Did Prince Charles “summon” Cabinet Ministers or did he “ invite” them seems to me a far more important question that the Oxford comma.
Obviously he invited them, and good manners assured their attendance. An invitation would never have achieved front page status in the left wing trade to which I increasingly regret devoting my life. In my defence, I have to insist that the newspapermen of my day were neither left nor right wing. After meeting so many practitioners of the shabby trade of politics we were all dodos, the defiantly wingless birds.
For most of my life I have been a reluctant monarchist; approving the office but loathing the occupants of any post-Plantagenet dynasty.
It’s a toss-up which was the worse, the feckless, self-indulgent Stuarts or their successors, the Hanoverians, the last two of whom were spectacularly dreadful: George V let his relations die to safeguard his job and Edward VIII was a pro-Nazi and a traitor to his country.
I think the Windsors may turn out to be the golden dynasty, but only because they have been saved by their womenfolk.
I like to think the stories about the Queen Mother being the daughter of a housemaid are true. Certainly she introduced a better bloodline into the royal nursery. Diana might have been as mad as a hatter but her progeny have been a credit to her. Camilla and the new Duchess have been splendid additions. I would not hesitate to breed from the Cambridges.
But to return to our next king. He was a boy when we met, he making his first royal progress as the Earl of Chester, me writing about it for The Times. I was so impressed by him I came within an ace of writing to the Queen to tell her that her lad done good.
My old friend Charles Quant, who worked closely with him in his charities, endlessly sang his praises ; the son of a friend, wounded in Afghanistan who can scarcely grant human status to anyone who is not an Argyll and Sutherland Highlander was visited by the Prince in hospital. Wales spent twenty minutes at his bedside and he said it was just like talking to an army chum. Coming from him, that is the equivalent of a Nobel Prize.
The Prince, of course, with his demands for special cooking times for his breakfast eggs, for special cushions and his insistence on a special bathroom tumbler, not to mention his forest of butlers and valets, comes across as spoilt. Looking back over his predecessors, it seems that comes with the territory.
Seeking knowledge about their departments by inviting ministers and their aides seems to me swotting on kingship and wholly admirable.
I feel very ashamed that I declined an invitation to meet him on the royal yacht when it was moored off Anglesey.
.LETTERS TO AND FROM THE EDITOR
Subject: spring cleaning
First of the month, and exactly half-way through the year.
As good a time as any to do the PC housekeeping - if you are not doing it regularly (and weekly is best).
MY RESPONSE
DEAR ….............,
I have tried disc clean up and defragmenting. Then I got carried away and removed all unwanted shortcuts. Then I thought I would go to control panel and clear away programmes that were rarely used. And for some reason the bloody computer is now running slower and I am going to have to pay a computer mechanic bags of gold to put it right. And that was only the beginning. I have made a small Chinese garden at the side of the house. I thought it would be nice if it were visited by birds. That meant putting back the hanging basket brackets I removed because they didn't seem Chinese; and that meant stripping off the old Rawlplugs and screws. In the process of doing this the screwdriver slipped and severely cut my thumb. When Celia had bandaged it I thought I would repot the pond plants in larger pots. Unfortunately I forgot to line the pots with hessian so the soil leaked out and discoloured the pond. I had just paid £350 for an ultra violet filter but when I examined it I found it had blocked. I forgot how to unblock it so spent a day looking in vain for the instruction manual. I thought I would calm my nerves by cleaning the garden furniture which has acquired a green mold. The pressure hose was not totally efficient so I thought I would attach the plastic container which contains shampoo. Unfortunately in screwing it in I managed to break the neck of the bottle. I consoled myself by proposing to replant three shrubs from their ugly plastic pots into nice ceramic ones. I knew I had plenty of compost and it was a job where it was difficult to think of anything going wrong because I had done it several times before.
So I went to the shed for the compost and when I opened the door all the tools fell out, nearly decapitating me. I stepped over them to the corner of the shed where I keep compost. And of course the compost I wanted was beneath the non-acid compost I bought when I potted a magnolia - and the sterilised aqua compost and the bag of sand Ken the Carpenter left and the potting mixture chippings for the aloe and the lawn fertiliser. But when I had carried all the unwanted bags away to get to the bag I wanted - it was also non-acid compost because I had over ordered.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that when I went to replace the compost and buy the Hessian I spent money I can ill afford on two more Koi and a couple of Tench, the so-called Doctor Fish.
But when I went to pay my credit card wouldn't work.
Then along you come suggesting I should go through the whole bloody process again.
Kindly fall out (without prejudice).
The trouble began when a friend recommended Tesco Scotch undyed kippers and horseradish mustard.
“I have not had time to taste your bloody kippers. My nerves are in shreds in consequence of recent close encounters with my Koi fish. And it wasn't helped because my wife (until the lawyers open tomorrow) had filed the pond manual (see under) as "Guarantees" and denied all knowledge of it. Fortunately my daughter was visiting and put everything right in half an hour by the town hall clock. However, as soon as I have filed for divorce I will go on to Tesco’s to order a shoal of the kippers you were kind enough to recommend. I will also buy enough horseradish mustard to immolate my future ex-wife as an alternative to alimony. As Menken wisely observed, alimony is the ransom that the happy pay to the devil. He also said that adultery is the application of democracy to love, but we had better not go further into that.
PRESS RELATIONS 2011 STYLE
Interesting that a charge of bribing the Metropolitan police allows one to be arrested by appointment whereas a luckless underling is dragged out of bed in the early morning. Now that it has been admitted police bribes were authorised, it is not easy to believe that Rebekah Brooks was unaware of the Milly Dowler phone hacking. Newspaper executives of my day know that all payments over a thousand pounds have to be signed off by the editor.
After the murder of schoolgirl Sarah Payne, Ms Brooks was blamed by critics for driving paedophiles underground and inspiring mobs to run riot in Portsmouth.
Ms Brooks was vilified for publishing the names and photographs of known sex-offenders to protect children. Some police officers claimed her tactics were wrecking investigations. Tony Butler, the then chief constable of Gloucestershire police, denounced her for "grossly irresponsible" journalism. Media pundits accused her of trying to cash in on eight-year-old Sarah's death
It has been an article of faith with me that the half-hour programmes of Any Answers on R4 contain more perceptive thoughts than the hour of Any Questions which precedes it on Friday/Saturday.
So I wasn't surprised that the most sensible comment about the NoW disgrace came from a listener on the BBC's Home page Comment :
"Conspiracy theory: NoW suddenly releases information about police bribes. Why now? This news caused BskyB share prices to slump as the deal looks in jeopardy. Therefore making it cheaper for News International to buy!! A few journalists will be fired, bent cops go down, the plebs soon forget all about it and miss their Sunday pervy, so buy NoW again and Rupert gets BskyB for a bargain! "
Worth noting that the day after this perceptive comment appeared it was announced that shares in BskyB dropped by a billion pounds.
Dog has shown a gargantuan appetite for eating dog. The Guardian devoted 13 pages to the closure of the News of the World, The Times 11, another 10 pages in the Independent plus two in the “i”, eight in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph seven, six in the Mirror, four in the Sun, three in the Express which inevitably included a mention of Princess Diana and two pages in the Star. On the To-day programme Justin Rose, who must be the worst mannered interviewer in the history of broadcasting announced with astonishment that the programme had received more emails about the disgraceful imbalance of university entrants from comprehensive and fee paying schools, than it did than it did about the closure of the Sun. A more perceptive man might have seen a lesson in that. If memory serves rather fewer newspaper pages served to break the news of the outbreak of World War Two. A sad commentary that the closure of a shabby shop, a purveyor of the malign, should attract such attention when a single page sufficed to chronicle the closure of “Focus”and “Habitat”, a much greater loss to the public
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 2011 STYLE
A council is firing all 6,500 of its employees, with a promise to re-hire them if they agree to a pay cut. Dismissal letters have been sent by Shropshire Council informing all staff they will lose their jobs on September 30. The letters go on to say employees can return the following day – but only if they consent to a 5.4 per cent pay cut.
Another Council has invited staff to wear woolly jumpers when dentral heating is cut to save heating costs.
Saturday, 9 July 2011
Saturday, 2 July 2011
CHINA IN A BULL SHOP
The Chinese Prime Minister is on another shoping trip, I see. Having bought America and most of Africa he has his eye on Ruritania - sorry, England. I expect he wants to buy us for the same reason those odd men buy old cars to renovate. I go part of the way myself. I used to buy vintage cars, have them restored at great expense and then sell them for a loss. Started with an Austin 7, in which, Wynford Vaughan Thomas told me, changing gear was like milking a mouse. Next came a Lagonda LG6, after which I mainlined on Series One Land Rovers. But I didn't make the same mistake (selling at a loss) with my MGTD. I loaned it to a chum who sold it for a £10,000 profit and I haven't seen him since.
Hope the Chinese PM does better with us.
I became especially fond of the race when I learned they had a caligraphic character for “horse farting in a field of corn”. Plainly the Chinese have a word for it - whatever IT is.
