Saturday, August 02, 2008 

Weekend links.

The Scum, despite the complete lack of evidence is continuing to keep up the pretence that Barry George is guilty of the Jill Dando murder: their crime editor Mike Sullivan, known for being incredibly close to the police, producing 10 supposed facts which weren't presented to the jury.

George's conviction for attempted rape was common knowledge, in the public domain and also completely irrelevant. The same goes for his supposed "raid" on Kensington Palace. Incredibly weak also is the supposed evidence for his obsession with celebrity blondes - he had some videos which had blonde celebrities on them, amazing! George was a hoarder, and had up to 800 newspapers in his home whem it was raided by police. Some just happened to have Diana in them, although it's true he was one of the first to lay flowers after her death. The neighbour's allegation that he was always talking about Jill and had a photo of him with her goes against all the other evidence from others that he had never mentioned her, and the police never found any such photograph, faked or otherwise. The estate agent link is so weak as to be completely worthless. The police successfully contaminated a piece of forensic evidence and then have the audacity to complain about it being ruled inadmissible. George was in the street on the day - but hours before Dando was murdered! Prison cell confessions should always be considered as highly dubious, especially considering George's mental state, and the "lookalike's scare" is just laughable.

Also worth comparing is the Scum article on a latest civil liberties human rights outrage from Iraq with the Guardian's rather more staid and detailed version.

Elsewhere:

Polly Toynbee loses her head completely over David Miliband. Mr Eugenides and Jamie respond.

Centre Right wonders whether the incoming Conservative government will save us from the scourge of anti-British left-wing multiculturalist novels and authors. donpaskini points and laughs.

The Orwell Prize will be posting extracts from Orwell's diaries starting from August the 9th, 70 years on exactly from when they were written.

Penny Red on being stared at and regarded as a sexual object. As someone who suffers from the tendency to gawp, and subjected two unfortunate young women to a daily performance of such pathetic inadequacy and doubtless made their lives far more uncomfortable than they should have been, to put it mildly, it's instructive to read exactly how it does feel. As the Manics (or Richey James Edwards at least) put it, beauty is such a terrible thing.

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8/02/2008 10:16:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Justice at last for Barry George, but still none for Jill Dando.

Did anyone, except for the Metropolitan police, the lawyers at the Crown Prosecution Service that authorised the original charge, 10 members of the original jury, and the judges that rejected his first appeal believe that Barry George was guilty of the murder of Jill Dando? Perhaps a better question now would be how many of those aforementioned organisations and individuals still believe that Barry George *is* guilty of the murder of Jill Dando.

For it certainly seems that the police and the CPS, despite everything, continue to be willing to defend their horlicks of a case, even after it has finally been proved to have been one of the most rotten and circumstantial to have come before a court in recent times. The only evidence that even slightly linked George to Dando were the single particle of "firearms residue discharge" found in one of his jacket pockets when his home was searched, evidence which was later ruled inadmissible because of the potential for contamination, and a single fibre found on Dando's raincoat, which the prosecution claimed came from a pair of C&A trousers found, again, when they searched George's flat.

George, like others before him, such as Colin Stagg and Stephen Kiszko, seems to have been picked up for little other reason than the fact that he was considered to be the local oddball. George certainly was weird: as a result of both his low IQ and a personality disorder, he went through a phase of passing obsessions, one of which during the early 80s was with guns and militaria. Later he became infatuated with Queen, and regularly claimed to be Freddie Mercury's cousin, going so far as to change his name by deed poll to Barry Bulsara. He also, as the court heard, followed local women and took photographs of them, on a number of occasions harassing them to such an extent that they either became frightened or agitated. During the 80s he was imprisoned for attempted rape, a crime he pleaded guilty to, and a neighbour also claimed that he had assaulted her.

None of this however even begins to make the case that he was a murderer, let alone the murderer of Jill Dando. The murder weapon itself was never found, and apart from the infamous photograph depicting him in a gas mask with a starting pistol and the magazines, both from the 1980s, there was nothing to suggest that George had owned any weapons for years. What was clear was that the murder of Jill Dando was a carefully planned and executed assassination, of the type that suggests that it might well have been professional. The very last adjective you would use to describe George would be professional: tests on his memory, planning and carrying out tasks suggested that he was in the lowest 1% of the population. George also never hid his obsessions; he talked about them incessantly, to anyone who would listen. Not only did he never speak of Jill Dando, but if he had killed her, for him to both successfully get away with it for nearly a year and also not mention it to anyone would have been extraordinary. Memorably, Paddy Hill, one of the Birmingham Six, said that you wouldn't trust George to go to Tesco, let alone to carry out such a meticulous murder.

