The Lowry, Salford and The Pitmen Painters

Off to The Lowry in Salford Quays, Manchester, at the weekend to see a production of The Pitmen Painters.

Written by Lee Hall, he of Billy Elliott fame, it is based on the true story of a group of miners from Ashington, who, inspired by a WEA lecture, took up painting themselves and became a feted artistic group.

It was a good production, funny, poignant, moving at times and definitely worth seeing. Hall has great fun with the language of the miners and the confusion it causes to their tutor. One memorable line to the bemused tutor being: "Ye dee dee ort deen't ye?" Trans: "You do do art, don't you?"

And when the brass band started playing Gresford - The Miners' Hymn commemorating the disaster that still resonates in Wrexham, you'd have to be an unfeeling soul not to get a lump in your throat.

But then came the touch that for me detracted very slightly from a great play. As the play finished the slides that had shown us the miners' works of art, turned to text, informing us that their hopes of a "University of Ashington' had not been realised. Their pit had closed in the early '80s, and that Labour had abandoned its commitment to workers' ownership of the means of production.

It was just a bit clunky, a bit like a great big hammer blow of political pointmaking, when so much had been concealed before in the story itself.

I don't need a subtitle at the end of the play to tell me the socialist miners of the 1930s and '40s might feel betrayed by the way the Labour movement has abandoned its principles.

I'm slightly suspicious of plays, films or books which tell a story and then rather clumsily say: "Right, here's the moral and here's how you should think about it." Let people decide for themselves having seen it.

Having said all that, it was still a great production and worth catching on its UK tour. It's on at Sheffield's Crucible this week.

Cameron has got me confused

I don't think the teaching of history, so often the cause of hand-wringing by those sections of the press who retain a devotion to the memorising of dates, has got so bad that we have forgotten who won World War II.

And even if the state sector lets its young charges do double glue-sniffing rather than list the King and Queens of our great nation, I suspect Eton would make sure its pupils know who was victorious.

So, that's why David Cameron's assault on the Human Rights Act has me a little puzzled.

You see, because it is based in Strasbourg, the European Court of Human Rights is therefore confused with all things European by those swivel-eyed sections of the media who cannot hear the word Europe without having an attack of the vapours.

The slight historical problem for Mr Cameron is this. The convention was brought into being by the British, to afford our poor European neighbours the same common law rights we had enjoyed for centuries and had just defended from the beastly Hun.

It was born in the smoking ruins of Europe and a central role in its drafting was taken by DAvid Maxwell-Fyfe, a Conservative, and a brilliant lawyer whose cross-examination of Hermann Goering is considered to be one of the greatest in legal history.

So, the ECHR, a Churchillian scheme to stop the Europeans sending each other to the gas chambers again, and drawn up by a Conservative lawyer. What's not to like about that if you're a Tory?

It must be because it's in Strasbourg. Perhaps if it had been sited in Bognor they'd be more comfortable with it. Maybe if it had been called the British Convention on Human Rights for our European Neighbours, they could have lived with it.

The Human Rights Act is nothing more than a restating of convention rights in English law. To repeal it will mean that UK courts no longer need to take the HRA into account. But, we are still signatories to the ECHR, so Strasbourg would still remain as a court of ultimate appeal on human rights.

Unless of course Cameron plans to withdraw from the ECHR. An unthinkable proposition that would put us on a par with pariah regimes such as North Korea.

And not, I would suggest, a fitting way to treat the legacy of Winston Churchill.

Simon Kelner's farewell to the Neath Guardian

Simon Kelner, editor-in-chief of the Indy and Independent on Sunday, started as a trainee on the Neath Guardian.

Here in an article printed in its last edition he remembers the beginning of his career and mourns the closure of his first paper. Reprinted in Roy Greenslade's Guardian blog

The Bravery of The Sun

Courageous move that by The Sun, backing the Tories, or rather, abandoning Labour.

How upset Labour  are depends on where your bullshit detector points between Harriet Harman's, rather tepid "we're all angry but we won't be bullied" rant; rumours that Brown berated Sun execs with a four-letter tirade and Labour spin that it doesn't really matter.

Look, Labour, or rather Tony Blair, would not have courted Rupert Murdoch the way they did if it didn't matter. But perhaps they were taking the Sun Tzu approach of keeping your friends close but your enemies closer. Either way, after the paper's declaration in 1992 that "It's the Sun Wot Won It" when John Major defeated Neil Kinnock with a little help from his friends at Wapping who exhorted the last person to leave Britain if Kinnock won to turn off the lights.

