We Are Biased...

Today the funeral took place in Langworth, Lincolnshire, of Arnold Hadwin OBE, editor of the Telegraph & Argus newspaper, Bradford, from 1973 to 1984.

For the record, he was 82 when he died in January, on his way to a meeting at the Village Hall. In his active retirement, he took to planting hundreds of daffodils round the hall, maybe thousands.

Far more than the number of irate union health workers who surrounded the offices of the T&A back in the early 1980s, irked by a column I had written on the scandal of hospital patients dying in the back of police vans while ambulancemen went on strike for more money.

Egged on by political militants, they tried to invade the building. Mr Hadwin, a former Royal Marine Commando, went downstairs and persuaded them to clear off, peaceably.

His name is known from Darlington to Africa. Committed to the ideas of democracy and freedom of the press, he travelled all over the world in his later years promoting them.

He ardently believed that all good newspaper journalism was journalist-led. The current notion of reader-led journalism was anathema to him, like political parties formulating policy according to focus groups rather than argued principle.

A local newspaper should take care of its readers - canalising their aspirations, making more articulate their demands, expanding their horizons, he once said. In this respect he was a regional Harold Evans, who expected his journalists to take risks, get under the skin of events and current affairs; basically lead from the front.

He gave a memorable example of this on May 7, 1976. Following local elections in which the National Front had attracted thousands of votes in Bradford, he wrote an editorial in response to an NF accusation that he and his newspaper were biased.

After a general introduction, he launched into his argument like a series of D-Day landing craft. Eight paragraphs began with the phrase, We are biased. In the ninth he wrote: Most of all, we are biased against a political philosophy derived from the degenerate, diseased and disgusting minds of Hitler and his sycophants.

QED, he and the Telegraph & Argus were beyond contradiction biased against proto-fascist parties and their beliefs; and we would be ashamed if we were not.

As I write this, his service at St Hugh's Church, Langworth, is almost over. But what Arnold Hadwin stood for, as a man and as a journlalist, will never be over, no matter how dumbed down and stupyfying the world gets; no matter how much celebrity displaces ability.

He wasn't universally admired, few editors worth their paper's printing ink ever are. But he was good to me and good for me.

I was a 28-year-old student placement at the paper when he asked me if I had ever considered journalism as a career. I told him I had not. Would I consider it, he asked. How did he know I'd be any good at it? I said, really wanting to know. "I think you can leave that to my judgement," he replied.

Thank you Arnold.

An Enemy of the People...

In Ibsen's play (1882), Dr Tomas Stockmann, medical officer of a tourist town's spa baths, foolishly believes that the result of his research, showing the baths to be polluted from the effluent of a mine, will be gratefully embraced by the town's people.

How wonderful, he says, to have the local newspaper, The Herald, behind him, as well as the support of the Householders Association. High time to sweep out the old corruption of the status quo and, yup! he's the man to do it.

At this point contemporary images from Tehran, Tunisia and Egypt may come to mind. More about these later.

Dr Stockmann quickly learns the fickle nature of public opinion. The liberals on The Herald, the two-faced Hovstad and the radish Billing (white on the inside), looking forward to a bit of agitation, soon change their minds. Aslaksen, the printer, babbles repeatedly about the necessity of moderation and "temperance" especially where local politics are concerned. The mayor, Dr Stockmann's brother Peter, contrives to get him fired from his job.

The satisfaction of having the solid majority behind him rapidly turns to disillusion - and enlightenment. Dr Stockmann tells a public meeting, at which he is forbidden to raise the subject of the polluted spa waters, that the majority is never right.

Progress and reform will always be driven by individuals because the majority is motivated by self-interest, in this case money bilked from tourists and revenue for the ailing Herald. How familiar all this is to me. Ibsen's fictional Norwegian spa town and the one where I live and work share the same sort of story. The worse the mess the greater the denial.

The Enemy of the People is the precursor, of course, of Steven Spielberg's great 1975 film Jaws, in which the mayor of tourist-friendly Amity Island opposes the local police chief who wants to close the beaches due to the presence of a man-eating great white shark cruising the deep blue sea beyond the surf.

Jaws, mainly a morality tale about greed and sloth, also portrays the majority, in the shape of the town council, as self-serving, short-sighted and inflexible. The hero of his film is Chief Brody, just as the hero of Ibsen's play is the intransigent, intrepid Dr Stockmann.