After 8 years, George has finally been proven to be completely innocent. Prison is bad enough when you're guilty and able-bodied; for George it would not be an exaggeration to describe it as his own personal hell. Like other victims of miscarriages of justice, what they don't want so much as compensation is an apology from those who first investigated them, who rubber-stamped the prosecution, and who, in George's case, have continued to defend the case even after they have been found to be not guilty. To do so however would be to admit that the police, completely stuck, did the clichéd thing and either decided to deliberately fit up the local nutter, or saw what they wanted to see in the flimsy forensic evidence which they collected. Some sections of the media have spent a lot of time of late decrying the Portuguese police for their bungled investigation into Madeleine McCann's disappearance, criticism which although valid in some places has also bordered on the xenophobic. Like in Praia da Luz, the trail of the real guilty party has long gone cold. You can rest assured that tomorrow London's finest will not be receiving the same levels of opprobrium that their investigation surely deserves.

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8/02/2008 12:16:00 AM | | | links to this post

Friday, August 01, 2008 

Jordan gets her kit off for the Times.

A couple of years back the Guardian delighted its readers by giving column space to Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof to talk about herself whilst one of the regulars was away. Giving Simon Jenkins a run for his money, she wrote of MySpace, her boyfriend and her dog.

At least Peaches probably wrote the column herself. You can't necessarily say the same for Katie Price, who's taken to the pages of the Times (yes, that's the Times) to bemoan the fact that she wasn't allowed to attend a polo meeting, told, despite paying £6,000, that she wasn't the sort of person they wanted.

Normally this blog would be completely opposed to snobbery it all its forms, including to a thick as horse shit glamour model who personifies everything wrong with modern culture. Can you however imagine a more suitable place for a missile or meteor to strike than the Cartier Polo International, at the Chinawhite tent, where those inside have paid £6,000 for the privilege of watching people who resemble horses ride horses while whacking around a white ball?

No, we couldn't afford to lose Jordan in such a way. There has to surely be a more fitting, violent and amusing demise for her to suffer. Like a knitting needle to the chest.

(I'm dreadfully sorry for this unfunny rubbish. Jenni Russell, incidentally, metaphorically eviscerates her.)

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8/01/2008 10:11:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, July 31, 2008 

Scum-watch: Yet more pathetic BBC bashing.

Never missing an opportunity to attack the BBC, the Sun is fuming over the £400,000 fine imposed by Ofcom for various fixed phone-in competitions which no one had a chance of winning:

ONCE again, the BBC is fined for conning viewers.

Ofcom’s ruling should shame everyone in the Beeb’s management.

In a private company, heads would roll. Instantly.


If the leader writer had so much as bothered to bring themselves up to speed on what shows were fined and for what, they would have noted that Ric Blaxill, the 6Music head of programming resigned last year after it became apparent that he had been complicit in one of the deceptions that took place on Russell Brand's show. The most high profile casualty of last year's series of "fakery" scandals was Peter Fincham, the controller of BBC1, who resigned after the "Crowngate" hoo-hah. It's perhaps worth noting that both Blaxill and Fincham, having resigned from their jobs in public broadcasting were swiftly recruited by private sector broadcasters, with Blaxill going to the digital radio station Q Music, where he is programme director, and Fincham to none other than ITV, where he is director of programming.

In fact, it's instructive to look to ITV and see what their response was to the fakery scandals which consumed them last year, for more than one reason. Not only did this private company, which the Sun claims would have instantly called for heads to roll, not sack anyone, despite Michael Grade saying that zero tolerance would be imposed, but it defended to the hilt Ant and Dec after it was revealed that they knew nothing about the underhand methods used on their Saturday Night Takeaway show on which they were executive producers.

There is of course, as almost always with the Sun, a huge conflict of interest here. BSkyB, itself around 39% owned by News Corporation, the Sun's parent company, has a 17.9% stake in ITV. As well as being in competition with the BBC through its satellite and digital service, it is in direct conflict now also due to its stake in ITV. Even before this was the case the entirety of the Murdoch press has taken every opportunity it can to attack the BBC, but now it has an even wider commercial reason to do so.

The BBC’s reputation for honesty and integrity is now in tatters.

Yet this isn’t a private firm. It’s paid for by you, through the licence.

Which means no one carries the can, and the buck stops with no one.


Completely untrue, as the Ofcom report and the resignations show. In fact, you could more accurately say this about ITV. No one there has carried the can, the buck has stopped with no one, and it directly profited through the flawed phone-ins, something which the BBC did not. Not only did ITV deceive and take for granted their viewers, it also effectively stole from them. The muted reaction to the original revelation of how ITV took £7.8m from its viewers deceptively was almost entirely ignored in comparison to the BBC's transgressions, which profited them nothing and were mostly always only gone through with to keep the show going.

Snooty intellectuals at the BBC treat viewers with contempt.