But that was 17 years ago, when the internet was just being born and things have changed in the way people relate to newspapers.

Not that newspapers had as much impact as they would have you believe if you take account of this study which states that while papers might hold some sway over individuals, it would be wrong to overstate their influence on the outcome of elections.

A view echoed by Alistair Campbell, who writes on his blog: "...people will make their own minds up. What a daily paper urges them to do will figure marginally if at all in that judgement, and provided Labour continues to defend the record, take the fight to the Tories, and set out the forward policy agenda with clarity and vigour, the battle ahead can still be won."

My point is that back in 1992 The Sun might get away with claiming its part in the Conservative victory. But now, in a political scene no longer dominated by print media, where 24-hour news and internet sources are far more likely to break political news than The Sun is, it's a brave move for a dead-tree outlet to claim as much influence as it does.

Of course, if the gamble pays off then it will no doubt run a suitably self-adulatory headline the next day. But what if they don't?

What if the economic recovery is just round the corner and its effects are felt before the next election? What if the electorate decides that on balance things are looking up and they don't want to gamble on the Tories?

The Tories will weather it of course and hope to be back next time. But for the paper that backed them and failed to get Cameron into Downing St it could be far more devastating. An unmistakable sign that the paper had been emasculated and its political influence was at an end.

Neath&Port Talbot no more

On BBC Wales this morning talking about the closure of the Neath and Port Talbot Guardians, which have been announced by Media Wales, a division of Trinity Mirror.

The company has blamed the economic downturn for the closures, which will result in the loss of 13.2 jobs (who's the .2?)

One might forgive the company this sad decision, had it, during the times of massive profits, ie five years ago, invested in its newspaper operations to make them a more attractive proposition to readers and advertisers. Now, in a time of not-quite-so-massive profits, decisions to close loss-making operations might have been justifiable.

But let's just look at what the senior management of this company have done in the good times to equip Trinity Mirror for the bad times that now afflict them.

Their 'big idea' was to send in the time and motion men. Blokes with reams of paper, who surveyed every inch of the business looking for fat to trim so that it could post the even-bigger profits its shareholders demanded.

Every newsroom had a visit from these people. Who came up with stunning ideas like: "Rather than check, rewrite and add to press releases, why not just cut'n'paste them into the paper, saving time and money?" Brilliance like that is beyond price.

As a result newsrooms were slashed. Not through redundancy, but by non-recruitment of trainees and non-replacement of staff. A gradual process of attrition that has left these places understaffed and lacking in experienced reporters.

And that was in the times of plenty. Ad revenues were good, circulation was in a gentle but manageable decline. These businesses were very, very profitable.

Then the bad times come round and what's their big idea now? More cuts. This time redundancies which, understandably, have been seized by some veteran journalists who were the heart and soul of these operations. And who can blame them leaving newspapers where their knowledge, contacts and expertise are treated with such contempt by national management?

Now we get closures, such as the ones announced in Neath and Port Talbot.

But here's the thing. Not so long ago the BBC was planning a network of ultra-local TV output. The regional newspaper industry squealed for all it was worth at a plan which they said was using the licence-fee to duplicate services they were already providing. The BBC's plans were abandoned, to the delight of the newspaper industry.

That argument holds water as long as you are not closing newspapers. Where are the people of Neath and Port Talbot going to get their news now? (Incidentally there are 130,000-plus people living in Neath and Port Talbot, if you can't run a profitable newspaper there then one wonders where you can run one at all)

From TM's 'digital platforms' - I don't think so. From the Western Mail? - can't see it getting down to the nitty-gritty of parish pump stuff from Neath somehow.

If TM cannot or will not give local communities the service they want, then I hope the BBC's ultra local plans are revived and this time the protests of newspaper corporations are ignored.

On the radio, again

On BBC Radio Wales tomorrow morning, 8.45am, talking about the closure of the Neath&Port Talbot Guardian.

On the radio

On BBC Radio Wales tomorrow morning (Wed) talking about why the Evening Leader is no longer an evening paper.

I started work on the Leader as a junior reporter, back in 1988.

You do get a whizzy button though

In the past week or so some of the blogs I read have started sporting a new button.

The button boasts their ranking in the various categories of the blog awards run by totalpolitics.