I do regret not visiting China. The country has fascinated me since, as a young soldier, I read Lin Yutang’s delightful book “The Importance of Living”. That led me to its poets and painters and scholars and to mavelllous novels like the Monkey Epic. It was an obsession shared with my much loved father-in-law, Dr Joe, who when he was in is late sixties learned Cantonese Chinese so that he could deal with his patients in Chinatown.At the same time he did a Spanish O level
Through him, I made many Chinese friends. One couldn’t speak English when he arrived in this country, aged 14. By the time he was sixteen he had gathered a harvest of distinctions in his “A” levels and, at 23, had a mathematical theorem named after him. He has just retired as a much respected professor.
His great-grandfather had been a bureaucrat in the court of the Manchus but had fallen under the spell of the opium which the Brtitish introduced. As a result, he became so poor that he could not afford to buy the classics which his son needed for school. His solution was to come out of his opium induced semi-coma to write out the entire canon of Chinese classics from memory.
I had another friend who served on the China squadron in the Thirties when public beheadings were a daily occurrence and the peasants were treated like animals. The Tiger of Chi’n, who unified China, decreed that the world started with his reign and ordered that every manuscript and painting be destroyed. Nothing changes. Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution had similar aims.
There are four Chinese languages. The ancient style in which the classics are written, the literary style, the business style and the colloquial. China’s system of law was formulated in the time of Yao (2357 to 2255 BC). It hs been described as “if not the most just and equitable, at least the most comprehensive, uniform and suited to the genius of the people for whom it is designed, perhaps of any that ever existed”.
To a Chinaman the civilised world is China. Anything or anyone beyond its frontiers is barbarian.
The Chinese are different. The Chinese see nothing wrong with slave labour; they believe Tibet is part of China. They are suspicious of the West and with good reason. We did our best to wreck the country by flooding it with opium. We also invaded Tibet, supporting the dictatorship of monks and aristocratic families from whom it had suffered throughout its history.
It has taken China twenty years to move from the Middle Ages to leading the 21st cenury world. Perhaps smog does hang over their capital. Very much like the Potteries in the sixties, in fact.
MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RANCH........
Llandudno is my favourite seaside town – and its picture is on our calendar for July. Sadly it has allowed its links with Alice in Wonderland to decay. Alice was the daughter of the Dean of Christchurch College in Oxford who had a holiday home on the foreshore. Once a hotel, it is about to be demolished to make way for a block of flats. The statue of the White Rabbit nearby has been vandalised and the Rabbit Hole, a wonderful “museum” of Aliceobilia has closed.
For over a century the town has gloriously ignored the sad truth that Charles Dodgson is unlikely to have visited Llandudno - and certainly THAT book was neither written nor inspired there. One might just as well celebrate Arnold Bennett who set in Llandudno an exciting part of “The Card” where Denry is launched as an entrepreneur.
The truth is that the Alice link had long been an embrarrasment to the Nationalists who now run the country.Quite out of the question for a country where holidaymakers are handed leaflets saying “Enjoy your holiday but don’t come to Live Here”. Without its tourist industry North Wales would collapse. But Nationalists are still uneasy that their fame rests on an English second-homer.
Fantasy is essential to Nationalism. It enables people to forget that the road to Nationalism leads to the gates of Belsen. As Scotland prepares to go it alone I heard a so-called Scots intellectul explain that it is time to end English oppression. We stole their king, he said, and they remember Culloden. The fact is that all the Scottish regiments fought on the Hanoverian side and we got lumbered with an appalling drunken series of Jameses. But 'twas ever thus. Davy Crockett and the brave defenders of the Alamo from the rascally Mexicans were in fact American slave owners, reacting and rioting against Mexican legislation outlawing slavery.
Hope the Chinese PM does better with us.
I became especially fond of the race when I learned they had a caligraphic character for “horse farting in a field of corn”. Plainly the Chinese have a word for it - whatever IT is.
I do regret not visiting China. The country has fascinated me since, as a young soldier, I read Lin Yutang’s delightful book “The Importance of Living”. That led me to its poets and painters and scholars and to mavelllous novels like the Monkey Epic. It was an obsession shared with my much loved father-in-law, Dr Joe, who when he was in is late sixties learned Cantonese Chinese so that he could deal with his patients in Chinatown.At the same time he did a Spanish O level
Through him, I made many Chinese friends. One couldn’t speak English when he arrived in this country, aged 14. By the time he was sixteen he had gathered a harvest of distinctions in his “A” levels and, at 23, had a mathematical theorem named after him. He has just retired as a much respected professor.
His great-grandfather had been a bureaucrat in the court of the Manchus but had fallen under the spell of the opium which the Brtitish introduced. As a result, he became so poor that he could not afford to buy the classics which his son needed for school. His solution was to come out of his opium induced semi-coma to write out the entire canon of Chinese classics from memory.
I had another friend who served on the China squadron in the Thirties when public beheadings were a daily occurrence and the peasants were treated like animals. The Tiger of Chi’n, who unified China, decreed that the world started with his reign and ordered that every manuscript and painting be destroyed. Nothing changes. Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution had similar aims.
There are four Chinese languages. The ancient style in which the classics are written, the literary style, the business style and the colloquial. China’s system of law was formulated in the time of Yao (2357 to 2255 BC). It hs been described as “if not the most just and equitable, at least the most comprehensive, uniform and suited to the genius of the people for whom it is designed, perhaps of any that ever existed”.
To a Chinaman the civilised world is China. Anything or anyone beyond its frontiers is barbarian.
The Chinese are different. The Chinese see nothing wrong with slave labour; they believe Tibet is part of China. They are suspicious of the West and with good reason. We did our best to wreck the country by flooding it with opium. We also invaded Tibet, supporting the dictatorship of monks and aristocratic families from whom it had suffered throughout its history.
It has taken China twenty years to move from the Middle Ages to leading the 21st cenury world. Perhaps smog does hang over their capital. Very much like the Potteries in the sixties, in fact.
MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RANCH........
Llandudno is my favourite seaside town – and its picture is on our calendar for July. Sadly it has allowed its links with Alice in Wonderland to decay. Alice was the daughter of the Dean of Christchurch College in Oxford who had a holiday home on the foreshore. Once a hotel, it is about to be demolished to make way for a block of flats. The statue of the White Rabbit nearby has been vandalised and the Rabbit Hole, a wonderful “museum” of Aliceobilia has closed.
For over a century the town has gloriously ignored the sad truth that Charles Dodgson is unlikely to have visited Llandudno - and certainly THAT book was neither written nor inspired there. One might just as well celebrate Arnold Bennett who set in Llandudno an exciting part of “The Card” where Denry is launched as an entrepreneur.
The truth is that the Alice link had long been an embrarrasment to the Nationalists who now run the country.Quite out of the question for a country where holidaymakers are handed leaflets saying “Enjoy your holiday but don’t come to Live Here”. Without its tourist industry North Wales would collapse. But Nationalists are still uneasy that their fame rests on an English second-homer.
Fantasy is essential to Nationalism. It enables people to forget that the road to Nationalism leads to the gates of Belsen. As Scotland prepares to go it alone I heard a so-called Scots intellectul explain that it is time to end English oppression. We stole their king, he said, and they remember Culloden. The fact is that all the Scottish regiments fought on the Hanoverian side and we got lumbered with an appalling drunken series of Jameses. But 'twas ever thus. Davy Crockett and the brave defenders of the Alamo from the rascally Mexicans were in fact American slave owners, reacting and rioting against Mexican legislation outlawing slavery.
Saturday, 25 June 2011
Marching to the bottom of the hill.....
The generals have said we will only be able to afford to bomb Libya for another three months, which must be a comfort to Gaddafi.They have given similar assurances to the Taliban.
Used we not to shoot traitors who passed vital information to the enemy? But we must not be unkind. They are fighting to the last job
Mind you,Sam Johnson and I are as one in our view of that earlier war in the Falklands Isles when we had bombs to spare.. He said of our invasion in 1771:
“... What have we acquired? What, but a bleak and gloomy solitude, an island, thrown aside from human use, stormy in winter, and barren in summer; an island, which not even the southern savages have dignified with habitation; where a garrison must be kept in a state that contemplates with envy the exiles of Siberia; of which the expense will be perpetual, and the use only occasional. “
My much more modest contribution was to point out we had used a navy we no longer owned, to occupy an island we had given to British Coalite, and to confirm the right to be British of a population whose passports we had withdrawn.
So I find it odd I should warm to the words of an admiral who marched into Number 10 dressed up like Sir Joseph Porter in HMS Pinafore ”to stiffen Mrs Thatcher’s resolve to recapture the islands”, whilst pretending she was Elizabeth I.
Now the sandy admiral warns we would not be able to mount a force further than the other side of the Channel. That is fine by me. We know we can beat the French, who even lost the French Revolution, and I am all in favour of a ban on exporting our forces.
We won’t be happy until we stop pretending we are still Great Britain and enjoy the reality being little England, shorn even, thank the Lord, of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
We really must get out of the expensive habit of invasion. Look what it is costing the BBC to invade the North.
Alas, you cannot keep a bad idea down. The BBC borrowed £813m in a bond-deal to invade the North. Or, as they put it, ”finance a Broadcasting House redevelopment”. However you put it, they will have to pay it back with interest over the next 30 years. Or even longer. The renovation is already £20 million over budget and is running at least two years late, badgered by claims of lavish expenditure.