That’s why they lazily faked competition winners.


If the BBC are snooty, lazy intellectuals, what does that make their counterparts at ITV and Channel 4 then, who didn't just fake competition winners, but profited from their viewers' failure to be able to win as advertised? I'm pretty sure that makes them fraudsters.

Rivals like GMTV faced massive fines for their errors. Yet the Beeb gets away with a tiny £400,000 fine.

Because, as Ofcom accepted, although those who phoned in on some of the programmes did lose their cash, the BBC didn't receive any of it. Other shows indicted were Sport Relief and Comic Relief, where the money went to charity in any event. GMTV by comparison was fined £2 million because viewers spent up to £40 million on competitions they had no chance of winning. At least with GMTV two executives did resign, unlike those at Channel 4 or ITV.

It’s high time the BBC lost its divine right to YOUR cash.

And was forced to fight with its competitors to survive.


It's high time that the Sun got its facts straight, started declaring its conflict of interests, and stopped moaning when such innovations as the BBC iPlayer show their rivals' programming up for what it is: complete and utter unmitigated crap. In a straight fight, there's only one broadcaster who would win, and it would not be Sky.

P.S. This post makes up the first proper entry on the Sun - Tabloid Lies dedicated blog, set-up by Tim from Bloggerheads. Other contributors will be soon be revealed also.

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7/31/2008 08:09:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 

The Miliband tendency.

This was probably one of those days when the great British public, those who aren't sunning themselves or wisely ignoring the news completely, find themselves remarkably disengaged by just how insular and geeky political reporting and machinations are. The government's foreign minister writes an article for an national newspaper. Article is deeply average, but because there's not a lot of news around and because the media are desperately looking for evidence of a plot to unseat the Supreme Leader, article is bigged up until it is most certainly the setting out of a stall for a leadership bid. Pandemonium breaks out on the streets as the country tries to take in the massive implications of this latest development. The law lords ruling on the dropping of the SFO inquiry into the BAE slush fund for comparison, unless I missed it, didn't even make it onto the News at 10 on the BBC.

Admittedly, the said article doesn't so much as mention Gordon Brown, and the press conference this afternoon with Miliband himself fending off question after question about its provenance will have done nothing whatsoever to reassure Brown himself of Miliband's true intentions. Jeremy Corbyn probably accurately summed it up, saying:

"Look at the timing, and look at the article itself. We are right at the start of the holiday season, and it is hardly a deep and thoughtful essay."

To which you can only reply, quite. For if this is Miliband's unofficial start to his own leadership campaign, it's certainly a deeply underwhelming one. There is not that much that is startlingly wrong with it; there just isn't anything that's spectacularly brilliant about it.

In fact, its contents can be summed up thus: we [New Labour] must not assume that we've already lost, even if the polls show that we're going to be annihilated; we must stop boasting about how brilliant we've been, but nonetheless all our wonderful success occurred under our former leader, Mr Blair, who I just happened to advise until I became an MP; even though I've just said that we must stop boasting about how brilliant we are, that Mr Cameron's wrong about us being a broken society because look how crime's dropped and how all these other things for which I haven't provided evidence for have dropped since we entered power; now, that Thatcher, she was pretty good wasn't she, inspired Mr Blair, and both of them were radicals while Mr Cameron is just a lightweight; Cameron, he hasn't got any policies, except for ones fairly similar to our own, and highly reminiscent of how we won in 97, decontaminating his brand whilst being suitably vague; that's enough Tory bashing for the moment, now we have to prepare for the upturn even though the downturn still hasn't hit properly yet; something about the public services; The Tories just don't get it do they?; oh, and finally we won by offering real change, change which our current leader isn't offering, so get ready to vote for me instead!

It's hardly Kennedy, is it? Not sub-par Obama class, even. Miliband does, it must be said, deserve credit for finally saying something against Cameron and their broken society nonsense, but it's nowhere near strong enough, nowhere nearly powerfully argued enough, and without any real background to emphasise the point. He's also right that the Tory belief that everything can be magically solved by either involving the voluntary sector or the private sector is completely unrealistic, but it gets lost in the general weakness of the argument. If this is the best that Labour has to offer, it's hardly going to cause Cameron to lose any sleep.

In any case, Miliband isn't going to win the leadership through fighting the Tories, if that is of course what this is the opening salvo of. He'll do that only through making the case that he can learn the lessons of the Blair and Brown years, the mistakes and the successes, and at the moment he only seems to have taken the positives from the Blair era and the negatives from the Brown era. As undoubtedly a Blairite and not a Brownite, that isn't surprising, but if there is one thing that Labour needs, it's someone who can either unite both wings, or can tell one wing once and for all that they can go and swivel, and if they like being right-wing so much, they can join the Tories and reign in perpetuity if they so wish.

