In re-defining Santorum, Irish Times redefines ‘squalid’

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While yesterday’s men in many sectors of the economy must make do with taking more of a back seat in the face of changing technology and wave upon wave of young turks, it looks like the boot may be on the other foot where the print media is concerned.

Journalists born before 1975, see, generally know how to spell. Just look through any written-word media these days and you’ll soon pick up on how much of a dying art that has become.

But there’s another thing that should make veteran hacks more, not less valuable as time goes on. Many ‘old school’ guys also know the meaning of “fit to print”, namely that there’s tittle-tattle and then there’s stuff actually worth writing about.

Now there’s a blurred line for you in 2012. Reading Donald Clarke‘s sarcastic lament as Rick Santorum abandoned his run for the White House, I had to keep checking the masthead to make sure that it really was the Irish Times that was running this piece and had decided that the following amounted to worthy op-ed in a quality newspaper:

“Hats are doffed to the gay activists who managed to make [Santorum's] surname a neologism for the damp residue that remains after a particular sexual practice has taken place. (Look it up yourself. I can’t be bothered to reply sarcastically to the complaints a fuller definition would trigger.)”

If you missed the gem of wit that gave rise to this tribute, I’m genuinely sorry to have to enlighten you. Particularly if you’re eating. It is important to spell it out, though, just so you are aware of the level of inspired discourse that floats Clarke’s boat.

Someone aparently decided that taking apart Santorum’s politics with reasoned debate and counter-argument was too tame  – what was really needed was for his surname to become a widely-used synonym for the mixture of lubricant and faecal matter that remains following anal sex.

Yep, you heard me right.

There was a time, of course, when puerility as debased as this was confined to the playground, to be mercifully lost in the breeze after a few guffaws among half-wits. Nowadays, alas, the playground is known as the Internet. This stuff gets written down and enjoys a longevity vastly disproportionate to its merit, among people who park their minds in the gutter.

To see this pathetic titbit given fresh life in a paper of the Irish Times status (“hats are doffed”!? Is the man out of his mind?) begs two questions. This Donald Clarke is over the age of 15, I take it? And who among his superiors actually cast an eye over this revolting paragraph and thought, “fit to print”?

Robin Cook – wisdom from beyond the grave

Robin Cook MP (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While the abiding impact of his memoirs The Point of Departure is to remind us that British politics lost one of its better representatives when Robin Cook died, the book serves two important purposes.

Firstly, his comprehensive dismantling of the supposed case for putting troops in Iraq in 2003 lands a far greater blow on the credibility of Tony Blair than I fear any tribunal will ever muster.

Far from having an axe to grind, Cook, who died in 2005 after spells as Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House, is unabashed in his admiration of what Blair and the Labour Party achieved between 1997 and 2003. When even your staunchest allies feel obliged to resign from cabinet and then be so publicly critical of your thinking as this, you must have put in some pretty lousy days at the office.

While his stand on the Iraq debacle is the central theme of the book, however, the Scot scores some equally valid points when he turns to media matters.

This is no mere tit-for-tatting under the euphemistic guise of ‘setting the record straight’. Having first-hand experience of seeing the press at work, I am forced to concede that he has the  Fourth Estate weighed up to a T when describing the harm he believed it does to politics in Britain.

I reproduce extracts below. They should be mandatory reading for anyone who plans on entering this particular bearpit with a pen and notebook.

“…the adversarial mode which is now all the range among broadcasters is part of the reason for the growing alienation of the public from political debate.

“…reducing every political interview to a one-dimensional  confrontation suppresses any chance of an honest and balanced discussion of the real dilemma.

“Between [politicians and the media] we have created a style of political discourse which is aggressive and overpersonalised and which has become a barrier between us and our joint public.

“[Politicians] are in danger of seriously boring our voters…leaders today bang away at the same phrase that they are told works well on focus groups…nobody in the party must say anything original…This is deeply baffling behaviour to our electors, who live in a defiantly individualist society…

“The reason why politicians stick to their hymn sheet is that they are dealing with a media which is no longer capable of handling an original idea but knows how to report a personality conflict.