The BBC might not have had to borrow so much had it not sent 437 people to cover the Beijing Olympics – about 100 more than the number of British athletes taking part. Or spent £25,000 sending a remote-controlled model helicopter, equipped with a camera, flying over Broadcasting House for just two minutes. Part of a £3.9 million arts ‘celebration’ of the flagship. The BBC has also been criticised for spending millions on artwork - but you can’t keep a good overdraft down.
Or, as a BBC spokesman spun it: “The budget for the project was adjusted after the first phase of the redevelopment in 2006 to rebase the construction contract and incorporate changes in scope to accommodate new services like Arabic and Persian TV. The project is currently on schedule to be delivered within its approved budget.”
Relocation of the BBC’s regional headquarters includes the new £400 million base in Manchester and the £188 million construction of a new Scottish headquarters in Glasgow. The Salford base, which will house services such as Radio 5 Live and the sports department, involves the relocation of 1,500 staff from London.
Be prepared. The cost could spiral to £900 million.
Comfort is on hand. Caroline Thomson, the chief operating officer of the BBC has promised: “The days of mega-money are over. The BBC would never again sign contracts similar to the £18 million deal with Jonathan Ross.”
Except between themselves. Most of the suits in Mismanagement are paid far more than the Prime Minister.
And has anyone explained the reason for the move? It cannot be to bring jobs to the North. Departments are bringing their staffs up with them.
A THOUGHT- PROVOKING EMAIL FROM JOHN EDWARDS, COLUMNIST OF OUR PARISH
Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people not computers and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why when the stars are out they are visible but when the lights are out they are invisible.
MEANWHILE BACK AT THE FUNNY FARM
In the U.S an enlghtened prison governor had an investigation of his prison population. Our M Poor as Ps are arguing about our prisoners. Perhaps they should read this:
" He found 75 percent [of the prisoners] were reading somewhere between the fourth- and sixth-grade levels. 90 percent never had a legal job. 90 percent were self-identified addicts. 80 percent were self-identified victims of sexual or physical violence as a child. 65 percent had been placed in a special-education class at some point. 75 percent were high school dropouts.
ALL’S WELL - ESPECIALLY WHEN IT ENDS
Tried the Dragon CD (see last week’s rant) on an old laptop and it worked perfectly. New laptop came with Norton anti spyware but as it was expiring I installed AVG. It found a tribe of nasties. I have a warranty with DELL on the laptop for a 4-year service. Tried all morning and got them at last at lunchtime. They said it will cost £65 to clean or £112 for a year. I said I have already paid but they said we are unable to find record of payment. Went to Dell Customer Support. Tried four times with no response. Rang AVG who sad it was a software error and they put me on to Virgin Digital Help. £100 a year. Bought in. They remotely accessed the computer, cleared some really heavy nasties and thoroughly examined the system. Took over an hour on remote control. Result bliss. And the charming young man who spent the afternoon in the innards of my computer was sitting at his desk – in the Philippines!
Summing up DELL isn’t the essence. Avoid. Their printers only take Dell cartridges so Dell can charge high prices for replacement cartridges.They also refuse to repay the costs of warranties
they don’t honour
Used we not to shoot traitors who passed vital information to the enemy? But we must not be unkind. They are fighting to the last job
Mind you,Sam Johnson and I are as one in our view of that earlier war in the Falklands Isles when we had bombs to spare.. He said of our invasion in 1771:
“... What have we acquired? What, but a bleak and gloomy solitude, an island, thrown aside from human use, stormy in winter, and barren in summer; an island, which not even the southern savages have dignified with habitation; where a garrison must be kept in a state that contemplates with envy the exiles of Siberia; of which the expense will be perpetual, and the use only occasional. “
My much more modest contribution was to point out we had used a navy we no longer owned, to occupy an island we had given to British Coalite, and to confirm the right to be British of a population whose passports we had withdrawn.
So I find it odd I should warm to the words of an admiral who marched into Number 10 dressed up like Sir Joseph Porter in HMS Pinafore ”to stiffen Mrs Thatcher’s resolve to recapture the islands”, whilst pretending she was Elizabeth I.
Now the sandy admiral warns we would not be able to mount a force further than the other side of the Channel. That is fine by me. We know we can beat the French, who even lost the French Revolution, and I am all in favour of a ban on exporting our forces.
We won’t be happy until we stop pretending we are still Great Britain and enjoy the reality being little England, shorn even, thank the Lord, of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
We really must get out of the expensive habit of invasion. Look what it is costing the BBC to invade the North.
Alas, you cannot keep a bad idea down. The BBC borrowed £813m in a bond-deal to invade the North. Or, as they put it, ”finance a Broadcasting House redevelopment”. However you put it, they will have to pay it back with interest over the next 30 years. Or even longer. The renovation is already £20 million over budget and is running at least two years late, badgered by claims of lavish expenditure.
The BBC might not have had to borrow so much had it not sent 437 people to cover the Beijing Olympics – about 100 more than the number of British athletes taking part. Or spent £25,000 sending a remote-controlled model helicopter, equipped with a camera, flying over Broadcasting House for just two minutes. Part of a £3.9 million arts ‘celebration’ of the flagship. The BBC has also been criticised for spending millions on artwork - but you can’t keep a good overdraft down.
Or, as a BBC spokesman spun it: “The budget for the project was adjusted after the first phase of the redevelopment in 2006 to rebase the construction contract and incorporate changes in scope to accommodate new services like Arabic and Persian TV. The project is currently on schedule to be delivered within its approved budget.”
Relocation of the BBC’s regional headquarters includes the new £400 million base in Manchester and the £188 million construction of a new Scottish headquarters in Glasgow. The Salford base, which will house services such as Radio 5 Live and the sports department, involves the relocation of 1,500 staff from London.
Be prepared. The cost could spiral to £900 million.
Comfort is on hand. Caroline Thomson, the chief operating officer of the BBC has promised: “The days of mega-money are over. The BBC would never again sign contracts similar to the £18 million deal with Jonathan Ross.”
Except between themselves. Most of the suits in Mismanagement are paid far more than the Prime Minister.
And has anyone explained the reason for the move? It cannot be to bring jobs to the North. Departments are bringing their staffs up with them.
A THOUGHT- PROVOKING EMAIL FROM JOHN EDWARDS, COLUMNIST OF OUR PARISH
Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people not computers and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why when the stars are out they are visible but when the lights are out they are invisible.
MEANWHILE BACK AT THE FUNNY FARM
In the U.S an enlghtened prison governor had an investigation of his prison population. Our M Poor as Ps are arguing about our prisoners. Perhaps they should read this:
" He found 75 percent [of the prisoners] were reading somewhere between the fourth- and sixth-grade levels. 90 percent never had a legal job. 90 percent were self-identified addicts. 80 percent were self-identified victims of sexual or physical violence as a child. 65 percent had been placed in a special-education class at some point. 75 percent were high school dropouts.
ALL’S WELL - ESPECIALLY WHEN IT ENDS
Tried the Dragon CD (see last week’s rant) on an old laptop and it worked perfectly. New laptop came with Norton anti spyware but as it was expiring I installed AVG. It found a tribe of nasties. I have a warranty with DELL on the laptop for a 4-year service. Tried all morning and got them at last at lunchtime. They said it will cost £65 to clean or £112 for a year. I said I have already paid but they said we are unable to find record of payment. Went to Dell Customer Support. Tried four times with no response. Rang AVG who sad it was a software error and they put me on to Virgin Digital Help. £100 a year. Bought in. They remotely accessed the computer, cleared some really heavy nasties and thoroughly examined the system. Took over an hour on remote control. Result bliss. And the charming young man who spent the afternoon in the innards of my computer was sitting at his desk – in the Philippines!
Summing up DELL isn’t the essence. Avoid. Their printers only take Dell cartridges so Dell can charge high prices for replacement cartridges.They also refuse to repay the costs of warranties
they don’t honour
Saturday, 18 June 2011
silly clown valiant
Lets face it. Five books is a lot for one finger but it is the only way I can type and I have had five books commissioned, bubbling away in the little room above the eyebrows, begging to be let out.
.The Digital Voice Recorder seemed a gift from heaven. Speak your thoughts and watch them appear,as if by magic on your manuscript.
Simply a matter of slipping in the CD provided, following the instructions which will appear on your screen and its away dulled digit. Except that it wasn’t. The process defeated two highly trained computer mechanics when I failed.I took wider advice.Upgrade it I was advised. So I set aside Dragon Speaking 10,used my birthday gift certificate from my daughter and bought Dragon Speaking 11 .
That didn’t work either so I contacted Amazon for a refund. No can do, said Amazson. You have already opened the envelope.I wondered how I could have found out it was the wrong software without opening the envelope. I contacted Nuance who supply the software and a nice chap said what software have you got and I told him with quiet pride I not only had Software 10 I had also paid £40 for software 11 and he said well neither is any good. Olympus had given me the wrong software he said. But obliging chap that he was he offered to download software 10.1 which he said was the appropriate CD and he did.
I keyed it in and clicked where ordered. At first everything went as promised and then I was instructed to key in my customer number and it was rejected. I tried again and again. Again and again I was rejected.
