The Telegraph’s poll: no need to add impudence to impertinence

 

Today the Telegraph has an interview with the “country’s top tax man”, Mr Dave Hartnett, urging householders not to pay tradesmen cash in hand, apparently because it only encourages them to avoid paying VAT.

““Tax provides the funding to run the country: hospitals, schools and everything else,” he says. “Every time someone pays cash in order not to pay VAT, the nation gets diddled.”

Quite apart from the fact that Mr “Dave” appears to confuse the concept of “the nation” with “the government” – if a tradesman diddles the Government out of VAT, that’s money he/she can then spend elsewhere in the nation – there’s a distasteful impertinence to the unspoken suggestion that we should all act as HMRC’s informal (and unpaid) enforcer-interns.

Adding impudence to the impertinence of this special pleading, the Telegraph website also has a poll, “Is it OK to pay cash in hand to tradesmen?”, which, if  you try to submit your vote at a time when telegraph.co.uk is off having a tea-break, a quick snifter, a nice lie-down or whatever (which seems to be most of the time), comes up with this:

Who are you calling nonce, kid?

 

Really, I don’t know what the mysterious owners of the Telegraph, the mysterious Barclay twins – Gilbert and George? Gilbert and Sullivan? Eric and Ernie? – get up to all day on their mysterious island hideaway of Brecqhou, but surely they have enough time to take a break from stroking their mysterious fluffy white cats to check up on what a mockery Tony Gallagher is making of a once fine newspaper.

Jeremy Clarkson and the freedom of an unfair press

Lavatory humour: Jeremy Clarkson and the modified Jaguar XJS

So, Jeremy Clarkson and his merry pranksters from Top Gear are in the soup again, this time over the programme’s”India Special” broadcast twice over the Christmas break.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the Indian High Commission is demanding an apology from the BBC over the programme, claiming Top Gear’s producer Chris Hale misled it over the eventual nature of the programme when seeking help in its making.

“The programme was replete with cheap jibes, tasteless humour and lacked cultural sensitivity. This is not clearly what we expect of the BBC. I write this to convey our deep disappointment over the documentary for its content and the tone of the presentation,” the letter from some mysteriously unnamed (at least unnamed in the Telegraph’s report) “diplomat” rather pompously puts it.

On the one hand, this report can be seen as just another case of the on-going BBC-bashing by the press, of which Clarkson et al are currently the main whipping boys. Now I have nothing against BBC-bashing: it’s an entirely honourable profession. But I do think it odd that Clarkson seems to be the main target, since his programme, aimed at petrol-heads of both sexes who enjoy a dash of schoolboyish, lavatorial humour obviously strikes a chord which a large section of viewing public, both here and abroad (it’s one of the BBC’s biggest exports). I’d have thought there were other, more legitimate targets in the BBC’s often skewed output that were worthy of attention. Quite why the Telegraph, Mail, Independent, Express etc so relentlessly target an ultimately lightweight programme which tickles the funny bone of such a large proportion of their potential readership baffles me.

Perhaps the fact that he also writes for the Sunday Times and the Sun makes Clarkson such an irresistible target, combining as he does the chance of not only a spot of BBC-bashing but Murdoch-bashing as well.

The other point worth noting that if the Indian diplomats really thought that the resulting Top Gear programme would be a po-faced travelogue extolling the beauty of the Indian scenery, friendliness of its people and the stupendous fabulousness of its automative industry, they betray a naivety and an ignorance that makes you wonder how they ever managed to pass the Indian civil service exams to become diplomats in the first place. Surely they must have seen the programme before? And surely that would have given them some clue as to what the likely result would be?

That naivety and ignorance is betrayed by the comments of one – again, curiously unnamed – diplomat to the Telegraph:

“We understand the free press – they are welcome to explain and to challenge as long as it is fair and above the belt. Can this pass as acceptable journalism?”

No sir/madam: you obviously do not understand the free press if that is what you believe. In countries where there is freedom of the press, media outlets may posit themselves as being “fair and above the belt” for whatever reason: a sense of smug superiority and higher purpose, perhaps, or simply because they believe that such a position gives them a commercial advantage over more blatently biased competitors.

But there is nothing explicit or implicit in the concept of “a free press” that makes being “fair and above the belt” mandatory.

Thundering: Bernard Levin (Pic: BBC)

The Times’ columnist Bernard Levin put it best in 1980, responding to the Master of the Rolls Lord Denning’s comment that “a free press must be a responsible press”.

Summoning his most orotund, magisterial manner, the man who often put the thunder into “The Thunderer” proclaimed:

It cannot be emphasised too strongly nor indeed put too extravagantly, that the press has no duty to be responsible at all, and it will be an ill day for freedom if it should ever acquire one. The press is not the Fourth Estate; it is not part of the constitutional structure of the country; it is not, and must never be, governed by any externally imposed rules other than the law of the land.