“The irony is that the press constantly complain that politicians are boring but they are not going to dare to be interesting unless the media starts to reward rather than punish originality.

“[Voters] want more MPs with whom they can feel some psychological empathy – MPs who have thrown away their pagers, speak what they think and demonstrate real passion for a cause…most of my colleagues would be happy to rise to that challenge if they felt it was safe to come out of the bunker.

“Today’s headline writers want drama and drama requires conflict and exposure, not progress and solutions…The awkward truth is that serious politics does not throw up a novelty every day for the next morning’s edition. As a result the search for novelty often ends in treasuring trivia.

“Politicians find themselves conscripted to parts in a soap opera, in which the plot line is solely about who is on the way up, who is on the way down and who is on the way out…The elector is reduced to being a spectator rather than the owner of the process.”

Public funding of politicians? Never and here’s why…

With the Tories’ own goal on party donations raising the appalling prospect of renewed calls for political parties to draw on the public purse, a timely put-down for the idea comes from across the Pond.

The arms implications of  Barack Obama’s off-mic promise to the Russian president I’ll leave to those more qualified to comment but his following quote is relevant for any democracy:

“This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

For anyone who didn’t immediately decode it, here’s what that statement is shorthand for:

“In November of this year, I have to go through this charade, in which I promise my people anything that I think will get me back into the White House. Once that’s attended to, I can do pretty much what the hell I like regardless because I’ll never need the support of those schmucks again.”

Now this hardly rates as bombshell news where politicians are concerned (although it’s telling that they don’t seem particularly bothered about concealing the way they operate any more) but it’s the perfect Exhibit A to wave in Westminster’s face when you and I are asked to fund Britain’s variation on this tired old theme.

Related articles:

• Obama Makes Light Of, Clarifies Hot Mic Moment (politics.blogs.foxnews.com)

Three ways to make the Lib-Dems a laughing stock (and one way not to)

At this rate, it won’t just be policemen we’re tempted to ask about having nothing better to do with their time.

Last week’s leak of the Lib-Dems’ makeover plans would have been hilarious were it not for the fact that these people are supposed to be helping run the country. As a reminder of just how secondary the electorate’s interests are to politicians’ interest in self-preservation, it was quite sobering.

Not to mention an object lesson in how to make yourselves unelectable. A propos of which, here we go:

1.  Employ a ‘brand adviser’. Unless you feel up to making this country function half-decently, of course, in which case your ‘brand’ tends to take care of itself.

2. Focus on “short-term political expediency”. Or ‘gimmicks’, as it used to be known. So much more fun than all that tedious ‘vision’ and ‘joined-up thinking’ stuff.

3. Make sure everyone knows the way you’ve successfully handled all those hot potatoes that dominate the political landscape in these turbulent times. Like the abolition of slavery.

But there again, let’s cover all the bases here and assume that, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, Nick Clegg actually likes the idea of not sinking without trace. Now, the tactics become a whole lot simpler: he simply puts as many miles as he can between his party and its ‘brand adviser’.

One hike in the unemployment statistics for which I’m sure we would all be prepared to excuse him.

Related articles

• How would you rebrand the Lib Dems? (guardian.co.uk)

Personal finance education? From this government?

I wish the Daily Mail well with its campaign to have compulsory personal finance education introduced into schools.

That I was only ever taught how compound interest works, never that it is one of life’s most powerful forces, is one of the few regrets I have over my own education and having watched the early promise of an endowment policy erode to something somewhat less glamorous over 25 years, without an ounce of contrition from the company that provided it, I am on a personal mission to ensure that my own children are capable of investing their own money in future without recourse to the so-called financial services sector.

As to how much support – genuine support – the Mail can expect from the Government in its endeavour, however, I harbour serious doubts, for it is just a matter of days since revelations that our rulers are considering plans to penalise graduates who repay their student loans early.