At this point I must have lost my nerve because I went scurrying back to a nice lady at Nuance with whom by this time I was on Christian name terms. She very kindly tried the download herself and said it had worked for her. So I went back to the keyboard and this time a notice appeared saying it was a zip file and if I would press the download button all would be well. So I pressed the download button and got a notice saying if I would press another download button my problems would be over. At this point my typing finger objected. It said it was working harder than ever and I did say as how I was going to make things easier for it. I was in no mood for argument so I rapped its knuckle and it went on its weary way. This time pressing the button brought a notice from someone called Reg work, saying there were 165 errors on the machine and vey sportingly offering to clear things up with a free trial,. In the face of a noticeable shortage of gift horses I complied. That pressure on a button brought a bill for £34 which I thought might be my one finger getting its own b ack but I paid and got another button telling me that my life would be made easy if I backed up my files. By now I was too weak to demur and that cost me another ten quid. I forget what the next tempting offer was but I know that when I had accepted it I was down £100 over a five minute involuntary spending spree.So I emailed my friend Flora on Nuance in a craven bid for sympathy..
She obviously had summed up my degree of technical expertise bt this time because she said probably the best idea would be to ask Olympus who sold the recorder to send me a CD 10.1 which would get round the problem with ease.
There the matter ended and I awaited the next email with a nervous Cousteau like twitch..
I got an email from some one called trial Play telling me that my Winzip software was ready and if I would press the download below it would be delivered. I pressed the download and nothing happened. By this time I was whimpering noisily so I emailed Trial Play support and back came an email quick as a flash. It said thet would answer my eteemed enquiry in 48 hours..
At which point I broke into song, a reedy tenor with nervous gulps “I’ll join the Legion, that’s what I’ll do....and in some far distant region I’ll fight for the right .....” but the rest of that stirring aria from the Red Shadow was drowned in fitful
sobs........
.The Digital Voice Recorder seemed a gift from heaven. Speak your thoughts and watch them appear,as if by magic on your manuscript.
Simply a matter of slipping in the CD provided, following the instructions which will appear on your screen and its away dulled digit. Except that it wasn’t. The process defeated two highly trained computer mechanics when I failed.I took wider advice.Upgrade it I was advised. So I set aside Dragon Speaking 10,used my birthday gift certificate from my daughter and bought Dragon Speaking 11 .
That didn’t work either so I contacted Amazon for a refund. No can do, said Amazson. You have already opened the envelope.I wondered how I could have found out it was the wrong software without opening the envelope. I contacted Nuance who supply the software and a nice chap said what software have you got and I told him with quiet pride I not only had Software 10 I had also paid £40 for software 11 and he said well neither is any good. Olympus had given me the wrong software he said. But obliging chap that he was he offered to download software 10.1 which he said was the appropriate CD and he did.
I keyed it in and clicked where ordered. At first everything went as promised and then I was instructed to key in my customer number and it was rejected. I tried again and again. Again and again I was rejected.
At this point I must have lost my nerve because I went scurrying back to a nice lady at Nuance with whom by this time I was on Christian name terms. She very kindly tried the download herself and said it had worked for her. So I went back to the keyboard and this time a notice appeared saying it was a zip file and if I would press the download button all would be well. So I pressed the download button and got a notice saying if I would press another download button my problems would be over. At this point my typing finger objected. It said it was working harder than ever and I did say as how I was going to make things easier for it. I was in no mood for argument so I rapped its knuckle and it went on its weary way. This time pressing the button brought a notice from someone called Reg work, saying there were 165 errors on the machine and vey sportingly offering to clear things up with a free trial,. In the face of a noticeable shortage of gift horses I complied. That pressure on a button brought a bill for £34 which I thought might be my one finger getting its own b ack but I paid and got another button telling me that my life would be made easy if I backed up my files. By now I was too weak to demur and that cost me another ten quid. I forget what the next tempting offer was but I know that when I had accepted it I was down £100 over a five minute involuntary spending spree.So I emailed my friend Flora on Nuance in a craven bid for sympathy..
She obviously had summed up my degree of technical expertise bt this time because she said probably the best idea would be to ask Olympus who sold the recorder to send me a CD 10.1 which would get round the problem with ease.
There the matter ended and I awaited the next email with a nervous Cousteau like twitch..
I got an email from some one called trial Play telling me that my Winzip software was ready and if I would press the download below it would be delivered. I pressed the download and nothing happened. By this time I was whimpering noisily so I emailed Trial Play support and back came an email quick as a flash. It said thet would answer my eteemed enquiry in 48 hours..
At which point I broke into song, a reedy tenor with nervous gulps “I’ll join the Legion, that’s what I’ll do....and in some far distant region I’ll fight for the right .....” but the rest of that stirring aria from the Red Shadow was drowned in fitful
sobs........
Saturday, 11 June 2011
What fright from yonder window breaks......
Desert Island Discs is a funny place to have an epiphany. I had never heard of Alfie Boe despite his international success as an opera singer, a musical comedy idol and a pop star. To any other ignoramus on the planet, I should explain he was a clog-wearing factory worker, one of nine living in a council house in Fleetwood, who became an opera star. The epiphany was the revelation that he shares with Aled Jones a rare and extraordinary talent and charisma, combined with being an ordinary and likeable young man who liked being in opera but hated watching it.
Up to then it had been a Bloody Sunday. I had just read that regional accents are fading out and being replaced by a Jamaican patois, and there is to be a new production of Romeo and Juliet in which a 14-year-old Juliet strips and makes simulated love on stage, before an audience.
It is the idea of Julian Fellowes, whose wife is a Lady-in-Waiting and who, on the strength of an “Upstairs Downstairs” lookalike script, is wheeled out by the Media TV an as an arbiter of aristocratic behaviour.
One essential quality of the true aristocrat is an assumption of modesty. It is not one that this expert on the behaviour of butlers shares.
He says his script is faithful to Shakespeare’s intentions. It features “appropriate” actors who appear close to how Shakespeare originally envisaged his star-crossed lovers.
Since in Shakespeare’s day Juliet was played by a boy, I think that unlikely. There is some reason to suspect Shakespeare’s sexuality but I cannot see him staging a homosexual romp.
I am not sure the idea is even legal. Fourteen-year-old girls still have some tattered remains of protection. The Government is to ban suggestive posters near schools and the pornographic exploitation of young girls. They are worried that, despite sex education that involves putting condoms on bananas, we have the greatest number of schoolgirl mothers in Europe. They seek to reduce it. An under-age love-in would seem to miss that high expectation by a wide margin. I cannot believe that such performances chime with a society which frowns on smoking on stage.
Be at ease.
Mr Fellowes assures us he is writing a film script which is both sensual yet tasteful enough to avoid accusations of child exploitation. His version, he insists, “keeps pretty true to Shakespeare but is more accessible. We tell the story more economically too.”
I worry about his Thatcher- like use of the Royal “We” but I suppose when your missus is a monarch’s “Gopher” one slips into such usage. But be assure:
“It is now Fellowesian Shakespeare. I’ve kept all the famous scenes and what was said in them. So we have, for example, kept the lines about a rose by any other name.”
I am sure we, perhaps even Shakespeare too, bask in his magnanimity.
In the same Sunday newspaper I was treated to a whole page devoted to a girl’s love affair with Martin Amis. Would that be the would-be literary genius with the mouth of rancid teeth and concomitant halitosis?
I have been reading a manual on how to be a Stoic, because it seems to me that might be just what I need in this whirligig world. Little comfort so far. The author points out that in classic times philosophy was studied as an explanation of life. No longer. Today’s philosophers specialise in logic, metaphysics, politics, science, religion and ethics. There are studies in the philosophy of sport, feminism, even the philosophy of philosophies.
Clearly they have given up on life and who is to blame them?
FOR EXAMPLE
Research by the Centre of Social Justice has established that the Olympic Games, which will feature 26 sports, will not induce people to take up a sport. Previous Olympics, including Sydney 2000, failed to produce an increase in participation. It added that there was no evidence of a link between national sporting success and increased levels of sporting activity.
So far this International Sportsfest has left its host countries in debt. But there are benefits. Those remaining FIFA bosses who escape prison will enjoy a £1.3m junket, including five star hotels and tickets to events like the final of the 100 metres, denied to the rest of you.(I wouldn't go if they were staged in our front garden. Indeed I would draw the curtains) Sepp Blatter, its head, and his Secretary General have been given “all areas passes”, and will be ferried round in chauffeur driven BMWs. Other FIFA bigwigs have been awarded tickets in all prestige events, and 200 heavily discounted rooms in The Mayfair luxury hotel have been booked. We will pay FIFA technical staff £200 a night subsidies for the three weeks they will be here. FIFA will also be offered 2,000 Olympic tickets at face value. In fact the reason so many people were disappointed in the ticket ballot is that only 40 per cent of the tickets available were offered to the public because 60 per cent have gone in freebies.
Last year the Spectator published the complete, contractually binding and previously confidential set of demands made by the 115-member International Olympic Committee (IOC).
