So bobbins former England manager Steve McLaren is going to commentate at Euro 2008 - the very tournament he and his team failed to qualify for.

It reminds me of what Clive James once said about British downhill skier Konrad Bartelski and the latter’s appearance as a commentator on Ski Sunday: Bartelski sits in the commentary box advising the greatest skiers in the world and then goes out there and comes down the mountain on his head.

I can’t stop thinking about the day Elvis Presley visited London in 1958 and why his guide around town, the then British pop sensation Tommy Steele, ’swore never to divulge publicly’ what occurred that fateful day.

Why did Tommy swear? What terrible secret has he been carrying this last fifty years? Is there an as yet undiscovered mass grave of murdered prostitutes in London? Simon le Bon was born later that year - was Presley to blame?

Did Elvis purchase a bolt hole in the capital to which he fled in 1977 and where he still resides to this day? Or was it that, for the sake of his future earnings, the King never ever wanted it to be known that he had hung out with Tommy bloody Steele? I guess we’ll never know.

So I’m listening to XFM. I’m not proud of it but there’s very little good on the radio of a Sunday lunchtime. Some spotty herbert sends in a text to the presenter:

What was that rubbish you played after the Ting Tings?

‘That rubbish’ was Young Americans by David Bowie.

In her legal case against Steve Vander Ark and his Harry Potter Lexicon, a tearful JK Rowling accused the defendant of ‘constant pilfering‘.

All you can really say to that is Jesus, what balls! If the likes of Tolkien weren’t dead, Rowling might very well have found herself on the receiving end of similar legal accusations. To point out the elements of her books that have been lifted wholesale from better authors could take the rest of the day.

(Via Marina Hyde)

Listen to this.

How do foetuses get to be this talented?

There’s a new ‘politically neutral’ politics magazine coming soon:

Unlike almost every other current affairs publication in the market, Total Politics - which Dale describes as “a lifestyle magazine for the political community” - will be given away free to the vast majority of its readers. From fledgling councillors to Westminster greybeards, every one of Britain’s estimated 23,000 elected politicians will be sent a copy - whether they want one or not.

Whether they want one or not? Not quite.

Nice to see former Olympic swimmer Duncan Goodhew breaking ranks from the other Olympian appeasers and speaking out against China:

It shows how extreme things can get in this country and it’s a great shame. It’s such a bad example for children.

Hang on. Sorry, he was talking about people in Britain who are against murder and torture. My mistake. He went on:

The Olympic Games is about inspiring young people, human excellence and fair play.

And just think - for two weeks this summer some very lucky Chinese people will get to see those values up close.

Here’s something I didn’t know:

The idea of carrying a lit torch from the Temple of Hera in Greece was invented by Hitler.

Indeed, the 1936 Berlin Olympics sounded like a lot of fun:

Although the bid was won before the Nazi Party gained power in Germany, some leaders in the government saw the Olympics as an opportunity to promote their Nazi ideology. Hitler was convinced by Joseph Goebbels to allow the games to take place in Germany. Preparation for the games started in the early 1930s. Hitler used the Olympics as a tool for propaganda.

The Olympics? Used as a tool for propaganda? Shocking. We should be only too glad that no other regime has followed such a disgusting precedent.

Meanwhile: Run, Konnie, Run!

You have to admit, it’s been a very dignified spectacle. A propaganda coup, no doubt.

All those plucky souls running with the Olympic torch today speak with one voice:

The controversial “message” to torchbearers was drawn up by Freud Communications, which represents the London Olympic organisers.

In an email seen by The Mail on Sunday, Freud Communications’ Pippa Rodger wrote: “As discussed, please find below the official statement that torchbearers can use should they receive any interview or media requests on the day.

For an added two degrees of separation bonus, the head of Freud Communications is Matthew Freud who is married to Elizabeth Murdoch whose father Rupert has considerable business interests in China. Nothing like keeping it in the family.

Meanwhile, the celebrity automatons run, only following orders. That well-known sportswoman Denise Van Outen is apparently doing it at the request of a famous soft-drinks company. Kneeling before the Chinese regime and Coca-Cola? Blimey, her soul is going to be in tatters by the end of the day. It’s a shame Fred West is dead as a man of his talents carrying the torch would have fitted right in with the ethos of Chinese political vales.

