Relief all round, the EU has found a solution: put Greece even further in debt

The newspapers are full this morning of how the fat was pulled out of the fire at the last minute and the euro has been saved. Greece will get another trillion billion of euros to help get it out of the shit, and this time, at the insistence of Germany's Kanzler Angela Merkel, those nasty moneymen, much distrusted by every right-thinking European, will also shoulder some of the burden. They won't acutally contribute any money, they will merely 'contribute' by not having the money they lent Greece repaid for another 30 years rather than after 10. Eveyone feared the worst and the 'markets rose' all over the world at the news that a soltuion had been found. Already, I'm sure, parades are being organised throughout the lands to celebrate this demonstration of unity. But hold on a minute.
Greece's problems will not be solved. The solution is merely that a country so in debt that it cannot afford even to pay the interest on money it had previously borrowed, is simply being lent even more money. In any other context the appropriate reaction would have

been a huge 'what?' and those coming up with the solution would have been hauled off by the men in white coats. The only excuse for putting forward what in any other circumstances (and a more rational society) would have been regarded as completely bonkers is that there was simply no other option. If Greece had gone down the pan, they say, then Portugal and Ireland would also have done so, and then it would have been the turn of Italy and Spain. This would have caused a severe economic depression in the rest of Europe and then the rest of the world. There would have been a global slump. So that's all right then: the world has been saved. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. The grand plan rests on the hope that Greece, Europe and the rest of the world will start growing their economies again, things will get back to normal and Greece will slowly come up out of the shit and start behaving like a good European. This seems to me rather like a bankrupt going to the races and betting his last sou on a sure thing: certainly his horse might romp home, but equally certainly it might not. The only abiding image of yesterday's meeting finance directors which is at all truthful is a lot of guys in expensive suits sitting around nervously and crossing their fingers.
What no one has been tactless enough to mention, so I'll mention it, is that we just shouldn't be in this mess in the first place (and I must now say we because even non-euro members are equally threatened). Twelve years ago when all those EU fuckwits were waving flags and setting off fireworks and treating the arrival of the new currency as the Second Coming, they all knew - all of them - that several of the member states signing up to join the euro had cooked the books to be able to do so. Never ming the figures, they said, feel the joy. This, they said, is the European dream.
Meanwhile, a great many economists were warning that the Europe-wide interest rate that would henceforth be applied to all those countries joining the euro was inappropriate given the disparate nature of so many EU economies. Well, here's a thing: why are Greece, Portugal and Ireland now in the shit? Why are Irish pensioners and those on benefits having their pensions and benefits cut? Why are the poor in those countries getting ever closer to penury? Why? Because when the economies of each of those three countries started to go awry, the one financiall measure they should have taken to cool down their economies - cutting interest rates - was no longer available to them. But no one has been honest enough to admit that, yes, they were wrong. In the real world, heads should have rolled. But you can bet they won't roll in Brussels.
My sister, who is a fan of the euro, thinks I'm some kind of Cassandra, only too keen to see the whole euro project collapse. She thinks that I'm talking pie in the sky when I claim that it can only get worse and that eventually those who have nothing to lose could even turn to violence in the streets. That has already happened in Greece, yet it is early days of the austerity measures. It is tactless to say so and given that the notion of 'democracy' began in Athens, quite ironic, but the tradition of democracy is still a little shaky in Greece which less than 45 years ago had a few years of dictatorship, and Salazar's 35-year dictator ship of Portugal only ended 45 years ago. How would Brussels react if in either or both countries a 'strong man' or a group of 'strong men' tried to grab power with the support of poor people who decided they had nothing to lose? Such a grab for power need not even be successful . It could well lead to civil war. And if that happened, how would Brussels react? The point I made to my sister was not that this is bound to happen, but that we would be foolish to think that such days are long gone. She said that 'government wouldn't allow it'. I pointed out that to stay in power, governments need the support of the majority of their people, and once they lose that support, they might well find themselves out of office, to be replaced by less salubrious types resorting to naked nationalism. It's not as though that hasn't happened in the past, and I can't understand why she and others insist it can't and would not happen again. When people are unemployed and have nothing to lose, they reckon they might as well try anything.

