The world has lost the plot: the BBC provides the proof. And after that there's one for the boys (and sporting gals)

I know it is an article of faith for us centenarians that the world and everything in it is disappearing up its own arse, but I do now think I have what will pass for conclusive proof.
For many years now, our British television and radio news programmes have not only broadcast reports live from abroad, but have taken to actually presenting their shows from abroad. So there is one ‘anchor’ in the London studio and another presenting live from wherever the major news event has taken place. What the anchor presenting live from abroad can add to the programme from doing so tens of thousands miles away is not at all clear and your guess is as good as mine. He or she can’t actually go out and do some live reporting as he or she has to stay in the studio to present. And, anyway, there are plenty of other broadcast hacks who can go out and report live. Nor is there much to be gained from interviewing in situ, as it were, those figures of authority who can add a useful two ha’porth and clarify what is going on. For if the presenter weren’t abroad but at home in London, he or she would simply conduct the interview over an international link. (I don’t know what the technical term is and, to be honest, I can’t be arsed finding out. Sorry.)
Ah, I hear you all cry, but your just an old fart who refuses to move with the times. Having one anchor at home and another abroad makes the programme – well, I’ll guess: more relevant? More immediate? More vital? Which? I can’t deny that it does add a certain pizzazz to proceedings and imbue whatever programme it is with a spurious gravitas – I stress spurious – but if we are at all honest, we would be bound to admit that it adds nothing except cost. These chaps aren’t flying easyjet, don’t you know. No, sir.
But, well, you know, modern times and all that, so perhaps I am being a bit of an ageing moaning minny by pointing out how exceptionally bloody futile it all is, despite the added sheen of showing off what technology can now do. But now I can demonstrate exactly how bloody daft the practice is.
I usually listen to Radio 4’s Today in the morning and rather like it. But it, too, is addicted to showing off with one presenter in London and another, as the news agenda might dictate, presenting from Tel Aviv or Washington or Moscow or somewhere. And what with the horrible disaster in Japan, Today – naturally – had to get one of its presenters over there. James Naughtie was the lucky hack, so this morning it was Sarah ‘Jolly Hockeystick’ Montague in London and James Naughtie in Sendai. (‘Naughtie’, by the way, dear foreign reader, is pronounced ‘Nochty’ as it is Scottish. They do that kind of thing. ‘Menzies’, for example, is pronounced ‘Mingis’. Naughtie’s mugshot is on the left.) And who did Jimbo interview live from Sendai? Only the bloody Japanese ambassador to Britain who was not in Sendai, but in London. If anyone reading this can point out to me why sending a hack to the other side of the world to interview someone back home, I shall be very grateful. But I shan’t be holding my breath in anticipation.
Now I must have a large sherry and go and lie down.

. . .

I heard a good joke the other day, which I should like to share with you.
It seems one of the professional hazards of earning your living as a racing jockey is piles. All that bouncing up and down in the saddle at the 2.30 at Wincanton plays havoc with your arse, so British jockeys have for many years resorted to a traditional and effective remedy. Every morning after they have done the stablework, they take a bath or shower and then rub used tealeaves over their bottoms, inside and out. It seems that something in the caffeine in tea has a soothing effect and tends to solve the problem. But not always. And it seems one stable’s champion jockey was finding no respite at all and with his piles getting worse and worse, his performance on the racetrack was suffering. So his trainer decided to pay for him privately to see a specialist.
Off the jocky went one afternoon for his appointment. He explained to the eminent man what the problem was and he was told to drop his trousers and bend over so the specialist could take a look. After a few minutes, the specialist says:
‘Well, that’s interesting.’
‘Can you sort it out?’ the jockey asks.
‘Yes, of course I can,’ says the doctor, ‘but I should tell you that you are going to go on a long journey and will meet a tall, dark stranger.’

A pub bore apologises, a pretty picture (well, strictly speaking two) and a complaint

This blog has been going through something of an minor existential crisis these past few days. I mean: what is it? It started out as just another, digital way of keeping a diary/commonplace book and was that for some time. It still is that to a certain extent, but more recently it has done nothing by resemble a rather corpulent gent in late middle age and no longer quite sober (‘sobre’ for my American readers - the first rule of blogging is ‘don’t confuse your reader’) leaning against the bar and delivering a series of platitudes and threadbare observations. And to be honest, I can’t as yet see a way around that. Added to that was my growing addiction to the ‘stats’. Every day I would look at the ‘stats’ to see how many people had readmy blog, what entries they were interested in and what actually brought them to the blog. (Mandy Rice-Davies knocks them into a cocked hat, incidentally. The number of visitors who have found there way here because they were looking for more information on Many or, more likely, wanted to see a picture of her in her heyday, is quite startling. So here it is again.) It then got to the point where I was beginning to feel obliged to make an entry. At the back of my head was the niggling thought ‘they’ll be visiting today to see what else I have to say about the world and its foibles’. Well, how stupid is that? There are many ways of describing ‘a fool’, and most certainly one very good way would be ‘the kind of man or woman who takes themselves seriously’, and I can’t deny that I crossed that line recently, or even not so recently. So from here on in, I shall try to bear that in mind.