What a message to send out. What better way to reinforce the mindset of an irresponsible, clueless age where money is concerned: an age in which bankruptcy is seen no longer as a cause for embarrassment but as a genuine tool in financial planning. An age so clueless that one muppet interviewed by Radio 1′s Newsbeat yesterday was clamouring for an end to cuts because they haven’t achieved anything, as if a double-dip recession is something you see off in a week.

Shamelessly, the Coalition is poised to add its own six penn’orth to this madhouse: dare to display some precocious thrift where your student loan is concerned, be savvy enough to realise that the first rule in any sensible financial strategy must be to cut debt, and you won’t be encouraged or supported, you’ll be fined.

It’s okay for the Government to cut deep and fast in trimming its own debt, apparently, but you plebs in higher education must wait. Turns out that George Benson and Whitney Houston were wrong; children aren’t our future in the eyes of this shower but cash cows to be milked ad infinitum.

Shame on them and to the newspaper that would spit into this wretched wind, the best of British.

Libyan lies not the biggest stain on Labour

Image via Wikipedia

Even if the Daily Mail coverage appears somewhat after-the-event (see also here) there is still quite a story in revelations that the UK well and truly had the wind up over The World’s Most Wanted (left) stamping his little feet over Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s release.

For in the middle of this potential disgrace, those responsible have performed quite a remarkable trick – somehow managing to relegate the possibility of bare-faced lies and playing the electorate for fools to mere also-rans in a league table of conduct unbecoming.

For isn’t the very worst of this story the funk that prompted the Labour government to dissemble in the manner of which it stands accused? Some tin pot north African tyrant rattles his sword over the release of a convicted mass murderer and the United Kingdom goes belly-up like a puppy who only wants to please.

The same UK that fancies itself as so major a player in global affairs that it felt duty-bound of late to open another war front in Libya, even while telling its own people that there is no money available  for trifles such as educating their young and properly policing their streets.

Gadaffi barked, we are led to believe, and the land of Elizabeth I, Churchill and Richard the Lionheart came running.

If the War on Terrorism was a soccer match, this would surely be the cue for  a substitute nation to start warming up on the touchline, while a sneering fourth official held up  an electronic board displaying the letters ‘UK’.

It would appear that we are the very worst type of player. We merely talk a good game.

Cameron on Europe – illogical, irrational and finally laid bare as just more of the same

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This isn’t how holidays are supposed to start. Last week’s developments in Washington and the Eurozone and the makings of market meltdown that followed, meant that what should have been a weekend of lightweight, poolside browsing in the West Country became an increasingly anxious study of the verdict of political commentators on both sides of the Atlantic.

You didn’t have to be reading at the more anarchic end of the scale, either, to pick up on a recurrent theme. Politicians are running out of places to hide.

Between one recession just three years old and another now brewing, went the pundits’ thinking, the rhetoric and promises have come to  nothing and the dearth of political  leaders with the ability to rise above the humdrum by way of  clear, inspired thinking, is now unmistakable.

When David Cameron’s latest thoughts on a UK referendum on European Union hit the streets this morning, therefore, it almost felt like those same commentators were wheeling out Exhibit A for the prosecution, so woeful were the Prime Minister’s arguments, issued through his mouthpiece, private secretary Laurence Mann.

“…Mann…issued the controversial justification for ignoring public clamour for a referendum in a leaked letter.

He wrote: ‘We had a referendum on that issue in 1975, which produced a very clear result.

‘There is also one argument, in particular, against holding such a referendum that we find irrefutably powerful, namely that most people in our country want to say neither ‘yes’ to everything from the EU, nor ‘no’ to everything.’”

The first limb of this rebuttal quite frankly beggars belief.  Any grown man or woman who has done even the most basic research on this point will know that the trading treaty put to the electorate in 1975 was a world removed from the superstate being tilted at nowadays. If this is the level of political analysis that pertains at 10 Downing Street then we are in the hands of children.