Some pix and news of three concerts. Finally a Screws, euro and Murdoch-free blog entry

Here are a couple of pics I took today, in no particular order and of no particular merit. I have also changed my blog pic for a while, just for the crac.

The picture below is one I saw a chap taking as I was driving home. 'What are you doing,' I asked him, and he told me he had been commissioned by Bradford City Council to compile a series of photographs taken in each EU member state which celebrated diversity in community which are intended to show solidarity with the European Union. Well, if it's good enought for him, it's good enough for me I thought, especially as he had a load of very expensive looking equipment whereas my pic was snapped on a GE C1033 on offer at E Leclerc in Lagon.

The table and chairs in the next picture were sitting next to me in the cafe in Bazas cathedral square and we fell into conversation (as you do when you are abroad) and the stories they had to tell! They were very good about having their picture taken and managed to keep quite still when I took it, keeping their natural Gallic exuberance in check.

There's a rather amusing story attached to my next picture. It seems that several years ago the Socialist mayor was defeated over some minor issue and never came to terms with his fate. Apparently, he began behaving in ever more odd ways daubing various buildings at night with Socialist slogans and symbols until finally the prefecture had to have him sectioned. He was a keen nuclear abolitionist in his youth and the people of Bazas, who were otherwise very fond of him decided the last symbol he painted before his arrest should be preserved in his honour.

Below is the pulpit in the parish church in Illats where I am staying. Last year, when the village got to hear that I keep a blog, they voted in (by a rather slim majority, but let's no go there) a district ordinance giving me squatter's rights whenever I am visiting (that is, I can preach from the pulpit whenever I like). I'm not too sure whether it is just a symbolic right or whether I could, in fact, exercise it, and so far I have decided to err on the side of caution.

Finally, no collection of holiday snaps would be complete without a pointless, though pretty, shot of a small river taken from a bridge. Here is mine, taken just a few minutes drive down the road.

. . .

Part of my stay was taken up going to concerts, although as I couldn't get away earlier in the month, we weren't able to go to any of those which are part of a Baroque music festival. However, we went to three, of which I enjoyed two and a half. Let me get the half out of the way I didn't enjoy. It was at the Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte in Martillac, about 25 minutes drive away, in which a Roger Muraro (I'm reading from the programme - I'd never heard of him, but then I've never heard of most of these people) played pieces by Liszt, Schuman and then Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique rearranged for the piano by Liszt, or bloody Liszt as I like to call him. I like Schuman (although he can get a little close to the mid-nineteenth century lush romanticism of which a little goes a very long way) but I don't like Liszt. Nor, for that matter, do I like Chopin. They spend far too long aimlessly noodling around on the keyboard, and the main impression I get is that they are rather keen to show us how clever and versatile they are. In addition, Liszt does bang about on the keyboard as though it were a tympany. I think I had only heard the Symphonie Fantastique once before and it wasn't a piece I was in a rush to hear again, so you can imagine just how much I enjoyed Liszt's interpretation of the piece. It went on for way over an hour and at one point I think I even stopped breathing.
However, the night before was a treat, as was the night after. Monday's concert was at the same chateau, although part of a different festival. It started at 5.30pm with a masterclass given by a chap called Maxim Vengero (and my aunt can't get over that I had never heard of him. Then, in the concert proper, he played Brahms sonatas for violin and piano, encoring with a piece by Ravel, which I have yet to identify, but which was joy.
Last night at the Chateau Gravas a Barsac was a much smaller concert of French Baroque music played on a harpsichord, viol de gamba flute accompanying a soprano. And the older I get, the more I like that kind of music. Stuff bloody Liszt and Chopin, crash, crash, crash bang, bang.
Also at the chateau was an exhibition of work by some chap called Paul Flickinger (he's not German but from Alsace). My aunt like his stuff, I didn't. It reminded me of what I've decided to call 'corporate art', the kind of stuff huge conglomertes like Shell, Pepsi, Ford and Transnational Acquisitions pay through the nose for to hang in their lobbies and corridors. As soon as I saw it, the word 'contrived' came to mind. But then what do I know (except, of course, that Liszt and Chopin, and for that matter Wagner, are a pain in the butt. One reason why Wagner goes on and on and on was that he was paid by the hour. That always brings the worst out in a composer.)