Gordon Brown is due to welcome the torch to 10 Downing Street. An odd concept to be sure, inviting an inanimate object to your home. It remains to be seen whether the rather more animated Dalai Lama will be afforded the same courtesy, or if Gordon decides to meet him on neutral and less politically honest territory.

As for me and mine, we won’t be watching a bunch of bread and circus artists trotting about in subservience to a gang of liars and killers. There are better things to do. Ooh look, it’s snowing! And is it wrong to feel conflicted about Charlton Heston being dead?

In the run up to him becoming prime minister Gordon Brown penned Courage. The book is a paean to eight of the most foremost exponents of that most enviable of virtues. It’s a useful yardstick. I don’t know about you, but I can’t help thinking of Gordon’s book when I read reports of his own displays of courage:

Gordon Brown has demanded the scrapping of longstanding plans for a clampdown on newspapers that illegally buy personal data, such as health, bank and telephone records, the Guardian has learned. This has provoked criticism that he has bowed to pressure from the media.

The Prime Minister’s reason for doing so is a peach. The government doesn’t want to hurt journalists, it wants to help them.

Peers were recently told by one minister, Lord Hunt, that Brown was concerned “to make sure that legitimate investigative journalism is not impeded”.

Which makes me begin to think I must have hallucinated the last eleven years. I clearly recall this government attempting to thwart ‘legitimate investigative journalism’ at every opportunity.

I remember there being some fuss about allegations that were made by some guy called Andrew Gilligan. But that can’t be right because the government doesn’t want to impede legitimate investigative journalism.

I also remember the government being somewhat lacklustre, stonewalling, and regardless of the spirit and the letter of its own Freedom of Information laws. But that can’t be right either because that behaviour would also impede legitimate investigative journalism.

I’m sure Members of Parliament are very unhappy about plans to release details of how they spend tax-payers’ money. But nobody wants to impede legitimate investigative journalism so I must have that wrong as well.

The Tories, of course, in a show of the tenacious and vociferous opposition for which they are rightly respected (not the effete, self-serving and ineffectual opposition of popular perception) are up in arms about all this. No, sorry, I got that wrong. They’re down in arms about this.

That may or may not have something to do with the Conservative Party’s director of communications being Andy Coulson. He may or may not be the same Andy Coulson who resigned as editor of News of the World after his royal correspondent went to jail for illegally intercepting telephone calls.

So we shouldn’t castigate the Prime Minister for a perceived lack of courage, or Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition for appearing to be unworthy of the name. It’s all about creating a level playing field for legitimate investigative journalism not our elected representatives abasing themselves before the venal demands of newspaper owners and editors.

I’m sure we’ll be reminded of that the second personal details of a minister or shadow minister, obtained by shady practices, turn up in the Sunday tabloids. To fail to do so would be a betrayal of the courage Gordon Brown wants to see in all of us.

Two thoughts after reading this:

The Chinese government has defied international anger at its crackdown on Tibetan independence protests, accusing the Dalai Lama and his “splittist clique” of being out to destroy the Olympics and damage China’s international reputation.

a) You’ll never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator. ‘Hey, you in the decadent West. The Dalai Lama wants to ruin your running and jumping about, the bastard,’ says China.

b) What international reputation? We know they’re bastards but we’re addicted to cheap tat. They could build a Death Star in high orbit if they like, we’re not going to rock the boat. It’s why we’re not seeing wider outrage. If it was Cuba doing this, people would be going ballistic.

A thought struck me when reading about the latest crackdown in Tibet that we’re going to turn a blind eye to so as not to spoil the running and jumping about in Beijing this summer.

The monks from the Sera monastery were surrounded by more than 1,000 armed police who fired tear gas into the crowd and used electric prods to disperse the protesters.

If Tibet were permitted to enter a team this year they’d clean up. You’ve never seen anyone do the 100 metre dash like a Tibetan monk with a Chinese riot cop after him.

