Hillary's downfall

I know yoiu might think yet another Downfall skit is is one too many, but this one really is fantastic (via Antoine Clarke):

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Worthy of Der Sturmer 

Jonathan Steele's piece in the Guardian today wouldn't merit any special attention were it not for the image which accompanies it. The piece is the usual drivel about US foreign policy being in hock to you know who:

Although he repeatedly outlines a general principle that the US should talk to every important player without preconditions, he does not apply this in the Middle East. In 2006, Obama blamed Hizbullah for the war with Israel and did not join the appeals for Israel to accept a ceasefire. Last month he criticised Jimmy Carter for talking to Hamas. "We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel's destruction," he said.

As I say, I'd not concern myself with Steele normally; his warped view of the Middle East is regularly trotted out. But this image appears below his piece:

The inference - not so much as inference as a statement screamed at high volume - is that Israel runs the US. The image is about as classic an anti-semitic trope as exists. Indeed, it's almost exactly the sort of thing highlighted by last year's All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism report (you can read the government's progress report here).

A think tank with which I am involved, the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, is carrying out research on just this sort of thing. As the report puts it (the work is being funded by DCLG):

Given the difficulties in clarifying the character of antisemitic discourse, the proposed research project aims:

To identify and illuminate the main component parts of anti-Semitic discourse, such as stereotypes, allusions, characterisations, prejudicial topologies and revisions of core antisemitic ideas

This will include an examination of how criticism of Israel and Zionism can cross-over into and become polluted by antisemitism through the expression or assumption of core antisemitic concepts.

The research will be published in September 2008.

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Plonk

In an otherwise somewhat sycophantic post about John Pilger, I rather liked this:

Once, it was said, Pilger had a house in Tuscany and invited some friends round for lunch. One of the guests sipped a glass of vino and said to Pilger: “Where does this wine come from?”

Pilger gestured grandly to his estate. “From the bottom of my garden,” he said.

Said the guest: ”Doesn’t travel very well, does it?”

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The serial killers (The Guardian)

I have a piece in the Guardian today about political memoirs. Here's an extract:

According to the rumours, Cherie Blair has received around a million pounds for her book and Prescott half a million. Nice work if you can get it, and lubricant enough to prise open the most tightly shut mouth.

But even if the Prescott family's other options for securing an income are somewhat more limited than the Blairs' - Cherie Blair is at the pinnacle of her lucrative profession, with a high-earning husband, while Prescott has no discernible skills to offer and a wife who does not work - it's not true that money is the only factor behind political memoirs. The first insider accounts of the Blair government, after all, came from Jonathan Powell, Blair's former chief of staff, and Lord Levy, his former fundraiser. Powell's advance will not have been huge, and he now has a well-paid job at Morgan Stanley bank. And Lord Levy is already a multimillionaire. Neither needs the money.

What they want is a hearing. Cherie Blair, Powell and Levy have had one thing in common for the past 11 years: they were regularly attacked but they kept - mostly - silent. Now Tony Blair is out of office the rules have changed, and they want to put their side. I suspect that they'd each have paid a publisher to produce their books if that had been the only option.

As for Prescott: far from keeping silent, his mangled syntax seemed to be a non-stop mechanism for noise production. But even in his case, I'm sure that putting his own side of things was important in his decision to publish.

...The real damage of such revelations is usually in the timing. Cherie Blair's extracts appeared on Saturday out of thin air - the book was expected in October. But when better than now to capitalise on Gordon Brown's collapse? In 1991, Norman Fowler published a famously dull memoir, Ministers Decide. It sank with barely a trace. Had he published it before Margaret Thatcher left office, while she was in political decline, even his modest criticisms would have had an impact.

My book was due to be published in the spring of 2005 but when news of Blunkett's affair broke (to my chagrin, as I had the details), I told the publishers that if we went for it now, we would have a triumph; if we stuck to the planned publication date, we would have a turkey, as the home secretary would be long gone by then. And so I rushed to finish it, the Daily Mail brought forward the serialisation, and 10 days later it was in the shops.

The key to these books is the serialisation. They turn a book into a news story. And they provide the real money behind the mega-deal advances. I made some money from sales but almost all my advance came from the serialisation. The same will be true for Cherie Blair and Prescott.

You can be sure that both of them will profess astonishment at the fuss being made. Those who use such books to wound or settle scores rarely accept responsibility for their actions. Blunkett's office, for instance, expressed anger and bewilderment at the whole thing, saying they had no idea what was in my book or that it was being brought forward.

