Three o'clock in the afternoon

Above: at three o'clock in the afternoon the moon was already rising above the valley.

I woke this morning and looked at my alarm clock. The time was half-past four. I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

When I woke again it was broad daylight. I looked at the clock again and it still said half-past four (and had clearly stopped). I picked up my watch from the bedside cabinet and the time was ten - I should have been at work an hour ago!

I rang my boss Andrea (pronouned "On-dray-er") and explained what had happened. I suggested I spent the day "working at home". It was impossible to tell whether she was annoyed or not (I think today is meant to be the most miserable day of the year, and so she may have thought I was "pulling a sickie").

In the afternoon I drove into the local town to collect a package from the Royal Mail sorting office. As I drove back I stopped the car and looked out over the valley. The moon was already high in the sky at three o'clock in the afternoon.

Plough Sunday

Today is Plough Sunday (Epiphany) and tomorrow is Plough Monday – the day when the ploughmen in the county would go back to work after the Christmas holiday. Last year I wrote about the traditional plough jags performed on Plough Monday. This year I thought I would do some research into the Plough Sunday customs that still survive.

Getting up at 7.30 (which I am not used to on a Sunday as I depend on the weekends to catch up on my sleep) I drove eastwards for about an hour until I reached a big river and followed it southwards (the road went along the bank) through a succession of ever smaller villages until I arrived in a settlement so small it wasn’t even on the map.

The weather was milder today than it has been for about a month (by milder I mean a blustery cold wind was blowing, but it wasn’t actually freezing). I parked my car in the small pub car park and walked down to where the High Street (a meandering muddy lane lined with cottages) forked into two. At this junction was the village church.



Above: Pevsner says the church was built in 1756. It was very small and built in a red-brick gothic style. From the road junction it had a two-dimensional appearance, as if it were cut out of cardboard.



Above: just before 10.30 a single bell made a jangling clamour and people walked along all three lanes to the church. Most people stood outside while a small plough belonging to a local farmer was wheeled up to the west door. The lady Vicar, the farmer and various dignitaries posed for photographs with the plough (as you can see, it is a small Victorian plough and would not have been used much in the fields).

Note: my digital camera stopped working at this point and so this photo is courtesy of Mrs Blaney.



Above: everyone went into the church and took their seats – about fifty people in all including a contingent of Young Farmers. The plough was ceremoniously brought in and taken up to the altar rails (Sir James Frazer records similar rituals where the plough is decorated with ribbons, but this one was completely plain). We sang hymns and the plough was blessed by the Vicar.



Above: then the Vicar produced a bowl of soil (presumably from the surrounding fields) and the soil was blessed. Although this ceremony dates back centuries it had a very modern ecological and environmental feel to it. In her sermon the Vicar pursued the environmental theme and told us to “use the power you have as shoppers” to buy local and sustainable goods.



Above: after the formal end of the service the plough was taken out of the church again. A folk duo (a fiddle player and a guitar player) then performed what the Vicar called “Plough Carols” although they seemed more folk songs to do with ploughing. They finished with a fifteenth-century song Speed The Plough which I had never heard before although everyone else seemed to know it and joined in.

Sorry this picture seems so gloomy – there was a problem with my camera. Actually the interior was very light and painted in cream and white. The lighting was modern.



Above: coming out of the church we all walked down the path to the junction where the Morris dancers were waiting (these are the sword dancers – again photo is courtesy of Mrs Blaney).



Above: holding up the traffic (cyclists, horse riders, some four-by-fours) a different group of Morris dancers performed the dance Speed the Plough (which is different from the song).



Above: more of the cavorting Morris dancers.



Above: I only stayed a short while watching the dancers as I needed to get home for lunch (roast pork). I walked back to the Full Moon pub where I had left my car. The wind had dropped and the sun was trying to make an appearance.



Above: the pub was holding a Plough Sunday beer festival. Over sixty different types of beer were on offer. Because I was driving I was only able to have a half (I would have liked to have stayed there all afternoon).