We should borrow the tactics. Chase Dwayne Chambers with an electric prod. That’ll make the bugger run. Every time our hockey team miss the goal, tear gas them. That’ll focus minds. Drag our gymnasts about by their arms. They’ll be extra limber. That way, we might even win a medal or two.

I know it sounds harsh, but we must tolerate all manner of abuses to make sure this year’s Olympics goes off without a hitch. Running and jumping and our national honour demand it.

The US State Department’s 2007 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices is out.

In it there are both brickbats and bouquets for those at the sharp end of The War Against Terror. A feedback sandwich you might say.

“Despite President Musharraf’s stated commitment to democratic transition, Pakistan’s human rights situation deteriorated during much of 2007,” said the annual report released on Tuesday.

‘Six of of ten, see me’, in other words.

The US itself doesn’t feature in the State Department’s list. I think it’s like the Eurovision Song Contest where you’re not allowed to give points to your own side.

So, it’s down to others to judge the US government on its human rights record. How’s it getting on? Well, it’s a little hard to say.

The U.N. investigator on torture said on Tuesday the United States had denied his request to visit U.S.-run jails in Iraq and insisted a visit could help clear its legacy of the prison abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib.

It’s a canny tactic and one that Andy Abraham should adopt in Belgrade later this year. He could refuse to perform his soulless, insulting piece of dreck. That way nobody can judge if it’s any good and he can declare himself winner at the end.

This Guardian doodling thing is a direct steal from the vastly superior kid’s Anti-Colouring Book. The Guardian have just made it appealing to adults. Mature infantilisation - that’s an oxymoron you could build a society on. Oh, we already have.

Not only that, but the page in the Guardian’s pale imitation that wants you to write and rewrite ‘I love my job’ until ‘you really believe it’, is just evil if you ask me. I’m going to give my copy to the first call centre worker I meet, you know, to cheer them up.

I realise I’m in an ever dwindling group, but this idea that white people in this country are somehow oppressed is a load of old crap. It’s pure perception created by the right-wing media and vote-grabbing politicians. And BBC 2’s White season looks like shaping up to do the same.

If you ask me, a venture that advertises itself using tasteful, epic photos of Enoch Powell and promotes wife-beating drunk George Best as a ‘working class hero’ is automatically suspect. Even the name ‘White’ is gratuitously provocative, gratuitously divisive.

Going by the website, the season reduces working class people to exhibits in a zoo, to reality television show freaks, to anthropological curiosities in National Geographic. Here’s some knobbly-faced salts of the earth in a Bradford working men’s club. Here’s every little-brained, little Englanders’ worst nightmare, a white girl in a hijab.

Here come the Poles to steal our jobs, women and dignity. Let’s take a trip to putative BNP launchpad, Barking. If the programmes don’t feature some wildlife footage of scantily-clad honkys puking in a gutter outside a nightclub, I’ll run round the town with my trousers round my ankles.

Not only that, what’s the appeal to working class viewers? Where are the stories of working class boys and girls done good? Where’s the message of ‘you can do it too, if you pick up a book or go to a night school class or join the Open University or whatever’. Where’s the tales of ‘if you don’t like it, do something about it’.

Where’s the aspiration? Not the woolly, fuzzy, meaningless kind as espoused by Gordon Brown or David Cameron but the proper, concrete ways for working-class people to escape their so-called oppression.

I don’t want to play the prolier-than-thou card but I was the first person in my family to go to university from generations of steelworkers, coal miners and farmers. It’s doable. Forget the academic side of it. The independence, the social skills, the new outlooks and ways of thinking you get are beyond price. And that’s before we mention making friends who teach you how to hold your drink. Why further and higher education isn’t sold like that is a mystery to me.

Whatever happened to ‘God helps those who help themselves’ or ‘I’m a lucky person and the harder I work, the luckier I get’? The notion of the dignity of the poor is repugnant, but this wallowing in a perceived victimhood is equally difficult to watch and the BBC should be ashamed for fuelling it.

There are escapes, if you feel you need to escape, even small ones like the public library or BBC4 or having Wikipedia’s daily article emailed to you (thanks, Chris). Night classes are cheap, and cheaper if you’re on some kind of benefit. We need broader horizons not narrower views.

