Has Murdoch pulled it off? The Devil closes the News of the Screws and claims ‘I am blameless in this whole affair. Now bloody well get a move on and let my buy all of Sky’ . . . UPDATE. . . UPDATE. . .

Well, the news flows so fast that even this award-winning* blog can’t keep up (*St Breward and District Gardening Club (incorporating Blisland and Temple Green Fingers and Mount Friends of the Earth) Blog of The Year 2010). Yesterday, the news came through that several firms were so disgusted by the behaviour of the News of the World that they would be withdrawing their advertising. Their principled charge for the high moral ground came after the Screws admitted that the mobile phone of a young murder victim had been hacked into and it was further revealed that the mobile phones of the relatives of those who British soldiers who had died in Afghanistan were also hacked into.
The issue was obvious: the News of the World and all who sailed in her were scum and firms including Ford, Renault, 02, Butlin’s, Sainsbury’s, npower, Mitsubishi, the Halifax, Aldi, Virgin Holidays and the Co-operative were shocked to the core by the revelations and did not feel their good names should be associated with such a publication.
Well, forgive me if I don’t organise a parade in admiration for such high-minded action.
Notwithstanding the specific instances of abysmal behaviour — sanctioning, or at the very least, condoning the hacking into the phone of the murder victim Milly Dowler and the phones of war victim relatives — those firms will most certainly have been aware that thereunto the Screws’ reputation was not exactly on par with that of a virgin bride on her wedding day. You will have to be under 12 or living on the North Pole not to know of the many, many complaints over the years of ‘tabloid intrusion’ into people’s lives and as arguably the most successful red-top Sunday paper it was highly unlikely the Screws was the exception to the rule, especially as over the years it has been sued for libel and carried sensationalist stories every week. So the various firms’ newly adopted stance of ‘goodness me, who are we dealing with!’ is disingenuous to say the least. What will have been on their minds is that because of the shit the Screws had landed itself in, they would be in a very strong  and very welcome position to ‘re-negotiate’ ad rates and get the same volume of advertising for a lot less moolah. Naturally, this could not be allowed to happen overnight, but their ads would have slowly started appearing over the next few weeks — at a far more favourable rate, of course — in conjunction with lofty corporate statements along the lines of ‘the News of the World and its owners News International have re-assured [name of saintly firm] that it has dealt severely with staff responsible for past unacceptable journalistic practices and that such practices are are a thing of the past. In the light of this solemn assurance [name of saintly firm] is happy to continue . . .’ etc. ad nauseam. But in view of yesterday’s ‘shock announcement’ that is no longer how it will all play out.
For yesterday, Rupert Murdoch played, if not a masterstroke, a very clever move: he simply shut down the News of the World.

. . .

How clever doing so was remains to be seen. The point is that the big prize is ensuring that his company News Corporation, which owns News International, manages to get complete control Sky or, strictly, BSkyB, although calling it that was merely a sop when Sky took over — or officially merged with — the abysmal and failing British Satellite Broadcasting, whose unique selling point was the ‘squarial’, a ‘square aerial’. (Why this should somehow have improved whatever crap they were intending to broadcast I really don’t know.
In fact, the Brits have form in the way of utterly daft unique

