Media

A slowly growing sense of hopelessness and impending doom

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Story #1: London’s burning. Again.

Story #2: The markets are in freefall and various economies are failing. Again.

Story #3: There’s been a massive increase in crime in rural areas since the recession started.

I don’t know what story #4 was on the BBC’s early evening news yesterday because I switched off at that point.

Each of the stories was presented in isolation, with fuck all by way of analysis or thought apart from a flash of Stephanie Flanders’ revolting green skirt.

It’s all linked, of course, and none of it is remotely surprising for those with half-an-inch of long-term memory. It happened in the 80s during a recession. It happened during the 90s in a recession. Just because we didn’t have a recession for 15 years doesn’t mean we should raise an eyebrow that the slash and burn approach to economics adopted by PBD and Gideon have resulted in exactly the same social upheaval that occurred when That Bloody Woman did the same thing three decades ago.

There are only two differences now.

First, rolling news channels have been invented. They’ve got to fill all that airtime somehow. The riots of the 80s just got ten minutes at the start of the evening news bulletin. Now it’s all riots, all the time. Breaking news is the new light entertainment.

Second, our leaders – the people in whom apparently sane and rational individuals were inexplicably prepared to place their trust just over a year ago – were absent. Whatever other flaws she had (and I think she had a couple), you can’t imagine a complete vacuum in Downing Street when That Bloody Woman was in charge. Even Bliar and Arrivederci Gordon realised some bugger had to hold the fort.

Everybody deserves a holiday. Even PBD and Gideon. (Or, more accurately, their families.) But, in real life, everybody in my department is not allowed to go on holiday at the same time. It is shameful beyond comprehension that the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary and the Mayor of London were all on holiday at the same time.

And I notice Chauncey Gardiner was on his hols, too, only deigning to come back from Devon’s Adenoid Extraction Recovery Unit AFTER PBD had announced he was getting on a plane to fly back from Tuscany. That tells you everything you need to know about our Leader (sic) of the Opposition.

What was our Coalition administration’s stunning Plan B while everyone topped up their tans? William Hague and Vince Cable. The former, a man whose leadership credentials have already been roundly rejected by the British electorate in a plebiscite; the latter, a man whose sole achievement over the past 15 months has been to demonstrate his lack of temperamental suitability for ministerial office. It shows how well the Don’t Panic Double Act went that first Nick Clegg, then Theresa May and then finally PBD dragged their sorry arses back to work like a half-hearted zombie invasion.

Gideon remains absent, soaking up the Californian sun. Rome burns but it’s nothing to do with him, guv.

Of course, the real salt is yet to be rubbed into the wound. Wait for it – it’s coming: the emergency police powers. We’re inches away from a police state. But then maybe that’s what our politicians have wanted all along.

And one final thing. What the fuck has this got to do with the Olympics? How many people were murdered in Los Angeles in 1983? Or Beijing in 2007? Grow a fucking pair. If you want to try to shift attention away from the fact that you have wrought this on yourselves by pursuing exclusionary policies, fine. But some of us would have preferred all along if the £9.3 billion or more of public money being spent on the Olympics had been spent pursuing inclusionary policies.

Not for the first time, the Minister quotes with approval Tom McRae:
Rioters of London, remember to leave some real estate standing so mortgage companies have a product to deny you.
I wish the poor shopkeepers luck in claiming on their insurance or getting small business loans. The wrong buildings are on fire.

(Thanks to Radio Nixon for the post title.)

Dupe process

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Yesterday Ofcom pleased its political masters by repealing laws passed by Parliament. It may have repealed a dodgy law, but that’s beside the point: it’s not how our system is supposed to work. No matter how dodgy a law may be, it is not a quango’s job to repeal it. It’s the job of legislators. And a powerful regulator should be independent, and not heel to its political masters – although anyone who followed the history of the regulator will permit themselves a hollow cackle at that principle.

Ofcom repealed Sections 17 and 18 of the Digital Economy Act by expressing no more than an opinion: the justification to support that opinion is absent from its report. Ofcom could have set out its case in terms of explaining the legal framework, for example, but it didn’t. It could have argued the costs and benefits of each approach to web-blocking – but it didn’t, it hadn’t even attempted to do that kind of empirical research.