Text of the song Speed the Plough: http://hillshepherd.blogspot.com/2008/05/god-speed-plow-farmers-arms-or-success.html

The dance Speed the Plough (best I could find): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXkgXLiJH6w

Sheila (the temp) jammed the photocopier - the past week at work

Monday

The first day back at work. The cold was unbearable (the bitter fresh cold of the journey to work and the dull cold of the offices before the heaters warmed them up). All of the week the temperature remained below freezing, so that I mostly stayed in at lunchtimes.

The economic situation has made people more careful over spending money. Jo, assistant (“Associate”) Account Executive upstairs, came into our offices to chat, moaning about how much Christmas had cost her. “Despite having a good job I still have to watch every penny” she said.

Julie (admin) complained that Andrea (our boss) was in a “swanning mood” (“she’s just swanning around finding fault with everything).

First day back and I hadvery little to do. In the afternoon I felt incredibly tired.

Sheila (the temp) jammed the photocopier and no-one could fix it (Andrea very tight-lipped and struggling to remove the tiny bits of shredded paper, finally giving in with a snarl and telling Julie to ring the engineer).

Tuesday

Client meetings, one late morning and one late afternoon. I managed to string them out so that I didn’t need to go back to the office afterwards. The cold so intense that I felt dizzy.

Wednesday

I did some media planning and thought about the other projects I have been given.

Terry’s American friend (who we think owns part of the agency) came to the offices. He noticed Andrea had put up one of her certificates on the wall and told us: “I don’t put my certificates up on the wall – the office is too small.” After he had gone Julie said she was sure he was gay because of the shape of his moustache (“it’s like a packet of Pringles”).

Thursday

Since we have returned to work Andrea has become very annoying (or perhaps she was always very annoying, only not to me). A number of times today I thought she was becoming confrontational. In the afternoon she attempted to contact an old client (from her last job) and they told her to get lost, which put her in an exceptionally bad mood.

Chris (does our Accounts part-time) talked frankly about her dissatisfaction at the way the personnel keeps changing, which she finds unsettling. Andrea listened to her with a blank look on her face. The arrival of Andrea’s sub-agency must be an intrusion for Chris as previously she had this side of the floor to herself.

Terry (our MD) came down several times and I revealed to him (casually) that my billings for December were almost twice the target. I always try to keep some small item of positive news for Terry’s visits so that he regards talking to me as a positive experience. Most people just tell him their problems.

In the evening, despite the bitter cold, I went to the west end for a committee meeting of a small educational voluntary group I do some work for. This voluntary group has a social programme which is used to raise funds. I took Andrea with me (she had expressed interest in the group) and she was co-opted onto the committee to help with publicity (the two of us were easily the most competent people on that committee).

Afterwards we went to a bar and over gin and tonics Andrea ran down Rachel (one of the Account Directors upstairs).

Friday

A slow day. I should really have got some research under way, but somehow I couldn’t get motivated. Most of the morning was taken up with the monthly agency meeting held by Terry in his office upstairs (not for the first time I noticed that most of his remarks seemed to be addressed to me instead of Andrea).

Charities

At the beginning of each year I send donations to the sixteen main charities I support. I send them occasional donations throughout the year (plus a few I have monthly standing orders for) but the main bulk goes out early January. I also respond to ad hoc appeals - I can't give much but I try to give something to everyone who asks.

What I find dispiriting is that for some organisations as soon as I have sent them something I get a letter back by return post asking for more. I realise that some charities are run as businesses with professional hard-nosed marketing people in charge of fund-raising (people of a type I know only too well). I realise that direct mail for some charities is as mathematical and formulaic as any hedge fund calculation (and probably someone has worked out that if you make an appeal to someone immediately they have donated you can get them to give again).

But even so, it is dispiriting.

Out Of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer

Above: I am currently reading Out Of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer. I heard it reviewed on Radio 4 while I was driving and decided on impulse to buy it, and ordered it on Amazon when I got back to the office. It is very unusual for me to do this, since I have so many books waiting to be read that I have imposed a moratorium on new purchases.