Mann’s second point might carry a little more weight were it not for the fact that the British people find themselves in exactly the same position every four or five years when they come to vote on their next government. It is by no means rare to find people who like a little of what the Lib-Dems offer but only wish it came together with some of what the Tories or Labour offer. We are torn and yet in that context, the first-past-the-post show must go on, apparently. So why is it suddenly such a terminal snag where Europe is concerned?

After all, if the British vote ‘no’, then the Government simply retires to consider a European deal that we might like. A commercial union with political independence that does not bleed us dry, let’s say. It brings this to us and asks us to vote on it. If we again say ‘no’, it has another go, until it finally comes up with a European policy that the majority of us can stomach. And before you denounce this as unfeasible, I would remind you of the nation immediately to our left, that was invited by Brussels to vote and vote again, until it came up with the ‘right’ answer.

What’s sauce for the goose, Prime Minister…

And anyway, why are we only hearing these particular objections to a referendum now? Why haven’t they been wheeled out in the past? Cameron comes across as a man desperately thinking up new lines to draw in the sand, as the force of public opinion forces him to retreat past each of their predecessors. Ah the pesky promises you make in the free and easy days of Opposition; how inconsiderately they come back to haunt you.

I’m just about done with the man after this latest insult to our intelligence. Having tried to reserve judgement in the hope that his ham-fisted arrival on the big stage was more an aberration than a telling insight into how he functions, I am now resigned to being in the clutches of one more second-rate premier who got where he is not through any intrinsic star quality but through a mere knack for smiling and glad-handing longer and less ashamedly than the next man.

Just about the only good thing you can say of this mediocrity is that he isn’t the only one.

Local elections highlight perils of exclusive inclusivity

My wife has binned the pamphlet and I don’t like to criticise specifics without hard and fast evidence in front of me, so suffice to say that one party in my town – campaigning for today’s local government elections – may need to revisit its inclusivity policy next year.

Leaving aside the question of whether someone should even have a vote in a country whose language he or she can’t speak, I think you have to be all or nothing when lobbying the non-indigenous population. Either produce entire pamphlets in the language concerned or stick to English.

What you don’t do is  produce a pamphlet written in English save for the very last line: “Vote for … on 5th May”, which is set out in several different tongues.

Here’s how I interpret that if I’m an immigrant: “Never mind policy or promises, you just make sure you put your ‘X’ in the right box come polling day, there’s a good lad”.

Not great, is it? Although as a symbol of where the British are generally with today’s politicians you have to say it may be frighteningly spot-on. Whatever your roots.

Glad to be gay; not fussed at being bust

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It is the most jaw-dropping thing I read last week. Possibly last month.

From the excellent Outstanding Investments financial newsletter (subscription only):

“Let’s get past the military fact that it’s raining steel in Libya. Something else troubles me. The U.S. government doesn’t have a 2011 budget for its Department of Defense – and we’re six months into the fiscal year. This is, at root, courtesy of the last Congress, which failed to pass a defense budget in the waning days of 2010.

No defense budget? Last year, there was political capital for Congress to pass ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ legislation. But for some strange reason, Congress could not pass anything as mundane as a law to fund procurement and operations, let alone to pay the troops.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Congress has authorized no money to fight wars – at least not this one.“

Such ludicrous priorities kill off forever the idea that American liberals are much more down-to-earth than their British counterparts.

So a near-bankrupt Uncle Sam is bombing Libya on an open-ended spending spree but at least everyone involved is comfortable with his sexuality. I think I just heard the first cuckoos of spring.

Flexi views on flexi time

I had to smile when I read the post-Budget commentary of New Statesman blogger Ryan Shorthouse – Osborne’s attack on flexible working will harm family life - coming as it did only two days after a colleague slammed down the phone after his third failed attempt in as many days to contact someone in our advertising department.

“Do you sometimes wonder if some people just use flexi-time as a way of making sure their job doesn’t interfere with their social life?” he fumed.

Oh well, George; you made someone happy.