Oh - the pain ...

If the BBC and Guardian are to be believed, one in seven of us suffer excruciating pain which isn't caused by listening to the Today programme.

I think they're right. On my day off today I walked up the lane, and could hardly hear the birds for the moans and screams of the villagers. As the wild geese flew overhead, I noticed that quite a number of them were honking in a particularly agonised manner.

And in the towns the cries of pain are so piercing that sensitive young men are forced to drive with their stereos on full at all times.

Some of the more socially conscious youths even open their windows so that passers-by can get some relief by hearing the latest from the Paedophile Crew or new rapper Fukubich, whose 'roasting' style is all the rage among wealthy young Londoners.

Sorry we ate your great-grandpa .....

I'm used to being told that as a Brit I should apologise for slavery/potato famine/colonialism/Sting albums/Amritsar massacres etc.

So what a refreshing change this story is.

I trust that liberals will be agitating for the unfortunate missionary's surviving boot to be returned to the UK from the Fiji Museum.

Bringing back the Marsh Arabs - well some of them, anyway

I wondered a few months back if anything would be done about this by GWBs boys, hoping the Toxic Texan would be able to give the finger to his green critics, but it looks as if Iraqis are doing it for themselves.

But alas the Euphrates isn't what it was, thanks to the huge dams in Turkey and Syria which divert so much of the water. Come on, Israel - you must have a few spare missiles left over from Hamas to help these people. Or do we need 617 Squadron ?

Come Back Miss Nightingale

Mrs Tall is currently taking a 'back to nursing' course in the UK after 8 years as a full time mother. She trained at Barts under the ancien regime and is puzzled by the 'coursework' she's being given now.

She's currently looking at three set texts

"Nursing Rituals" by Mike Walsh and Pauline Ford

'... the unquestioning tradition of obedience ... Victorian legacy ... this involves obedience to hierarchy and also to men, who, according to Victorian values, are seen as inherently superior to women. It is no accident that most nurses are women and most doctors are men.'

A later work by the same pair 'New Rituals for Old'

'being powerless is synonymous with being oppressed (tough being a baby then - LT) and one of the principal tenets of feminism is that women are an oppressed group. About 85% of nurses happen to be women. It is hard to ignore making a linkage (sic) betwen these two statements, and, in addressing the issues of empowerment, feminist perspectives therefore deserve our immediate attention.'.

The theme of this book appears to be that 'we've thrown out all that stuffy old tradition and we're STILL oppressed'.

And 'Nursing Models and Nursing Practice' by Peter Aggleton and Helen Chalmers.

.. until relatively recently many nurses believed that nursing is best carried out when based on instinct, intuition and empathy, elements that make up 'the calling' ... such an approach ...has since come in for considerable criticism.

It was not until 1967 that Yura and Walsh argued that nursing care ... should be likened to a problem-solving process in which nurse and patient
1. together identify the causes of problems requiring intervention
2. make plans to remedy this problem
3. take the necessary steps to alleviate them, and then
4. reflect on what has happened '

Love that 'reflect on what has happened'. Presumably only if you're still alive. My mother was subjected to this last approach (known as "the nursing process") when she was dying of cancer a year ago - a charade of equality. It was a pity that during this dialogue her night nurses made plain to her their displeasure at having to take her to the toilet several times a night.

When I was studying sociology and annoying my tutors, my wife was learning nursing at the sharp end in London casualty units.

It looks as if the 'return to nursing' courses are not designed to update the returnees in clinical practice, new drugs or techniques, but to reprogram them into a new nursing ethos, one in which the nurse and her status are all-important. All for the patient's good, you understand.

Tony Martin 'I Love America' Shock Horror

Well I'm not sure how Rummy would react to being told that "America is an extension of this country" but I'm sure he'd have loved the rest of Tony Martin's address to the annual UKIP conference, which gave him a standing ovation.

After stating that if we had to have a single currency it should be the dollar, Mr Martin said this :

"The only reason I'm living here today is the Americans and two World Wars.

"It's not an insult to the British people who fought for this country to say that without the Americans help, the world would not be a free place ... it's as good as you're going to get."

Oliver Bloody Letwin .....

You just had to go and blow it, didn't you. You spoke truth from the heart - such a rare thing for a politician.

Surprise surprise - the BBC and Guardian didn't like it. Wow.

And then you had to climb down.