The novel is ostensibly about a writer attempting (and failing) to write a biography of DH Lawrence. You might think a book about a writer trying to write a book about a writer is somewhat self-indulgent. However, the book is really about procrastination, inertia and self-delusion, and therefore has some very pertinent points to make that are relevant to my current life.

I hadn't thought much of DH Lawrence before reading this book (although I have liked Bavarian Gentians since I was about fourteen). As a result of reading Geoff Dyer I looked up Lawrence's poem The Snake and have already read it several times. I think it is going to be one of my all-time favourites.

The Snake: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/dhl.snake.html

Vivienne Westwood

Above: the Vivienne Westwood shop in the Kings Road – “World’s End”. Although Vivienne Westwood is usually associated with the 1970s, she did some of her most influential work in the early 1980s, developing the “new romantic” look (Kim is drawing parallels between Westwood’s “new romantics” in the 1980s and Dior’s “new look” in the 1940s). In particular Vivienne Westwood designed for Adam And The Ants.



Above: Vivienne Westwood c1987 – make-up by Paul Starr, hair by Kevin Ryan.

Vivienne Westwood pirate design: http://www.fashion-era.com/images/1960-80/west300x20a.jpg

More: http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1231_vivienne_westwood/changing_styles_7.html

And today at the V&A: http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/fashion/fashion_motion/westwood/index.html

I don't think anyone takes Adam and the Ants seriously these days, but they have to be seen within the context of their time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtxuPqjSJDc

Henry Purcell, one of our greatest composers

Above: the 1994 Purcell monument by Glynn Williams (in Victoria Street).

2009 marks the 350th anniversary of the birth of Henry Purcell, one of our greatest composers. Many Purcell concerts are planned - I hope to go to at least one. He is said to have invented the musical style "English baroque".

On my way from one meeting to another I got off the tube at Victoria to look at the Purcell monument (by Glynn Williams) in Victoria Street, intending to walk down to Westminster and get on the tube again. This was a big mistake. In the bitter bitter cold Victoria Street stretched ahead of me grey, intimidating and unending - like some DDR-style sieges-allee (a sort of London rival to Berlin's Karl Marx Allee).

More on Purcell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzqNA2VBtT4&feature=related

More on Glynn Williams: http://www.glynnwilliams.co.uk/index.html

5p

Have you noticed how much more frequently you are given a 5p piece in your change?

The inflationary pressure to round up in 10p increments is fading.

And also (although this might just be me) have you noticed when prices are heavily discounted to about a third of their value you find yourself saying: well that's about what it's worth.

Education in the county

This post is a collection of material about the development of education in the county. It is basically work in progress and I might come back and develop it as I discover more information (or again, I might not, depending on whether I am distracted by something else). So this is what Wikipedia would call a "stub" (feel free to contribute your own thoughts, opinions, little-known facts etc).



Above: in the middle ages there was a surprising amount of education available, mainly through schools attached to monasteries. This was available to more or less all ranks of society (Cardinal Wolsey was a butcher's son). The monasteries were often based in remote areas, but from the thirteenth-century onwards the Friars set up schools in most towns in the county.

Friars were urban-based religious orders that worked "in the community" (setting up schools, hospitals, preaching in market places etc). You can often trace their presence through street names. Greyfriars were Franciscans, Blackfriars were Dominicans (or "hounds of God"), Shodfriars wore shoes etc.



Above: following the Reformation there was initally a regression, as the monastic schools were closed. In the decades that followed some of the resources taken from the monasteries were used to set up educational establishments, particularly grammar schools. This blue plaque commemorates the foundation of a grammar school on the old greyfriars site in the small town down on the plain.



Above: view of the grammar school - the original Elizabethan school is the central portion you can see (with the bay window). Additional extensions have been added over the years. The county has kept intact its network of grammar schools (most of these schools in the United Kingdom were merged in the 1970s to form "comprehensives" although even the Labour government has now dropped its support for the comprehensive movement, which makes you wonder what all the fuss was about in the first place).



Above: as well as the grammar schools, local schools were set up in parish churches. This elaborate screen marks the entrance to one of these "church schools". It was basically one room where all the children of the village would be taught together.