Tim Worstall makes a similar point:

…freedom of the press does indeed allow you to use fairness and above the beltness as a positioning exercise, sure, but it doesn’t in fact require you to do so. Which is rather the point of that “free” bit in there, d’ye see?

Indeed. We may humour ourselves that the best press is one that is fair, above the belt, temperate, reasonable, balanced, responsible etc – and of course, the media outlet we currently work for is all of these things, while its competitors are hopelessly skewed by hidden agenda and almost criminal bias – but they are not mandatory attributes of a free press.

Levin goes even further to question whether they are even desirable attributes:

…we [the press and media] are, and must remain, vagabonds and outlaws, for only by so remaining shall we be able to keep the faith by which we live, which is the pursuit of knowledge that others would like unpursued, and the making of comment that others would prefer unmade.

Stanley Baldwin’s famous dictum about the press barons – “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot” – is a good soundbite on the desirable attributes of power, but has nothing to do with the desirable nature of  a free press.

Keep Calm and Womble On

The Leveson hearing continues to Bore On for Britain, with live coverage on both BBC News 24 and Sky News, for heaven’s sake. As if anyone apart from Guido Fawkes and the usual politico-journo junkie suspects are really interested in watching minute-by-minute coverage from that sweaty oak-panelled room in the Royal Courts of Justice, where the testimony can hardly be heard above the ticking of the lawyers’ taximeters.

I’ve taken up watching Russia Today and Al-Jazeera to get my afternoon’s news fix. At least you get an idea that something important is happening outside in the real world.

It’s not as though we haven’t been here before. Whatever Leveson decides, we know what’s going to happen. Indeed, I’ve tried to interest Laurence Rees in a blockbuster TV series, tentatively titled The Calcutt Committee: A Lesson From History, but so far he’s not answered a single one of my emails. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t bring Nazis into it in a meaningful way.

Still, it’s good to see Fleet Street’s Finest have got their heads down and are still digging up the Stories That Really Matter:

W T Stead, eat yer heart out. Now this is a scoop!

Full story here.

When good subbing is essential, Part 96…

When you’re writing a scoop about educational standards…

telegraph.co.uk, 08/12/11

Health news nonsense from the Daily Churnograph

Drink a little wine, for thy stomach's sake

The Telegraph seems to be starting a health-news nonsense war with the Daily Mail:

Millions of couples who share a bottle of wine over dinner are unwittingly putting their lives at risk by underestimating the dangers of alcohol, a report has warned.

Some eight million British adults drink more than what is considered safe by experts, the study claims, raising their chances of suffering conditions such as cancer and stroke.

Many of those at risk are middle class drinkers, who are unaware that regularly drinking wine with their evening meal is damaging their health.

Women are at greater risk if they evenly share a bottle of wine with their partner because their alcohol tolerance is lower than men’s.

Tim Worstall makes the pertinent points about these “research” findings here. Of course, it’s not hard to see it as part of the Great Wowser Offensive, which started against smoking, continues with alcohol and “obesity”and will, if the usual puritan history repeats itself, end with targeting some modern form of witchcraft. It’s hard to know what the latter will be, but if I were Prince Charles, I’d be worried.

But this sort of pseudo-scientific reporting of press release flatulence has become increasingly common in the Telegraph over the last year or so (see Louise Gray et al) – to such an extent it really should be called the Daily Churnograph.

Personally, I don’t think the paper’s been the same since it was taken over by those mysterious oriental Barclay twins, Chang and Eng. I wonder what they’re up to, plotting in that mysterious opium den that is the isle of Brecqhou?

Polar bear attacks in Norway – I was right

Best avoid the yellow snow, too...

An expert agrees with my comments a few days ago about the fatal polar bear attack in Norway:

Norway polar bear attack: hikers need to be ‘armed to the teeth’

Modesty forbids any Sun-style boasting along the lines of “You read it here first, folks!” Merely consider it part of my ground-breaking worldwide news-gathering information service.

Of Breivik, Norwegian Christmas trees and Special Brew

How Norway says thank you for our help....

One of my favourite bloggers is Norman Tebbit, not because I necessarily agree with what he says, but because he has a refreshingly old-fashioned take on blogging. Unlike most bloggers, he’s no drive-by merchant; it’s obvious he thinks seriously about what he writes before pressing the Publish button but, more rarely, he reads the commenters to his previous blogs and then comments on them: fans, pans, droles, trolls and all. Unlike some bloggers, he doesn’t respond to commenters in the comments themselves: he summarises  and answers them in his next blog. I think he’s got a better handle on this blogging lark than the cutting-throat, bleeding-edge show-off freaks at Comment is Free.

In his blog tonight, apropos the Breivik massacre, he says this:

 I thought that just as the Norwegian people send us a Christmas tree every year in thanks for our support during the War, the suggestion that we might send them a tree to symbolise our feelings for them at this time made sense.

