Sugar and Spice and Quarterly Sales Targets

This is the third piece I have written for this blog. It is the second concerning dead children. I hope and trust this is no reflection of my own interests, regrettably however it does seem to be a reflection of other's. 

I shall return to this point.

Recently, Ed Milliband drew comparisons between the expenses scandal, the banking crises and 'hackgate'. I sense the primary similarity is that all the events and offences happened whilst the hypocrite's own party was in office. A second is that in all three cases the wrong questions were asked, the wrong people were blamed and the wrong outcomes were sought and found. 

Perhaps though it is naive to blame those seeking to make hay as The Sun burns. Never let a crises go to waste as they say. For the bandwagon jumper extraordinaire this was certainly too good to miss. In fact in his position, standing on a ledge waiting to be shoved off by colleagues, it was an open-topped bandwagon carrying feather mattresses and pillows and passed under him with miraculous timing. Way too good to let it pass by for such paltry reasons as honesty, consistency or avoiding false moral outrage. So perhaps Ed cannot really be blamed. What is clear however is that his efforts and those of the BBC are only coherent in their partisan ambition to kill their enemies.

At the time of writing I am still unable to discern what the real issues are and where the real blame in this debacle lies. I do though know that none of it has anything to do with 'breaking up the Murdoch empire' or BskyB takeovers. 
However, in amongst this rapidly moving and disparate mess lies indications of another sad aspect of our culture that has not yet been mentioned. I have begun to wonder if I am the only one thinking about it. Namely the sickening sale of the stories of dead children and the details of their grizzly end.

A brief throat clearance:

I accept fully that the parents of Miss Dowler endured the deepest conceivable pain and torment and that they and the memory of their daughter deserve nothing but the highest consideration.

I also accept that a crime is a crime. The fact that a smack addict has what is essentially a disease, a physical disorder, it by no means excuses his attempts to have away with the contents of my home or car. The desire to make money giving people what they want is not justification for intercepting their private communications, let alone tampering with them to the point of affecting a police investigation. THE STAFF AT THE NoW ARE TO BLAME.

To continue:

If a journalist does something somewhat shady in the exposing of corruption in business or government, he wins prizes. Do it to millionaire movie stars and many will turn a blind eye because they are sure the victim will be comforted by their riches and notoriety. But to missing and dead children? Well that can bring down a 168 year old paper in the first week alone and this scandal has many more weeks to run.

So why did they do it? I accept that we are not speaking of the most moral members of our society when we speak of a red top newsroom, but what could drive them to such stark levels of moral vacuity?

In short, millions upon millions of pounds.

I don't recall exactly when it started. I think a whole summer of Sarah Payne on the front pages in 2000 was when it first became transparently clear to me. It felt part of the growing economy of grief, from Diana to Dando there was a growing air of the mawkish lingering on death. Yes, if it bleeds it leads, but should it lead for as long as it is relevant and informative or for as long as it sells? 

Soon it had become an almost annual ritual, or rather for the papers, a bonanza. And you can NEVER criticise it. The economy of grief meets the tyranny of grief.

In 2002 the Soham girls fitted the bill and again the column inches were relentlessly filled. Their coverage started to confirm something else, simply that the cuter the kids the bigger the splash. Children are murdered by their parents or close relatives almost daily, but that doesn't scare us. Presumably little black or Asian children are also murdered, but they will be forever doomed to the inside pages.

Then in 2007 the press hit their motherlode, a photogenic and achingly cute little girl with presentable and articulate middle-class parents. To top it all, she was missing and only probably dead, the endless coverage could be pushed out under the guise that it all helped in the search. That was when things jumped into the realms of the utterly grotesque. The poor and beautiful face of Madeleine McCann adorned the front pages almost daily for almost a year. Popes and First Ladies were dragged in, Prime Minister's lent their weight and the press stretched every fibre to find excuses for any form of coverage. 

It was during the McCann case I witnessed the single most cynical headline I have yet encountered. There, months after she went missing was a red top with her photograph on the front and a headline taking up half the page which stated "Maddie Body Dumped at Sea". Below in the small text was the explanation that a nameless source in the Portuguese police had speculated such. Yes that is right, months after somebody goes missing from a seaside resort and a rigorous search had found no body, it was considered worthy of an entire front page to postulate that perhaps the body was in the sea. It was not newsworthy, nor helpful, nor important, merely a cynical attempt to drain as much money as possible from the presumed horrid fate that befell that poor girl. And Britain still lapped it up.