selling points: the first Austin Allegro was touted as being rather special and different because it had a ‘square steering wheel’. That was soon dropped, but not before several hundred drivers had died in crashes while trying to get to grips with this important motoring innovation.) The whole phone hacking scandal was very damaging, not only to the Screws itself, but arguably to Murdoch’s bid for full control — so why not shut it down? It kills the hacking scandal far faster than it might otherwise have gone away and Murdoch can blame a corrupt culture in the Screws which had nothing to do with him and can attempt to claim moral high ground by shutting the paper and sacking staff who might have been responsible.
Furthermore, the Screws might have a long history, but in the upper echelons of hackdom folk aren’t nostalgic. More to the point, Murdoch can launch a ‘Sun on Sunday’ to take the place of the Screws, re-hire the Screws staff he values and get rid of any dead wood. All those oh-so-moral advertisers who announced that buying ad space from the Screws was now more than they could stomach can now buy ad space in the newly launched Sun on Sunday in good conscience (and most likely dealing with the same people they previously dealt with). And, dear friends, a new, more perfect era can begin. Naturally, everyone will know what is really going on, but all those anti-Murdoch critics who continue to call for blood — as they will — will now begin to look rather silly with News International claiming they had dealt with the problem decisively, there can be no doubt that the wrongdoers had been brought to book and further criticism was in bad faith.
The main flaw in this strategy is that Rebekah Brooks, now News International CEO, who was editor of the Screws when much of this is going on, has not been sacrificed, and critics can legitimately ask ‘why not’. Murdoch could, of course, announce that she had been given a stern talking to and that her canteen privileges have been revoked for a month, but the truth is he needs her and he needs her to keep her mouth shut, so she is in no real danger. Her successor as editor, Andy Coulson, is, we are told due to be arrested today, but I don’t think he is in much danger of doing time. Labour’s leader Ed Miliband has been banging on about how David Cameron appointing Andy Coulson as his director of communications was a ‘catastrophic failure of judgment’, but sadly for Ed that just sounds like so much politicking and no one give a toss. Anyway, it wasn’t. Cameron probably asked Coulson ‘were you involved’, Coulson probably said ‘yes’, and Cameron then probably said ‘well, we’ll see how it goes. If it gets too hairy, I’ll have to cut you loose, but let’s play it by ear.’
Meanwhile, the National Union of Journalists and all ‘concerned’ journalist — i.e. those on papers which hardly sell at all: the Guardian and The Independent — are all still banging on about the whole affair, but truthfully by closing the Screws, Murdoch has pulled the rug from under their feet. There’s also another ‘big story’ brewing — unprecedented famine in the Horn of Africa — so all those who still might have something to lose if the hacking scandal does linger on will be praying that it hurries up and gets far worse and starts taking everyone’s mind off the matter. God bless them all. It’s at moments like this that I thank my lucky starts I am nothing but an utterly insignificant little tick who drives an £800, 11-year-old Rover and is invisible to every good-looking woman he encounters. Actually, forget that last bit: it still irritates me.

. . .

Let me repeat what I have written here before and which will probably earn me the sheer disgust if not the outright hatred of many: when he bought The Times in 1981, Rupert Murdoch was asked to give his solemn assurance that he would not interfere in editorial policy of the papers. He is said to have replied: ‘I didn’t spend several million pounds buying The Times not to interfere.’ So the man can’t be all bad.

. . .

Since writing the above, I have a special edition of Radio 4’s The Media Show (available on all good radios) in which the usual suspects were trotted out to pontificate and observe, including the former Guardian editor Peter Preston and Bill Hagerty, a former editor of the Daily Mirror (now The Mirror) and The People, as well as Carole Malone, with whom I once worked with who could broadly be described, a la Private Eye, as one of the Street’s foremost Glenda Slaggs. It was, in my view, the usual whitewash and how the Screws always did its best ‘to get things right’ etc. Well, yes, but to keep their lawyers happy and to ensure not to much dosh was wasted on avoidable libel trials. And the observation that it always did its best ‘to get things right’ is pretty bloody irrelevant when the story you are doing your best ‘to get right’ is as vitally important as to whether Ryan Giggs is cheating on his wife or whether Blue’s Duncan James also bats for his own side. The distinction was made long ago, and is worth repeating here that what is ‘in the public interest’ and what ‘the public are interested in’ are not necessarily always (or even ever given the gormless nature of much of the tabloid readership) the same thing.
I don’t doubt that in the wake of the Press’s extensive coverage of MPs’ expenses scandal, that gang will not try their utmost to muzzle us as much as they can and then some. They have been handed a grand advantage thanks to the idiots on the Screws. And they mustn’t be allowed to do so. But please let us draw the line somewhere: yes, every democracy needs a free and, within reason, unfettered Press, but that doesn’t and will never mean that we should defend up to the hilt each and every nasty thing the Press does. It boils down to this: if a democracy wants a free Press, it must take the rough with the smooth. But I, for one, am not going to spend a single second arguing that the rough the Press gets up to is in the slightest bit necessary.
Another update concerns Rupert and his son James: apparently it was James who insisted on the strategy of shutting down the Screws. Rupert had to be persuaded.