There are all sorts of categories - Welsh blogs, MP blogs, media blogs, Scots blogs, etc, etc.

The recipients of awards and a shiny widget for their blog are perhaps justifiably proud. I say perhaps, because if you take a look at the awards section it explains how the voting was sorted out and quite openly states that 'more than 1,500' people voted in the awards.

One might argue that 1,500 people is a respectable sample and not far off the size of sample that might be taken by a polling organisation to determine who might win a general election (usually their sample size is 2,000 or more) Therefore, a proud winner might argue that though the number of voters is small, it is representative of the blogging public and therefore quite an accolade.

That might hold true for something like MP blogs or, maybe, media blogs, where there are a lot of people voting in those categories. But how many voted in the Wales categories for instance? Those voted to the top in there might find they have attained their position on a very sparse sample indeed.

Naturally, if you cast your eye rightwards you'll see no button on this blog linking you back to totalpolitics, and so this post might be accused of vintage sour grapes. Maybe. But firstly, I did not engage in the shameless vote-garnering that some blogs did. Secondly, even if I had, I'd never be in the running for an award, the blog isn't active enough, and it's now a selection of random meanderings posted on a less than occasional basis. You would have to be very short of candidates indeed to vote for this in any poll.

But more than all this, why, when the blogosphere is supposed to be this free, anarchic, random, chaotic, joyous rabble, do people buy into blog awards run by anyone? As soon as your blog gets an award its become part of the establishment, respectable, and you should have the decency to shut it down.

One of the strengths of blogs is their freedom from the restraints felt by the dead-tree press. So why seek validation from a blog award system voted on by so few people?

If you are any good, people will visit your blog, you shouldn't need spurious blog awards to make them do that.

Hello to The Hindu

Thanks to what I assume is a Guardian syndication deal my piece on Twittering jurors appeared shortly afterwards in The Hindu. 

Media Guardian article

Occasionally I write pieces for Media Guardian on law.

I've got one in today on Twittering jurors.

RIP John Hughes

John Hughes, creator of the Bratpack teen movies of the '80s has died, aged 59.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off was a favourite of mine, but others included The Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, and he wrote Home Alone.

When he hit upon a winning plotline, such as Pretty In Pink, he wasn't averse to reversing the roles and remaking it, see Some Kind of Wonderful.

Ferris was his greatest creation though, his philosophy being: "Life moves pretty fast and if you don't stop and smell the roses once in a while it might pass you by."

Gravity sucks

Never underestimate how slippery a muddy hill is.

Never overestimate the amount of grip semi-slick summer tyres will give on said hill.

Never underestimate the chances a rock will come into contact with your knee when you go arse over elbow on hill.

Never overestimate your pain threshhold when you get two inches of North Yorkshire's finest sandstone inserted into your knee joint.

Never underestimate your ability to carry on biking to get home when you've no mobile and no choice.

Never overestimate the amount of time it gets taken to get seen in casualty if you walk in actually bleeding (they don't like it on the floor).

Never underestimate just how painful 'irrigating' a wound can be - my, my it smarts.

Never overestimate your ability to walk afterwards.

Some tendon and nerve damage, but I'll live to bike another day. Worst injury I've had in 12 years of mountain biking, so pretty lucky really.

Quotations (slight return)

A postscript to the post below.

David Jones has now added a link to this blog, to his own. Which should do this one the power of good in site traffic.

Theatrical quotation

It's a well-known, and derided, practice by theatres to selectively quote a review for the purpose of their playbills.

So a reviewer's comments such as "quite how this pile of drivel made it onto the stage is utterly amazing" becomes "utterly amazing" for the playbill.

When I said that David Jones MP was 'smart, acerbic and writes a very good blog' before going on to point out that those commenting on his blog were a bunch of roaring buffoons, perhaps I should have anticipated what would happen next.

Ah well, a journalist complaining about being taken out of context is beyond the pale though. But if he thinks enough of my opinion to quote me, perhaps he ought to link to my blog.

I might not agree with what he says, but at least you can find a link to what he does say here.

Iain Dale's Diary and the sheepshagging Welsh

Iain Dale, famed blogger, has found 15 sheep.

They wandered onto his land and he decided to enlist his readers'  help in finding out where they came from in an amusing post.

So far, so good.

Then his readers started commenting.

It took, oooh, three posts for the first Welsh sheepshagger joke to surface. Are they, this wit inquired, Welsh asylum seekers.