Those crafty lads at the FSB: now, apparently, they are running al-Qaeda. And the ‘hacking scandal’ – it gets even murkier, though one thing is clear: the Murdoch’s are on their way out

A rather contentious, not to say very odd, claim has come my way that the FSB, Russia’s successor to the KGB is, if not actually now running, at least in a good position to guide al-Qaeda. On the face of it, it would seem to be so much nonsense, but when you get into the detail, you have to agree that it can’t be dismissed out of hand.

At the moment, I am staying in the Bordeaux region for a week to attend a series of Baroque music concerts with my stepmother’s sister. She is a retired English teacher who most recently taught at the Bordeaux University and who regularly gets copies of The Spectator which are passed on to her by a friend. You might or might not be familiar with my opinion of The Spectator, but briefly although on occasion some of its writers can be quite amusing, I don’t much like it. I just get tired of the general pose of ‘isn’t modern life just awful. It’s counterpart The New Statesman is equally tedious with its neverending maudlin refrain of ‘God aren’t the right/Tories/middle class/Daily Mail readers such heartless bastards. Shooting is too good for them’. To sum up both are as bad as each other.

I happened upon a recent edition of The Spectator (the June 25, 2011, if you’re interested) and immediately turned to page whatever when I read on the cover the come-on ‘Are the KGB running al-Qaeda?’ In essence, a writer with a suitably Eastern European name claims that Bin Laden’s successor, an Egyptian called Ayman al-Zawahiri, was taken up by the then KGB and schooled for six months in an establishment it has in the North Caucasus. The course is is said to have been enrolled on dealt in all sorts from how to run an organisation so it does what you want it to – impeccably Leninist that – to clandestine operations. Interestingly, the KGB eventually did admit that al-Zawahiri was in the North Caucasus for six months but that he had been picked up as an illegal alien and held for the six months while it tried to establish his identity, and then expelled when it couldn’t. That’s plausible, of course, but not particularly convincing, although not being convincing doesn’t mean The Spectators claim is true. But to add a little to the claim’s credibility are comments made by the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko who was bumped off in London (most probably by the KGB using a radioactive material) that al-Zawahiri was indeed the KGB’s man. Again claiming as much doesn’t prove anything, but the balance of probability is that the chap did have some sort of connection with the KGB and now with its successor, the FSB.

The Spectator’s tame Eastern European goes on to claim that once he had graduated from the KGB place in the North Caucasus, al-Zawahiri was sent to Afghanistan and told to infiltrate al-Qaeda and get as close to the top of the organisation as he could. Well, succeeding Bin Laden more or less achieves that goal, and I’m sure that – if the claims are true – a case of vodka and several kilos of Beluga caviar were sent on their way to brighten the chap’s leisure time. Though, on reflection probably no vodka. The obvious question is: why would Russia want to control al-Qaeda? To that the reply is that as the country’s economy is a bloody mess and it depends on the export of oil and gas, instability in the Middle East is to its advantage. It is also keen to portray the troubles in Chechnya not as a country’s struggle for independence, but as part of the global islamist troublemaking. And it also wants to be seen as a player in the anti-islamist movement. Or something. Anyway, as they say: believe it or not. Me, I’ll leave the jury out there for a while pondering the pros and cons.

. . .

Well, the Hacking Scandal – I think that by now it deserves the honour of capital letters, although I’m not too sure whether ‘Hacking Scandal’ is the name agreed upon or whether it is known as something else, Hackgate or something – is evolving by leaps and bound. I must, thought, admit that it is no interest whatsoever to anyone outside Britain except a few excitable careerists in in the US Justice Department who see it as a chance to climb the greasy pole and assorted swivel-eyed lefties wherever they live who regard Rupert Murdoch as the Devil’s representative on Earth – a sort of anti-Pope, I imagine. But for those who are inexplicably interested – I had a rather plaintive email from a pensioner in Sarawak who has asked me to outline what is going on exactly – I shall do my best to summarise the main points. And the first main point is that everyone is in the shit and sinking increasingly deeper, except the saintly Guardian, which over the past few years and especially the past few weeks has garnered so many journalistic Brownie points that it will soon be able to hold its own jamboree.