Also more than apparent is that Labour continue to underestimate both Cameron and the Conservative resurgence. As addressed previously, for a while you could call Cameron a shallow salesman without any policies, but it simply isn't accurate any longer and just won't wash. Miliband is wise enough to realise that the attack has to be harder, but he doesn't seem to have recognised yet exactly what the Conservatives are doing, which is bizarre, because it's exactly what Labour was doing in the run-up to 97, when Miliband was none other than Blair's head of policy. Despite my dismissal of it last year, I've been devouring the Alastair Campbell diaries (which sums up just how sad I am, really), and what you can instantly note is that either Coulson or someone in the Tory camp has been taking notes right from it. The difference is that unlike New Labour, the Tories, rather than being positive, as they were with "things can only get better," Britain deserves better and other vacuous soundbites which didn't do down the country but rather the party of government, has decided to be negative but still keep with the same overall message. Britian is broken, things are pretty grim, but the Conservatives, rather than the washed-up and out of ideas Labour party are the only ones that can fix it. The New Labour victory was built, exactly as Cameron is doing now, on "decontaminating the brand", which came through Clause 4 and removing almost anything truly out and out left-wing from the agenda. The Tories are doing the same, but are throwing out the right-wing message now because they're confident enough that they'll win in any case.

There, for all to see, is Labour's biggest failure, and also its betrayal. In being so desperate to win, they abandoned their core and are now reaping what they sowed. The Conservatives, realising what they did wrong, have learned from that mistake. First make yourself electable, but don't become so obsessed in doing so that you forget what you're actually for. Miliband is right in one thing, which is that it is still feasibly possible, if remote, that Labour can win the next election. It'll just take far more courage and real change, not just the phony change so far offered by both himself and Brown, for that to happen.

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7/30/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

A victory for the arms dealers, the kleptocrats and the government.

It's been buried thanks to the oh so exciting David Miliband article in the Grauniad, but the House of Lords today made a ruling which will potentially affect the rule of law and justice in this country for decades to come. Overruling Lord Justice Moses and Sullivan, who had came to the decision that the Serious Fraud Office had acted unlawfully in dropping the investigation into the BAE Systems slush fund, after the Saudis threatened not just to withdraw their co-operation on counter-terrorism, but also specifically made the chilling comment "that British lives on British streets" were at risk were it not be stopped, the law lords have very narrowly decided that the SFO director was acting lawfully.

Unlike Moses and Sullivan, the law lords have taken the view, like the government, that such threats are either a "matter or regret" or a "fact of life". It doesn't matter how outrageous the threats were, how if they had been made by a British citizen that he could have been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice, as both the attorney general and Robert Wardle followed the correct procedures in deciding to drop the case, the Royal Courts of Justice were wrong in declaring that the initial decision was unlawful.

Legally, this can be understood and accepted. It however frightfully ignores the much larger, bigger picture: that the UK government was to all intents and purposes being blackmailed by one of its supposed allies. That is of course if we accept that the threats were to be followed through, which in itself is by no means clear. Even if the Saudis had withdrawn their counter-terrorism co-operation, all such information is now pooled between the main intelligence agencies, meaning that the CIA for one would have forwarded it on to MI5/6 as a matter of course. To give the impression that this threat was more real than it was, the Saudi ambassador expressly made the statement that "British lives on British streets" were at risk if the inquiry was not dropped. Rather than tell the Saudis to get off their high horse and make clear that due to the separation of powers such an investigation could not be called off by politicians, the government meekly gave in, as Moses and Sullivan initially ruled. Robert Wardle, the director of the SFO, had little choice but to cancel the inquiry, as it was clear if he didn't the politicians, including the attorney general, would go ahead and do so anyway.

It takes a moment to digest exactly what sort of precedent this sets. This ruling more or less means that any foreign power, whether an ally or not, can threaten our national security whether directly or indirectly in any case where one of their citizens or otherwise is being tried or even investigated, and we the citizens can do absolutely nothing to challenge the government if it decides that such threats are serious enough to drop that investigation or trial, as long as they have acted appropriately, as the law lords decided Wardle and Lord Goldsmith had. Say that by some miracle or another that the man accused of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, Andrei Lugovoi, was captured and to be put on trial. Russia wouldn't even have to necessarily threaten violence to stop the trial, all it would have to do is threaten to sever ties on helping with national security, or to not pass on information it has on terrorist activities, and the government could therefore conclude that as more lives than just one are being threatened, it would be perfectly lawful for the prosecution of Lugovoi to be dropped.