Above: inside the old classroom has been kept more or less as it was (the church school survived until the 1920s). You can see the chairs the pupils would sit on, and the "pigeon holes" where they would keep their work. There is even a carpet.



Above: you might wonder what standard of education would be available at these church schools. I think it would have been quite good - for instance, this window commemorates an Assistant Curate at a remote village in the county. The window includes the coats of arms of both Eton College and Trinity College where he was educated, so the education he was able to pass on would have been of a high standard (notice also the rooks and owls in the stained glass - he was a bird-spotter and when the church tower was restored he insisted on special openings so that the owls could continue to nest in the tower).



Above: reading, writing and arithmatic - no "media studies", no national curriculum, no government targets (hope this doesn't sound reactionary).



Above: this exhibit at a history display (in another village, this one up in the central hills) of some of the needlework produced by village girls was quite moving.



Above: the textbooks at this exhibition dealt with agriculture - living so close to nature the children would know the names of plants and animals, the trees in the woods, the fish in the rivers, the birds in the sky.



Above: from the eighteenth-century the process of industrialisation meant movement of population from the rural areas into the towns and cities. The existing education systems couldn't cope with this influx and so charity schools were set up. The "Ragged School" in the county town which provided free education for those too poor to pay (as well as free food and clothes).

The introduction of the state Board Schools from 1870 replaced the need for charitable establishments.



Above: the Anglican church is still very active in educational provision and its role is expanding. In part this is because of the obvious failure of the state education system which has led to many parents abandoning state schools if they can send their children anywhere else (this is includes most of the current "socialist" government). Church schools have been accused of being "elitist" and "selective" but the real reason they can achieve higher standards is probably because their teachers have a greater sense of vocation and work harder than their state school equivalents.

Media planners of the world unite – you have nothing to lose (except your jobs…)

The News Corporation empire is all-pervasive. Among many operations in the United Kingdom the company owns The Sun, the News of the World, the Times and Sunday Times, as well as satellite broadcaster BSkyB. In America the company owns the Fox Network, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal.

Normally the conglomeration of business enterprises is part of the capitalist system. Business empires rise, business empires fall. However, Rupert Murdoch’s continual interference in the democratic process (“It’s The Sun Wot Won It” etc) makes his media aggrandizement a problem for all of us.

Unfortunately there is little individuals can do about this state of affairs.

We live in a world where newspapers and broadcast channels are all-powerful.

Except that they are not quite all-powerful.

Almost every one of Rupert Murdoch’s companies depends heavily upon advertising revenues.

Take the advertising away and you might be able to kill the publication (and if you can kill some of the publications you can start to reduce Rupert Murdoch’s unhealthy influence).

Which is why I appeal to my fellow ad agency colleagues (especially media planners) to take News Corporation companies off your clients’ advertising schedules. There is enough duplication of coverage that you can almost always make up the gap with other publications. Even a twenty per cent reduction would wound this monster.

This raises the question: is it ethical for media planners to do this? I ask myself this question seriously. Many people are employed by News Corporation and these are real people with mortgages to pay and families to support etc.

At the end of the day you have to ask yourself what is more important?

After Rupert Murdoch the two most important people in the media world are:

Les Hinton, now in control of the Wall Street Journal and one of Rupert Murdoch’s most trusted deputies. I have never met Les Hinton but everything I have read and heard about him suggests he is not a pleasant person. He is not someone who should be manipulating electorates.

James Murdoch is Rupert Murdoch’s son and supposedly his heir. Very interested in the potential of the internet. The only reason for his wealth and influence is the fact that he is his father’s son (and Rupert Murdoch claims to be opposed to the hereditary principle!).

Which is why I say: Media planners of the world unite – you have nothing to lose (except your jobs if your ad campaigns fail through poor coverage, which is why I would advise doing this gently, just a little at a time).

But perhaps I am being paranoid about the Murdoch empire. Perhaps I am seeing conspiracies where none exist. Perhaps Rupert Murdoch is a kindly and benevolent old gentleman using his wealth and influence to benefit all of us…

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It (whether you are a Conservative or Labour supporter, for varying reasons you can agree that the Tories should not have won the 1992 election).