The tragic case of Milly Dowler's 2002 murder was simply another in this long line.

This trend is not about saving children or solving cases, it is pandering to an ugly part of our nature. As depressing a factor as any in all this is that the selling of dead children is dressed up as being laudable, a public service. Laudable? The net result of the News of the World's paedogeddon was that some bingo-winged neanderthals managed to taunt a pediatrician. (Did they think the sign on her office and letters after her name were indications of her senior and qualified standing as a nonce?).

As Steve Coogan intimated, when the tabloid press do something laudable, it's to shift units, when they do something risible, it's to shift units. And cute dead kids shift them by the truckload.

WE buy this rubbish and WE provide the enormous financial pressure to seek scoops from the families of dead children. WE do that.

To return to a drug analogy; there is something slightly amiss about those who speak with passion and moral indignation about fair trade and then happily throw cocaine up their nostrils. We all stop buying it and a whole load fewer Colombians get murdered. No, you might not beat the farm hand and you did not murder their gang rivals, you might even have a strong desire to buy your stash from a licensed and reputable source, but for as long as you are willing to hand over your £50s to a dealer near you, you are providing irresistible financial imperatives for other people to screw up half a country at the production end. They are not innocent, but they wouldn't do it without cause.

Perhaps in all this finger pointing and moralising it might be sensible for us to take the time to look to ourselves, to what we pay for and to what the logical pressures and implications of this sickening curiosity really are. Instead of acting like a stray hand has been shoved up our petticoats, perhaps ask why these people felt it was necessary or acceptable to do so. To feed the beast that is our appetite for the horrific, disguised as the caring. A uniquely British habit.

Or more likely it will be just another weapon in the political hackary of the shameless. 

You get the press and the politicians you deserve, and it seems the mawkish and horror addicted British public deserve no more than the squalid, shameless, soulless and amoral detritus whose faces currently remain plastered across the front pages of their own product.

C Old Slaughter

Going, going going... Six runs. (An Election Night Special)

'The pieces are in flux'. Please tell me it's going to happen. Please tell me this turd will flush.

Look at them. What a photograph by the way. The best of what's left.

If the bunker metaphor is still in vogue it is now clear which pair will be drugging the children. The wondrously fortunate constituents of Morley and Outwood have decided whether Goebballs is taken out by a stray Russian shell or gets to stretch out his double suicide over the coming weeks.

Gaze upon this sparkling row of talent. There stand the remains of the Guardians of the Labour Movement, the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the future of our country.

Well hopefully not. Calling your core voters bigots whilst confirming every accusation of your approach to leadership is surely a weighty enough straw to break the even this camel. After a three day wave of recrimination, genuine offence and naked schadenfreude, the minds of the nation turned a corner. The Spectator spoke of the home straight, the Liberal Democrats are having fun imagining benches closer to the Speaker and indicatively even the Manchester Guardian cannot bring itself to support Labour.

As final straws go it really was a joy to behold, it brought Gordon international humiliation and a us crystalline moment of death. We witnessed the exact second his flawed personality was struck by the realisation that his own conduct had finally killed him. (Brilliantly captured by Jon Stewart "the moment his political career leaves his body"). No Terminator-like reassembly, no Glenn Close jumping out the bath, Max Cady is not clinging to the boat.

To the person typing this, the architects of New Labour have, since 1994, been a malignant growth on the nation's body politic. 

So now that surely, finally*, the fat lady is warbling, there will be relieved sighs all round? Champaign corks popping? 

If only. I predict that even watching him leave Downing Street with the Labour vote decimated still won't do it for me. I shall attempt to explain why. 

Over the last few months we've seen a new narrative forming from the left. A narrative best described as 'it was Gordon's fault'. Not the gold, not what's happened over the last three years, but every negative ion over the last 13/16 years. Popping up on Radio 4 will be an intellectual, an author, a playwright, certainly an unashamed lefty, who where previously they had been shifting uncomfortably under the shame of publicly supporting this shower, they now announce with confidence, and I would venture palpable relief, that it all would of been ok if it wasn't for Gordon.

Of course this coming result could have been different if Miliband (or possibly anyone) had grown some but the damage done by New Labour is not simply to be measured by this election. Nor can they just remove the millstone and carry on.