In practice, it's unlikely that such an extreme case would ever occur. No, what instead is apparent here that from the very beginning the government wanted the SFO inquiry into the slush fund dropped, not because the Saudis were making threats, but because BAE themselves wanted it dropped. It's been established time and again that BAE may as well be a nationalised company, such is the power it has over ministers. The Guardian's expose which initially altered the authorities to the slush fund connected with the al-Yamamah deal was severely embarrassing, even if it didn't have New Labour's fingers all over it. It proved what long been suspected: that BAE and the government had provided the Saudis with massive sweeteners so the deal went ahead, potentially over a £1bn in bribes, which enabled Prince Bandar to buy a private jet, and which was also spent on prostitutes, sports cars and yachts among other things. All of this is helped along through massive public subsidy: up to £850m a year. In other words, we are directly funding the Saudi royal family's taste in whores and vehicles, while its people suffer under one of the most authoritarian, discriminatory and corrupt governments in the world. Despite everything else, it really is all about the arms deals and the oil. The government got its way because it realised it could rely on the spurious defence of "national security". Moses and Sullivan didn't fall for that. The law lords don't either, and one of them, Baroness Hale, even made clear that she was very uncomfortable with having to overrule them, but had little legal option other than to.

The government response to the initial ruling, which understandably horrified them, was to completely ignore it except to appeal against it. There doesn't seem to have been any reaction today either. The groups that brought the initial challenge, CAAT and Corner House were far from silent:

Nicholas Hildyard of The Corner House said:

"Now we know where we are. Under UK law, a supposedly independent prosecutor can do nothing to resist a threat made by someone abroad if the UK government claims that the threat endangers national security.
"The unscrupulous who have friends in high places overseas willing to make such threats now have a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card -- and there is nothing the public can do to hold the government to account if it abuses its national security powers. Parliament needs urgently to plug this gaping hole in the law and in the constitutional checks and balances dealing with national security.
"With the law as it is, a government can simply invoke 'national security' to drive a coach and horses through international anti-bribery legislation, as the UK government has done, to stop corruption investigations."

Symon Hill of CAAT said:

"BAE and the government will be quickly disappointed if they think that this ruling will bring an end to public criticism. Throughout this case we have been overwhelmed with support from people in all walks of life. There has been a sharp rise in opposition to BAE's influence in the corridors of power. Fewer people are now taken in by exaggerated claims about British jobs dependent on Saudi arms deals. The government has been judged in the court of public opinion. The public know that Britain will be a better place when BAE is no longer calling the shots."

This ruling, as if it needed stating again, is far, far more serious than last week's involving Max Mosley. The media however on this case, with the exception of the Guardian or Independent fully supported the government's craven surrender, and will do the same over today's decision. When it personally affects them and their business models they will scream and scream until they're sick; when it potentially means, however spuriously, that "lives are at risk", they jump straight behind the government, and, of course, the money. Such is how democracy in this country works. The rule of law, justice being blind and everything else associated always comes second.

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7/30/2008 09:11:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, July 29, 2008 

Reality television, self-destruction and Jodie Marsh.

It's been alluded to in the press a few times of late, but it's worth dredging up here yet again as an example. In the very first episode of I'm Alan Partridge, in a desperate attempt to get a second series of his chat show, Knowing Me, Know You, Alan pitches a variety of brain dead concepts for programmes at the commissioning editor, including, most famously, Monkey Tennis. First shown back at the tail-end of 1997, in those intervening 11 years the idea no longer looks so absurd. In fact, if you set it up like the idea that if you give enough monkeys enough typewriters and enough time they'll eventually write Shakespeare, but instead give them enough racquets, enough balls and enough time, compared to Big Brother it would be exciting beyond belief. Will the monkeys ever play a rally, serve an ace or master the backhand smash? Tune in tomorrow just in case they do!

Commentators have been writing the obituary for reality television for almost as long as it has existed. At the weekend, supposedly prompted by the fact that Australia has cancelled Big Brother and that ratings for the show have fallen to 3 million (which is in fact the fairly average amount the show has been getting for the last couple of years) Rachel Cooke in the Observer went to investigate its health. While her article covers all the bases and is one of the better pieces on the genre's continuing lifespan, the most fascinating part is the interview with Jodie Marsh, who along with Jordan and Kerry Katona (both of whom existed prior to their forays onto reality television, but whom vastly improved their profiles due to it) is probably the other most recognisable female face which the shows have bequeathed us.

Marsh is a conundrum for the simple reason that unlike so many others who have attempted to shoot to fame on the coat-tails of the latest invasive camera show, she is quite clearly of above average intelligence. She could, if she was prepared to put effort into it, be something far other than the sum of her current parts, which include comedy sized breasts (paid for by one of the weekly one-handed lads' mags), comedy sized lips (courtesy of a Five show) and an apparently unfixable nose, which she broke whilst playing hockey at school. Instead, she's plunged herself into the world of reality television, not because she wants to just be famous, although that's part of it, but because she wants to be rich.