‘Citizen journalism’: complete cobblers or just a load of old cack?

I gather from the BBC News website that a UK edition of The Huffington Post is being launched today. I have spent the past few minutes trying to find it, mostly by using Google, but haven’t yet been able to track it down. But it’s still only 8.31 in the morning, so perhaps it’s a little late into work. All I knew about The Huffington Post is that it was launched my Arianna Huffington as a conservative commentary on the world, but is now regarded as more liberal, which is remarkable as most drift with age is in the opposite directions, i.e. we want to legalise everything when they are 20 and want to hang, draw and quarter everything by the time the are 40 and can’t go anywhere without a quart of whisky in our back pocket.

All I know of Arianna was that when she was still Arianna Stasinopoulos, she had a long love affair with the much older Bernard Levin (a big noise in journalism at the time, now I’m afraid ‘who he?’ for those readers who aren’t yet 70), but left him when he told her he didn’t want to marry and have chidlren and moved to America. She was later involved accused of plagiarism over parts of her biography of Maria Callas, married a man from a rich family, divorced him when she discovered that the other people he was seeing behind her back included men, and co-launched The Huffington Post.

While trying to track down the UK edition of The Huffington Post, I came across a website called the Online Journalism Blog (a rather clever name which seems to cover more or less all the angles; give it a print edition and I think it comes pretty close to having the full set) which reports the news of the launch. There I noticed that its report on the launch had already received six tweets (‘tweets’) and there is even a facility to ‘retweet’. Bless! And that got me thinking about the concept of ‘citizen journalism’.

On the face of it ‘citizen journalism’ sounds rather admirable in that it might be regarded as a ‘democratising’ force, but even after a just a few minutes reflection, there seems a great

deal less to it than meets the eye. What does it mean, exactly? Forget, for a moment, the ‘citizen’ bit and reflect on what ‘journalism’ is. There is, in my view rather less to that, too, than meets the eye.

Certainly, among others, the following will spring to mind: Horace Greeley (surely the patron saint of every spotty adolescent who has not yet paid a penny in taxes), ‘the public’s right to know’, the ‘public interest’, the Fourth Estate, ‘keeping sources confidential’, Watergate, thalidomide, Bernstein and Woodward, Arthur Christiansen and Dutton Peabody of the Shinbone Star. But let me beef up that list a little and attempt to rebalance it: Tunnels & Tunnelling and Carpet & Flooring Review (two publications which most certainly do exist, the first catering for men and women with a keen interest in tunnelling and the second for those whose lives involve laying carpets and other floor coverings. I have provided links for both to silences the doubters, and I should add that although the links prove a web presence, I first came across them before the web existed when they were most certainly print publication), the Daily Star, Asian Babes, Fox & Hound (pronounced ‘Fox and Hind), the St Breward Parish Magazine, Power News (the staff newspaper of the former Central Electricity Generating Board for whom I once worked), What Camera, the News of the World (‘The Screws’) and any number of coke-snorting alcoholics who earn their daily crust writing cobblers for the masses. My point is that this second list is no less legitimate and no less part of ‘journalism’. For the fact is that, in essence, ‘journalism’ is as much about being part of a noble tradition of ‘righting wrongs’ as so many would like it to be seen, as ‘eating’ is about ensuring the continued good health of the world’s population.

Certainly — and it is very important that I make this point — there are a great many men and women journalists who risk their lives in order that the public might know what’s going on; they are active — and given that many are killed that should strictly be ‘were active’ — in Russia, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Argentina, the Philippines, Zimbabwe and many other places and are all doing an admirable job. (Let me mention some names with which I am familiar from listening to the BBC: Barbara Plett, Hugh Sykes, Damian Grammaticus, Lyse Doucet and Orla Guerin. There are many, many more) But there are a loads of others working in the media who are equally entitled to call themselves ‘journalists’, but whose work has nothing to do with ‘righting wrongs’. For example, my day at work consists of first checking the puzzle page proofs against the puzzles ‘hard copy’, then helping to read, check, correct and do whatever is necessary to the promo page, the letters pages and the ‘answers’ page; at what point in my working day is my life at risk? Which is all a very long-winded way of pointing out that being ‘a journalist’ as such doesn’t really add up to a row of beans. It’s what you do that counts.