. . .

On loyal reader (who in his way sparked off the above confession) has alerted me to another blog. I visited it and came across this picture, which I have nicked. It reminds me of a young Evelyn Waugh. Oh, and if you were tuning in here to read all about the horrible earthquake in Japan or the West’s dilemma over ‘what to do about Libya’ (makes it sound like parents wringing their hands over their youngest son who they know is a spendthrift, promiscuous, gay and an alcoholic, but who cannot yet admit it to themselves), fuck off and watch it on TV. I’m in a bad mood. You won’t get any more platitudes here for at least another two days.


. . .

One of the more infuriating aspects of the internet is that however useful it can be, it is not always useful. Time and again while trying to track down something - a service, a product or, as now, a list of railway stations in Italy so that I can find out trains serve which towns around Lake Garda - you are merely directed from one long list of websites to another long list of websites, and from there, blow me, to another long list of bloody websites, without actually being directed to one which can give you the information you want. They say it’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive, but ‘they’ were probably not trying to find out about railway stations serving the various towns around Lake Garda.

Dining with the Devil - it's great while it lasts. And a couple of shorts

When does a saying become a cliché? Well, I don’t know. All I know is that one thing many sayings and clichés have in common is that they invariably contain more than a grain of truth. And the saying - or is it cliché? - I should like to use in today’s sermon
is ‘When you sup with the Devil, us a long spoon’. I think we’ve all heard that one, but it is surprising how often we ignore such sage advice. One of the latest people to pay the price of ignoring that advice is a chap - a knight no less, which will, of course, be of great interest to any Americans happening upon this blog - who is by no means a dumbo and who, therefore, is all the more culpable. The man in question is Sir Howard Davies, who was once a chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority and a deputy director of the Bank of England. Sir Howard has just resigned as the director of the London School of Economics for doing something which, in retrospect, looks rather stupid. As the LSE director he accepted a £300,000 donation to the college from a ‘charity’ set up by the family of Colonel Gaddaffi. Remember him? The thug who has ruled rather brutally over Libya for 42 years and is now bombing his own people who have decided they want rid of him? That’s the chap. The point is that the Gaddaffi regime’s brutal repression was not somehow hidden from view for these past 42 years, nor was it just an open secret. But a few years ago, the good colonel decided - he is known for being unpredictable - he wanted to get on better terms with the West and made all sorts of repenting noises. Western business was not slow in realising that here lay an advantage for them and leading the charge on their behalf were the West’s leaders. (I published a series of pictures last showing a number of them, as well as Russia’s Putin sucking up to the colonel. They weren’t exactly sucking his dick, but they might have been.) In that context and at the time it is perhaps understandable that when the colonel’s son, Saif al Islam, arrived at the LSE with 3300,00 in a suitcase in used fivers and announced he would like to hand over the money for the good of mankind, Sir Howard thought it would be all right to accept. If all the other great and good of the West were at it, why not the venerable LSE? you can almost hear him thinking. In a sense, all Sir Howard is guilty of is following the latest political fashion of shutting one’s eyes and counting the cash.

. . .