And by everyone, I do mean everyone, from Rupert Murdoch, Prime Minister David Cameron, virtually everyone in the Metropolitan police to everyone in the Labour Party, who were more assiduous in lining up to suck Rupert’s dick than anyone else. What is interesting (although I am bound to admit that I must use the word ‘interesting’ loosely) is that all those involved are involved in a slightly different way. There is nothing straightforward about the matter and there is talk of calling in the BBC’s cricket commentator’s to interpret it all, given that with their intricate knowledge of cricket, they are the only ones who can be relied upon to find understand such arcane detail.

Rupert and his idiot son James are in very real danger of seeing Rupert’s life’s work, skilfully and intelligently built up over the past 50 years unceremoniously go down the pan. David Cameron is fighting off claims that by employing the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson he is ‘guilty of an error of judgment’ (and a more severe failing it is hard to imagine. It makes Pol Pot’s genocide look like a minor social gaffe). The Met rozzers stand accused of accepting backhanders from News International hacks on an industrial scale. Labour assiduously sucked Rupert’s dick as much if not even more than the Tories which is making all their attempts at scaling the high moral ground utterly pointless. Our noble MPs, who were not at all averse to almost universally faking the expense chitties and were hauled over the coal by the Press for doing so, are relishing getting their own back and there is loose talk of ‘regulating the Press’. Well, their motives are lost on no one and. Only the saintly Guardian looks like coming out of this at all well.

Then there is the whiff of conspiracy about it all. Rebekah Brooks, the ‘flame-haired’ former Screws editor and former News International chief executive who finally resigned at the end of last week, is due, with Rupert and James, to appear before a Parliamentary committee tomorrow (Tuesday) to be questioned by loads of MPs. She was expected to give a full grilling on all aspects of the matter, not least about who among the Met was accepting backhanders, how much they were getting and for how long was this going on. Then out of the blue she was yesterday arrested by the Met on suspicion of whatever – because it doesn’t really matter: now that she is arrested, the MPs are pretty much restricted in what they can ask her because they will be warned that they could prejudice any possible future court action. And Rebekah will now be entitled to refuse to answer any question which, she could claim, might lead her to incriminate herself. No one really knows whether her arrest was intended to stymie the MPs questioning or whether was just the unfortunate decision of some cack-handed plod. I suspect it was intentional but then I’m just a sad old cynic.

Another development yesterday was the resignation of the Met’s Commissioner. He had rather blotted his copybook by appointing a former deputy editor of the Screws as a special advisor at a time when the Met was investigating the phone hacking and by also accepting £12,000 worth of free accommodation and treatment at a health farm which also employed that former deputy editor as a PR advisor. The Commissioner, a Sir Paul Stephenson, was called in by Boris Johnson, London’t mayor, and resigned after the meeting. The question everyone is asking – OK, not everyone but every Westminster and media anorak – is did he jump or was he pushed. And in his resignation letter, Sir Paul made a few cryptic allusions to ‘not wanting to compromise’ Prime Minister David Cameron which sound rather ominous.

In America those Justice Department careerists are wondering whether any phone hacking by Nws International went on in the US, where it is a federal offence and could see the Murdoch’s hauled into court. It’s a long shot and their motives are transparent in that the Murdoch’s enemies aren’t just confined to the shores of Old Blighty, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do a hell of a lot of damage. To add to the Murdoch’s woes, the board of SkyB, is beginning to ask whether having James as its chairman might not be doing the company, of which the Murdoch’s crucially don’t have a majority shareholding, rather a lot of harm. This one will, as they say, run and run.

. . .