London is required to provide the IOC and the ‘Olympic Family’ with 40,000 hotel-room bookings for the entire duration of the Games. The city must control all billboard advertising, city transport advertising, airport advertising etc. for the duration of the Games and the month preceding it. Customs officers and police must ‘co-operate’ in taking action against unapproved Olympics advertising and enforce the confiscation of non-official goods. Brand protection teams will ‘conduct surveillance’. They must ‘attempt to confiscate any infringing material whether inside or outside the venue’.
Spectators at the Games ‘must not wear clothes or accessories with commercial messages other than the manufacturer’s brand name’. ’No athlete or other participant’ at the Games may wear any clothing on which the manufacturer’s name takes up more than 10 per cent of the surface area. No journalist covering the Games is allowed any ‘signage of any kind’, even for his or her own publication — on ‘camera bags, hats or other garments’.
The Olympics flag must be more prominent than the Union flag. There must be a royal reception on the day before the Games open, at which, ‘IOC members are presented to the Head of State’.
Billboards and pageantry throughout the city shall be in French as well as English.
The IOC is getting 250 miles of so-called ‘Zil’ lanes — named after the old Soviet limousines that enjoyed traffic-free passage. They will stretch from London to Weymouth, where the sailing games are being held. It now emerges that there will also be 500 air-conditioned limos, whose drivers must wear hats and uniforms. London must provide a ‘dance café’ in the £325 million Olympic Village. A flower shop is required, which the IOC insists ‘should provide a range of flowers and gifts for customers’.
A balloon rental service is optional, .but ‘it is recommended that the same housekeeping staff perform their duties for the same teams daily’, because this will ‘build relationships and trust’, ‘give confidence’ and ‘maintain standards’.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A letter to a friend
Dear Sarah,
Thank you for your kind concerns about our wounded dog. The other night when he could not sleep I sang him a lullaby. It seemed to soothe him, though once, when singing with the choir of The Big Pit at Blaenavon, I threw the entire choir out of tune and they begged me never to sing with them in public.
Last night - or more accurately at 4 am - the prisoner/dog wakened me demanding to perform his ablutions. He has to go everywhere on a lead, so, harnessed up, prisoner and escort marched into the garden where he instantly knocked me over and escaped. At my great weight, once over, I cannot right myself. I tried pulling myself up by a rose bush and pulled out the bush by the roots. I tried to climb up my walking stick and broke the stick. My floundering about roused the prisoner's curiosity and he abandoned what was clearly a carefully crafted escape plan and came back to find out what I was about. At that point my nerve broke and I fear I abused him. Oh well, his eyes said, if that is your attitude... and stalked off. When, after half an hour, I eventually stood upright and staggered into the room we had vacated, the prisoner was happily sleeping and scornfully snoring - in My Chair!
The whole thing was clearly a devilishly cunning plot. I expect he had heard that when a butterfly dies in Africa the effect is felt here. I see myself as an elderly, crippled, overweight butterfly. The stop press news is that he has been back to the vet and is mending nicely. I am not.
Much love,
Ian
kidmoresisland.blogspot.com
Up to then it had been a Bloody Sunday. I had just read that regional accents are fading out and being replaced by a Jamaican patois, and there is to be a new production of Romeo and Juliet in which a 14-year-old Juliet strips and makes simulated love on stage, before an audience.
It is the idea of Julian Fellowes, whose wife is a Lady-in-Waiting and who, on the strength of an “Upstairs Downstairs” lookalike script, is wheeled out by the Media TV an as an arbiter of aristocratic behaviour.
One essential quality of the true aristocrat is an assumption of modesty. It is not one that this expert on the behaviour of butlers shares.
He says his script is faithful to Shakespeare’s intentions. It features “appropriate” actors who appear close to how Shakespeare originally envisaged his star-crossed lovers.
Since in Shakespeare’s day Juliet was played by a boy, I think that unlikely. There is some reason to suspect Shakespeare’s sexuality but I cannot see him staging a homosexual romp.
I am not sure the idea is even legal. Fourteen-year-old girls still have some tattered remains of protection. The Government is to ban suggestive posters near schools and the pornographic exploitation of young girls. They are worried that, despite sex education that involves putting condoms on bananas, we have the greatest number of schoolgirl mothers in Europe. They seek to reduce it. An under-age love-in would seem to miss that high expectation by a wide margin. I cannot believe that such performances chime with a society which frowns on smoking on stage.
Be at ease.
Mr Fellowes assures us he is writing a film script which is both sensual yet tasteful enough to avoid accusations of child exploitation. His version, he insists, “keeps pretty true to Shakespeare but is more accessible. We tell the story more economically too.”
I worry about his Thatcher- like use of the Royal “We” but I suppose when your missus is a monarch’s “Gopher” one slips into such usage. But be assure:
“It is now Fellowesian Shakespeare. I’ve kept all the famous scenes and what was said in them. So we have, for example, kept the lines about a rose by any other name.”
I am sure we, perhaps even Shakespeare too, bask in his magnanimity.
In the same Sunday newspaper I was treated to a whole page devoted to a girl’s love affair with Martin Amis. Would that be the would-be literary genius with the mouth of rancid teeth and concomitant halitosis?
I have been reading a manual on how to be a Stoic, because it seems to me that might be just what I need in this whirligig world. Little comfort so far. The author points out that in classic times philosophy was studied as an explanation of life. No longer. Today’s philosophers specialise in logic, metaphysics, politics, science, religion and ethics. There are studies in the philosophy of sport, feminism, even the philosophy of philosophies.
Clearly they have given up on life and who is to blame them?
FOR EXAMPLE
Research by the Centre of Social Justice has established that the Olympic Games, which will feature 26 sports, will not induce people to take up a sport. Previous Olympics, including Sydney 2000, failed to produce an increase in participation. It added that there was no evidence of a link between national sporting success and increased levels of sporting activity.
So far this International Sportsfest has left its host countries in debt. But there are benefits. Those remaining FIFA bosses who escape prison will enjoy a £1.3m junket, including five star hotels and tickets to events like the final of the 100 metres, denied to the rest of you.(I wouldn't go if they were staged in our front garden. Indeed I would draw the curtains) Sepp Blatter, its head, and his Secretary General have been given “all areas passes”, and will be ferried round in chauffeur driven BMWs. Other FIFA bigwigs have been awarded tickets in all prestige events, and 200 heavily discounted rooms in The Mayfair luxury hotel have been booked. We will pay FIFA technical staff £200 a night subsidies for the three weeks they will be here. FIFA will also be offered 2,000 Olympic tickets at face value. In fact the reason so many people were disappointed in the ticket ballot is that only 40 per cent of the tickets available were offered to the public because 60 per cent have gone in freebies.
Last year the Spectator published the complete, contractually binding and previously confidential set of demands made by the 115-member International Olympic Committee (IOC).
London is required to provide the IOC and the ‘Olympic Family’ with 40,000 hotel-room bookings for the entire duration of the Games. The city must control all billboard advertising, city transport advertising, airport advertising etc. for the duration of the Games and the month preceding it. Customs officers and police must ‘co-operate’ in taking action against unapproved Olympics advertising and enforce the confiscation of non-official goods. Brand protection teams will ‘conduct surveillance’. They must ‘attempt to confiscate any infringing material whether inside or outside the venue’.
Spectators at the Games ‘must not wear clothes or accessories with commercial messages other than the manufacturer’s brand name’. ’No athlete or other participant’ at the Games may wear any clothing on which the manufacturer’s name takes up more than 10 per cent of the surface area. No journalist covering the Games is allowed any ‘signage of any kind’, even for his or her own publication — on ‘camera bags, hats or other garments’.
The Olympics flag must be more prominent than the Union flag. There must be a royal reception on the day before the Games open, at which, ‘IOC members are presented to the Head of State’.
Billboards and pageantry throughout the city shall be in French as well as English.
The IOC is getting 250 miles of so-called ‘Zil’ lanes — named after the old Soviet limousines that enjoyed traffic-free passage. They will stretch from London to Weymouth, where the sailing games are being held. It now emerges that there will also be 500 air-conditioned limos, whose drivers must wear hats and uniforms. London must provide a ‘dance café’ in the £325 million Olympic Village. A flower shop is required, which the IOC insists ‘should provide a range of flowers and gifts for customers’.
A balloon rental service is optional, .but ‘it is recommended that the same housekeeping staff perform their duties for the same teams daily’, because this will ‘build relationships and trust’, ‘give confidence’ and ‘maintain standards’.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A letter to a friend
Dear Sarah,
Thank you for your kind concerns about our wounded dog. The other night when he could not sleep I sang him a lullaby. It seemed to soothe him, though once, when singing with the choir of The Big Pit at Blaenavon, I threw the entire choir out of tune and they begged me never to sing with them in public.
Last night - or more accurately at 4 am - the prisoner/dog wakened me demanding to perform his ablutions. He has to go everywhere on a lead, so, harnessed up, prisoner and escort marched into the garden where he instantly knocked me over and escaped. At my great weight, once over, I cannot right myself. I tried pulling myself up by a rose bush and pulled out the bush by the roots. I tried to climb up my walking stick and broke the stick. My floundering about roused the prisoner's curiosity and he abandoned what was clearly a carefully crafted escape plan and came back to find out what I was about. At that point my nerve broke and I fear I abused him. Oh well, his eyes said, if that is your attitude... and stalked off. When, after half an hour, I eventually stood upright and staggered into the room we had vacated, the prisoner was happily sleeping and scornfully snoring - in My Chair!
