,000 Iraqis who have died in post-invasion violence and of the U.S. and British servicemen and women who have been killed – who cares. Most certainly not the public, who after the artificial prosperity of the Labour years now face having to pay the bill for the profligacy. Not being able to buy yet another 48in plasma TV for the kids’ bedroom? The shame of it!

Why we should kill all poor people and save the planet. And Piers Morgan stands in for God as the lad himself goes on extended leave

I’m a rather dull sort and subtlety tends to elude me. So you will understand why I am baffled that, on the one hand, the news this morning is that if population continues to grow at the rate it is, but we continue to waste food at the rate we do, we’re screwed. On the other hand, science (make that ‘science’) is finding ever cleverer ways of prolonging life and ensuring we all live well into our second century, so glory, glory be.
As for food, it seems that as we all grow ever more prosperous (another goal which is apparently sine qua non in the western ‘civilised world’), we can afford ever more arcane food from all corners of the world, which we ship in but don’t always eat. Then there’s our ‘concern’ for our carbon footprint which means we are looking for alternatives to fossil fuels, of which bio-fuels are one. The trouble is that to ensure we have enough bio-fuel in the western world so that we can reduce our ‘carbon footprint’, land so far used for growing food crops is now being increasingly used to grow bio crops to produce bio fuels. Why? Because they sell for more: the western world, concerned as it is to save the planet for future generations is willing to pay more for bio fuels than the poor of the world can afford to pay for food crops. Obvious, really, when you think about it.
Here in Britain (and in other parts of Europe) we have related tomfoolery. While scientists (make that ‘scientists’) beaver away to ensure we live longer, governments (I am inclined to write ‘governments’) are getting increasingly worried that there won’t be enough young working young people around who they can tax in order to pay for the care of an ever larger group of elderly. A short-term solution has been to ‘raise retirement age’, so that people carry on paying their own way for longer. All fine and dandy you would think, except that industry is rather less inclined to employ older folk because they can get away with paying young folk lower wages. Younger folk are also thought to be more adaptable to change.
All in all a fuck-up in the making. So what’s new?
Here’s my solution: kill off everyone over 75 irregardless of material status, and kill off as many ‘Third World’ poor people as we can decently get away with without raising too many eyebrows. It might sound like a drastic solution, but the imperative to ‘save the planet’ surely takes precedence over our somewhat sentimental regard for life.

. . .

There can now be few in the world who have never heard of Piers Morgan and the lad is now well on his way to world domination. From the factory dormitories of Xianxing to the call centres of South Shield the talk is of nothing but how the man’s talents, charisma and ambition have landed him the Top Job: standing in for Larry King on (I should imagine it’s called) The Larry King Show. If, on the other hand, you haven’t yet heard of Piers Morgan (aka the Honourable Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan, 8th Baron Wapping when he’s in his birthday suit) you’re either a Trappist monk or dead.
It seems his first appearance in the hot seat was a complete triumph in which he managed to get one Oprah Winfrey to talk about herself and her new TV channel. Well! That shows
Piers poses with God
the doubters who said it was all stuff and nonsense when young Piers first announced he was in line for the position.
I’ve never met him, although when I worked subbing shifts on the Sun, he was editing the paper’s Bizarre column and he would be around the feature backbench every night, cutting what I always thought was a rather incongruous figure in a Tweed sports jacket. He is said to be insufferably Tiggerish, but to be fair I know three people who have worked with him and two of them speak quite highly off him. The third jointly presented a TV programme with him and she is rather less of a fan. The first two knew him, respectively at the Sun in the early Nineties and when he edited the Mirror (which might still in those days have been called the Daily Mirror).
His rather less enthusiastic acquaintance knew him several years later, after he had been sacked from the Miror, but by which time his ego had apparently grown rather large.
The guy who worked with him on the Sun (and was rather more senior than Piers, although in a different, tho’ related department) now works on the same desk as me, and he told me an anecdote about Piers from when he ran and wrote the Sun’s Bizzare column. In fact, he didn’t write quite large chunks of it — that would have been impossible — and had a deputy and staff writers, but everything appeared under the ‘Piers Morgan’ byline. That is not necessarily an indication of an outrageous ego, it’s just how many such columns operated and operate. At the Sun Piers’ deputy was a chap called Peter Willis, a rather pleasant unassuming chap, and, of course, everything he produced appeared under Piers Morgan’s byline. After few years, Rupert Murdoch, who owns News International, plucked Piers and made him the editor of the News Of The World, which was the lad’s first step to stardom. (From there he went on to edit the Mirror, although as the Mirror was the Sun’s arch-rival, the move across didn’t go down well with Murdoch. But that move came later.)
As editor of the News Of The Screws, Morgan hit pay-dirt and among his perks was a chauffeur-driven car. It seems that one dark and rainy night he was being driven home from the Wapping plant in whatever luxury limo he had been given when he spotted his old deputy Peter Willis leaving the building, his coat wrapped around him to keep out the cold. He had the chauffeur stop car and he offered Willis a lift, which his former deputy accepted gratefully. As the two of them were driving along in the back of the limo, Morgan asked Willis:
‘Peter, do you remember all those stories you found working on Bizarre which you then wrote up and which then appeared under my byline?’
‘Yes,’ said Willis.
‘Well,’ said Morgan, proudly indicating the interior of his plush limo and all its luxuries, ‘look where they got me.’