The pussycat which has stood in for me as my profile photo is being retired as I have finally come up with a picture which doesn’t necessarily make me look like a raddle old fool and with which I am content. All I ask is that you indulge me in this piece of innocent vanity.

RIP News International? RIP News Corp? Remember Thomson Newspapers? No, hardly anyone else does, either. And the euro shit gets ever closer to the real world fan

When I first started in newspapers in the mid-Seventies a job with Thomson newspapers was something like the gold standard. Thomson’s paid well, were comparatively enlightened employers and the holidays were good. But above all they were successful in producing newspapers. The Times and the Sunday Times were Thomson, as was The Scotsman and a string of regional papers owned by a subsidiary, Thomson Regional Newspapers.
In July 1978, I joined The Journal as a head office reporter. The Journal was a Thomson paper, and one of the perks was a discount on a package deal with Thomson Holidays. (Incidentally, my stint with The Journal was not particularly distinguished. I was, technically, as good a reporter as any other, but unfortunately I wasn’t a reporter at heart. I don’t give a flying fuck about what passes for news for one thing, and just can’t get into the mindset. Also, the really good reporters, the ones employed by the national for very good money usually have the morals of an alley cat and would sell their mums for sex if needs must. I, on the other hand, wouldn’t. Then, about halfway through my time on The Journal, my inexperience landed me and the paper in an awful lot of trouble when I accidentally shut down Newcastle airport. But more on that another time, if ever, because it was not my finest hour.)
In the Sixties and Seventies, Thomson papers were respected. In those days, admittedly at a time when, as we now know, television was more or less in its infancy, there was no local radio or the internet, and many more people turned to read newspapers, both local and national, to keep up with what was going on, they did have a little more to boast about. The Sunday Times, under the editorship of Harold Evans didn’t rely on tarted up tittle-tattle and lifestyle pieces about what aftershave to use when opening a bottle of Californian red, but was, for example, known for the exposes of it Insight team. It also pioneered the magazine format and it had real photojournalism, not just glossy piccies of rich men’s yachts around the world and features on how to decorate your second home. (If the majority of its readers didn’t have a second home, they were self-regarding enough to believe they jolly well should have one and that, all things being equal, getting one was just a matter of time)
My point is that in an ever-changing world, Thomson Newspapers were a fixed point. But no more. These days, the Thomson Corporation is a multi-billion dollar enterprise but it doesn’t own a single paper, TV station or radio. (Lord Thomson, the man who began it all, got going when he bought a down-at-heel shop in provincial Canada which, among other items, sold radio sets. He realised that sales of these sets were so low because the area had precious few stations to tune into. So he simply started one. That sort of thinking lay at the basis of his business brain.) It might be a similar story with News International – in Britain – and News Corp worldwide: to suggest that a time when neither exists could be sooner than expected sounds mad. But don’t bet your shirt.
The problem for both is the both are Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch, who might have become a naturalised American, but who thought and acted like the Australian he was born, is not just the brains of both companies, but their soul. His son and heir apparent James is, by all accounts not a patch on Rupert. I was talking to a guy here at work who was a Times reporter for ten years and sat through many talks given by James. James, the man expected to steer News International and News Corp from strength to strength refers to ‘readers’ as ‘users’ and ‘newspapers’ become ‘the end-product’. It might be impeccable and classic Harvard Business School speak, but in the real world of newspapers it is the kiss of death.
Rupert is in his mid-eighties, and from where I sit, the guy who once had one of the sharpest brains in the business and was not afraid to roll up his sleeves and muck in with the troops – which is why so many of those troops are loyal to him – had lost it. For all his brilliance, he did not know when to take a bow and leave the stage. It might be that in his heart he knows James is a duffer and that he didn’t want to relinquish the reins to a man who sooner or later is bound to fuck it all up. I don’t know. But his behaviour over the whole News of the World phone hacking scandal and his backing for that idiot Rebekah Brooks seem to indicate just one thing: he’s lost it.
. . .