Instead, on page 43, we learn that: “It is our current belief that the blocking of discrete URLs, or web addresses, is not practical or desirable as a primary approach.” What’s practical is not defined, what’s “desirable” is well beyond Ofcom’s remit.

Imagine the uproar if a quango had interposed itself to block significant primary legislation: Britain’s entry into the Common Market for example, or the minimum wage. All are quite complicated issues, after all. The blame isn’t entirely Ofcom’s; the regulator was permitted to do this because ministers wanted to find a way to bury the Sections without Parliament formally repealing them. Again, this is dishonest, and not the way laws are made or unmade. Ed Vaizey has been trying to get industry to agree to self-regulation which would allow him to announce their imminent repeal (most likely in the next Communications Act).

The Conservatives came to power vowing to abolish Ofcom, and declaring war on what they saw as Leftish academic poseurs, and business-hostile bureaucrats. They now seem to be at the mercy of all three. How on Earth did that happen?

Andrew Orlowski, Ofcom bows to Google lobby, The Register

How to call out Gideon without using the word ‘cunt’

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I love this woman:

I’m no economist but a blind man can see that we’re in the shit. Everything – and I mean everything – Gideon has done, from more tax on North Sea oil to cancelling defence contracts which provide the only jobs available in some parts of the country, has been a disaster. He won’t cut VAT, which would get spending up, and the only job he’s created was for Coulson – a decision which has so far cost 500 jobs, closed a £160m newspaper and may even bring down the Government.

I had expected so much more of a 2:1 history graduate and career politician with the face of an 18th Century French aristocrat whose defining achievement in life, at the age of 40, is that he changed his name because it didn’t sound Prime Ministerial enough.

I had expected he’d screw things up over several years, rather than just the one. Now, can anyone explain why he’s still in a job?

…even if she is a journalist.

I was seriously thinking about hiding the receiver

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The frightening pointlessness of rolling news channels was amply demonstrated once more last night, with BBC Radio 5 Barely Alive’s coverage of the Norwegian vileness.

First, the BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner decided to opine – apparently in the absence of too much evidence – that the events bore all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda attack.

“Seems a little surprising,” I thought. “A blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian speaker apparently acting alone doesn’t seem too much like the multi-handed al-Qaeda atrocities we used as an excuse to bomb Arabic-speaking little brown people back to the Dark Ages.

“But, hey. This is the BBC. They wouldn’t just – you know – make it up as they go along, would they?”

This morning I awoke to the news that the blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian speaker is apparently a Christian fundamentalist with a history of decrying Islamism and multiculturalism.

Yet this morning’s Today programme was curiously bereft of Mr. Gardner fessing up to the fact he’d been talking shit 10 hours earlier.

Worse still, the BBC’s rolling news radio network inexplicably thought that the appropriate way to cover the tragedy was to phone up and ask for a comment from Jan Åge Fjørtoft.

Mr. Fjørtoft is an intelligent and erudite Norwegian who speaks fluent English, but I still don’t see what expertise he can bring to the analysis of these events in his capacity as a former professional footballer for Swindon Town, Middlesbrough, Sheffield United and Barnsley.

Maybe he was the only Norwegian in the duty producer’s contacts book…

Ironically, Mr. Fjørtoft was bumped mid-sentence by the stereotypically hyperventilating presenter precisely because the producers had managed to find someone to talk to who actually had some involvement in the day’s awful events.

If these rolling news networks can’t actually cover breaking stories with a semblance of competence, then what exactly IS their point?

But then perhaps I’m missing the wider point. Maybe the only appropriate reaction to acts as senseless as those in Oslo and Utoeya is utter senselessness.

We’re all in this together

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To the Commons, where David Lammy asks PBD if the informality of his relationship with Rebekah Wade-Mitchell-Brooks was appropriate.

“I’ve never held a slumber party or seen her in her pyjamas,” wisecracks PBD in response. (Because cheap gags is precisely what’s needed at the moment.)

Wonder if everyone else in the Commons today can say the same, though…?

>> Big Questions <<

What people want to know this week

Which politico might be feeling a bit nervy this week as old rumours which linked him VERY closely to the News International CEO are circulating around disgruntled hacks in Wapping?

Ministerial apology

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For some time now, I have been pouring scorn on Edward Samuel Miliband, Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party.