Out of courtesy, I had contacted them to tell them it was coming out early, and precisely when each extract would appear. As for the content: months before, I had sent them the first draft and two of his staff had gone over it with me word for word, asking me to take some comments out - each of which I did (they have never appeared anywhere, and were far, far worse than anything which I published). They signed off on every other dot and comma.

You don't need me to tell you that, when it comes to political memoirs, there's always a hidden story.

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Ken for Mayor

No, no, no, no, no! Here's my theory (like many of the best, it's best on total speculation). 

Ken wants nothing more than to be host of the 2012 Olympics. And he still thinks he has a right to be Mr London. He'll be the Labour nominee in 2012. Just you watch.

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Overworked and underpaid

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Comments

A few people have written to me about comments, angry that their posted comment has been 'censored'.

I'm not responsible for comments being uploaded, but I've spoken to the powers that be and have been assured that only two comments have not been published in recent weeks - one supposedly naming two paedophile priests, and another labelling someone as a 'Jew hater'.

Believe me, if comments were being censored then I would not allow those such as the one by 'marvin' in my post on the Brussels Journal. But they're not and so it appears.
 
I think it's simply a case of technological error - that a comment might have been sent but hasn't been received.

Anyway, free to email me if a comment you've sent hasn't appeared and I'll look into it.

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The BBC thinks we are all morons

I wrote the post below about BBC Young Musician of the Year before watching the final, broadcast yesterday.

Given that it had been allocated two hours on BBC2, I assumed we would be allowed to hear more than the same inane rubbish broadcast during the heats. As if.

In days of old (yes, in this respect at least things really were better in the olden days) the programme consisted of the finalists playing a concerto each, some expert commentary, and the results. I have no idea what the ratings were, but why should that matter to a public service broadcaster?

Not any more. Yesterday's programme consisted of mindless chit chat with the contestants' relatives about how they would be feeling, some patronising intro and lame jokes (so lame that they were met with silence in the hall) by Aled Jones and five minutes or so given over to an instrumental solo by the contestants. As for the concertos, we are clearly all too stupid and hyperactive to sit and listen to a whole piece. So the contestants simply performed an extract from their chosen piece. (They had apparently played the full piece the night before, but the BBC decided not to bother with that as it would clearly have frightened away any audience.)

We pay for this. We pay, under threat of a jail sentence, to be treated as morons. We pay to have anything remotely serious reduced to pap. 

If the BBC was given charge of a three star Michelin restaurant, it would puree all the food and feed it to its customerrs through straws.

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More on the Brussels Journal

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The BBC's lamentable coverage of Young Musician

I've been catching up with my recordings of this week's broadcasts on BBC4 of the category finals for BBC Young Musician of the Year.  The final takes place tonight, but isn't being shown until tomorrow night on BBC2.

I'd like to be able to write that the standard is, as ever, extremely high. I'm sure it will have been. But I can't tell you that for sure because this year's coverage is even more  appalling than in 2006. Let's ignore the fact that it's been hidden away on BBC4, and take on board the BBC's defence - that BBC4 allows it to have far more time devoted to it (five one hour daily programmes: brass, woodwind, percussion, strings and piano). 

I actually think this is nonsense, because the whole point of BBC2 - indeed of publicly funded TV - is to provide this sort of programme and to make it widely accessible. If ever a programme was designed for BBC2, this surely is it. But lets accept the BBC's decision. Even on its own terms, the coverage has been abysmal. 

Each programme lasts 60 minutes - but the first 40 minutes (at least) of each programme has been devoted to fly on the wall profiles of the contestants, with barely a note of music to be heard. For five or so minutes, this might be fine; but 40 minutes? 

And then, when they do at last turn to the recitals which comprise the competition, we are not allowed to hear even one movement, let alone a full piece, in full. The extracts last a matter of seconds. And as if that isn't bad enough, the extracts are used simply as background to the jury's comments. We get to hear those in extended extracts, but the performances on which they are making their judgements, barely at all. Work that one out.

The BBC, of course, thinks its viewers are morons, incapable of listening to anything for more than two minutes, and that because classical music is dull, it has to find something else to tempt its moronic viewers to watch - to wit, the profiles of the musicians rather than the music they make. 

And to think that the main justification for the license fee is that without it, minority pursuits will be denied coverage. Utter hypocrisy.

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