Hit the ground running

I am still at home "on holiday" but I have access by a remote link to my computer at work and have done a couple of hours today so that I am not rushing about on Monday. I hate the phrase "hit the ground running". I am more "hit the ground, roll over in pain, have a rest for a while, then have a cup of tea, then look out the window for a while, then think about doing some work..."

Anyway, I have a "launch" to arrange for one of my clients (they are launching a report). I have done lots of "launches" over the years. At this agency it is quite easy as Cathy Closey works fulltime on Events and will book the venue and do all the admin.

Events is rather a velvet ghetto for Cathy. She started as an Account Assistant and then got promoted to Events, which was quite a big step up for someone who isn't a graduate. But there is no-where for her to go next - if she stays at the agency she will be stuck doing Events, more or less on the same salary.



Above: one of the key factors in a successful "launch" is to get the right venue. The venue has to reflect an attribute of the client. Medical clients I take to the Kings Fund off Cavendish Square as they have a basement room that is just the right size (if the launch flops you don't want a few people rattling around in a big hall - better to book a smaller room and have people standing at the back).



Above: if the subject is vaguely political or connected to lobbying then Millbank Tower is the obvious venue as it is close enough to the House of Commons for MPs to get to easily (you can actually book a Committee Room in the Houses of Parliament, but you need a tame MP to do that and you can't really do it if there is a commercial connection).



Above: sometimes the client will specify a venue. Many times United Grand Lodge has been insisted upon. Inside the building is very art deco in design and the sepulchral appearance is deliberate as it is basically a memorial to all the freemasons who died in the First World War (which makes this Westlife video all the more surprising, but it gives you a good idea of the interior: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzFF3safYjQ).



Above: I am always on the lookout for new venues. Environment and atmosphere count for a lot. If the venue feels wrong the launch is at risk.

More on velvet ghettos: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_Velvet_Ghetto and http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Times+have+changed%3F+IABC+Research+Foundation's+'The+Velvet+Ghetto'...-a099290703

New Year Resolutions

Above: a neighbour has garden plans that go back nearly a hundred years.

First day of 2009, and traditionally a time for New Year Resolutions.

This year I want to get the garden looking nice again.

After the death of our mother (in 2003) my brother and I tried to keep the garden as it was, and failed. Then we tried to keep it “looking tidy” and failed again. We tried to employ someone, and it was a disaster (he advertised as a “gardener” in the local paper, but didn’t have the first idea what to do, and after he had hacked the hedges to pieces I paid him £200 to go away).

I now realise that if I don’t do the gardening myself, no-one else is going to do it for me.

Therefore I resolve to learn all the skills necessary, pay all the money required (despite the recession) and allocate all the hours that are needed.

I will cut the lawns at least once every two weeks, do a “big weed” every three months, put fifty bags of peat onto all the flower beds (yes, I know it’s not very ecological, but I have tried to make our own compost and all I have is seven plastic dustbins of unrotted material).

When the spring bulbs have finished I will tie the leaves up with raffia until they go brown then collect them all up.

I have ordered the bedding plants, and when they arrive I will keep them in the greenhouse until the second week of May (last possible frost) and then put them out all in the same weekend.

I will take cuttings of the regal pelagoniums (I have inherited two hundred named varieties) and pot them up (and pot them up again as they get bigger).

I will deadhead the borders every two weeks.

I will spray the roses every two weeks.

If it doesn’t rain for more than ten days I will get the hose out and water the whole garden including the lawns (if there is a hosepipe ban I will use the water in the cistern under the yard).

So there you go. This is what is going to happen. There can be no excuses.

New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve. Seven o'clock. Still undecided about what I should do this evening.

New Year's Eve was never much of a celebration time in England until recently. For my parents and grandparents it meant finishing the Christmas drinks and watching the White Heather Club in black and white on television (unless they went to bed early). Even today, if you go to a pub or a club it all seems a bit forced.



Above: in the north of the county there is the White Heather Club. If I went there this evening would I find Andy Stewart and Moira Anderson and all the black and white characters of the 1960s? At midnight would everyone go out onto the terrace in the freezing air (it has been freezing all day) to watch the (black and white) fireworks?