The whole thing was clearly a devilishly cunning plot. I expect he had heard that when a butterfly dies in Africa the effect is felt here. I see myself as an elderly, crippled, overweight butterfly. The stop press news is that he has been back to the vet and is mending nicely. I am not.
Much love,
Ian
kidmoresisland.blogspot.com
Friday, 3 June 2011
VET DEBT
Historically lawyers and members of parliament have a richly deserved unsavoury reputation which the parliamentarians have shown themselves anxious to retain.
It is interesting that the most venal trade of all, the veterinary surgeon has escaped opprobrium.
I think I know the reason.
In my view only the atom bomb has been a greater threat to civilisation than TV. Thanks to that devilish invention violence has become endemic. Our feral young have been encouraged to slaughter each other and aspiration has been replaced by insistence. If we see it we must have it.
Some years ago a Yorkshire vet published a series of moderately successful anecdotes. Anxious to bring out a collected edition his London publisher hunted round for a title and eventually settled on “ All Creatures Great and Small” It proved a gold mine. The publishing industry to a man, or more correctly a woman, scratched its hennaed head for biblical titles. I ws writing my book on Ken Williams the policeman naturalist and I was solemnly assured that it would a beat seller if I could establish a biblical connection.
I couldn’t and it wasn’t. However an ecstatic review in the Police Gazette was read by a Yorkshire policeman who ws encouraged to publish his own memoir. That became the TV series “Heartbeat” and I believe he is now a millionaire. It ws par for the course in our family. My wife’s book “ Prisoners of Santo Tomas was the acknowledged inspiration for the TV series “Tenko”, though in admitting it the TV company declined to pay a royalty on the grounds it ws “in the public domain”
The Vets’ stories were also made into a TV series that depicted Vets as loveable, eccentrics who spent their lives with their arms up a cow’s uterus with never a thought about money. It is not sour grapes to say that Herriot had an enviable command of the cliché. The aristocratic eccentric, the wayward charmer, the try harder do gooder and the lovable servant. Surround them with a cast of thousands of well meaning rebel peasants all speaking impenetrable treacle toffee. Place them in an enviable landscape of empty roads, free of caravans, EC lorries and mechanical diggers. Follow that with interminable series about earnest and often beautiful young people learning how to castrate a newt. The result?
A national perception that all Vets are Good Eggs and probably Scottish.
Porridge eating philanthropists to a manHow quickly the perception fades. The writer Max Hastings published an article about vets costs and te a storm of comment
. We have just paid a number of vets a sum of money I once took a year to earn. I remember being charged £40 to discover the cause of death of a five shilling goldfish.A pensioner neighbour found a stray cat which was obviously ill, took it to the Vet and was charged £218. It goes without saying that we coughed up our king’s ransom without a murmur. As did all the people who commented on Hastings article.
“Ah” you will say “ Vets were kinder in my day.”
Rubbish. I have a friend, a vet of the old school who died last week,, An admirable man who would give you his right arm and did in fact give me a C C de France split cane game rod. Often sought my advice on books to read and matters of literary style. Yet if I asked him the most innocent question about dog behaviour an iron shutter came down.
TV is at it worst in documentaries. I watched one in which the presenter claimed that Dr Crippen was innocent of his wife’s murder and based it on “ truths” that he claimed to have discovered about the remains found in Crippen’s cellar, which were those of a man and not Crippen’s wife. He also claimed as a matter for astonishment the Scotland Yard man Inspector True was corrupt.
I have no doubt Crippen was innocent. A significant number of murderers brought to book by Scotland Yard have proved to be innocent In fact it was known at Crippen's trial the remains were those of a man.The judge mentioned it in his summing up.
As to the revelation that True ws corrupt. Some years ago Dr Howard Taylor, a historian from Nottingham University conducted a four year research programme which showed that since the days of Jack the Ripper police forces have been fraudulently massaging crime figures. Until the First World War police efficiency was judged by the LOW number of detections and prosecutions. In consequence crime figures were kept below 90,000 a year and any crimes above that figure were “lost”. From 1880 to 1966 the Director of Public Prosecutions “rationed” murders at a fixed rate of 150 a year, with the connivance of the police.
In 1919 the Government sought for reasons to cut police numbers and budgets. Overnight the crime figures trebled.
Dr Taylor concluded “ It is clear that crime rates have been supply led, rather than demand led and have little reflection of reality”
Even traffic deaths, he found, had been manipulated so that they rose precisely in line with the number of extra policemen required
“All the police did ws claim that one sixth of the force was needed each year for traffic duties and the accident rate rose accordingly.
When I was “doing crime” for The People” scarcely a week seemed to pass without a senior officer going to prison on corruption charges. During the invstigation in to the Richardson Brothers crime syndicate I was given a tip off that one of the gang, a man called Duval, had kept a diary of his time with the gang. and I was sent to find him.
I was told on no account to ring th Metropolitan police. So many of them were in the pay of London g gangs that the Richardson investigation was being conducted from a rural police station in the Home Counties.
Some years later I was hired by Lord Russell of Liverpool, a celebrated lawyer of the day to check the alibi of Hanratty who had been hung for the A6 murder, despite insisting he was in Rhyl at the time.
Hanratty had described the room in a boarding house in Kimnel st where he had slept. He said it had green shiny wallpaper. The police could not find such a room When I went with Russel the landlady after some pretty impressive questioning by him suddenly said.
“There is a room with shiny green wallpaper. The bathroom. And if I am full I let it out to visitors”
As Deputy Judge Advocate General to the British Army of the Rhine Lord Russell was one of the chief legal advisers during the Nurnberg war crime trials held after the end of the Second World War" After our investigation he was adamant that Hanratty ws innocent
Massaging crime figures? I have told here how the Lord Chancellor’s office at the time of the moratorium of death sentences instructed judges that murder charges were to be reduced, Because there were apparently fewer murders there was no argument for the retention of the death penalty
DANGEROUS CUTTING.
POLICE dispatched to a 999 emergency reporting a “bright stationary object” above a caller’s house soon solved the mystery – when they discovered it was the moon.
The recording runs as follows. Police have not revealed the identity of the caller except to say he was from the South Wales Valleys:
Control Room: “South Wales Police, what’s your emergency?”
Caller: “It’s not really. I just need to inform you that across the mountain there’s a bright stationary object.”
Control room: “Right.”
Caller: “If you’ve got a couple of minutes perhaps you could find out what it is? It’s been there at least half an hour and it’s still there.”
Control: “It’s been there for half an hour. Right. Is it actually on the mountain or in the sky?”
Caller: “It’s in the air.”
Control: “I will send someone up there now to check it out.”
Caller: “OK.”
A few minutes later, all became clear in the following exchange between the control room and the police officer sent to the scene.
Control: “Alpha Zulu 20, this object in the sky, did anyone have a look at it?”
Officer: “Yes, it’s the moon. Over.”
It is interesting that the most venal trade of all, the veterinary surgeon has escaped opprobrium.
I think I know the reason.
In my view only the atom bomb has been a greater threat to civilisation than TV. Thanks to that devilish invention violence has become endemic. Our feral young have been encouraged to slaughter each other and aspiration has been replaced by insistence. If we see it we must have it.
Some years ago a Yorkshire vet published a series of moderately successful anecdotes. Anxious to bring out a collected edition his London publisher hunted round for a title and eventually settled on “ All Creatures Great and Small” It proved a gold mine. The publishing industry to a man, or more correctly a woman, scratched its hennaed head for biblical titles. I ws writing my book on Ken Williams the policeman naturalist and I was solemnly assured that it would a beat seller if I could establish a biblical connection.
I couldn’t and it wasn’t. However an ecstatic review in the Police Gazette was read by a Yorkshire policeman who ws encouraged to publish his own memoir. That became the TV series “Heartbeat” and I believe he is now a millionaire. It ws par for the course in our family. My wife’s book “ Prisoners of Santo Tomas was the acknowledged inspiration for the TV series “Tenko”, though in admitting it the TV company declined to pay a royalty on the grounds it ws “in the public domain”
The Vets’ stories were also made into a TV series that depicted Vets as loveable, eccentrics who spent their lives with their arms up a cow’s uterus with never a thought about money. It is not sour grapes to say that Herriot had an enviable command of the cliché. The aristocratic eccentric, the wayward charmer, the try harder do gooder and the lovable servant. Surround them with a cast of thousands of well meaning rebel peasants all speaking impenetrable treacle toffee. Place them in an enviable landscape of empty roads, free of caravans, EC lorries and mechanical diggers. Follow that with interminable series about earnest and often beautiful young people learning how to castrate a newt. The result?
A national perception that all Vets are Good Eggs and probably Scottish.
Porridge eating philanthropists to a manHow quickly the perception fades. The writer Max Hastings published an article about vets costs and te a storm of comment
. We have just paid a number of vets a sum of money I once took a year to earn. I remember being charged £40 to discover the cause of death of a five shilling goldfish.A pensioner neighbour found a stray cat which was obviously ill, took it to the Vet and was charged £218. It goes without saying that we coughed up our king’s ransom without a murmur. As did all the people who commented on Hastings article.