Why didn't you just make a public statment to the effect that you were sorry if the state schools were upset, that you had great respect for the difficult jobs the teachers were doing - but that you'd still walk on broken glass to send your children somewhere else.

Sometimes form is as important as content.

I can’t ever remember hearing the Japanese national anthem before today’s Scotland game, but the mournful, beautiful version sung by the choir and two singers was deeply affecting. Words like ‘Heimat’ floated unbidden into my mind. Shaven-headed Japanese props had wet faces and some others were only just holding onto it (my observation, based on years of watching Wales, is that players who cry during the anthems are also doomed to cry after the game).

The choir then did ‘Flower Of Scotland’ in EXACTLY the same style. It was bloody awful. Just as if the Mike Sammes Singers (older UK surfers will remember and perhaps shudder) had given it the inimitable ‘Sing Something Simple’ treatment. The players sang along but looked embarrassed.

Yet the tune and words hadn’t changed. It’s just that ‘Flower Of Scotland’ simply cannot be sung like a lullaby - not at a rugby match anyway. It needs to be sung as by a marching army.

If they sang the World Cup version at Murrayfield England would put sixty points past them. When they’d stopped laughing.

UPDATE - just heard a Talk Sport presenter (English) saying that it sent shivers down his spine. Does he mean it or is it a plot to emasculate the song ?

Radio 4 is heading downmarket fast....

Lead by Eddie Mair and Dan Damon, who moved from Radio 5’s ‘Sunday Service’ to PM and Broadcasting House respectively. Mair is essentially a R5 presenter and always will be, a less hideous Nicky Campbell, while Damon’s Broadcasting House seems to be simply a transplant of Sunday Service. I’ve just listened to a studio discussion on who may become the new Dr. Who. Will it be Eddie Izzard ? Perhaps Alun Davies or Bill Nighy - maybe Derek Jacobi - for heaven’s sake - this is Radio Four !

Thank God for Andrew Rawnsley - he may be another public school socialist a la “Andy” Marr but I think it unlikely that I’ll tune in tonight to hear ‘Oasis - when exactly did they lose it ?’.

Keep St George in my heart .....

So the overpaid, drug-addled "roasters" of Olde England managed not to lose - let rejoicing be unconfined.

But while I agree with her on the hypocrisy of some feminists, I must take issue with Jackie when she writes I've always heard of it as "spit-roasting". That particular phrase refers to a particular act, not to be described in a family blog, but one which could not involve more footballers than, say, a couple of Newcastle or Charlton strikers.

The 'moral' of the roasting incident is that the rock generation of the 60s and 70s (or in Peter Hitchens' phrase 'the suburban revolutionaries now occupying the corner offices') have passed some attitudes on to today's youth, the 'celebrity generation' - and anyone with enough fortune and/or fame/nice hotel suite/VIP table can now do rock star things (Parental Advisory), though perhaps with less gonzo style.


UPDATE - Jackie responds in robust fashion on the great debate of our times.

Back at last ....

Though no-one seemed to notice the absence, save only Jackie, who dropped me from her 'Required Reading' list. No deluge of emails demanding a return of service. Perhaps I should put an address on the site. Or something.

Apologies. The builders are extending the house, I'm selling another (my late mother's), and above all the earning a living thing have used up all my time. But the house sold today (STC), the Project From Hell is at last getting into shape, and Susan is at Warren's Malthouse for the evening - or is it the PTA ?

What's strange is that nothing really seems to have happened in politics over the last few weeks.

The Lib Dem conference was just like last years. Then it was porn at 16 and let the burglars out, this year it's ban smacking, compulsory porn (sorry, sex education) at 7, and let the burglars out. And people are still voting for them, showing that if you have no prospect of power, policies aren't important as long as you present well. Which they do. The Brent by-election was just a gigantic 'Not In My Name' directed at Labour and the Tories.

The Labour conference was only noteworthy for the dog that didn't bark in the night - said dog being the anti-Blair revolt. Better men than I have commented on this, but the lesson is that today's Labour activists simply have too much to lose too quickly. The old working class, the steelmen, miners, metalbashers have mostly disappeared. Plaintive pleas to save what's left of UK manufacturing are ignored. In the olden days activists could be as left as they wished. British industry would still be there, under Tories or Labour. I doubt very much if anyone really thought that it would vanish - and in fact it took decades to kill it.