Above: at The Napoleon there is a fancy dress party (wear something "crazy") with free shots. Like most transplanted celebrations Hogmanay has never really got off the ground. Portugese landworkers sometimes go to The Napoleon so they will probably think it is all typically English.



Above: for real end-of-year sadness you have to turn to Tennyson. 2008 started fairly hopeful and then... crash. And the crash is still going on for many people - who knows when the fall will stop?

More: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odEHDf_pJ4M&feature=related

Today

In the dead calm of the week between Christmas and New Year I have been listening to the Today programme again. I say "again" as I went off the programme mainly because I didn't like some of the presenter changes. In particular I couldn't listen to Evan Davis (would actually switch him off rather than be patronised and talked-down-to).

Anyway I listened to Evan Davis talking to Zadie Smith. He was unbelivably patronising to her. Like the infamous 70s interview between Russell Harty and Grace Jones, Zadie Smith would have been justified in taking one of her shoes off and beating Evan Davis with it.

Doing a Google search on Evan Davis, I read that he is a member of the "British-American Project for the Successor Generation". Apparently this organisation is "grooming" (whatever that word means) future leaders. I thought in a democracy leaders are elected, not generated by some creepy trans-atlantic cabal.

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British-American_Project_for_a_Successor_Generation

Virgin Megastores went bust about a week ago

Above: ad from Christmas 1985 showing albums you could buy for £5. The copy refers t0 CDs, although there is an acknowledgement of how expensive the new technology was. Virgin Megastores went bust about a week ago.



Above: Dingwalls in Camden Lock. The bands featured in the Virgin ad would all have performed here or came here to see other bands (Scritti Politti lived in Camden). Three nights a week there was also a nightclub.

More: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vng8C5Bj9kA

They know enough to run

Above: the week between Christmas and New Year is characterised by gunshots going off in the fields around the house. About twenty or so Barbour-clad men in flat caps walk around with shotguns (including walking up the lane shooting from the verge, which I thought was illegal). Pheasants crouch in the undergrowth of the North Field hoping to remain unnoticed (or come into the garden where they are safe).



Above: I think these are ptarmigan running for cover. One of the shooting party said they have such small brains they don't know what is happening to them. They know enough to run when they see the townie solicitors, opticians and accountants dressed up in tweeds for a day out in the country.



Above: those who don't run fast enough end up in the cooking pot. You need to "hang" them until they are ready - in winter this can be as long as three weeks. At least these birds have experienced life in the wild (unlike factory farmed food).



Above: although pheasants are not native to England (they were brought here by the Romans) they have entered the national culture in terms of cuisine, folklore, art etc. I saw these two bronze pheasants in a junk shop that specialised in house clearances. Pheasants also feature in the paintings of Thorburn - one of our greatest wildlife artists.

More on Thorburn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Thorburn

Article in The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exposed-the-cruel-rearing-of-game-birds-1029894.html

Enjoying the holiday

Above: inimitable sur d’oeuvre (the glass resting on The Independent's review of something or other).

Living in a picturesque lane means that everyone within five miles with a dog is going to come walking past your house in a continuous clamour of barking and shouting during the daylight hours.

The sound of revving tractor engines over the farmyard early on Boxing Day means that the farmer has already become bored of staying at home and intends to do some ditch-clearing or hedge clipping.

The newspapers are full of “quizzes” and “reviews” and (most meaningless of all) “picture reviews”. This recycling of redundant items is set to continue until the first week of January. Most infuriating is the way the book review pages are replaced with extended “my book of the year” sections in which minor celebrities tell us their “book of the year” in tiny paragraphs of meaningless drivel.

But apart from that I am enjoying the holiday.

Anger

I hadn't expected to write anything on this site until after Christmas.

It has been a busy Christmas Eve with all the last-minute preparations.

At seven o'clock this evening I went to the Service of Lessons and Carols at the minster down on the plain. Hundreds of people were there. We were each given lighted candles to hold (not sure how they got that through Health & Safety) and listened to world-class singing from the choir.