But why should this mean that News International and News Corp could go to the wall a lot sooner than expected? Well, I am just another armchair pundit whose experience of finance and big business is restricted to shoving my debit card in a cashpoint every few days. So please bear that in mind. But I can see the following happening: already a staggering £4billion has been wiped off News Corp’s share price because investors are getting queasy about the whole hacking affair and how it is being handled. Who knows? Rupert pops his clogs in a few months’ time, James takes over, the investors don’t like him in charge and vote in another chairman, the new board decides to ‘rationalise’ the company (whose parts might be worth more individually than they are as divisions of News Corp), and within a few years the once mighty News Corp is no more. That’s just one scenario, but … (I reckon the same will happen to Apple, too, when Steve Jobs finally pops his clogs.)

. . .

The shit is getting every closer to developing a mind of its own and going for a head-to-head with the fan. Guess who’s going to come off best? I’m talking about the euro, of course. Now the, more or less ‘official’, talk is that it might not be such a bad idea if Greece ‘defaults’, the posh word for telling those you owe loads of money to fuck off and stop bothering you. The new big worry is now Italy. It is no longer just idiots like me who just wish the EU would just get on with it and bite the bullet. The trouble is that when the bullet is bitten, it will be the Ordinary Joes throughout Europe who will carry the can. All those dicks in Brussels will simply retire to their country of origin, accept an honour or two, allow themselves to be granted a sinecure and settle back to write their memoirs and how they knew it was all going to go wrong and said as much but no one would listen! Plus ca change …

What’s worse than an unsentimental hack? A sentimental hack. Lord save me from them and their bullshit

Back at work after a week off sick when, coincidentally, the News of the Screws went to the wall, and I am fed up to the back teeth with all the maudlin crap from colleagues about 'how sad it is that the Screws is closing'. If I come across one more boasting of how they have bought three copies of the final edition 'because it's historical', I'll kill someone. The only sad thing about the whole affair is that around 200 people have lost their jobs, the huge majority of whom will be completely innocent of the skulduggery that went on at the Screws. Furthermore, the paper being superbly produced - and I am not talking of its worth as a newspaper but the professionalism of the hacks who brought it out every week - the vast majority of those 200 will be working in equally well-paid jobs within two weeks. They will be snapped up because of their kind they are the best of the best. By the way, last week not 200 but 1,400 will be lost at a firm called Bombardier which makes trains because the Government has handed a vital contract to a German firm - no hacks crying tears over them, you'll notice, and few if any of them will have been on the rather splendid salary the Screws will have been paying its staff.
As for the paper: good riddance. Don't believe a word of the self-serving crap about what important stories it 'cracked'. Off-hand I can't remember one. The Screws specialised in digging for dirt about those in the public eye - for example, Max Moseley who runs Formula One and who liked nothing better than being whipped by tarts dressed as Nazis - and then publishing it for the titillation of folk whose lives are otherwise dull, dull, dull. Someone this morning suggested that printing the story of one David Mellor, a Tory Cabinet minister who was playing away and who liked to shag his squeeze dressed in a Chelsea football strip was the kind of worthwhile story the Screws printed. Why? Because Mellor was a Cabinet minister. Give me a break. And 'the Great British Public' should also shoulder some of the blame: if it were not so bloody prurient and ready to soak up the latest salacious details of some D-list turd's sex life, the Screws and its rivals wouldn't bother publishing it.
There's a well-known saying - well, well-known to me, anyway - that 'news is what doesn't appear in the newspapers', so given that, with one or two honourable exceptions, our national newspapers choose to print nothing but celebrity tittle-tattle, diets, 'lifestyle features', property columns and pieces on where best to save your money, the next time someone brags about Her Majesty's Press, do me a favour and tell them to fuck off.
The one thing that does concern me is that after the MPs' expenses scandal of last year, those same MPs, many of who got away scot-free with more or less dipping their fingers in the till, will be queuing up to table motions about 'regulating the Press', 'harnessing and out-of-control' Press' and all the rest of the hooey. If and when it comes to a confrontation with MPs, I shall most certainly stand by my colleagues to fight against any control. But I shall still be obliged to hold my fingers to my nose in the company of some of them.