And so we get to ‘citizen journalists’: I don’t know who first came up with the phrase, but don’t be taken in by it. It means very, very little and has more in common with advertising agency puffery than the real world. Yet it sounds so grand, doesn’t it, it gives the impression of democracy on the march, of a steady progress towards a more enlightened, more caring world. Here in Britain, as I’m sure is the case throughout the world, the websites of all the national papers now offer the facility to allow us, the reader, to leave our comments on a particular issue or news story. What does that tell us? Well, here is what it tells me: that a great many people have a great many different opinions on a great many different subjects. And none is willing or even able to listen to the other’s point of view. What counts, what is of supreme importance is that their voice should be heard. But you only have to spend a minute or two in your nearest public bar to establish that. What do you get when everyone is allowed to have their say? Nothing but a noisy cacophony in which nothing is intelligible. And so much for ‘citizen journalism’.

And doesn’t it get sticky at the top. Here’s why one complete nonentity is sometimes glad that his life is basically sweet and, above all, simple

There are times, dear reader, when I am glad I am nothing but an ageing boring old fart whose one vice is to pontificate in this ’ere blog but who otherwise has a character which is without stain. Who in their right mind, for example, would want to swap places with the West African hotel maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her and then was herself accused of being a prostitute? She is now suing the New York Post for libel after it published stories of her selling sex (pictured). Or who would want to be Rebekah Brooks (always referred to as ‘flame-haired’ and you can see why) as the affair

over a private detective hacking into mobile phones on behalf of the News of the World spins ever more out of control for — well, for one reason or another more or less everyone involved? Brooks was editor of the Screws while a lot of this was going on, but is now chief executive officer (one of those American titles we are slowly adopting over here) of News International. Or who would be Rupert Murdoch, who must be 80 if he is a day, who is seeing a great deal of his life’s work in danger of unravelling over the affair. News Corporation, which owns News International, is doing its damnedest to take over all of BSkyB, but the Tory government, whose approval it needs to do so will not want to give it the nod if this whole business with phone hacking gets any worse. Or who wants to be any one of several ‘senior police officers’ of the Metropolitan Police who appear at best to have been clay-footed and at worse turned a blind eye to their mates in Her Majesty’s Press. The trouble is it is all getting worse, more or less by the hour.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, conveniently referred to as DSK in tabloid headlines in New York is no longer under house arrest, and although he still faces various charges, might have had as stroke of luck courtesy of the league of private detectives employed by his expensive lawyers to dig up whatever dirt they can on the accusing maid to undermine her claims. So far, we are told, the story she told of being gang-raped in order to get asylum in the U.S. is a load of cobblers and there is ‘said to be evidence’ that $50,000 had been deposited in her bank account by a known drug dealer. Then the Post added its two ha’porth worth by claiming she was nothing but a tart touting for business at the hotel where she worked. Her suit against the Post raises the stakes because if she loses, she is utterly discredited, and if she wins, it will seem crystal-clear to the world that a nasty dirty tricks campaign is afoot against her, and the only one to gain from her being discredited would be DSK. Incidentally, there is still talk in France that once all this has blown over (of course), DSK might still be nominated to stand for the Left at the coming presidential elections. They are even talking of postponing the deadline for nominations to be submitted just to accommodate the old rogue. Whether of not they have also taken into account more rape claims made against him is unclear.
As for Rebekah Brooks, well she seems to be sinking ever further in the shit by the day. Strictly speaking News Corporation cannot be held responsible for any dealings, however murky, conducted by the News of the World, but we all know it doesn’t work that way. All Murdoch’s enemies will shriek (and they do tend to shriek) that if he allowed that kind of thing to go on in his newspaper division, who’s to say what he would allow at a wholly News Corp owned Sky TV? By the way, I do find the phrase often trotted out in these cases — ‘not a fit and proper person’ — to be pompous beyond belief. The Tories, of course, who like Labour are usually only to keen to kiss Murdoch’s arse (and allow him to take over Sky if at all possible — that should keep the old rogue sweet and onside for many more years) don’t know what to do. His problem is that he now has to hang on to Brooks through thick and thin whatever she might have done, for getting rid of her at this late stage will only make him look ridiculous. And, of course, she will know where several other bodies are buried. So that is why, dear reader, I don’t feel the slightest twinge of envy for any of those who reap the benefits of living in the public eye. Just give me my pipe, my half ounce of shag and several pint bottles of pale ale and I am utterly contented. Who would want the limelight?