“Ah” you will say “ Vets were kinder in my day.”
Rubbish. I have a friend, a vet of the old school who died last week,, An admirable man who would give you his right arm and did in fact give me a C C de France split cane game rod. Often sought my advice on books to read and matters of literary style. Yet if I asked him the most innocent question about dog behaviour an iron shutter came down.
TV is at it worst in documentaries. I watched one in which the presenter claimed that Dr Crippen was innocent of his wife’s murder and based it on “ truths” that he claimed to have discovered about the remains found in Crippen’s cellar, which were those of a man and not Crippen’s wife. He also claimed as a matter for astonishment the Scotland Yard man Inspector True was corrupt.
I have no doubt Crippen was innocent. A significant number of murderers brought to book by Scotland Yard have proved to be innocent In fact it was known at Crippen's trial the remains were those of a man.The judge mentioned it in his summing up.
As to the revelation that True ws corrupt. Some years ago Dr Howard Taylor, a historian from Nottingham University conducted a four year research programme which showed that since the days of Jack the Ripper police forces have been fraudulently massaging crime figures. Until the First World War police efficiency was judged by the LOW number of detections and prosecutions. In consequence crime figures were kept below 90,000 a year and any crimes above that figure were “lost”. From 1880 to 1966 the Director of Public Prosecutions “rationed” murders at a fixed rate of 150 a year, with the connivance of the police.
In 1919 the Government sought for reasons to cut police numbers and budgets. Overnight the crime figures trebled.
Dr Taylor concluded “ It is clear that crime rates have been supply led, rather than demand led and have little reflection of reality”
Even traffic deaths, he found, had been manipulated so that they rose precisely in line with the number of extra policemen required
“All the police did ws claim that one sixth of the force was needed each year for traffic duties and the accident rate rose accordingly.
When I was “doing crime” for The People” scarcely a week seemed to pass without a senior officer going to prison on corruption charges. During the invstigation in to the Richardson Brothers crime syndicate I was given a tip off that one of the gang, a man called Duval, had kept a diary of his time with the gang. and I was sent to find him.
I was told on no account to ring th Metropolitan police. So many of them were in the pay of London g gangs that the Richardson investigation was being conducted from a rural police station in the Home Counties.
Some years later I was hired by Lord Russell of Liverpool, a celebrated lawyer of the day to check the alibi of Hanratty who had been hung for the A6 murder, despite insisting he was in Rhyl at the time.
Hanratty had described the room in a boarding house in Kimnel st where he had slept. He said it had green shiny wallpaper. The police could not find such a room When I went with Russel the landlady after some pretty impressive questioning by him suddenly said.
“There is a room with shiny green wallpaper. The bathroom. And if I am full I let it out to visitors”
As Deputy Judge Advocate General to the British Army of the Rhine Lord Russell was one of the chief legal advisers during the Nurnberg war crime trials held after the end of the Second World War" After our investigation he was adamant that Hanratty ws innocent
Massaging crime figures? I have told here how the Lord Chancellor’s office at the time of the moratorium of death sentences instructed judges that murder charges were to be reduced, Because there were apparently fewer murders there was no argument for the retention of the death penalty
DANGEROUS CUTTING.
POLICE dispatched to a 999 emergency reporting a “bright stationary object” above a caller’s house soon solved the mystery – when they discovered it was the moon.
The recording runs as follows. Police have not revealed the identity of the caller except to say he was from the South Wales Valleys:
Control Room: “South Wales Police, what’s your emergency?”
Caller: “It’s not really. I just need to inform you that across the mountain there’s a bright stationary object.”
Control room: “Right.”
Caller: “If you’ve got a couple of minutes perhaps you could find out what it is? It’s been there at least half an hour and it’s still there.”
Control: “It’s been there for half an hour. Right. Is it actually on the mountain or in the sky?”
Caller: “It’s in the air.”
Control: “I will send someone up there now to check it out.”
Caller: “OK.”
A few minutes later, all became clear in the following exchange between the control room and the police officer sent to the scene.
Control: “Alpha Zulu 20, this object in the sky, did anyone have a look at it?”
Officer: “Yes, it’s the moon. Over.”
Friday, 27 May 2011
When the chauffeur returned our dog Taz from Racehorse Ritz he brought with him a raft of Part One Orders. We were instructed to limit him to one room,.accompany him at all times to the ablutions, not allow him to climb on furniture and above all not let him escape to the Great Outdoors.
Here, at Stalag Luft One, an anti-escape committee was convened. It was pointed out that this entire dwelling was about the same size as my library in our home at Aberbraint. Therefore it was proposed, and seconded, that for the purposes of command the ground (and only) floor of Stalag Luft be designated as 'one room'. A further proposal was adopted that furniture be rearranged in the drawing room to limit movement in early stage of convalescence/captivity. Dog walker to be re- mustered as dog sitter.
The meeting was then adjourned and adjutant(me) retired to my study. Closely followed by Taz, who had ignored recently erected barriers and now glared at him challengingly from the plastic cone which prevents him from biting stitches. An escort was summoned and prisoner and escort were marched out to confinement suite.
Adjutant returned to study and peace reigned until rent by scream from Head Ferret. The dog under advisement had vanished. Suite search failed to discover signs of tunnel and guards were despatched to search perimeter fence. Prisoner discovered hiding behind hedge. Challenging glare replaced by smug insubordinate expression. Prisoner returned to punishment suite. Peace reigned after Last Post was piped.
At 6 am came a sound as of a plastic helmet being dashed against C.O.'s bedroom door. Adjutant observed dog butting said door. Returned prisoner to suite with adjutant spending night on armchair duty till reveille piped.Prisoner insisted on lullaby before sleep. Adjutant obliged and prisoner slept soundly
Anti-escape committee re-convened. Prisoner's records perused. Revealed considerable form for escaping whilst still an apprentice dog on recruitment to Unit.
The problem is that he insists on being with us. With us he is loving and obedient. If we are not within licking distance he gets a red mist. He is the only dog we have ever been owned by to be barred from a boarding kennels.
When he was badged with us on Anglesey he was billeted in a Kennel Yard in which bloodhounds had been confined. He pleaded guilty to burrowing beneath a 6ft high, heavy duty steel fence and tearing through wire on a padlocked gate. When repairs were effected he found a weak join four foot up, made a hole and jumped out. Left in the house, he ate through a listed window, demolished the cat flap, ripped out the phone cable and shredded the cushion flooring in a bid to burrow under the door.
Confined to cars, he ate fourteen seat belts. Estimated cost of replacing and repairing £3,000.
At this point it was discovered from a Children's TV programme that Taz is the shortened form of Tasmanian Devil. Obviously there were personality flaws his previous owners had kept to themselves. Happily his cheery, loving presence more than cancelled them out and it was observed that he only escaped as far as the gate, where he waited placidly for our return.
In the light of these disclosures, the anti-escape committee unanimously voted for compulsory parade of dog to view DVDs of “Colditz” and “Bridge Over the River Kwai” for instruction purposes. Dog warned that future acts of indiscipline may be punished by confinement to the Hole. Adjutant's objection to this description of his study overruled by CO.
Sadly over the weekend the wound became infected and Taz was back in the camp hospital, under guard, on a diet of money; leaving his bemused owners to wonder how his absence leaves a huge chasm so much greater than the space he occupies with his presence.
On Thursday we had an anxious call from the veterinary nurse. He had gone on hunger strike. He was refusing to eat hospital food. Could we bring round some chicken?
The C.O immediately went into Meals on Wheels mode and delivered a tasty melange of chicken and rice. The suggestion of the adjutant that he might like to wash it down with a saucer of Chardonnay was not well received. Before she returned a vet rang to say that if she wanted to visit Taz after Rounds she would be welcome.
That day we had lunch at 4 pm because a second vet rang to say he had been in touch with the Racehorse Ritz who said there was nothing to worry about. Wound infection often happened with greyhounds and Taz could come home the next day.
The adjutant is as well as can be expected though exhibits a worrying tendency to jump nervously for no apparent reason. No doubt in time the attendant nervous twitch will disappear.
LIONS LED BY DONKEYS
Lord Dannett, the noisy Christian who used to be C.I.G.S. is predictably against defence cuts. He says if we do make them we won't be a great nation any more. He asks if that is what we want.
General, you can bet your sweet arse it is. It is time we gave up our seat at the top table. It is time we gave up trying to turn Afghanistan into Slumberland. Afghanistanis are an undisciplined mob which lives to fight.
General, the MOD is already 3.5 million in debt financing your folies de grandeur. Add to that a further billion fighting the Libyan army, whose military experience in war is limited to stealing petrol from the 8th Army.
May I remind you that you are borrowing from your countrymen, who are so broke we are closing care centres and libraries, throwing millions out of work? We even have to buy hospitals on HP.
General, you seem to have misunderstood our role, or perhaps you have not noticed the Empire has gone. Nations sit on the top table because they are powerful and call the shots. We are not. Borrowing billions to buy lethal toys and giving billions in Aid to countries wealthier than we are will not buy us privileges to which we are no longer entitled.
But that is not the reason I want us to be a little nation, bothering no one. The reason is guilt.