"They probably originated in Wales, then were dumped after some Welsh person had his wicked..........sorry, forgot where I was for a moment :)" said another.

The smiley face makes it ok, of course. And almost inevitably one compared the find to a Welsh leisure centre.

If you are going to make sheepshagger jokes about the Welsh, and I know it's an instinctive thing with a very few English people - it's almost like the word Welsh triggers something deep within the hypothalamus (look it up Dale Diary posters) and as soon as they hear the word Welsh, they cannot restrain the word 'sheepshagger' from popping out unbidden - then at least try to make them original and...um, how to put this...funny.

But be warned that this is what you'll get if the Tories gain power at the next election. For all the 'call me Dave' mateyness of Cameron, the legion of gofers and hangers-on that will come with them have a default setting of knuckle-dragging idiocy.

For every sane and seemingly rational, photogenic candidate they put up for election, there is a tide of braying idiots behind them that David Cameron has managed to persuade the party to keep in the backroom at least until they're in power.

Unfortunately they break loose now and again and post comments on websites like Dale's Diary and they give you an inkling of what Cameron's Britain will be like - imagine living in the Daily Mail.

Take David Jones MP, for example, smart, acerbic and writes a very good blog, but then you get to the comments section and you cannot help but think, dear God, how does he put up with such roaring buffoons?

Unfortunately, if they win the election we'll have to put up with them too.

Duck islands and plasma TVs

The list of just what MPs have claimed for has been quite interesting really and might, in the end, prove more damaging to some than others as it highlights their similarities and differences to their electors.

For instance, some Labour MPs seem to be in trouble for flipping, claiming max allowances or overdoing it on the plasma screen TVs. Margaret Moran standing out somewhat for claiming dry rot treatment on a house nowhere near her constituency.

That's going to be pretty irritating to their voters, but they can, perhaps, comprehend the desire for these things - more cash, lower housing costs, a nice TV.

Now, look at the Conservative excesses and you have duck islands and moat cleaning. For the middle class voter that Labour captured in 1997 and who the Tories need if they are to win the next election, that is another world. They have nothing in common with someone who builds 'servants' quarters' at the taxpayers' expense.

This is the sort of troughing that makes the voter want, in the immortal lines of that great revolutionary, Wolfie Smith, to line them up against the wall - bop, bop, bop.

Gordon Brown should go to the country now on a platform of greed that we can comprehend.

As for Julie Kirkbride's claims to be a mum struggling with childcare. That will only enrage those parents out there facing the same dilemma, but unable to rely on the public purse to build them an extension to help.

Who is in it the deepest?

It must be an interesting time for Gordon Brown at the moment. Interesting in the Chinese sense that is.

But not entirely gloomy.

When the Telegraph broke the story it led with Labour figures, but it's been pretty even-handed in handing out the kickings ever since. After all, as its journalists delved into that hard drive, they must have been bewildered by just how much dirt there was on politicians of every party. Where do you start? Moats, mortgages, or dry rot?

It has been universally bad news for all the parties.

Gordon Brown may be in the mire, but is he as deep in the mire as David Cameron.

What's more, are voters who traditionally back the Conservatives - the party that has always associated itself with law and order - going to be more outraged and for longer, than Labour voters?

This is not to say Labour voters condone what's gone on, but they might not have an attack of the vapopurs so severe as their Tory counterparts when they discover their MP has been claiming for catfood.

It might not turn voters from one party to another, but it may affect the turnout. Elections are decided in marginal constituencies where parties manage to 'get the vote out'. In those constituencies it will depend how long the whiff of corruption lasts, which party it clings to longest and how much it bothers the voters in that constituency.

David Cameron might secretly be hoping he rids himself of his Julie Kirkbrides as quickly as he can, because I suspect this scandal will bother his voters and particularly his potential voters much more than it will those for other parties.

No moral authority

I have to say that not having the weekly deadline of a column to file has been a release or sorts. The blank screen staring at me at, usually, 1am on a Sunday night when I used to write it, is not something I miss.

But the past few weeks have been an exception. 

This whole expenses thing may just blow over. But then again, unless some big event - a war, a terrorist attack - comes along to divert our attention, it could colour the way people vote.

It would have been a joy to have been writing the column this last month, if only to have been working in such a target-rich environment. Never let it be said I passed up a chance to shoot fish in a barrel.