But let's say you're one of the social workers employed on an anti-truancy project as part of Labour's great crusade against social exclusion. They were still recruiting them last month in my local education authority. You may have read the figures - that 600 million pounds worth of expenditure later the level of truancy has hardly altered - that each extra day in school for one child has cost over £1,000. Do you think your job would survive a change of government ? There are huge numbers of polytechnocrats whose jobs depend on Labour continuing to spend. They may hate Blair but they know open warfare would be electorally disastrous.



And the Tories ? Presumably they'll be trying not to shoot themselves in the foot Theresa May-style, while Ken Clarke and Portillo snipe from the sidelines.

But what a great story this is. Should get them all hot and bothered at the Guardian and Indie.

Rising Tory star Tim Metcalfe galvanised the Tory conference yesterday by asking for three cheers for Tony Martin, the farmer who shot a burglar dead, and demanding the return of hanging. The IT consultant, who hopes to become an MP, received a warmer ovation during the debate on crime than any other speaker, including Shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin.

He won the biggest cheer of the conference so far when he said it was time to stop being soft on criminals.

"Make prison a genuine punishment, bring back solitary confinement, take away their TVs and snooker tables and let them earn privileges," he said. "Bring back birching for young tearaways that terrorise council estates and vandalise graveyards, castrate paedophiles and bring back hanging!"

And there was an equally enthusiastic response at the end of his speech when he shouted: "Let us show the country that we really do mean business on crime by showing our support for Tony Martin."

Mr Metcalfe three times said "hip, hip" and thousands of delegates responded with "hooray!"

I could do with an IT consultant like that on the Project from Hell.

Don't Kill The BBC

Says Peter Hitchens in the Spectator.

"The time has come for sensible reactionaries to rally round their old enemies at the BBC, and for the BBC to seek support among those moral and cultural conservatives it has spent too long despising. Those who think that such an alliance would be as unprincipled and doomed as the Nazi–Soviet pact are mistaken. There is a real community of interests here, if only both sides would see it. Unless the BBC makes some new friends rather quickly, it will not survive much longer in anything like its present form. If it does open itself to people and ideas it now excludes and scorns, then it will become better as well as stronger. And if the BBC goes, the things conservatives really value will suffer. "

His solution ? For the BBC to drop its pretence of impartiality and encourage partisanship and open debate in its current affairs programmes - hence opening up the airwaves for cultural conservatives. I think he has as his model the late lamented 'Grilled On Both Sides' - the Sunday morning Talk Radio show which caused me to desert the Archers Omnibus after 20 years. Presented with the Labour MP Austin Mitchell, it was compulsive listening.

Only one problem - I just don't think the BBC are institutionally capable of reforming themselves. It just won't happen. They're like a much-loved dog suffering from an incurable and fatal disease that has to be put down. You know you won't ever have another dog like it, you know you'll be losing a friend and part of the family - but you still take that trip to the vet.

And the reason it won't happen ? A world-view which says that it would be better to be abolished by a future Tory Government than to admit that conservative ideas have any cultural validity.

The Today Programme - we don't report the news, we make it

So the BBCs apology lasted until Andrew Gilligan got out of the witness box. This morning the Today programme wheeled out Hans Blix, repeating what he's already said. This is now the main item on R4 news.

And for an unbiased look at the BBCs current position we had a studio discussion with ex-Times editor Peter Stothard and top BBC partisan (she was its social affairs correspondent for years), the Guardian's Polly Toynbee, who was allowed to both open and close the debate and was given about twice as much airtime. Ms Toynbee considered no criticism of the BBC from an ex-Murdoch employee was was valid, and slagged off all the papers except the Guardian and Indie.

This is what the BBC calls debate.

Update - as at 6.30 pm the Blix story (main item at 9.00 am) has completely vanished from the 30 minute R4 bulletin.

Neighbours From Hell, Frank Field, and the IWCA

Frank Field, one of the best Labour MPs, the man who Blair told to 'think the unthinkable' on the welfare state then sacked him for doing just that, has a new book 'Neighbours From Hell', describing the conditions that many people are forced to live in on our estates. The only review I've found is a small and flippant one by Fabian Paul Richards, but if this Sunday People article is any guide he's not short of ideas.