Well, I thought: thank goodness this tragedy occurred in Norway and not in Denmark. Because the Danish thank-you present for our help in World War II was Carlsberg Special Brew.

...and how Denmark said thanks (pic: http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk)

Winston Churchill, who had strong and well-informed feelings about these matters, apparently expressed the opinion that no lager was strong enough for him. Come the fall of Hitler and the liberation of Europe, the Carlsberg brewery came up with a lager which met the old war-horse’s high standard of alcoholic toxicity.

Thus was the free world bequeathed the joys of Carlsberg Special Brew, which probably also helped boost post-war production of brown paper bags.

If Breivik had gone berserk in Denmark, what drink would have appropriately marked our feelings towards them in their hour of national grief? Buckfast (15% ABV)? Bruichladdich X4 (94%)? That scrumpy I bought from a farm gate down in Cornwall (don’t know what its ABV was but after a couple of pints it was so psychedelic I didn’t care)?

I think I shall post a comment on Lord Tebbit’s blog and see what he thinks. If he’s sober.

Ignore this man at your financial peril

Quite so. You don’t have to know much economics – well, not much more than the supply-demand curves and a bit of Adam Smith – to recognise common sense when you read it. Indeed, economics is common sense, unless you’re someone like Krugman, favoured by the Guardian, Independent, EU, UN, NY Times, Washington Post, most of the Lib-Dems, too many of the Cameroons etc. All of whom urge us to borrow more money to buy ourselves the sustainable, hand-crafted, Fairtrade, low-carbon handcarts they’re taking us to hell in.

Joss Stone and shaping the 24/7 news agenda

Joss Stone: Arresting new single

Currently, both the BBC baby farm – sorry, BBC News – and Sky News are featuring heavily and tweeting louder than an evening chorus the news about blue-eyed soul singer Joss Stone and arrests surrounding an alleged “murder plot”. Both the BBC and Sky seem to rely heavily on that increasingly deranged and hysterical font of breaking “news”, the Daily Twittergraph. Even to the extent of  sharing the same phraseology and “spokespersons”.

Hmmm. Stone of course was the artist who attracted widespread opprobrium from the bien pesantry in the UK media in 2007 by affecting an American accent at the Brit awards. How dare she sound something like George Dubleya! Boo! Hiss! Gerrer orf!

But in these days of Hopey-Changey, that’s OK now, so it seems she has been rehabilitated by the North London chattering classes. Huzzah!

What none of these news reports thought fit to mention is that she has just this week released a new single, Somehow, taken from a new album, LP1, due for release on July 26. I’d have thought these facts might have relevance to the story. But obviously they were unaccountably not included in the original press release. Or, if they were, the journalists for some reason thought fit not to include them, despite finding a lot of other superfluous rubbish to include, including the telling details of  – to quote the BBC – “swords, plans of the singer’s home and” – a real gothic, Burke and Hare detail this – “a body bag”. Surely there was a phosphorescent-fire breathing hound somewhere in there? We are talking about Devon, after all.

Well, call me a cynic, but isn’t the coincidence of a singer coming back in from the media cold with a just-released single and an upcoming album, with a red-hot, hold-the-front-page story of possible kidnap and murder which might have been ripped straight from the pages of a Victorian penny dreadful enough to make even the Twittergraph’s fearless investigator of “quirky internet stories”, Andrew Hough, pause for thought? Maybe not.*

For the record, I enjoy Joss Stone’s singing. You can hear some tracks from the new album at her website. She sounds as good as ever.

Personally, I don’t give a monkey’s what she talks like at some arse-licking industry award show like the Brits. There, she could moo like a cow or honk like a flatulent goose for all I care. She certainly wouldn’t sound any worse than the journalists at the bleeding-edge of our shiny new 24/7 news cycle.

* UPDATE: Or maybe so. I notice at 1.16am this morning, the Telegraph website had taken down Hough’s original story, plus some other “related” stories.

The Indy’s magical monarchist moment

Her Maj’s historic (© all newspapers, airwaves, bandwidth) to Ireland dominates the front pages of the heavies today, but one particularly stood out from the newspaper rack I passed this morning.

Most went for the traditional “beautiful handbag and smiling hat” pictures. The Times:

The Guardian:

The Torygruff takes another tack, going for a deep, tightly cropped headshot, but none too successfully:

(Instead of looking out of the page, if she had been facing the other way, toward the lead story on les travails de Huhne, it might explain what she’s laughing at.)

But best of all for its unusual, striking treatment and its witty pairing one historic event with another is The Independent:

Excellent treatment, though maybe the headline should have read ‘One small step for a Ma’am’

I’m not sure how this will play with the Indy’s kneejerk anti-monarchist readers, but from a purely page design point of view, its the equivalent of the Crown Jewels.

 

The tabs mostly ignored the event, apart from the Mirror, which had this laboured and baffling sidebar pun:

Yer wot?