But we never, ever learn from our mistakes. And while the West does its best to forget how it sucked up to Gaddaffi as he goes about slaughtering ‘his people’ - apparently they still love him. The ones causing the trouble are young men high on drugs supplied by al Qaeda and the CIA (whose alleged congenial co-operation would be unprecedented) who will be hunted down house by house - it continues to suck up to other regimes which can be equally as brutal when needs must. China, for example.
China, the West tells itself (while keeping its fingers firmly crossed behind its back), is improving. Slowly, perhaps, but it is feeling its way towards democracy, or, at least - the qualifications are obliged to multiply as the truth sits increasingly uncomfortable with the claim - towards a kind of democracy. The evidence, says the West, is there for all to see: a burgeoning middle class (without which no democracy is possible, of course), unprecedented economic growth (without which no democracy is possible, of course), a growing private sector (without which no democracy is possible, of course), home ownership (without which no democracy is possible, of course), and far greater freedom for the West’s media to travel throughout the country and report on what it sees (without which no democracy is possible, of course). Or not as it now turns out.
In view of the unrest spreading throughout the Middle East and anonymous calls from within its own borders for the people to mount similar demonstrations, China has taken fright. The West’s media has now been told that it cannot report from certain parts of one or two of its cities and that it must again seek permission before travelling around the country. Oh, well, you might say, remember: it’s a ‘developing democracy’ and the path to freedom is not always smooth. Quite, and it was a damn sight less smooth for the BBC’s Damian Grammaticas and his television crew as well as other reporters who had gone to film in Beijing’s famous shopping street, Wangfujing. They were set upon and beaten up by state security agents. His report can be found here. Has China changed its spots? Well, for the past ten years while the West’s apparent prosperity was sustained by a never-ending supply of cheap consumer goods from China, we persuaded ourselves that it had. But if - make that when - the shit eventually hits the fan, when those in China whose homes are bulldozed overnight to make way for nice beaches for the ‘burgeoning middle class’, when the housing bubble bursts and that same ‘burgeoning middle class’ is reduced to penury, when the West really takes fright at how much farming land China is busily buying up in Africa and other parts of the world and decides to get tough, we will see just how reformed China has become.

. . .

China is, of course, very aware of the danger of its economic miracle turning to dust and the political unrest which would follow. In a speech delivered yesterday, Premier Wen Jiabao has acknowledged the growing gulf between the country’s poor and its ‘burgeoning middle class’ and widespread corruption and its 11 per cent economic growth cannot be sustained. The problem is, of course, that China is a very curious kind of dictatorship. It doesn’t actually have a dictator. Instead it relies on an intricate web of vested interests - in other words all those benefiting from the widespread corruption - to keep the system running, and it must tread carefully. Very carefully. And, as Caesar once pointed out, the solution to dealing with domestic trouble is to cause trouble overseas. It tends to take one’s countrymen’s minds of their own difficulties. I’m sure the Chinese leadership is aware of that, too. It’s not, of course, in anyone’s interests for there to be worldwide trouble: China needs us to buy its goods just as much as we need China to produce those goods more cheaply than we can. But if needs must, which they eventually might ...

. . .

And just for the craic...


and another for good measure...

Who discovered olives and coffee? And enjoy the good times, they might not last much longer

There are several questions which, even at the ripe old age of 104, I have yet to find answers. As they are of the kind of question a child might ask a parent, I am quite happy to be puzzled, and I can feel the years falling off just pondering them. Here’s one of the questions.
I eat a lot of olives. I love olives. So I recently googled olives to find out what health benefits they have, and I discovered they have rather a lot. But I also discovered that they have to be cured first before they can be eaten, because the fruit on the tree is incredibly bitter and not at all edible because of a substance called oleuropin. Fair enough, with you so far, but here is my question: how on earth did we, several thousand if not several tens of thousands of years ago make the connection between 1) picking an olive and eating it and thinking ‘Jesus, that’s awful, it’s so bitter!’ and 2) well, I still want to eat this incredibly nasty fruit and – who knows? – I might even want to squeeze it to see if I can’t get some oil out of it. I know, I’ll cure it by either soaking in oil, brine or water, or dry packing in salt.
See what I mean? Doesn’t make a great deal of sense, does it. I mean did the same thought process also take place with the bark of trees, with some bright spark thinking: ‘Well, it worked with olives, so although if I eat the bark of this tree it tastes bloody awful, if I do something to it, possibly by soaking in oil, brine or water, or dry packing in salt, I might find that it becomes edible after all’?
Then there’s coffee. It seems you can do bugger all with the bean as grown. So at some point, some bright spark, quite possibly the same bright spark who found how to make olives edible (you must remember that there weren’t half as many people around tens of thousands of years ago, so it could well be the same guy) thought to himself: ‘Well, this fruit isn’t very useful, is it? I know, I’ll extract the green bean in the centre, drop it into a fire to roast it, then, when it’s roasted, I’ll fish it out, grind it up, then mix it with water just off the boil and see what that produces. Who knows, it might well produce a stimulating drink and in time, I could sell beakers of that drink from a chain of shops all over the world.’
I won’t go on, as it is bad form to labour a point, but I’m sure you know what I’m getting at.

. . .