One of the greatest failings of the left, and a factor in peoples disengagement from politics, is the attitude which cares more for the offender than the victim. This is an especially grave failure in view of the fact that the poor, elderly and vulnerable are the main victims of crime. This is the theme tirelessly pursued by the good doctor Dalrymple.


So it is with pleasure that I can report on a small left group called the Independent Working Class Association or IWCA - a far-left group that actually seems to think that crime and fear of crime is an objective reality, with an existence outside a Daily Mail columnists mind.

They appear to have started as a quasi-anarchist grouping in London, but have branches in places like Harold Hill, Essex, and the notorious Blackbird Leys estate in Oxford. I haven't studied their policies in great (or any) detail yet, though headlines like 'Working Class Rule For Working Class Areas" don't exactly fill me with confidence - would they also support "Middle-Class Rule In Middle-Class Areas" ?

But you have to warm to an organisation which campaigns to get crack dealers evicted, and is then criticised by the police for doing so - whose side are they on ?

"Responding to the IWCA public meeting on the drugs issue, Inspector Eugene Gratwohl of Oxford police issued a warning to Blackbird Leys residents, telling them they could be ‘overstepping the mark’.

Speaking in the Oxford Mail (‘Residents Threaten Action on Dealers’, 1 July), Inspector Gratwohl said that residents who tried to gather their own evidence or demonstrated outside the homes of drug dealers risked ‘contravening the human rights of those implicated.’"

The IWCA responded to the police with classic British understatement :

"The police statement on the issue of ‘human rights’ for crack and heroin dealers will do nothing to reassure concerned residents that police priorities are in order"

Well, well, well. The Left is not completely dead after all.

Lay Off The Politicians ....

Aaronovitch joins Jackie Ashley and Polly Toynbee in a triptych of Guardianistas who all, correctly, feel that unremitting abuse of politicians is bad for democracy.

"... a piece in which a music magazine journalist writes about award-winning musician Dizzee Rascal, and his lyrics. '[His] album,' said the journalist, 'depicts Dizzee's life in Bow, east London. Uncompromising, raging, it is not easy listening - but every MP in Westminster should be forced to hear it.'

When music journalists speak, the world ought to listen. But I wondered whether this one actually knew who the MP for Dizzee's patch was? Or if he did, did he ask himself whether Oona King might not be more familiar with the problems of Bow than even the UK garage correspondent of Mixmag?"

Do you think this means that the Guardian will lay off Archer ? Dream on !


Triptych - what a lovely word ....

So put your hands together for ... Ambrogio Lorenzetti !


Triptych: Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene and St Dorothea c. 1325. Wood, 90 x 53 cm (central panel), 88 x 39 cm (side panels, each). Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena Source:Web Gallery of Art

Rewriting History

The BBC and Guardian on the 'Three Degrees' .

"The Three Degrees may not have won anything together, but their influence cannot be exaggerated. 'At a time when far-right groups were recruiting outside other grounds, going to the the Hawthorns was more like being at a left-wing rally,' recalls Adrian Goldberg. 'The Three Degrees raised the political consciousness of Albion supporters everywhere.' "

Really. Was that why those same Albion fans made monkey noises at John Fashanu and Carlton Fairweather for the 90 minutes of their 4-1 F.A. Cup defeat at Wimbledon in 1989 ?

I was there and have never felt more ashamed of them. I think I was actually glad when the Dons got their fourth.

Note - the 'Three Degrees' were the three black players in the West Bromwich Albion soccer side of the late 1970s. Laurie Cunningham, a mercurial winger who never quite reached his full potential and died tragically young, Cyrille Regis, the powerful Guyanese centre-forward with a thunderous right foot, and full-back Brendan Batson. They WERE the start of the wave of black players into top clubs, but we never thought of them that way. Albion fans admired them as players and people, not as black icons. And I certainly never felt my consciousness rising as I stood at the Brummie Road End.

Why The BBC Must Still Go .....

The Guardian on Charles Moore, Telegraph editor, and his Beebwatch campaign.

"Shall we guess that breakfast in the elegant home of these serious and discerning folk is partaken to the background of the Today programme rather than, say, Planet Rock or Talksport? Come tea time do the smaller Moores watch JackAss and Kerrang, or are they tactfully steered towards Newsround or the Simpsons? Is that a prom on Radio 3 we hear in the background over supper or is it Heart 106.2? And as bedtime nears do we find the grown-ups glued to the mediocre film on Sky One, or are they throwing cushions at Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight? "

But Natalie Solent only notes that "I may even find a little tear trickling down my cheek as I take my £116 to the bank."