Rational debate: thy name does not appear to be James Delingpole. But Talbot Church gets my vote

It is fair to say that in the long run everything is balanced out, although I am obliged to add that, as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, ‘in the long run we are all dead’. In the short run and in politics, the left must put up with government by the right, but, don’t worry, for in time the right will give way and be obliged to put up with government by the left. Were British politics to be viewed over the past 200 years, it would be apparent that, more or less, the awful ‘progressives’ have had their hand on the tiller for about as long as the awful ‘reactionaries’ and neither has had a disproportionate time in office. (I should add, though, that as far as I am concerned both terms are next to meaningless: there are as many reactionaries who regard themselves as ‘progressive’ as there are innovators who are seen as ‘reactionary’.) Naturally, if the perspective is a lot narrower, the balance isn’t always too apparent. So someone born in the mid to late Nineties, such as my two children, will only have known Labour government (I won’t say ‘New Labour’ as that was just so much PR bullshit dreamed up by the essentially red-top mentality of one Alastair Campbell, he of Diana, ‘the people’s princess’.) They will now know that Labour isn’t the be all and end all of politics, by the time they get to be my age, they will also come to realise that politics is not the be all and end all of life.
When I was at college, the lefties all thought of me as a righty and the righties thought of me as a lefty. In fact, I was – and am – neither and have remained, overall, pretty much dead centre all my life. My father once accuse me of being ‘dangerously liberal’ which, at the time – I was still in my salad days – I thought of as being a contradiction in terms. Now I know it isn’t and I fully understand what he meant, but then from his 30s on he was always pretty much ‘on the right’.
I usually do my best to avoid political discussions because they are invariably horribly dull. Either both sides agree with each other completely, or the ‘discussion’ quickly degenerates into a slanging match. Very rarely indeed are both sides prepared to listen to what the other has to say, to consider it and to responded rationally.
All this occurred to me when I visited the Daily Telegraph website for a general mooch around and spotted the name James Delingpole. I’ve twice met him very briefly and on the second occasion decided to take against him when – he was still wearing his hair exceptionally long – he wrote off the band Steely Dan. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and own tastes, of course, but anyone who writes off Steely Dan wholesale, even if they don’t like their music, is either striking a pose or downright stupid. I now suspect that in Delingpole’s case it is the former, because he is now an established youngish journalist who makes his living writing for right-of-centre publications and producing pieces along the lines of ‘how awful the world is/is becoming/will be in the future’. That’s fine and dandy from some hack in his late
50s with a drink problem (I intend calling him George Rant), but Delingpole is not in his 50s (as you can see from the piccy) and, as far as I know, doesn’t have a drink problem (which the piccy cannot establish either way).
The piece I spotted in the Telegraph, which you can read here, is true to form. It is headlined ‘Why we still love Sarah Palin’ and to give you a taste of the kind of reasoned, intelligent polemic it sets out to be, contains the observation that ‘President Obama is a socialist and his administration a crazy house of eco-loons, crypto-Marxists, progressives, collectivists, surrender monkeys and anarcho-lesbian harpies’. I could live with the opinion that Obama ‘is a socialist’, but the rest of that sentence can be taken no more seriously than you would the rantings of your local bar bore. On the face of it, Delingpole does not strike me as the kind of chap who would contribute very much to a rational political debate.
For a taste of something a little more rewarding, I can recommend a distinguished writer and journalist called Talbot Church who is currently employed by The Independent ('The Inday'). You can find his latest piece (or, if you are reading this in the year 2015, a piece he wrote several years ago) here.