If you don't know what went wrong you are at a disadvantage when tying to avoid repeating the mistake. New Labour was not a beautiful idea dragged down by one bad egg. Blair as the Son of God being critically hampered by the Son of Manse can't wash. I know this for two reasons:

The first is that when they finally managed to say bye to Blair (what timing by he), the same people were saying precisely the opposite. Brown was the real New Labour, Brown was the brains, Brown was not Tony... It cannot work both ways.

The second is that it does not take into account what New Labour actually is.

Or rather, to describe what New Labour is, allow me to explain what I think it isn't... It isn't Cricket.

I use that phrase aware at how clearly it grates against New Labour's notions of modernity. But not only do I mean as the expression denoting our once cared for and famous grasp of 'fair play', but more specifically the modern game of cricket. As of 2000 the Laws of the Game include the requirement to safeguard the 'Spirit of the Game'.

Cricket is a game that owes much of its unique appeal to the fact that it should be played not only within its Laws but also within the Spirit of the Game. Any action which is seen to abuse this Spirit causes injury to the game itself.

It formally recognises that it is the responsibility of those within the process to take a duty of care over the dignity of the process by recognising that the quality of the outcome is affected by it.

New Labour does not recognise that.With or without Gordon Brown New Labour is happy, no, compelled, to do what is in its immediate interests. And to them that is automatically in everybody's interests. "Don't you get it you idiot, we are doing this for you."

Quickly compare the conduct of those within snooker and cricket to that displayed in football. It has nothing to do with class, as is the excuse so often in rugby vs football discussions. It is about what each sport considers acceptable. Vital to its success is the resistance to compromised standards in the face of professional consequences. In snooker a player will call a foul on himself, in Cricket a captain is expected to suffer consequences if he chooses advantage over decency. In football a player is seemingly now expected to get whatever he can. The responsibility of 'should' is not his. Of course as a metaphor for political systems one might make the point that Cricket and Snooker have both been tainted by corruption. But of course sport deals most harshly of all with cheating. Sport realises the obvious, in that any attack on the credibility of the process is damaging to everyone. Politics should be, could be and to a much greater extent was, the same.

The ad nauseam cry during the expenses scandal of 'it was within the rules' left a nasty taste because it so ignored the spirit of them. But it helpfully crystallised the spectacle of those that should know better doing what they could rather than doing what they should.

I actually wasn't that offended by MPs surreptitiously using expenses as additional pay, it was just spineless not to have increased their pay previously (house flipping and tax avoidance are not the same as duck-houses and porn, that's just a lazy grouping). The reaction to it gave me greater concern.

Harriet Harman explained that the current system was run by the MPs, for the MPs, scrutinised by MPs and with pay set by MPs and self-evidently this made it defective with a removal of the toys and new raft of bureaucrats described as just the tonic. But surely to a non-technocrat an examination of that system leads to the more obvious conclusion that you simply have the wrong MPs within it.

She recommended her new system with the logic that the system should not continue with the approach of a 'Gentlemen's Club' (in Harman speak that is most definitely pejorative). Of course the thing about a Gentlemen's Club approach is it presupposes its members would behave as gentlemen.

The tacit acceptance, that if you have dishonest MPs in a system requiring honesty then the system is clearly the thing to change, demonstrates precisely how New Labour consider people and their responsibilities.

In New Labour world humans are simply self-interested pin balls bouncing off the bumpers of rules and disincentives.

On their way to creating a society so perfectly legislated nobody need be good. (I'm sure someone else said that)

We know of Labour's panic over being unelectable and the desire never to let '92 happen again. And of the inability to switch off the spin when in office.

It was never going to be the way of New Labour to adopt the position they considered best for the nation and then seek to move the electorate towards it. Theirs was to study the electorate and obligingly move themselves to whichever position best furthered their ambitions. I have read Burke on the role of a representative. I humbly agree with him. I accept they should, to an extent, repeat in Parliament the views of those that elected them. And I also accept that career minded politicians weren't invented in 1994. But the arrival of New Labour was something else. It was our first real exposure to the cynicism of Clintonian triangulation.

We really were not prepared for that. We were like naked nubile nuns in an East Coast abbey blissfully unaware of the gruff men in longboats just stepping ashore. Surely even our press should have done a better job of blowing the horns and ringing the bells. But no, the raping began and in keeping with Nordic stamina it hasn't stopped since. And it really has affected everything.