I can’t remember what I was doing yesterday, but the thought suddenly struck me that in years to come folk might remember the past 60 years as an era of peace and prosperity. Perhaps I’ve spend too many years working as a hack disseminating doom and gloom (it’s sells a treat) and am guilty of the cardinal sin of believing my own bullshit, but if things are to go very wrong for the world, the conditions could not be riper.
I have now remembered what I was doing when the thought struck me - I was reading about how the Germans, who seem to have shrugged off the recent ‘economic and banking crisis’ a lot faster than many, were said to be growing wearing at bailing out what they regard as feckless southern European types who lied and cheated their way into membership of the euro. I have possibly caricatured them rather, but if that is the essence of what they are thinking, they have very short memories. Wasn’t it the Germans who were all in favour of the European project and its badge of honour, the euro? And didn’t they turn a blind eye to what some countries were doing just to get everyone involved? Why, yes they did. Still, I can’t but have some sympathy for the dilemma the German government now faces over the EU bailout fund. It might still be in favour of helping out member states, but are Germany’s voters? And exactly who does the government need to keep sweet if it wants to stay in power? But what has all this to do with a stormier ride ahead for the world?
In two words: oil prices. Because of all the trouble in Libya, the price of oil has shot up and looks like rising even further. Barely two years ago, I was paying just over 90p for a litre of petrol and cursing the cost. Yesterday, that litre cost me £1.33. All other things being equal, the West might well be able to tighten its belt and ride out the storm, but there’s the little matter of the huge debts everyone is facing and the very nasty cutbacks all governments are obliged to make. A sustained period of widespread unemployment and widespread immigration could see rather a lot of trouble on the streets. For example, in May all migrants arriving in Britain from other parts of the EU will be as entitled to full welfare benefits as though they were British-born, and the danger is it could utterly scupper the Tories attempts at reforming the welfare system. For however ungenerous our welfare payments are, they are still more generous than those paid in other parts of the EU, and who can blame people living in those other parts from moving to Britain to get a piece of the action as, under EU law, they are entitled to do?

. . .

We were rather spoiled by the comparatively peaceful progress of what we hacks refer to the ‘Arab spring’ in Tunisia and Egypt, although it seems it most certainly isn’t all done and dusted in those countries and there is a lot of trouble bubbling under. But the situation in Libya is far more immediate in that ol’ Muammar Gaddaffi is most certainly not going quietly. There is talk of civil war developing there, Egyptian migrant workers in Libya trying to escape the troubles by fleeing westward are not too welcome in Tunisia, and the West has united against our very own David Cameron to slap him down over his suggestion that it should do something militarily to put an end to Gaddaffi’s regime. The White House is utterly aghast at the suggestion, which rather begs the question as to why the U.S. didn’t have such delicate feelings about chuntering into Iraq a few years ago. Ah, that was different, they will say.
But if the trouble does spread - and no one does repression quite as well as the Saudis, Americans’ best pals in the area - that will mean even higher oil prices, even higher food prices, even higher inflation, greater unemployment, an even higher danger of civil dissent on the meaner European streets and, generally, a lot of nostalgic looking back to that peaceful and prosperous second half of the 20th century. Oh, and the Belgians still don’t have a government. You couldn’t blame them for thinking that if the country can function rather well without one, as it has done for the past ten years - or thereabouts - why do we even bother with one?

Kenny pledges to ‘get tough’ with the bankers - well, it’s expected of him isn’t it, that nice Mr Obama (and one more short film)