Having ‘a spare’. Or is possessing seven laptops a symptom of early onset lunacy? No, sir, it isn’t! Please read on

One of the jokes at work is that I am something of a gadget queen, and I must admit that the shoe fits quite well. I do love gadgets whether the gadget is a laptop, an iPad (I inadvertently bought one recently), a portable digital TV for use in the car, several sets of handy screwdrivers the various tips of which fit out of the way into the handle, an infra-red gadget for measuring distances, a mobile phone, little wind-up pocket torches which can be attached to your keyring, a thingamajig for testing the voltage on batteries and how much poke is left, a small portable car tyre inflator, several digital guitar tuners in various sizes, a portable wifi radio — and I do mean portable, not one of those design disasters which would make a Thirties Bakelite model look elegant — a flash slave unit (very useful), well the list might go on, but I shall have to be in bed before dawn and there is more to right in this entry than merely a list of all the semi-useful crap I have accumulated over the years.

On the plus side, of course, if the fact that when someone shouts out aloud to the world at large: ‘Has anyone got a . . .’, I can invariably reply: ‘I have. Do you want a red one or a black one? And would that be in metric of imperial measurements.’ And this is not empty boast: a few months ago, a colleague’s reading glasses fell to pieces. ‘Has anyone got a minute screwdriver, so that I can put these glasses back together again?’ And I was able to shout back: ‘Yes, I have. Do you want one made here in Britain or a Russian-made one?’

Actually, that last bit is bollocks, but I did happen to have a tiny, tiny screwdriver which was specifically intended for the tiny, tiny screws which hold your glasses together. So who’s the fool? It is my proud boast that I am most surely the only employee at the Daily Mail who has a knife with a foot-long blade in his drawers at work.

And there’s no need to be alarmed: we have a tradition that whenever it is someone’s birthday, they bring in a cake to be shared with everyone else. And when I brought one in a few years ago, I got thoroughly few up with trying to cut it up with a stupid bloody plastic knife as everyone else did, which not only made a complete mess of the cake and ensured that no slice was as big or as small as the others, but invariably too much of a perfectly pleasant cake was left in pieces all over the desk.

So when I went out and bought a cake, I also went a little further up the road and bought a large knife with which to cut it. It does the trick very well and everyone else now uses it, too, except hacks being the self-centred fucks they were, are and always will be, it never, but never occurs to anyone to wash it and give it back to me once it is no longer needed. But that’s hacks for you: they think the whole world is there simply for their convenience.

There is, however, another, angle to my propensity to collect gadgets: I also, if possible, like to have at least two of then — a spare and another spare in case I cannot immediately lay my hand on the one I want, it gets lost or is stolen or something. I realise that on a rainy day your average pschyoanalyst could have a field day, but quite honestly it doesn’t worry me one little bit. So, for example, I own three digital guitar tuners, two portable wifi radios, at one point owned two of those nifty NextBase portable digital television sets, we have a total of eleven mobile phones in the house (two of which don’t work) and — ahem, six laptops, or rather I own six laptops but have the use of seven.

Now I do realise that all that makes it sound as though I am not playing with a full deck, but that really isn’t the case. I might point out that, for one thing, I am perfectly aware of just how ridiculous it all is and just how whacky I sound, and — this is the crucial point — if I were if I really were ready for the men in white coats, I wouldn’t be writing what I am now writing, but would, instead, insist that the situation is perfectly normal and that, furthermore, those individuals who don’t have, say, eleven mobile phones (working and non-working) are the ones we should be concerned about. But I’m not saying that, am I? See what I mean.