Our unwritten written constitution was certainly not ready for it. There were innocent people who think as I, priding ourselves on the malleability of our constitution, recognising that's it's ability to evolve through the generations like a Darwinian diagram was a special gift. Relative stability, trust and certainty had resulted for centuries and its outcomes made models for others across the world. It had made me and my antecedents some of the luckier people on the planet. It was a birthright. The constitution was however, never prepared for those that couldn't care less about the constitution. It was like a conquistador sneezing on an Native.

Only Popes have been in Europe longer than the Lord Chancellor. What sort of mind is comfortable to roll over in the morning and decide to dissolve an office of state that has served a function for 1400 years with no consultation as if it were a ministerial reshuffle. It goes beyond ignorance or it is too close to malice. Either way it is not something fit for office and it certainly isn't cricket..

And so we arrived at now. These days every punter with a keyboard has bright ideas on how to fix up the system, and they are not small changes. We are in the unfortunate situation of having to rely on the same people that got us here, people so blissfully aware of unintended consequences, to repair it. The Vandals are being asked to redesign Rome.

When your sole aim is re-election, and your primary weapon is legislation, legislation becomes message, message becomes legislation. And messages are most effective when repeated. So we got thousands and thousands of laws. Statute after statute until even the law makers were unable to keep up. We were famous for being law-abiding. We had respect for the rules. Maybe because the law makers had more respect for us. Is that rose tinted? I know that now the laws are become trivialised by their frequency. Like currency printing, the more there are the less they're worth. National character traits like that don't arise in a generation. They are so valuable. They are however quickly lost. Breaking a law is now something it is hard not to do.

When a resignation becomes merely an automatic reflex triggered by a time limit (3days) of negative  headlines followed by a re-entry into Government, who could think the dignity of office is taken seriously?
Again, we had a system we could think was cleaner than others.

Of course the man pictured gives the response that he didn't really do anything wrong. If that is the case, what does it say of a political leader that would rather sack the best person for the job than to defend them in the face of the media. 

If the cricket thing is taken further New Labour would be Alan Standford "sport is just a buisness, end of story".

When an organisation is dedicated solely to getting away with as much as it can. What chance has a subordinate organisation based on loyalty, duty and sacrifice (words that are kryptonite to New Labour)? Our Armed Forces are reliable, effective and dedicated. The Army doesn't have a union. They rely on trust from government. Suckers. They have been stretched and cut and starved and pushed and silenced and used for photo ops. Now they are at breaking point just when our money runs out, their funding will now be slashed. 

They relied on a covenant, a system based on trust. Unlucky. These are the people that see flaming buildings and think of burying news. From you.

These are the people to whom a lie is not a lie until a judges gravel slams on it. They inherited a system painfully strained through the filter of history. It had a public remarkably trusting even of the governments it was ideologically opposed to. And they have pissed all over it. It's amazing to think how much has changed.

To use an analogy, think of us as a porn star. In 1994-7 we were innocent people just receiving some childhood abuse. Cash for questions, undeclared gifts, a bit of auto-asphyxia. We were so shocked. Well someone on a Harley came along to show us a better life. We were going to make movies in Hollywood. We then spent a spirit numbing and degrading 13 years getting gang banged. We thought it couldn't get worse but it got uglier and cheaper until for the final two years we were subjected to making illegal donkey clips.

Scan the list. Remind yourself.

I hope we can now finally get to the final stage where we find Jesus, open up a free Testing Clinic and run advice centres for new young starlets in town.

But where do we turn for that?

I think of straight arrows. People who have integrity and ability. Somebody like  er... David Kelly. Oh... yeah. What chance do they have against New Labour?

That is what New Labour is, a cancer, it pinned itself onto the labour movement and has done massive damage to our society. I hope tonight will be a successful surgical procedure. I hope we can follow with a good dose of chemotherapy.  

Perhaps though it has already spread. Perhaps those voting Tory today are going to be feeling just what principled lefties felt after electing Blair. When those who hoped he was just electioneering discovered electioneering is all he does.

As Clinton was the best Republican President they never voted for, will Cameron spent so long appeasing the left he leaves us the same results? The heir to Blair will have inherited the triangulating tendency,

Perhaps I'm a young old-sentimentalist and the genie is out of the bottle. Perhaps my opinions are a half century out of date. I am sure the average Labour activist would think a full one.

When I went to the polls today I voted for the closet thing I could get to Cricket.