The trouble is that Marsh is a walking example of the maxim that money can't buy you love or real friends. It doesn't help that, judging by this interview and past ones, she seems to be thoroughly unpleasant and self-absorbed beyond belief, but again, that also hasn't prevented others from rising up the greasy pole. No, what overwhelmingly hits you reading the conversation between her and Cooke is the fury which seems to be sitting just beneath her skin. Also apparent is that this all too overwhelming anger is not just directed against those who have either slighted her or who she's worked with and thinks have taken advantage of her, but also against herself. The woman who formerly boasted of the fact that her breasts were real while Jordan, her erstwhile rival's, were not, has since had those same implants inserted into her already generous bosom. How else can you describe her decision to continue with such programmes as "Jodie Marsh: Who'll Take Her Up the Aisle", the inference being that not just will the husband she's looking for take her hand in marriage, but also be allowed to, as James Joyce's wife once begged her husband, "bugger [her] arseways," fitting neatly into that very modern, pornographic obsession and fetish that anal sex, probably because of the power it gives the male whilst giving the female none of the pleasure, is far superior to stuffy normal vaginal intercourse. It's hard not see, without getting too psychoanalytical, that Marsh's behaviour is self-harm on a scale which is far beyond what we usually associate with those who cut or otherwise hurt themselves, either as a cry for help or to "help", as they see it (and I include myself in this) with getting their pain out, while also providing all too vivid physical wounds to go with the mental ones.

Some will doubtless look at Marsh and feel that the blame rests purely on her own shoulders for the way she's lived her life. She has entered freely into the shows she's taken part in, knowing full well that she will be used just as much as she uses the producer's money afterwards. Unlike the aforementioned Jordan and Katona however, the difference between them and her is all too obvious to see: while both of them have been advised and have agents which have steered them reasonably effectively, with Katona a customer of Max Clifford, Marsh has for one reason or another relied purely on her own wits. They have ensured that their clients have not become the victim, or the one who is primarily being used; Marsh instead has made a whole host of terrible decisions, and has been fed on parasitically instead of making the deals that the others have.

In this, Marsh is perhaps the summation and ultimate tragedy not just of reality television, but of the way the tabloid media and culture works. Bullied at school, as she sets out in the interview, she sought solace in the thought of becoming famous, as none of the woman on the front pages of the men's magazines could ever be accused of being ugly. She then swiftly contradicts herself, making clear that no one should judge her on how she looks; yet it was her desire not to be that led her onto those self-same magazine covers. After all, how could she not be beautiful? She is little less than a walking fuck doll, the supposed male fantasy: blonde, large breasts, even if not real, luscious lips, and with a mind as filthy as a dirty protester's cell. Yet none of these things have made her happy. None of these things have brought the real success she craves. And very few men except a former boyfriend of Jordan's seem to want to go near her.

Perhaps, apart from her own bad decisions, the real reason why Marsh has not achieved the success of her rivals is that she embarrasses those who have made the rest of them. They're the ones who have set-up the rules, created the celebrity culture, and shoved all of this down our throats, yet Marsh's chutzpah and path of self-destruction is too much for them. She is simply too much; she's tried too hard, and she's followed all the rules far too closely. She is, in short, a monster of their own creation, and that repels them.

I'm not one of those indulges the view that this part of our culture instantly means that we have an entire generation of Jodie Marshes waiting in the wings to join her once they reach the required age. What is of concern however is that those who have grown up with reality television and what some call the raunch culture have not yet reached their coming of age, so we do not yet know what the overall effect will be. While I disregard the view that watching violence encourages violence, as it is hardly ever provided as aspirational, what is clear is that there is peer pressure amongst teenage girls, bullied perhaps like Marsh was, to look like the young women on this week's Zoo or Nuts, to act almost purely as their walking fantasies, indulging their every whim. As the National Post article I linked to at the weekend said, how did we know when first embracing "low culture" that it would become the only culture? It's not entirely true of course; there are other role models, other cultures, other trends. It's just that it's this one that seems so prevalent, and the one which is undoubtedly the most pernicious and troubling. Jodie Marsh, in her misery, is a warning, and might well be reality television's real lasting legacy.

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7/29/2008 09:32:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Holidaying in your own misery.

I do realise that it's the silly season and that means that almost anything is far game when it comes to filling up the newspaper, but is it possible we could do without the fatuous, shallow or attempting to be humourous analysis of just what Gordon and Sarah Brown and David and Samantha Cameron are invoking through their choice of dress and poses? Yes, they're partially to blame for letting the photographers take the shots in the first place, but they're probably doing it with the proviso that they then fuck off and leave them alone for the rest of their holiday.