Anyway, if an individual such as me any whackier than all those think herberts who haunt the railway system of Great Britain recording the numbers of every train in service? Or what about all those complete fucking idiots who will travel several thousand miles with nothing but a pair of binoculars and a packet of sandwiches for a fleeting, 15-second glimpse of the Great-crested, lesser-spotted Whatever. Me mad? I don’t think so. My one ‘quirk’ is that I like to have ‘a spare’ in case.

Now let me explain the situation with the laptops. And let me reassure you that I am considering getting rid of at least three. Or at least I was considering getting rid of at least three until I logged onto eBay, looked up Completed Listings and realised what pitifully poor prices the kind of laptop I was think of selling now command.

Until recently, I owned an Mac iBook G4 and a Mac Powerbook G4. The trouble was that when you watch BBC iPlayer on a G4 — and the Powerbook has a top-spec 1.6ghz processor — it is all rather jerky. So slowly I began looking at what Windows machines were available on eBay and, to cut a long story short, I more or less accidentally bought a rather nice Samsung. (By the way, mention of the seven laptops above doesn’t take into account the several other laptops which have previously seen their way into our house but have since departed again. That would be another six — two 1400s, two G3 Powerbooks and two Dells.)

The Samsung became my pride and joy, not least because Windows, for all its myriad faults, allows you to play online backgammon. The iBook (which, like the Powerbook, boots a damn sight faster than any Windows machine) sits in my bedroom and is used first thing in the morning to check my email.

My daughter uses now uses the Samsung as she insists she needs a Windows machine because all the computers at school are Windows (or something — it’s a little hard pinning her down on that one). I suppose here is the place to record that although I loathe, loathe, loathe the whole ‘Mac community’ bollocks with the insufferable attitude of too many Mac users that they are part of the chosen few and Apples’ corporate arrogance, I far prefer Macs to any Windows machine. There, I’ve said it.


However, I finally decided to rationalise my collection of laptops. For the past five years Apple has been producing a new range of laptops using Intel computer chips and that meant that the new range of computers could also run Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 (which as far as I am concerned is the only Windows OS to date which should run off and hide its head in shame, though it, too, can all-too-often give you the runaround). So the plan was to buy two Mac Intel Macbook Pros and get rid of all the other laptops in the house. One would set up always to boot into Windows 7 so that my daughter could use it, and I would use the other one.

I bought the first MacBook Pro a week ago. The price was something of a bargain and I should have know better. Although the seller in insists the laptop was in ‘perfect working’ condition when she sent it off, when I took it out of its box last Sunday and booted it up, I immediately got a kernel panic. That, dear reader, is the Unix technical term for ‘something in this computer is completely fucked and this laptop is going on strike’. I shan’t go into the ins and outs of it all, but I am now assured of shot of the laptop and getting my money back.

In the meantime, I have bought two more MacBook Pros. They have, I’m told both arrived at work but as I haven’t since been to work, I have yet to unpack and inspect them. (I get several items I buy sent to me at work because my wife has a habit of getting into an awful tizzy when stuff arrives here at home in Cornwall and accuses me of ‘wasting money’.

Well, perhaps I do, but my argument is that she has never been left short of money, no bill has ever — ever — gone unpaid and, anyway, I like to have a life of sorts and if having a life of sorts involves buying all sorts of crap I want, so be it. However, unfortunately like so many women, she has a bloody-minded and irrational inability to

see my point of view, so getting ‘stuff’ sent to me at work saves on an awful lot of aggro. Why go looking for trouble? And as I am coming clean, I should also tell you that the three MacBooks I have bought (one of which I shall be returning) have the virtue of superficially looking almost identical to the Powerbook on which I am writing this blog. The theory is that, with a bit of luck, she won’t spot that I have bought a new laptop. Or rather two, but I’m still in the process of thinking that last bit through. Please don’t rush me.

