Quis custodiet ipsum Custodem?
Peter Preston, sometime editor of the Guardian (and my own editor there for some 16 years) now writes about the media for the Observer (owned by the Guardian). Unfortunately, he no longer appears to grasp what he himself has written, let alone the journalists he writes about. In today’s column he writes that I (amongst others) wrongly predicted that Ann Widdecombe would be elected Speaker of the Commons:
If political correspondents (and editorial writers) want to play tipster, maybe you should judge them by Ascot’s standards. So who got the young stallion that the Mail now calls ‘Mr Squeaker Bercow’ right? Not Melanie Phillips in the Mail itself. She napped Widdecombe Fair, who was also the Times’s ‘temporary solution’. The Guardian wanted, but didn’t quite get, Sir George Young. Wherever odds were set and quoted - pretty well everywhere - Margaret Beckett was clear favourite. You know what they’d say at Ascot as they ripped up their tickets in fury. How could so many experts get it so wrong? But this is politics, and, strangely, we don't even pause to wonder why they missed the winner.
But I wrote nothing of the sort. In my Daily Mail column, I wrote that I wanted Ann Widdecombe to be elected Speaker. I did not tip her to be thus elected. I referred to the previous front-runner, John Bercow, having been overtaken by a new front-runner, Margaret Beckett, which was the situation at that point. Furthermore, I ended my piece by expressing scepticism that MPs would elect Ann Widdecombe. I said it was 'her moment' as she was the one candidate who would save Parliament from itself:
But whether Parliament actually wants to be saved is another matter.
In other words, I wrote precisely the opposite of what Preston says I wrote.
What’s more, he himself refers to the Times and Guardian ‘wanting’ Ann Widdecombe and Sir George Young respectively to win – but nevertheless similarly implies that the Times and Guardian thus called the result wrongly. Which they did not. So what Preston wrote makes no sense at all.
Maybe the very sight of my name still in print causes a red mist to descend in front of Preston’s eyes. Or else he’s just a sloppy writer with no concern either for accuracy or sense.
Quis custodiet ipsum Custodem?*
* Apologies for the rusty grammar!
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Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'Londonistan', published by Encounter and Gibson Square.
For a complete set of Melanie's articles click here
Melanie Phillips blog archive
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Nannette
June 28th, 2009 7:42pmI'm amazed Peter Preston didn't grasp the fact that as well as your good self, the majority of us WANTED to see Anne Widdecombe as speaker of the House.
We KNEW that MPs would never elect anyone who's squeaky clean with high moral standards such as Anne Widdecombe.
They obviously elected someone who, like themselves has their long snout deeply embedded in the trough the taxpayer provides for them.
Gavin
June 28th, 2009 8:18pmShould read: 'Quis custodiet *ipsum* Custodem?'
John Page
June 28th, 2009 8:29pmipsum (it's accusative)
L Itterator
June 28th, 2009 8:49pm"ipsum Custodem" not "ipse Custodem"!
Curabilis, cum de accusativo non est disputandum.
P
June 28th, 2009 8:51pmFeel compelled to point out that that should be 'quis custodiet ipsum custodem' (if you want it singular, that is: the original was 'quis custodiet ipsos custodes')
Mr Commonsense
June 29th, 2009 4:38amEt semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum.[Horace] The knuckle draggers of the BNP have the same problem with journalists. [Tr. And once sent out a word takes wing irrevocably]
Mark i didnt go to clare college either but rowan did
June 29th, 2009 6:56amForgive my ignorance of english but what did Ann Widecombe really mean when she said that Michael Howard had a touch of the night about him?
Pedanticus
June 29th, 2009 7:34amCurabilis, cum de accusativo non est disputandum.
... non SIT disputandum (come, come - cum cum cum subjunctivo non sit disputandum!)
Mark
June 29th, 2009 7:56amhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/963393.stm
She takes the right stance on most issues and Keith Hellawell if i remmember correctly worked on the drugs issue by making deals with the taliban instead of curbing usage. So of course when a war comes along the policies of the drugs csar become more or less useless unless youre a peace loving nazi that is.
I always thought the man was a bully and said so at the time.
Is he in the same club as general michael jackson perchance?
Andre
June 29th, 2009 8:05amNanette: the majority? I didn't want to see AW elected speaker ghastly idea - she's anti-hunting, opinionated and sounds like a attic-imprisoned maiden aunt - that said Bercow is an equally appalling appointment.
Jonny Mac
June 29th, 2009 10:44amGreat stuff. To really stir up comments on a Speccie blog, use Latin!
Sarah
June 29th, 2009 11:15amI know, I know, Mel. But it's not the first time I've seen a Guardian writer try to put words in your mouth. It won't be the last, either.
