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Where’s Blair?
There was a time when Tony Blair’s voice was part of the background noise of this country. But since he spotted the danger ahead and deftly handed Gordon Brown the reins of the chariot of state as it hurtled towards the abyss, we have heard barely a squeak.
But where is he now, at a time when he should once again be strutting his stuff on the world stage? With a fresh, tragic crisis in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, there is no sound from the Representative of the “Quartet” of interested parties – UN, EU, Russia and the US – a post to which Blair was appointed in June 2007, and in which he has not achieved any perceptible initiatives.
Clarkson - overhyped, overblown and overbudget
Yesterday’s Vietnam edition of Top Gear on BBC2 was one of the least entertaining, least informative travel programs I’ve ever seen. The idea that the chaps might have to ride into North Vietnam on a bike painted with stars-and-stripes to remind the people there of having the shit bombed out of them 40 years ago was so pathetically feeble and plain ill-mannered, I don’t imagine it raised a titter anywhere in the land. But poor old Clarkson (who, I know, is a nice guy from his choices on Desert Island Discs) has created a persona for himself of such dimensions his studied un-PC-ness has got way out of hand. Now Top Gear’s producer is grumbling that the BBC will have to cut his budget. May I suggest that the easiest way to cut costs at Top Gear would be to axe the two puerile tossers with whom Clarkson is forced to work. May is a bumbling oaf and Hammond is the most witless little git on telly. Are there really people out there that love them? Je ne croix pas.
Screws’ Bob-a-Jobson deplores royal protection of privacy
The News of the World’s quaintly styled Royal Editor (former incumbent: Clive Goodman – lately at Her Majesty’s Pleasure), Robert “Bob-a” Jobson, is cross, and dangerously ratty in today’s edition of the scurrilous arse-wiper.
Jobson has churned out a handful of ‘Royal’ books, stuffed full of the usual well-thumbed myths and cliches. Now the chubby oil-slick claims in today’s Screws that the Queen has ‘slapped a gagging order on all palace staff – to preserve royal family secrets.’ He says that over 200 royal staff have been told to hand back any handwritten notes, letters, or other items given to them by their employers while in service.
Oxford University Press rubs out Sin.
When the Oxford University Press brings out a new edition of one of its dictionaries, the publishers often choose to issue provocative press releases announcing scurrilous new words they have included, which usually guarantees them a crop of useful headlines and a few harrumphs from J Humphreys on the Today Programme.
Recently, though, publicity has been generated for the academic publishers by a mother from Northern Ireland. Lisa Saunders was helping her son with his homework (what?) and found the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary did not contain the words ‘moss’ or ‘fern’ (You might enquire why the child couldn’t spell these simple words, or why he didn’t know what they were, with such a diligent mother to advise him). This prompted her to review earlier editions of the dictionary – aimed at 7-8 year olds – from the past 30 years right up to the latest, published in November 2007.
Rustic feasting
Out here among the honeyed hillocks and mistletoed meadows, we like our seasonal office parties, too, you know.
My son Archie has been working in a cake-making place – a ‘home’ not a factory, I guess, since the cakes are home-made – and of a high order, mostly finding their way from deep Salop to Fortnum & Mason, Piccadilly. He has just enjoyed a Christmas dinner with eleven female cake-making colleagues in a rustic functio-pub near Bridgnorth, where several disparate groups were celebrating the Winter Solstice. Archie’s cake party was flanked by a festive gang of primary school teachers, and a group of cattle artificial inseminators (I wonder what they talked about?).
The News of the World run by bullies and liars - It’s official!
Yesterday the Employment Tribunal at Stratford, East London dealt a well-deserved blow to the already noxious reputation of the News of the World when they found in favour of former senior sports writer, Matt Driscoll. He had claimed unfair dismissal and disability discrimination by the newspaper; the tribunal will hold a further hearing early in the new year to determine compensation to be paid by the paper.
The tribunal heard that Matt Driscoll had since 1997 been a well-thought of sports journalist on the News of the World. He’d been promoted in 2001 by his boss, Mike Dunn to chief sports features writer. But incoming editor, Andy Coulson, had taken against him, and Driscoll was subjected to a series of baseless disciplinary hearings to force him to resign. As a result he developed a stress-related illness, on the basis of which Coulson and his managing editor, Stuart Kuttner dismissed him. Driscoll has been unable to work since.
Indie to be housed in the Mail’s back passage
Is this the place to put a healthily independent paper? Poor old Independent isn’t only inviting up to 60 staff redundancies, it’s being forced to move and take up lodgings in the Mail building in Ken High Street. The big worry is that they may catch something nasty from Muckraker Dacre’s diseased organ.
BBC mood control
When a Daily Mail-reading friend (yes, I do know people who read the Mail) told me Ed Stourton was being axed from BBC Radio’s Today Programme, I pooh-poohed it.
“That story’s a hardy annual in the Mail,” I scathed. “Whenever there’s a lull in media news they run a piece about Ed Stourton being sacked by the Beeb for being too posh.”
Bit of an exaggeration, of course, but broadly speaking true. While in the great tradition of Mail volte-face, last year they ran a story about 5Live’s Peter Allen not getting a job on Today because he wasn’t posh enough.
Parliament must clarify Privacy Law with clear legislation.
BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour last Saturday featured a short debate between Conservative MP Nick Herbert and Alfred (Lord) Dubbs about the use of Cl.8 of the Human Rights Act in recent privacy cases. Herbert, like Mail editor Paul Dacre, argues that Parliament, not judges should be making any new laws on invasion of privacy.
Notting Hill Git
It’s OK – this isn’t another blog about the domestic life of the popular young Leader of the Opposition or his Shadow Chancellor or, for that matter, Ozzy’s mildly disgraced younger bro, who, it’s alleged, is setting up a bookmaking business in his parents’ Notting Hill home while he can’t be a doctor.
I just want to use the headline before the subs on the Sun, the Mirror, or even one of the junior ShagRags get round to it.
My first response to our vegan's colleague's 'reply to all' email, was not one of shame that I, like the ...
Ed Sturton not sexy?! You've got to be kidding! 
My mother used to tell me that I'd be known by the company I keep. I wonder what David Cameron's ...
You pose an interesting question; here are some more questions for you, at random....... is Mandelson, like the Rothschilds, Jewish? ...
Glad to see the bile level are back to normal.