By the way, the astute readers among you will ask: so what is the seventh laptop? Well, it is Lenovo Something Or Other supplied to me by work so that I can log onto the system at work for when I put together the puzzle pages. Rational or what?

Johan Hari comes a cropper or the Sad, Sad Tale of a Hero of the Left who has broken the Eleventh Commandment. And Greece: is it a tragedy of a comedy?

A curious, low-key spat in the Press these past few days about one of the darlings of the left who just might have been caught, metaphorically, with his fingers in the till. It concerns a chap called Johan Hari who in his day was something of a child prodigy apparently, having his journalism published when he was 16 or something (though I have looked on Wikepedia and can’t find any references to this anywhere, so perhaps I am just making it up, although if I am doing so, it is entirely inadvertent). Hari is notable in that as a gay man, he is an activist. According to Wikipedia he ‘has been named by the Daily Telegraph as one of the most influential people on the left in Britain and by the Dutch magazine Wing as one of the 20 most influential gay people in the world.
At his point I must mention that I have an antipathy to ‘lists’, especially to lists of ‘influential’ people. What exactly does ‘influential’ mean in this context? Someone might well be regarded as influential if others copy their dress sense and style, but beyond that, very limited, sense, I think it is simply cobblers to describe anyone as ‘influential’, especially a paid

hack such as Hari (right). As far as I am concerned, it is just another instance of media luvvies talking themselves up and making themselves sound just a little more interesting than they themselves suspect they are. Then there is the description of Hari as an ‘influential gay’ person, which I regard as doubly daft: surely to goodness we have come sufficiently far down the road to treat someone’s sexual inclination as being about as important as their toothpaste of choice. Whether or not a man or woman is gay does not make them either a better or worse person. They just are, and, as some do, to celebrate the fact seems to me just as pernicious as to hold it against them.
One thing Hari, who writes mainly for The Independent but also for several other notable publications, has in his favour, as far as I am concerned, is his ability to make enemies. In my book that is a definite plus, and although when I have heard him on the radio or read any of his journalism, I was inclined to regard him as something of a silly little tick, I yield to no man in defence of his right to be a stupid prick if he wants to be. But what I didn’t, and don’t like, about him is his tendency to occupy the high moral ground. And just how dangerous doing so can be is highlighted by the spat in which he finds himself. And if he hadn’t done so in the past, passing judgment on those whose behaviour fell short of what he thought was acceptable, the media spat in which he finds himself might never have started.
Hari belongs to the serious end of journalism, and in that he has my best wishes. Again according to Wikipedia, he has reported from, among other places, the Congo, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Venezuela, Rwanda and Syria. Whether or not he found himself in personal danger on any of these assignments I don’t know, but what he did is several million miles away from checking the puzzle pages and ensuring the commas are in the right places on the letters pages as I do and I can honestly say I have never once feared for my life doing so. That then one point to Hari, no points to me. But given that background – he has also won something called the Orwell Prize for his political journalism – what he is now accused of is odd in that if he is guilty, he surely should most certainly have known better.
Hari, it seems, has been interviewing prominent people – political activists, that kind of thing – and then including quotations from their work in the pieces he subsequently wrote. Nothing wrong with that, you might think, except Hari would paraphrase the quotations and use them as though they were what his interviewee had actually said to him in person – that is pretend that they were said as part of the interview. There is no question that it is a somewhat controversial thing to do, and I regard it as a form of cheating (but see my  below, for more on that point).
Hari, though, says he doesn’t and has come up with a somewhat convoluted justification for the practice. He says (and I now quote from the Guardian of today (July 1) that he distinguishes between the ‘intellectual accuracy of describing [interviewees'] ideas in their most considered words, or [it should be ‘and’ but that’s the Guardian for you] the reportorial accuracy of describing their ideas in the words they used on that particular afternoon’. As far as I am concerned, there is a distinct and quite unmistakable whiff of bullshit about Hari’s justification. What makes it all rather more complicated is that given his left-of-centre views and his homosexuality, Hari and his supporters are arguing that those criticising him have ulterior motives (although they don’t explain quite why he should be regarded so highly and why taking him down would be seem as something of a coup). That the many people who don’t like him are enjoying the chance to take young Johan (who, at 32, might not be quite as young as all that) are lining up to give examples of his duplicity speaks volumes. But then as a general rule, no one is quite as bitchy as a hack and the men are worse than the women.
I am not about to condemn him in the slightest and to do so would be despicable. I have made up many, many quotes as a reporter and sometimes as a sub, mainly because Joe Public as opposed to the great and good Hari mucks around with are horribly inarticulate, and if I had quoted them with 100pc accuracy, they would have come across as mentally deficient. Then there was the time, many years ago – at least 31 years ago, so I don’t’ mind coming clean - when I invented a complete interview (purportedly with the mayor of a small Sardinian town which was the centre of the kidnapping for ransom by the mafia of two well-off Brit holidaymakers). I was paid handsomely for the piece (in fact, due to a misunderstanding between the newsdesk and accounts, I was paid twice - a flat fee and then on lineage) and even though I say so myself, it might have been complete fiction, but Christ it was a rattling good read. But I am not going to condemn Hari. All I shall do is point out that if you are going to pull a fast one, make sure you don’t break the Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Allow Theyself To Be Caught Out. Unfortunately, Hari did. And I can’t help feeling just a touch of Schadenfreude that after all his high moral posturing, young Johan has finally been caught with his trousers down.