Scum.
sarah
June 29th, 2009 11:36amGood for you for outing this man. He is nothing but trouble.
Luscus Britannicus
June 29th, 2009 11:41amHad Juvenal ever met the Roman matronly equivalent of Ms Widdecombe the less well known part of the quotation might fit the bill :
" pone seram, cohibe "
For the benefit of those who, like Ms Phillips, read English rather than Classics, the translation runs :
"Bolt her in,constrain her " !!
Sam Armstrong
June 29th, 2009 2:40pmWell said Melanie. I remember exactly what you wrote and I only read it once. This man was obviously trying to take the proverbial.
Mister Christian
June 29th, 2009 2:45pmThere's more Latin here at
http://moralorder.mediumisthemess.com/
Well, somewhere...
James Murphy
June 29th, 2009 5:40pmNo, no , no - should of course read - 'Caesar adsum jam forte..' Any fooel no that.
John Edwards
June 29th, 2009 7:41pmAre there not more important things to blog about?
Suki
June 29th, 2009 11:05pmJohn Edwards, if you want to start your own blog, please do. But stop embarrassing yourself by clinging on to Melanie's coattails for an audience.
Peter Preston seems to just be lashing out at several papers and several journalists just because his rotten newspaper is losing so much money:
"The Guardian and The Observer lost £26.8 million before various one-off write-offs in the year to March 2008. The recession means that the figure will be worse this year."
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article6024879.ece
Why don't you celebrate that news, John Edwards?
How the hell does a newspaper like Preston's have the nerve to run media commentary every Monday when it can't even turn a profit?
Carl Gardner
June 30th, 2009 12:37amIt's amazing how often people confuse wanting something to happen with predicting it will happen. It seems ineradicable from human behaviour or at least from our social existence. I'm glad I learned this lesson early: I'll never forget how unpopular I was at school when I said I thought Moenchengladbach would beat Liverpool in the 1977 European Cup. Wrongly, as it turned out. "Gardner wants the Jeermans to win!", they shouted, within seconds of my forecast. It's just what people are like, I'm sorry to say.
fellow traveller
June 30th, 2009 8:54amSarah
He was wrong, which was sloppy. But it's a stretch to claim that two short jokey paras which point out that the Guardian got it wrong, as did almost everyone, make the him or the paper "Scum".
Is there some pattern of putting words in Mel's mouth you are referring to? Can you help with a couple of links? I'm open to persuasion.
Sarah
June 30th, 2009 10:23amCertainly, fellow traveller. Here is The Guardian's Jackie Ashley struggling to get Mel to say what she wants her to say and when she can't she just interposes words like 'disembowelled':
'Multiculturalism, she writes, "has become the driving force of British life, ruthlessly policed by a state-financed army of local and national bureaucrats enforcing a doctrine of state-mandated virtue to promote racial, ethnic and cultural difference and stamp out majority values". British nationhood is being disembowelled by "mass immigration, multiculturalism and the onslaught mounted by secular nihilists against the country's Judeo-Christian values."'
Why did Jackie Ashley break that quote for a handful of words to use the word disembowelled?
As I said, fellow traveller - scum.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/jun/16/media.politicsphilosophyandsociety
Luscus Britannicus
June 30th, 2009 1:08pmI'm not sure if the thumbnail detail of Plato from The School of Athens is intended to relate to the septuagenarian Mr Preston, but I do hope there is not even the teeniest bit of ageism inherent in the picture selection. Or is it just the extended finger that caught your eye?
fellow traveller
June 30th, 2009 11:12pmSarah
I posted a detailed reply to the interesting points you make but it's been swallowed, once again, by the amateurish posting/moderating system in use here. I'm sorry but I can't be bothered to do the whole thing again...
logdon
July 2nd, 2009 7:31pmfellow traveller
June 30th, 2009 11:12pm
How we suffer when returning to our point of effort to find that the effort was wasted?
I think rather than being modded they are swallowed in a huge basement area server in the bowels of the Spectator.
Then sold on to Peter Mandelson's database of state criminals to be dealt with at some future date.
Try doing the text in Appleworks or Word, then copy and paste onto the form which achieves two things.
One/ a complete view of the written page affording better para's, punctuation and less word repetition.
Two/ you've got a copy to then have another go without all the hassle of doing it again.
Reminds me of a story about T E Lawrence (of Arabia).
He was travelling by train from Oxford to his publisher in London with the complete handwritten ms for Seven Pillars of Wisdom. How, I don't even venture to fathom, but it was left at the station, never to be seen again.
So he had to rewrite the whole massive screed again. Seven hundred and four pages in the Penguin version.
That is dedication, even from a noted masochist!
Ann
July 5th, 2009 4:58pm"she's anti-hunting"
Which is only one of her many excellent qualities.