My ancestors fought at Hastings, Crecy, Agincourt, in the Civil War; at Ramillies, Waterloo, Trafalgar; in the Crimea and in the Zulu and Boer wars, and every silly war including World Wars One and Two. A branch of us even fought in the American Civil War. It didn't do us any good. We learned nothing, Worse, I am of the generation of World War Two. I grew up watching the destruction of my cities, the death of my school fellows in a succession of blitzes. I spent two years in a beaten Germany, witness to its degredation and the mass obliteration of Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover and Cologne.
My guilt? I have fathered a generation which has learned nothing. A generation of people like you, General, who believe that war is a solution, not a problem. It is something of which I am deeply ashamed and eager to make reparations.
Thanks to my publishing friends Revel Barker and Neil Marr, the thirty odd books I have written are being republished and all the royalties are going to service charities. It won't wash away the guilt I feel but it might help the fine young men and women who will go through life without limbs or genitals just so that our generals and our politicians can swank on a top table they have no right to share.
YOU FEEL BETTER FOR THAT ???????
A mass display of public disobedience, of judicial petulance, blatant abuse of parliamentary privilege and a commercially driven media campaign............
So now we know that Ryan Giggs had it off with Imogen Thomas. Do we feel (a) greatly relieved (b) proud that a blow has been struck for media freedom or (c) slightly shabby and wondering what the fuss was all about? Young men filled with adulation and money, surrounded by nubile young girls eager to give their all. The wonder would be that a testoterone-brimming Adonis turned down the opportunity. I do not suppose the cuckolded Mrs Giggs feels better for the fact we all know of her betrayal by the man she loved. Ms Thomas cannot enjoy the reputation that will be her lifetime companion.
I used to make a handsome living writing stories for the tabloids about similar situations. Cannot honestly say that I felt ashamed. My only fear was that one of my victims might have asked in answer to my probing:
“What has it got to do with you?” I wouldn't have had an answer.
Until recently all I knew of Giggs is that his dazzling talent has entertained thousands of supporters for over a decade. That he is universally liked...
I think I will stick with that memory and the feeling of relief that no one has been nosing into my private life in the way I nosed into theirs.
P.S. In passing, I cannnot believe that any legislation which muzzles Giles Coren is wholly bad.
Here, at Stalag Luft One, an anti-escape committee was convened. It was pointed out that this entire dwelling was about the same size as my library in our home at Aberbraint. Therefore it was proposed, and seconded, that for the purposes of command the ground (and only) floor of Stalag Luft be designated as 'one room'. A further proposal was adopted that furniture be rearranged in the drawing room to limit movement in early stage of convalescence/captivity. Dog walker to be re- mustered as dog sitter.
The meeting was then adjourned and adjutant(me) retired to my study. Closely followed by Taz, who had ignored recently erected barriers and now glared at him challengingly from the plastic cone which prevents him from biting stitches. An escort was summoned and prisoner and escort were marched out to confinement suite.
Adjutant returned to study and peace reigned until rent by scream from Head Ferret. The dog under advisement had vanished. Suite search failed to discover signs of tunnel and guards were despatched to search perimeter fence. Prisoner discovered hiding behind hedge. Challenging glare replaced by smug insubordinate expression. Prisoner returned to punishment suite. Peace reigned after Last Post was piped.
At 6 am came a sound as of a plastic helmet being dashed against C.O.'s bedroom door. Adjutant observed dog butting said door. Returned prisoner to suite with adjutant spending night on armchair duty till reveille piped.Prisoner insisted on lullaby before sleep. Adjutant obliged and prisoner slept soundly
Anti-escape committee re-convened. Prisoner's records perused. Revealed considerable form for escaping whilst still an apprentice dog on recruitment to Unit.
The problem is that he insists on being with us. With us he is loving and obedient. If we are not within licking distance he gets a red mist. He is the only dog we have ever been owned by to be barred from a boarding kennels.
When he was badged with us on Anglesey he was billeted in a Kennel Yard in which bloodhounds had been confined. He pleaded guilty to burrowing beneath a 6ft high, heavy duty steel fence and tearing through wire on a padlocked gate. When repairs were effected he found a weak join four foot up, made a hole and jumped out. Left in the house, he ate through a listed window, demolished the cat flap, ripped out the phone cable and shredded the cushion flooring in a bid to burrow under the door.
Confined to cars, he ate fourteen seat belts. Estimated cost of replacing and repairing £3,000.
At this point it was discovered from a Children's TV programme that Taz is the shortened form of Tasmanian Devil. Obviously there were personality flaws his previous owners had kept to themselves. Happily his cheery, loving presence more than cancelled them out and it was observed that he only escaped as far as the gate, where he waited placidly for our return.
In the light of these disclosures, the anti-escape committee unanimously voted for compulsory parade of dog to view DVDs of “Colditz” and “Bridge Over the River Kwai” for instruction purposes. Dog warned that future acts of indiscipline may be punished by confinement to the Hole. Adjutant's objection to this description of his study overruled by CO.
Sadly over the weekend the wound became infected and Taz was back in the camp hospital, under guard, on a diet of money; leaving his bemused owners to wonder how his absence leaves a huge chasm so much greater than the space he occupies with his presence.
On Thursday we had an anxious call from the veterinary nurse. He had gone on hunger strike. He was refusing to eat hospital food. Could we bring round some chicken?
The C.O immediately went into Meals on Wheels mode and delivered a tasty melange of chicken and rice. The suggestion of the adjutant that he might like to wash it down with a saucer of Chardonnay was not well received. Before she returned a vet rang to say that if she wanted to visit Taz after Rounds she would be welcome.
That day we had lunch at 4 pm because a second vet rang to say he had been in touch with the Racehorse Ritz who said there was nothing to worry about. Wound infection often happened with greyhounds and Taz could come home the next day.
The adjutant is as well as can be expected though exhibits a worrying tendency to jump nervously for no apparent reason. No doubt in time the attendant nervous twitch will disappear.
LIONS LED BY DONKEYS
Lord Dannett, the noisy Christian who used to be C.I.G.S. is predictably against defence cuts. He says if we do make them we won't be a great nation any more. He asks if that is what we want.
General, you can bet your sweet arse it is. It is time we gave up our seat at the top table. It is time we gave up trying to turn Afghanistan into Slumberland. Afghanistanis are an undisciplined mob which lives to fight.
General, the MOD is already 3.5 million in debt financing your folies de grandeur. Add to that a further billion fighting the Libyan army, whose military experience in war is limited to stealing petrol from the 8th Army.
May I remind you that you are borrowing from your countrymen, who are so broke we are closing care centres and libraries, throwing millions out of work? We even have to buy hospitals on HP.
General, you seem to have misunderstood our role, or perhaps you have not noticed the Empire has gone. Nations sit on the top table because they are powerful and call the shots. We are not. Borrowing billions to buy lethal toys and giving billions in Aid to countries wealthier than we are will not buy us privileges to which we are no longer entitled.
But that is not the reason I want us to be a little nation, bothering no one. The reason is guilt.
My ancestors fought at Hastings, Crecy, Agincourt, in the Civil War; at Ramillies, Waterloo, Trafalgar; in the Crimea and in the Zulu and Boer wars, and every silly war including World Wars One and Two. A branch of us even fought in the American Civil War. It didn't do us any good. We learned nothing, Worse, I am of the generation of World War Two. I grew up watching the destruction of my cities, the death of my school fellows in a succession of blitzes. I spent two years in a beaten Germany, witness to its degredation and the mass obliteration of Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover and Cologne.
My guilt? I have fathered a generation which has learned nothing. A generation of people like you, General, who believe that war is a solution, not a problem. It is something of which I am deeply ashamed and eager to make reparations.
Thanks to my publishing friends Revel Barker and Neil Marr, the thirty odd books I have written are being republished and all the royalties are going to service charities. It won't wash away the guilt I feel but it might help the fine young men and women who will go through life without limbs or genitals just so that our generals and our politicians can swank on a top table they have no right to share.
YOU FEEL BETTER FOR THAT ???????
A mass display of public disobedience, of judicial petulance, blatant abuse of parliamentary privilege and a commercially driven media campaign............
So now we know that Ryan Giggs had it off with Imogen Thomas. Do we feel (a) greatly relieved (b) proud that a blow has been struck for media freedom or (c) slightly shabby and wondering what the fuss was all about? Young men filled with adulation and money, surrounded by nubile young girls eager to give their all. The wonder would be that a testoterone-brimming Adonis turned down the opportunity. I do not suppose the cuckolded Mrs Giggs feels better for the fact we all know of her betrayal by the man she loved. Ms Thomas cannot enjoy the reputation that will be her lifetime companion.
I used to make a handsome living writing stories for the tabloids about similar situations. Cannot honestly say that I felt ashamed. My only fear was that one of my victims might have asked in answer to my probing:
“What has it got to do with you?” I wouldn't have had an answer.
Until recently all I knew of Giggs is that his dazzling talent has entertained thousands of supporters for over a decade. That he is universally liked...
I think I will stick with that memory and the feeling of relief that no one has been nosing into my private life in the way I nosed into theirs.
P.S. In passing, I cannnot believe that any legislation which muzzles Giles Coren is wholly bad.
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