With a bit of luck, Ireland’s bankers are getting a little bit nervous this weekend with a pledge by the incoming taoiseach Enda Kenny to launch a probe into the banking crisis which brought the country to its knees. (Great words ‘probe’ and ‘pledge’, I use them now as a matter of course after a life of dedicated hackery. In fact, ‘pledge’ means nothing more than a chap announcing that all things being equal and not to be too premature, he might - and don't necessarily hold him to this - he might well be considering doing something or there again he might not. But the word does give reports of that announcement a harder, tougher edge. This morning, I got up and ‘pledged’ to make a cup of tea, and it was quite obvious that my family were deeply impressed. As for ‘probe’, it, too, implies a no-nonsense attitude and that no stone will be left unturned in the quest for truth and decency. This morning, I probed where a clean pair of socks might be. And it, too, is largely spurious. Invariably, people only ‘pledge’ and ‘probe’ in the media.)
But luck is not what the Irish seem to have on their side at the moment, and I doubt that the ice cubes in innumerable glasses of Jameson being drunk in smart villas around Dublin are rattling any more than they would do otherwise. The trouble is - and the bankers know this - the Irish government needs them, just as the British government say all sorts of nasty things about Britain’s bankers but very wisely holds back from actually doing anything nasty. So I wish Mr Kenny very good luck as he sets about trying to convince the electorate that he is actually doing something.
He has also announced that he wants to re-negotiate the terms of the bailout imposed on Ireland at the beginning of the year, and he might just have more luck with that. Ireland might have voted to accept the Lisbon Treaty a while ago, but only after a second vote was held because the voters didn’t provide the result Brussels was looking for. After being kicked from pillar to post by the moneymen and Brussels, I can’t see the EU having even a tenth of the support is once had in the Republic. And Brussels knows it now has to keep the Irish sweet if it doesn’t want to risk a real upset.
I don’t know a great deal about Mr Kenny, except that he has a great Christian name, and has benefited from the single fact that
he is not Fianna Fail. From his pic he seems to have it all: politician's good looks, sincerity and a winning smile, though he might need a bit more than that in the coming months and years. I read somewhere that FF has been in government in the Republic for 60 of the past 80 years, but as they are universally regarded as a busted flush, the glory days might well now be over. Sinn Fein have gained seats this time around, so they might become more vocal. Gerry Adams has been elected to represent Louth in the Dail. I wonder whether he will give up his House of Commons seat. (Quaintly, British MPs can’t resign. They have to apply for to appointed Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham or Steward and Deputy Steward of the Manor of Northstead in Yorkshire. This is always granted and they then cease to be an MP, because MPs can’t hold a Crown office which pays. But somehow I can’t see Adams going down that road if he decides to resign, which will, with a bit of luck, lead to a constitutional crisis. We haven’t had one of those for ages, and they are always very amusing.

. . .

News reaches me from the White House (they like to keep me up to speed) that Barak and Michelle have appointed Jeremy Bernard as their social secretary. Commenting on the appointment, the White House said: ‘Jeremy shares our vision for the White House as the People's House, one that celebrates our history and culture in dynamic and inclusive ways.’ ‘Dynamic and inclusive’ eh? I’m sure I would be mightily impressed if I had the slightest clue as to what that meand. Informally, Michelle said: ‘We [she meant ‘I’, but remember she is now Mrs President] have every confidence that Jeremy will not fuck up like the last two who had that job, and will make sure the Obama White House outglams that of the Kennedys.’
What is notable about the appointment is that Jeremy, who is from Texas and is said to have a ‘big laugh’ and an outrageuos sense of humour, is ‘openly gay’. And that, ironically, could cause the Obama’s a little embarrassment. I, for one, would have been rather more impressed if an ‘openly gay’ man or woman was appointed Secretary of State or head of the Fed or the CIA’s new boss. But ‘White House social secretary’ does rather smack of gay stereotyping, as in gays ‘make great wedding planners, interior designers and hairdressers’, whereas it is now pretty much established that gay men and women are represented in all jobs and walks of life and do every job as well or as badly as heterosexuals. It remains to be seen whether Obama’s many enemies, both among the Republicans and Democrats, will pick up on that.
Here in Britain, the England cricket team’s wicketkeeper, a chap called Steve Davies, has just come out, and he says he did so after a former Wales rugby international Gareth Thomas came out last year. And one would be hard-pushed to typify either of those sports or their ethos as in any way effeminate. Roll on the days when about the least newsworthy aspect of a man or woman’s life and achievements is their sexuality.

. . .

Incidentally, it has long been the contention of British hacks that American hacks and the newspapers they produce are at best downright crumby and at worst fucking awful. I have only spent a week in the U.S., in New York, and I remember buying a copy of the New York Post to see how a Yank tabloid could stack up
against ours. I have to report it was no contest: the front page lead, about the horrible murder in some suburb or other, read like the blurb on the side of a breakfast cereal packet. I know New York and Chicago once had tabloid newspapers that were regarded as the template of the yellow press, but those days are long gone. It’s all ‘responsible journalism’ now. It makes you despair. Where’s the crassness, where’s the entertainment, where’s the fun? A case in point in how America’s finest apparently seem to do their best to outdull each other would be the Washington Post’s report on the appointment of Jeremy Bernard (you can find it here). Here is the intro: ‘It could have been a blast, another chapter in the life of an irreverent, shrewd insider who can get away with playfully tossing an ornamental gourd in a fancy Washington restaurant without any repercussions.’
It’s bloody awful. The difference is that too many American print hacks are novelist manque. For all our other faults - which are, admittedly legion - we British hacks aren’t.

. . .

And here’s a little something I knocked up this evening. The soundtrack is a short Vaughan Williams piece reversed with a little reverb and delay. Thought you’d like to know.