Either way. I hate this Government... well I would say I hate this government but is hate a sufficient word for your rapist?  I hope they leave in the knowledge that if living in less 'enlightened' times the perpetrators of their actions and betrayals would be hanging from city walls with hungry birds in attendance. That is a hope too far. They will think the electorate too stupid. They will blame Gordon.

Shame.

*For the symbolically minded amongst you: that was the 666th Spectator article tagged 'Gordon Brown'

'Anonymous' equals 'New'

      

As part of the Lib Dems shallow and decidedly old-style attempt to differentiate themselves they insist on refering to the others as 'the two old parties'.

The Whigs are about the oldest party in the world, what they really mean is 'the two successful parties".

  
They claim to be new, what they really mean is that you never bothered to listen to them before.
  

If you tolerate this...

Was the late President of Poland a relative of the Manic vocalist?

I demand answers.

President Lech Kaczynski                             James Dean Bradfield

    

The occasional joy of Wiki

      
Wanting to write a post about footballers and slags, I looked up Lizzie Cundy's wiki page as research. I invite you to click below and examine. 

It has now been changed to exclude the more accurate descriptions seen above. This reminded me of one of my favourite wiki moments. When the live news was interrupted to announce Heath Ledger's death two years ago, the friend I was with decided to look him up on Wikipedia. On top of the page was an amateur photo of a contributor's erect penis complete with shaved surroundings (I shall not include the screen shot). Clicking on a link at the bottom of the page to a list of other young dead people we were greeted by another image, this time of the same gentleman's undercarriage. Again shaved.
It is surely a glorious individual that upon hearing the news of a famous dead person runs straight for a camera and computer with a world wide audience in mind. God only knows how many people enjoyed the close examination of his junk in the minutes before the site was corrected but it must have been a lot. Sir, I salute you.

Footballers and slags post to follow.
      

"I hate noise" screams man

  
Elton John has revealed he is disillusioned with fame by er... giving an interview to a magazine. Just to make doubly sure he kept this exposure to a minimum he used it to describe the Christ as a "super intelligent gay man". No way that would get publicity.

This all reminds me of something. (skip to 6:30)


  

Good Grief

        
Grief top trumps is not an edifying sight. But somebody experiencing grief apparently demonstrates that they 'understand' your pain so it is therefore all the rage. I felt grief after David Carradine choked himself to death whilst tossing off, (you see, the trend setting Tories were into that way before Carradine and Hutchence made it look cool). So I now 'understand' your pain right?

Apparently not. There are, if the papers are to be believed, different levels of grief. For example, the pain felt from losing a family dog is slight when compared to the loss of say a sibling. On the scale of grief my Kung-Fu star doesn't seem to cut it.
I am regularly informed that the pinnacle of grief is the loss of one's offspring. Seemingly if this has happened to you, you have climbed the summit and are now free to 'understand' everything.

I wonder though if this top stratum of grief can be further sub-divided. Let's try these two examples.

1: A couple become pregnant. Following complications the baby is born prematurely weighing a tiny amount. After a week or so, before it has developed the ability to recognise and react to its father, to demonstrate personality or to form friendships, it dies. The parents try again and are successful in having another child. The distress of this incident is enough to cause tears when explained during a TV interview years later.

2: A couple raise their one and only child for 18 years. Through years of care-filled effort, love and expense they produce a young adult ready to make its way in the world and of whom they are rightfully proud. Later they receive the news that despite the top of the range body-armour they paid for themselves, their genetic future is now little more than a charred lump of flesh in a field hospital somewhere in Afghanistan. They strongly believe, and with good reason, this is due to a Scottish liar cutting the Army's helicopter budget and forcing their child to be sent on a journey in a Landrover instead. They are now too old to produce another.

Is there a difference in grief between these two examples? Does one trump the other? I would imagine so.

Perspective is everything. So we should be forgiven  if we struggle to feel GB's pain. He can cry us a river if he likes but history will still remember him as one of the more incompetent, vindictive and mendacious Prime Ministers in our history.

I didn't start blogging so I could comment upon the deaths of other people's children, but then I never ever expected to see the leader of my country exploiting such a death for votes. Really, how much lower have we to sink before this farce is finally over?

Cat got the Cream (and doesn't look too thrilled)

      
Cream drummer Ginger Baker seems very happy after marrying a lady 42yrs his junior. Hell, who wouldn't be? Looking at the photos though I am not entirely convinced that the bride is operating at the same level of euphoria.

Points to Note: Ginger's generosity in decking her out in one of his own T-shirts and the "post mock-execution" look the she sports.