Strangely for a Biased-BBC contributor, I find myself more in agreement with the Guardian. As a Radio Four listener since the age of nineteen I often wonder what I shall do when it's gone. I have a vivid memory of sitting in a San Francisco flat, flicking through the 200-plus channels available, coming to the awful realisation that there was nothing worth watching on any of them (we ended up watching old Doctor Who episodes on PBS). There's no doubt that the BBC even now, after 30 years of relentless dumbing down, is still producing some great stuff.

But for me the price is too great. Unlike many libertarian bloggers, I accept the idea of a state-funded broadcaster in principle. Were the BBC still Lord Reith's BBC, I would be fighting its corner. I'm happy with a paternalism - the idea that the BBC should reflect the best of British culture and reinforce values, often now derided as "middle class", which were once shared by all classes. I'm happy with a measure of elitism, happy with excellence, happy with the view that what people want isn't always what is good for them.

The problem is that the BBC is too successful in reflecting the views of an influential and articulate section of the educated English middle class. That is why it must die - because the views of this section are so pernicious.

(Those views are in essence still those of my campus some thirty years ago, when we considered that 'straight white society' was the enemy. On the flagship Today programme, a Patti Smith comeback album is now greeted as if Adam Smith had written a new economics text. Radio Four are broadcasting a programme about West Bromwich Albion's three black stars of the 1970s in which they apparently made an impact on society like MLK's march from Selma to Montgomery. As one who was there at the time, Baggies fans simply thought of them as good players who happened to be black. (Oh, my Regis and my Johnston long ago !) And how dare they ignore Remi Moses ?)

There can be no doubt that the loss of the BBC will be grievous. And the domination of Murdoch more so. But things must get worse before they get better.

Good News From Sweden

After a grim week for Swedish democracy, the Euro is decisively rejected. The mooted "sympathy vote" for the (pro-Euro) Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, tragically murdered on Wednesday, was insufficient to claw back the anti-Euro lead.

And Bjorn Again will be touring this autumn.

Oh Dear

For the BBC to reinforce sexist stereotyping in this way is disgraceful.

Still, they do use a photo of a couple of babes.

Is Lamb ?

From the Gulf comes the distressing news that a ship carrying 57,000 sheep from Australia to Saudi Arabia (Sadly I don't think they're founding a knitwear industry ...) is stuck at sea after the Saudis refused it entry. The sheep are dying due to the heat - more than 3,000 so far.

Apparently the owners are trying to give the sheep away - to the Baa'th Party ?

Thank You Ian Buruma

For dissecting brain-dead anti-Americanism so well. And thanks to Norman Geras via Harry for the pointer.

It's only human to admire someone who reinforces a point you've made. Even better when he does it in language you can only aspire to.

"When Indians kill Muslims, or Africans kill Africans, or Arabs kill Arabs, western pundits pretend not to notice, or find historical explanations, or blame the scars of colonialism. But if white men, whether they are Americans, Europeans, South Africans or Israelis harm people of colour, hell is raised."

"As long as white people aren't spilling it, ANY amount of Iraqi blood can be spilled and you won't give a damn, let alone pick up a pen to write about it. "

"Democracy, to conservative realists, was fine for us but not for strange people with exotic names. It was the left that wanted to change the world, no matter where. Left-wing internationalism did not wish to recognise cultural or national barriers. To them, liberation was a universal project. Yet now that the "Bush-Cheney junta" talks about a democratic revolution, regardless of culture, colour or creed, Gore Vidal claims it is not our business, and others cry "racism"."

"In politics there always seem to be two views of 'the Other' - the Other in this case being the people of Iraq. One side says 'they're just people like us - they want the things we want', the other says 'these people are not at all like us - beware'. Historically the former view was held by the Left - think of the idealism with which the African colonies were liberated (or abandoned), or the argument that asylum-seekers will in no time be helping with the PTA and sending the kids to medical school, compared with the traditional 'right' view of peoples 'half devil and half child' or (circa African independence) 'they're just not ready for it'.

But these days its a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world. The repentant Trotskyites who make up America's neocons seem confident that the whole Middle East can be 'liberated' from feudalism or theocracy, and it's the Left who are suddenly saying 'don't kid yourself - these guys are very different to you and me. "