(Christ, that last line was terrible but I hope you get the gist.)

Poor Margaret Hodge. You have to feel sorry for her. She sees anti-intellectualism and knee-jerk nationalism stalking across the land like fifth and sixth horsemen of the apocalypse and thinks, ‘I’d like some of that action.’

She made the mistake, however, of choosing the wrong target. If she’d laid into that nest of communists, the complacent, middle-class bastion Radio 4 or the pernicious, inquisitorial, politically correct Race Relations ‘Industry’, she’d have been quids in and a grateful nation would have carried her around on their shoulders. But no, she rashly chose the Proms.

The audiences for many of our greatest cultural events – I’m thinking in particular of the Proms, but it is true of – is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this. I know that this isn’t about making every audience completely representative, but if we claim great things for our sectors in terms of their power to bring people together, then we have a right to expect that they will do that wherever they can.

She’s right when she says ‘this isn’t about making every audience completely representative’. It’d be difficult to do that without herding a demographically balanced crowd into the Royal Albert Hall at gunpoint every September. This is about changing the content of the event to make it more appealing to a broader audience. In other words making the common dominator that bit lower.

(more…)

There is much to say about the tawdry stunt of Prince Harry in Afghanistan. That the MoD should gleefully leap on the opportunity to produce such revolting propaganda is only to be expected.

That the media, after all this time and all it should have learned, lapped it up like a dog returning to its own vomit, should be more surprising but isn’t really. There’s a twinge of sympathy for the Prince, I suppose - he’s a puppet in all this. But then that was the role allotted to him at birth and he’ll be one until he dies.

You think he’d be aware of that by now. The fact that he says that he needed to go to Afghanistan and call in air-strikes in order to feel ‘normal’ would suggest not. The way this has been choreographed down to the minutest detail I’m amazed we’re not seeing photographs of the less-than-private shits Harry boasts he’s been taking over the last ten weeks. Fancy that, a member of the royal family needing to defecate! Lawks! I fort that kind of fing was only for the loiks of me and you, Mary Parpins.

Anyway, Marina Hyde in the Guardian says it all better:

On the one hand, it was nice to see Prince Harry in a British army uniform, as opposed to one of Hitler’s. It’s a little bit like Pokemon, really. I’m hoping he’ll give us a highly collectible Hutu warrior snap soon. Gotta catch ‘em all! On the other, is there anyone over Pokemon-playing age who believes it was really worth it? The sheer number of man-hours and money lavished on allowing one young man to experience job satisfaction is mind-boggling. It has to be the most fatuous use of Ministry of Defence resources since Geoff Hoon.

According to the executive director of the Society of Editors, who helped establish the controversial media blackout, it was not designed to mislead readers and viewers but to ultimately give them “a deeper insight into a new side of Prince Harry”. But how completely intriguing. And yet, is he basically still a fairly dim, fairly affable chap, you might ask? It would appear so. But he’s being fairly dim and fairly affable in Afghanistan. Or rather, he was until the news broke, at which point a detailed, prearranged plan to get him out - how many logistical brains are wasted on this nonsense? - was mobilised. So at least we have an exit strategy for Prince Harry, if not for the actual war.

Wouldn’t it have been cheaper and caused less damage to the psychological well-being of the nation to just give him an X-Box and a copy of ‘Call of Duty’?

I like it that Internet hack Matt Drudge got his Prince Harry in Afghanistan ’scoop’ from Australian supermarket rag, New Idea.

He’s moved on from the literally soiled goods of Monica Lewinsky’s dress to the literary soiled goods of second hand stories.

Join the Jim Bliss Fifty:

It goes without saying that I’ll be avoiding the writing of Steven Wells from now on (any music writer who can write: “If a band are any good at all they’ll play their best toon first. And that toon will deliver a killer hook in the first 30 seconds…” clearly doesn’t have the faintest idea about music, no matter how many singles he reviewed for the NME). And I’m unlikely to encounter Benedict Brogan again until the next time his drivel is highlighted by a decent writer. But between them, they’ve dragged the reputation of mainstream journalism even further into the pit of filth in which it’s been wallowing. And I’ll be reading The Guardian’s Arts Section with a little more scepticism in future. Can we assume their book reviewers bothered to progress past Chapter 1? Did the film critic walk out after the first five minutes? Seems like it doesn’t really matter anymore.