In the course of the last six weeks I have described him as “floppy”, “awkward”, “clueless”, a “wanker of the first water”, “inept”, “pathetic”, “dreadful”, “abysmal”, “pitiful”, “awful”, “limp”, “anaemic”, “nonsensical”, “embarrassing” and “Chauncey Gardiner”.

With the benefit of two weeks’ hindsight, I now accept I was clearly, completely, unequivocally, dunderheadedly and half-wittedly wrong on all counts.

Ed Miliband’s superlative performances during the News International affair have demonstrated to all that he is a political giant, the likes of which we have not seen in this country since William I.

In just two short weeks, Ed Miliband has redefined the age in which we live. He bestrides the world stage like a Colossus.

Ed Miliband’s presentational skills put Apple to shame.

Ed Miliband’s leadership makes Genghis Khan look like a pussy.

Ed Miliband’s outstanding oratory literally scorches his audience, all of whom have to receive medical attention after his speeches.

In the space of a fortnight Ed Miliband has brought about an end to war, famine, pestilence and poverty.

In just 14 days Ed Miliband has cured both cancer and AIDS.

He has colonised Mars.

He has recorded and released a series of albums that completely shit down The Beatles’ throats.

The breathtaking achievements of Edward Samuel Miliband over the past two weeks cannot be overstated: Ed Miliband should not only win all this year’s Nobel Prizes, he should win them all EVERY YEAR FROM NOW ON.

Until 14 short days ago the Labour Party was hurtling towards obliteration. Now it’s heading for inevitable world domination, adenoids or no adenoids.

Ed, I was wrong and I am sorry. Your penis is enormous. Your balls are massive. Your taint is beautiful, no matter what they say.

I love Ed Miliband.

This is the end of the world news, sponsored by God

By BigBrother in All posts No Comments Tags: , , , ,

I feel sympathy for some of the people at the News of the World who are losing their jobs. I don’t like to see anybody lose their jobs (apart from That Bloody Woman, Bliar and the entire current cabinet, natch). Some of those people are truck drivers and printers and office staff and cleaners who have nothing to do with the “journalism” carried out by some on the newspaper.

And some of the others are honest journalists who have never had anything to do with anything that might raise an eyebrow, let alone lead to criminal investigations, prosecutions and/or convictions.

Those people do deserve some sympathy. With the best will in the world, there are not enough jobs around these days for everyone to be able to say on principle, “I won’t work for News International because of Rupert Murdoch.” People have families to feed, clothe and house. It looks as though quite a few innocent people are going to suffer for the crimes of a few and I am really sorry about that.

And it is sad that a title that endured for almost 130 years before Murdoch got his hands on it has met such a ridiculous end. To some extent, the last 40 years of the NOTW‘s life were something of an aberration in the context of its entire history. Like the Mirror and Mail before they went tabloid, the NOTW was once a respected home of investigative journalism. It broke a lot of important stories in those 168 years – and (whether it’s cool to admit it or not right now) there were plenty during Murdoch’s ownership, too, if you could find them within the tawdry tattle that made up the bulk of its content throughout my lifetime. The Observer will soon follow the NOTW into oblivion when Harry Potter finally gets his way and proud titles like that deserve better than the ignomy being thrust upon them by men not fit to fluff those who went before.

All that said – and I mean every word – it’s hard to feel too sorry to see any part of the News Corporation empire slide out of view, even if it is almost certain to be replaced very soon by a (no doubt equally tawdry) Sun on Sunday. Cor, just look at the tits on that.

But anybody who thinks that the corrupt and unlawful practices that were carried on by some members of NOTW staff are confined to the NOTW are deluded. If you think mid-market and highbrow titles don’t do that sort of thing, then look at the Information Commissioner’s report from a few years ago [warning: PDF].

If yesterday – delicious as it was in so many ways – is to mean anything in the long run, the promised enquiries and ongoing police investigations need to look at more than just the activities of some on the News of the World and drive that particularly malevolent strand of journalism back into the gutter.

If James Murdoch thinks the answer, “At this moment, yes,” is an appopriate answer to the question, “Are you absolutely certain that these practices did not extend to The Sun?”, he needs to be shown the error of his arrogance.

And if News Corporation and/or News International think refusing to accept Rebekah Wade-Mitchell-Brooks’s resignation is the right thing to do at this juncture, then Ofcom really needs to grow a pair and see whether its “right and proper” muscle still retains any memory at all.

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