The problem Labour and the Tories have is that they have shown themselves to be so pathetically driven to claim whatever they could, from cinema systems, to moats to cat food, all at our expense.

It becomes very difficult for them to argue against public sector pay rises and for tax rises when they have shown themselves so willing to spend our money on giving themselves a very comfortable life.

Of course, there are a few voices who have commented on the irony of journalists criticising anyone's expense claims when their own are so legendarily exorbitant. To a certain extent they are living in the past. Expense accounts may still be generous on some national papers, but not all, and certainly not to to the extent they were in the past. There was a time when not only could you claim a camel on expenses, but also the cost of its burial when  it died in the course of duty (see Stephen  Glover's 'Secrets of the Press')

Indeed when I started out as a lowly junior in North Wales and mentioned to my superiors that my wage was less than generous, I was told to 'bump up' my expenses to supplement my paltry pay. OK, I didn't get my moat cleaned, but the principle is the same. Except it was never with public money, and that is different.

Gordon Brown must be hoping that events will come to his rescue and something will happen in the next 12 months to rescue the reputation of his Government.

Does anyone care about this e-mail 'scandal'?

When I started what I might loosely refer to as work, as a junior reporter on the Evening Leader, in Wrexham, the then editor Reg Herbert, who was a newsman through and through, had a phrase he would use when a story didn't grab his attention.

"That won't be read by my old aunty in Garden Village," he would say, consigning it to the spike (these were the days when papers weren't so short staffed and desperate for copy and so stories did get spiked as opposed to shovelled into the paper come what may)

I don't know whether Reg had an old aunty, but Garden Village was one of the districts of Wrexham, and his old aunty was Reg's version of the man on the Clapham omnibus.

Now, apply Reg's ruling to this e-mail scandal. Do you think come election day anyone in the country is going to cast their vote on the basis of what some spin doctor said in an e-mail to Derek bloody Draper?

No, they don't give a stuff. What will win or lose the next election is whether we're in jobs or out, whether we can get a mortgage or not, whether we've managed to avoid bankruptcy personally or as a nation. That's it.

And, as one very perceptive letter writer to the Guardian pointed out, the Tories might not have engaged in quite this depth of spinnery, but then they've always had the right wing tabloids to do it for them.

Attacking ministers' wives beyond the pale? Not if you live in the very, very odd world of the Daily Mail.

Andy Burnham's wife wore a dress that did not meet the approval of the cat's-arse-mouthed fashionistas on the Mail.

Any Tory voices raised in disapproval of this unwarranted attack? All very quiet.

Any Conservatives disapproving of the treatment meted out to Cherie Blair, Pauline Prescott, Glenys Kinnock to name but a very few over the years?

Nope, nothing, zip, nada.

This is not to defend the juvenilia aimed at Tory wives in the e-mails, but the high horses mounted by the Conservatives do begin to look a little lame when the same treatment and worse was, and is, dished out to Labour spouses day-in, day-out.

Ross, Brand, the BBC and just a whiff of hypocrisy

Firstly it wasn't 'edgy'.
Phoning Andrew Sachs and being indiscreet about his granddaughter is not edgy. It's oafish, cruel and has a touch of the bully about it.
When Chris Morris tricked various MPs and celebs to join his campaign to eradicate the menace of a new drug called 'cake', that was edgy. The various bods complaining that the past week's events will somehow stop comedians from pushing the boundaries were perhap forgetting just how unchallenging Brand and Ross's exchange with Sachs's answering machine had been.
But that's not the real point.
The BBC broadcasts countless hours of material every week and some of it will offend, most will not.
Those in BBC management who are promising to put systems in place to stop this happening again are fools. You cannot possibly achieve anything like that level of control in an organisation that large.
You could possibly promise never to phone Andrew Sachs again. But to suggest that something equally as offensive might not happen again is nonsense. Of course it will.
What they might promise is that they will have a management response that does not leave them flat-footed when they are in the crosshairs of the Daily Mail et al.
Finally, while the BBC response was poor, the behaviour of the tabloids shows that writing for them requires the ability to suspend one's sense of irony.
Howe they raged against this dreadful intrusion into the life of a much-loved actor and the invasion of the privacy of his granddaughter.
Yes, and pray who was it whose excesses in recent years have had the courts busily developing the very law of privacy that was flouted this week by Ross and Brand?
Step forward the UK tabloid press.