Later I will go to Midnight Mass (an Anglican Mass) at the village church - a quarter of a mile walk in the dark to get there. A less exalted choir (but no less sincere). Last year the interminable sermon was about the line of Jesse, with almost every begat pondered upon.

Anyway, the reason I have opened this site up again is to register my protest at the way "someone" decided that Christmas Eve was a good time to announce that the arrest of Shadow minister Damian Green in November had been illicitly taped by the Metropolitan Police (who concealed the information until this afternoon).

What sort of country are we living in?

Are the police routinely "taping" people in the hope that they can use unguarded comments as "incriminating" evidence? Or was this a special one-off because the Metropolitan Police is following some kind of a political agenda? Has the Metropolitan Police become (in the words of their critics) "just another criminal gang"?

Whatever you think of Damian Green (and apparently even his own party thinks he is a wishy-washy liberal, well to the left of his Labour opposite Phil Woolas) if they can do this to a senior MP they can (and will) do it to anyone (and eventually they will do it to everyone).

What makes me so angry (provoked to anger on Christmas Eve) is the cynical way "someone" thought today was "a good day to bury bad news". There is no Newsnight tonight, no Today Programme tomorrow, no newspapers until Boxing Day by which time it will be old news. Which is why I have cranked up this ageing laptop and clicked open my pathetic little blog to add my tiny voice of protest that THESE THINGS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING.

I hope Paul Dacre (Editor Daily Mail) and Will Lewis (Editor Daily Telegraph) and Alan Rusbridger (Editor The Guardian) find out who took the decision to "bury" the item today, and publish the name on the front pages of their newspapers.

AMENDED 27TH DECEMBER.

More on the "taping": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7799092.stm
More on the line of Jesse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Jesse

Stephen Fry

Above: signed photograph of Stephen Fry in the window of a Cambridge cakeshop. The note praises the shop’s Chelsea buns. Stephen Fry attended Queens’ College Cambridge.

It was a criticism of the United Kingdom in the nineteenth-century that it was a society controlled by four hundred families (aristocracy, land-owning gentry, industry-owning plutocracy).

Arguably you could say of today’s society that it is controlled by four hundred individuals working in the media (owning the media, writing for the media, presenting media broadcasts, “regulating” the media, distributing the media, “creating content” for the media). They appear to compete with each other, but as a class they act together to create a consensus and so reinforce social stability. On the downside they decide which voices get heard and which do not (and thus this broad media oligopoly controls “democracy”).

One of the most influential of the media “aristocracy” (or “aristos” if you prefer) is the actor, writer, presenter Stephen Fry. For the last twenty years his presence has been ubiquitous. Through extraordinary levels of energy and prodigious talent he has become tremendously popular.

His popularity can be distilled to the single attribute that he is (or certainly appears to be) very good company. Amusing, sympathetic, empathetic, he is someone you feel is always on your side. Even in the midst of histrionics, he is always very likeable.

However, his autobiography Moab Is My Washpot shows that he has not always been a likeable person. Has he become a different person? Or is his current persona a superb and sustained piece of acting?

The reason I ask these questions is that his popularity has made him very powerful. If he were to speak in favour (or against) any issue it would command attention (far more so than the opinion of any backbench MP or even junior government minister). This sort of power makes me uneasy since it is unaccountable.



Above: Stephen Fry is enthusiastic about “gadgets”. In marketing terms he is thus innovative-prone, an early-adopter and an opinion-former. The latest entry on his blog (11th December) runs to 9,470 words on the subject of mobile communications.

Stephen Fry’s blog: http://www.stephenfry.com/blog/

The last present

Last day in the office. Actually not even a day as I finished at 12 noon. It all sort of fizzled out as I wished Andrea season's greetings then left.

On the landing I thought briefly about going upstairs and saying goodbye to everyone until after the holiday, then decided against it (it would take ages to get out of there again).

I went to Millbank to drop off one last sheaf of papers, and then I was free.

Suddenly without anything to do I walked for a while into Pimlico, and by chance found a jewellery shop where I bought the last present I needed to get.