It's almost enough to make you wistful of the days where the Blairs denied the publication of where they'd gone on security grounds. Their two-fingers up message to anyone who thought it was tacky to stay with one of the biggest political crooks of all time, or to make use of the Cliff Richard villa was at least fundamentally honest; we don't care what you think and we'd rather you left us alone for at least a couple of weeks a year. You can't help but get the feeling this might yet be repeated once the Camerons are safely in 10 Downing Street.

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7/29/2008 08:49:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, July 28, 2008 

Brown should go with dignity.

It seems almost perverse, only slightly more than a year after he finally took the job, to be suggesting that it is already time for Brown to relinquish it, but events have swung both so swiftly and decisively against him that is quickly looking as though it's the only option remaining. Governments which are beset by in-fighting and plotting, and that is undoubtedly what is now happening within the Labour party, on a scale probably not even seen during the days of the supposed September letter writing plot against Blair in 2006, do not last long, and despite "big beasts" such as John Prescott and others calling for the plotters to take a holiday, that is clearly not what has happened.

Brown faces essentially three options. The first is that he decides to stand down now and allows a leadership contest to take place, without the need for bloodshed or the sort of fallout which many argue destroyed the Conservatives almost up until the election of David Cameron, even if they did subsequently win the 1992 election after Thatcher was forced out. The second is that he is overthrown, or forced to go, probably through either Jack Straw or Geoff Hoon telling him that he has lost the confidence of the party. The third is that he toughs it out, and whether or not he develops a strategy before the Labour party conference for fighting back, the end result will almost certainly be defeat at the next election.

Indeed, undoubtedly whoever leads the Labour party will be defeated at the next election. The only question remaining is how heavy that defeat will be, and whether it will crush the Labour party to the extent which New Labour crushed the Tories in 1997, or if the polls are accurate, potentially even more devastatingly. While we can only surmise and caveat predictions for what will happen, under Brown the party's defeat threatens to be as catastrophic as that suffered in Glasgow East. This wouldn't just be a disaster for the Labour party or the left in this country, but for democracy itself. The only real opposition to Blair for his first two terms was from his own backbenchers, and eventually, the media, and it wasn't so long ago that commentators were denouncing the elective dictatorship which the first past the post system essentially provides to those who win by a huge margin. Under Cameron the presidential style of government could be even more profound and autocratic; few of the Tory backbenchers seem likely to raise much protest at whatever their policies will be once in office. The one main sticking point might well be the area which so plagued Major: Europe.

In the interests not just of the Labour party itself, but in the balance of power then, Brown's resignation now would be welcome. There are still a few good reasons for why he should fight on, though. Beyond a shadow of a doubt there is no instant successor, or by any means any suggestion that they would necessarily do any better. None of them, whether they be David Miliband, Alan Johnson or even John McDonnell have either the profile or the support within the party itself to quickly become the presumed next in line. Then again, how many could have named David Cameron prior to his decision to run for the Conservative party leadership? While both he and George Osborne were lined up as being the next big things by Michael Howard, the big money to begin with was on David Davis, with his apparent failure to connect with the audience at the Conservative party conference, or more cynically, the media, considered to be the final blow to his campaign.

Another good reason is that Brown standing down would suggest once and for all that the Labour party has stopped caring about the running the country and is instead again fully back in in-fighting mode, further wrecking its opportunities. While there is a good chance of this taking place, and some again link Major's final downfall to his decision to stand down from the leadership and fight to be re-elected, could Labour really fall any further? The drift that has become impossible to ignore over the last few months has become all encompassing, and Brown shows no signs whatsoever of being able to turn it around. His last remaining defence seems to be that he is still best placed to bring the country through the economic downturn, and while this seems, after his "no more return to boom and bust" soundbite being well and truly exposed to be laughable, it still probably rings true with many. Stability rather than uncertainty, even if the stability is akin to a table with three legs, is always preferable.

Lastly, if Brown did stand down, whoever became the next leader would almost certainly have to call an election far sooner than the 20 months down the line which is currently envisaged. Not only would Labour be at an immense disadvantage because of its lack of cash, but a snap election would probably not give the party's fortunes as much of a chance to recover. One either next spring or next autumn could still see the credit crunch biting, and with Cameron remaining in the ascendant.

There is though one remaining reason for why Brown should go now. For both his own sake, and for the sake of his dignity. Despite all the jibes against him, and all the endlessly unamusing insults which fill the messages boards and comment sections, Jock/Bottler McBroon and worse, his departure now would be seen as tragic rather than pathetic. He would be the aspiring leader who once he had got there simply found that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and that with events conspiring against him, he simply couldn't manage to be the successor to Blair that so many hoped he would be. Blair himself said it was not ignoble to want to be prime minister, and while it might well be strange and weird, it certainly isn't. Furthermore, we've seen what happened as a consequence of Blair's refusal to go: the collapse in Labour support which Brown hasn't been able to bring into check. Brown must not now repeat that same mistake. Unless he wants to be remembered, increasingly, like John Major now is for tucking his shirt into his underpants and shagging Edwina Currie, he should recognise his weakness and let the next generation take over. Failure with dignity is not ignoble; failure without it most certainly is.