. . .

The Greek parliament united, more or less, to vote in an even tougher raft of austerity measures a day or two ago to ensure it received another bung from the other members of the euro club. And I admit I was very disappointed. I wanted the MPs (who will most certainly not be on their uppers over the coming years as a result of these measures) raise two fingers to the Greek government and Brussels, but it was not to be. I happen to think the whole ‘EU project’ as it is now is a dishonest mess and that the introduction of the euro was riding for a fall from the off. But that isn’t why I wanted the new set of measures to be shown the door. I don’t mean to sound precious but the fact that the Greeks are now most likely to get the second tranche of their bailout money offends – wait for it – my aesthetic sense. Yes, I know it sounds daft, but it does. Whether I inherited the trait from my German ancestors or whether it was from the Powell’s of South Wales that my genes were thus programmed, but I do like a certain order. If it is a German trait, let me call it Ordnung. But the whole Greek bailout saga is just one complete and bloody mess.
For one thing, you don’t help a country (or an individual in debt by lending it (them) more money. It doesn’t work that way. However much Greece is lent, it will eventually have to be paid back. And anyway, you can bet your bottom dollar that the next wallage of moolah to be handed over won’t go, as officially intended, to ensure the Greek civil servants are paid but will be used to buy back the – worthless – bonds bought over these past few months and ensure those most open to catastrophe in the event of a Greek default get as much of their money back as is humanly possible.
The official theory is – and a rather threadbare theory it is at that – that ‘once the crisis is over’ and ‘Greece is back on its feet’, the Greek economy ‘can then expand’, the books will be balanced, and sooner or later the Greeks will be in a position to pay of their debts. And, so ‘the theory’ goes, the euro project (‘one for all and all for one, especially if that one is France) will be vindicated and it will be one in the eye for all those nasty cynics. Well, stuff that. All that has happened is that the day of doom has been postponed, people who should not be carrying the can in Greece will carry even more of the can, and a bad situation will get even worse. In the meantime, those in Greece partly responsible for this mess simply because they do not pay their taxes will get off scot-free and most probably get even more prosperous. And, as I say, that offends my aesthetic sense.
Furthermore, exactly why does everyone think that the meaures taken will not in time lead to trouble. Those Greeks at the bottom of the pile pay taxes. Those at the top don’t. Does anyone really think that increasing the tax burden on already impoverished people while ignoring the tax evasion of those with piles of money will bring about peace and harmony. The cliché is that democracy was born in Greece. But more to the point is that not so long ago, the army organised a coup and ruled for several years. Is it really impossible that an army sensitive to the plight of those at the bottom of the pile will not decide that enough is enough, stage a coup and return to the drachma? They would, at a stroke, have popular support, and it would be wrong to imagine that their natural allies are the prosperous folk whose refusal to pay taxes is partly to blame for the mess.