One of the things that fascinates me about journalism
is that somebody else – not often the person who is writing or speaking it – decides which way the item will be presented, slanted by need for audience, bias of producer, etc. and where we are up to in whatever story.
How can we go on being asked to be surprised at the depth of confusion and misinformation that surrounds Peter Mandelson?
It’s how he thrived. You don’t need to be a major wheeler dealer, gay, a fixer or anything else of any weight. Most of us know or have experience of somebody like that, from the “I just wasn’t quite sure about him” to the “No way, Jose!” If he were a builder, you’d use him once but never again.
Starmer is unpopular so he can’t do right for doing wrong. It’s only 2 weeks max since I read an article which said, as he was going to be trashed at the forthcoming elections, he might usefully use the time left to make unpopular decisions, he was so unpopular already it wouldn’t make any difference to him and it might to us.
So he makes a decision – that’s difficult enough in the existing system of what I’d call endless chewing – bang.
And is promptly accused of throwing the head of the civil service under a bus.
Point of reference: making a decision has (at least) two sides and one of them is that somebody or bodies has to be in the wrong. Unless you are the Faerie Queen. And the Civil Service runs the country, never mind who is in power.
If there is a service to be rendered to British public life, it is to revise the system by which we are governed because it takes too long. Or if it is to stay, we have to negotiate and accept a limited application of short cuts. By the time all the considerations are over, the situation is likely changed. Trump exploits this, Putin too (differently, same game) and Xi too.
I began this week thinking “Oh, stop …” Whinge, whinge, whinge about the state of our defences and no action. This lamentably reduced military ability has been achieved over many years- when Labour and Starmer were not in power.
There is an old phrase “guns not butter” and successive governments, lulled into false security by peace, ran down the guns and distributed the butter – better housing and schooling, better medicine, more money around … We are all very wise after the event.
The Armed Forces and the BBC have this in common: we over economised and wondered why the service faltered. Neither organization connected with us, the poor devils who finance them.
I can go on and on about television
(I don’t listen to radio – I confess I loved being part of it but don’t want to listen – never did) but I am bleakly cheered by more and more people complaining about the quality of scriptwriting and the gutlessness of production – an odd wonderful item is not enough when we all pay for this. The repeats are like echoes down a well, repeating themselves and the programming is dire.
The few good bits are tucked away later than most of the ageing population – which is the principal audience – stays awake.
By the same token, the endless repetition
of the same complaints, and the same shortcomings – whether political or artistic – wearies us. You can see why people switch off to football or snooker, to endless hooey about the Windsors larded with looking back at what once was,
But you can’t live in the past. We are in the present. And in that present, I have found joy in much better journalism that I knew existed which includes a piece about the Vice President JDVance and the memorable image “When you look … for Vance’s defining identity, the soul of his true self, there is nothing there, only a pile of receipts from… useful transactions.” (Gerard Baker, The Times.) Which provoked a wonderful conversation on the bus last week with a CofE vicar, a girl in a wheelchair, a friend of mine and me – exchange, laughter and handshakes.
When did you last hear or see the word “soul” in a political piece?
Annalog 