Read the rest

There’s a protest on the roof of Parliament about the proposed third runway at Heathrow airport. Benedict Brogan, political editor of the Daily Mail, isn’t happy. He picked up one of the paper aeroplanes the protesters were throwing to find…

…it’s a photocopy of an email from someone at BA to a Dept of Transport official about something complicated that I can’t be bothered to read…

…thus neatly summing up the problem with most modern journalists: things are complicated and they can’t be bothered. Any government minister wanting to sneak something dodgy past the Daily Mail now knows what to do: get folding.

We know New Labour and dignity parted company some time ago, but they will insist in continuing to poo on the reputation of politics in this country. Here’s Former Home Secretary and serial resigner David Blunkett using his ’skills’ to their full potential. That is, whoring them to a fifth-rate television channel:

In what is billed by Five as a “bold social experiment”, Banged Up will see Blunkett head up the “parole board” of a “prison” that mixes reformed offenders with young people on the cusp of a life of crime.

Just what makes Five think Blunkett’s an expert on prisons is anybody’s guess. Former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Sir David Ramsbotham described Blunkett as ‘not fit’ to be in charge of Britain’s prisons. I wonder if Blunkett will become hysterical and order his televisual charges to be machine-gunned if they fail to do his bidding.

He talks of the programme ‘creating a grasp of reality’ which is at least in keeping with the New Labour ethos of fabricating truth. I wonder if we’ll see the true reality of British prisons: racist and Asian prisoners mixed together, two suicides a week, and 70 per cent of Blunkett’s lags being mentally ill. And for added realism, in the second series, 75 percent of the ‘young people on the cusp of a life of crime’ will be invited back.

Anyway, never mind that. How about a sequel called Knocked Up where Blunkett impregnates married socialites? The possibilities are endless. Cocked Up with Blunkett trying to apply for a job when his Criminal Record Bureau check wrongly brands him a nonce.

Made Up where Blunkett examines the Blair government’s case for war in Iraq. Blown Up where Blunkett has to help clear unexploded British cluster bomblets from an Afghan village.

How about some ideas in keeping with Blunkett’s level of dignity? Pissed Up where each week Blunkett and a celebrity see who can wee the highest up a wall. Or Zipped Up where Blunkett has to use a public urinal while wearing boxing gloves.

Then there’s Dried Up where Blunkett ponders where his credibility went. And Time’s Up where Blunkett puts us all out of his misery and retires.

(Thanks to Derrick for the link.)

Update: Then there’s Softened Up where Blunkett is kidnapped, flown to Syria and then water-boarded. And Ripped Up where he examines what ten years of New Labour has done to 800 years of civil liberties.

There’s not much to add to the story of the missing draft of the Iraqi dossier finally being released. The New Statesman, who have been following the story all along have some good coverage.

The general lack of media coverage and analysis across the board was a little surprising considering some of the more high profile casualties were newspaper editors and BBC director generals. But then I suppose ‘Compliant media treated like dickheads and used as propagandists by still-at-large war criminals‘ is a story most editors would balk at.

I doubt many of them wanted to be reminded - and to remind their readers - of their complicity. Journalists, eh? What was it Humbert Wolfe said?

So, 99 per cent of the respondents to The Sun’s survey on capital punishment are calling for its return. That’s ‘nearly’ 100,000 people.

The Sun’s been struggling with its circulation of late but let’s be generous and say it sells ‘nearly’ three million copies a day. That being the case, The Sun’s survey reveals that just 3.3% of its readership supports the return of capital punishment.

Or 0.16 per cent of the entire population.

It’s a trick they’ve used before, of course. And you can’t really blame them, this being a better* headline…

…than this…

* ‘Better’ in this case meaning its ability to shift more copies, and nothing to do with its accuracy or quality.

Update: Tim does a better analysis.