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7/28/2008 11:40:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

How tabloid journalism works part. 94.

It's the silly season, it's a Sunday, and you haven't got anything approaching a front page story. Do you a: put in the effort and attempt to find a new angle to the problems facing Gordon Brown? b: continue to go on alarmingly about the moral decline in society because a rich man who enjoys being spanked has won a court case or c: turn the most innocuous addition to a social-networking site which just happens to be a rival to the one owned by your own proprietor into a super splash?

There's just no contest if you're a Sun "journalist", is there? I'm not on Facebook as I don't have any friends, but even I know there's a whole plethora of "poke" applications, such as giving one of your friends a virtual sexually transmitted disease, as well as literally dozens of similarly hilarious things. There isn't however at the moment a moral panic about STDs, but there certainly is about knives. "TEENS VIRTUALLY KNIFE EACH OTHER ON INTERNET" still doesn't quite cut the mustard though; no, you have to go the classic tabloid route of getting a quote from an organisation or an individual who has suffered through whatever it is you're railing against. Hence the Scum made a call to the uncle of murdered teenager Robert Knox, and what do you know, he's disgusted by it:

“The stupidity of having this on their site is unbelievable. And they deliberately use the street term ‘shanked’, which is even worse. They are targeting the kids who are on street corners carrying knives.”

Yes, of course "they are" gramps; keep taking the pills. This brilliant quote however gives the paper their headline: ‘Shank’ website is aimed at the kids who carry knives.' And voilà, where there was previously no story, have we now got one for you!

To call this pathetic, shoddy and disingenuous journalism is to put it too lightly. Not even in the wildest of imaginations can anyone begin to claim that this glorifies or is likely to encourage anyone to commit a crime involving a knife; it's nothing more than a joke between friends. It does however serve another agenda, which is the Sun's continuing low-level campaign to run story after story which is either critical of Facebook or an article expressing horror about something that's happened relating to it, while the paper never deigns to mention its humongous conflict of interest. Indeed, when probably the biggest bad news story of them all to do with social networking websites was released last year, involving the number of sex offenders who had profiles on one of them, the Sun strangely didn't run with it. It couldn't have possibly been because the site was MySpace instead of Facebook or Bebo, could it?

Still, perhaps it was worth it for this comment, which is either a quite brilliant piece of satire, or something rather more frightening:

Some of you appear to be missing the point - young people are becoming acclimatised to knife crime as a normal part of life, the more it is treated like a bit of a joke the more it becomes subconsciously acceptable.

We have a group here in Sheffield petitioning to get the Sheffield United's nickname changed from 'the Blades', knife crime should never be associated with fun. Also we want the swords removed from the badge, it's only a matter of time before it progresses from knife crime to sword crime.

Probably even more hilarious though this weekend was the former Archbishop of Canterbury writing in the News of the Screws that the other victim of the Max Mosley judgement was public morality. On the same page as Carey's bilge you can read such enlightening and moral stories as "RONALDO: Blonde had sex with Cristiano in hotel room" and "VICE: Student had sex with 3 men while high on valium." Such reporting is not of course salacious, sensationalist or purely to make money out of other's behaviour, however depraved, but obviously to shame them into altering it.

You can far more effectively make the case that the News of the World for decades has been coarsening the public sphere with its warped sense of what is and isn't newsworthy, or indeed, that its practice of "public interest journalism" has directly led to the celebrity culture which Carey would doubtless decry, but none of this is of any consequence when you're doubtless being paid a hefty sum for only slightly more than 250 words. Perhaps even more humourous than this humbug though is those that have taken it seriously: witness Dave Cole doing such. You have to wonder whether even Carey was pretending to be troubled. The reality is that it is not Mosley, judges or the HRA or ECHR that are "dangerous or socially undermining" as Carey puts it. Dennis Potter never put it better:

I call my cancer Rupert. Because that man Murdoch is the one who, if I had the time (I've got too much writing to do). . . I would shoot the bugger if I could. There is no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press. And the pollution of the press is an important part of the pollution of British political life, and it's an important part of the cynicism and misperception of our own realities that is destroying so much of our political discourse.

The same can be said of the deeply immoral but "moral" Daily Mail, the same Daily Mail that thinks nothing of going after lower-class targets that have just lost their daughters, but which sympathises so deeply when life deals "their people" a bad hand. There is only one freedom in which Murdoch and the Mail truly believe in, and that is the freedom to make money.

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7/28/2008 09:34:00 PM | | | links to this post

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