Surveying the broken windows of his house, Dr Stockman tells his wife Katrina that the people who threw the piddling little stones are cowards. In so many words he says, far better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

Self-serving, short-sighted, inflexible governments, with their tremendous reservoirs of military and para-military might, always under-estimate the power of seemingly ordinary people. Especially those who stand up to be counted, do no harm to others, but die nevertheless.

People such as Neda Soltan, 26, shot dead by the security forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2009; Khaled Saieed, 28, dragged from an Alexandra cafe by two Egyptian plainclothes policemen last year and beaten to death - in front of witnesses; and poor Mohamed Bouazizi, 26, a village fruit-seller, whose stall was confiscated by Tunisian police in December. He set himself on fire in protest. Last week the Government of Tunisia went up in smoke.

In January 1969, 20-year-old Czech history student Jan Palach set fire to himself in Wenceslas Square, emulating what monks in South East Asia had done. He was making an individual protest against the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia the previous summer, which had snuffed out the bid for liberty. Notice, he didn't set light to Russian soldiers in Prague, let alone scream "I'll kill you all" and detonate a bomb.

Irrespective of the modern trend of Islamic suicide bombings, true martyrs do not murder others: they sacrifice themselves. But don't expect many Christians to rush forward to make this point. Nowadays, like Mr Aslaksen, they tend to "opt" for moderation and have sod all to say about anything controversial - except global warming.

The dark side of individualism is egotism and the hubris that inevitably follows. Danny Boyle's latest film 127 Hours, based on a real event, is a gruesomely gripping, moving and redemptive story of what happens when one self-proclaimed American hero, Aaron Dalston, a Dr Stockmann in the making who thinks he needs nobody, is trapped between a rock and a hard place - literally.

"I need help! he shouts towards the end. Don't we all. Even the redoubtable Stockmann has a loving wife and family to sustain him in future battles against the enemy - the people.

Seldom Seen, Kid (part 2)

Part 1 was posted last night, for a while, and then despatched to the woman I love.

I don't have anything to say of any consequence, except to her. However, one little verbal habit that really gets on my tits is the knowing way office managers and technocrats talk about thinking outside the box.

The box. What's that, then, a coffin? The following is a little poem celebrating not thinking outside the box. It's called OUTSIDE THE BOX (meaning alive and kicking)...

Edson Arantes do Nasciemento,
the Brazilian,
the Black Pearl,
Pele,
three times World Cup winner,
in 21 years scored
twelve hundred and eighty-two goals
in thirteen hundred and sixty-three
first class matches
by not
thinking
outside the box.

Give it the elbow.

So,
Throw those curtains wide
one day like this a year will see me right
throw those curtains wide
one day like this a year will see me right
throw those curtains wide
one day like this a year will see me right...

God bless.

The Walls Are Tumbling Up

According to The Daily Telegraph the Greeks are planning to build a 128-mile wall along the border with prospective European Union member Turkey.

Unlike us, our border controls emasculated by EU directives, the Greeks are no longer willing to put up with illegal migration from Asia Minor - as though in apology for Alexander the Great's prolonged excursion the other way in the fourth century BC.

They say in principle it's just like the 850-mile security fence erected by the Americans along parts of its border with Mexico, whose citizens seem intent on reclaiming Texas and other parts of South-Western America lost after the phyrric victory at the Alamo.

The Turks are reportedly pissed off by the idea that they are responsible for the demographic pull east to west - one of the consequences of the EU decision to extend open borders across 27 member states.

Apparently they haven't heard the saying that good fences make good neighbours. Look at the shit the Israelis have taken for that ugly West Bank Barrier. Critics say they nicked Palestinian terriroty to build it. Israelis say since its construction the number of Palestinian suicide bombing attacks (73 in 2003 with reportedly 293 killed and 1,900 injured) has plummeted.

Last January, the Israelis announced their intention to build a 266-kilometer security barrier along the Egyptian border, to deter illegal immigration. How effective that is likely to be is anyone's guess.

Walls and fences are all the rage. You can read on Wikipedia that attempts to remove separation barriers between Catholic and Protestant communities in parts of Northern Ireland in 2008 were greeted with anger. These barriers range in length from a few hundred yards to more than three miles. People feel safer behind these defensible lines, it seems.

Our political masters, behind their gated offices, protected by armed robocops, surveillance that George Orwell scarcely dreamed of and armour-plated limos, know all about that. They need peace of mind and security in order to go on making Britain a better place to live in.

There is an irony in all this, of course. Fifty years ago this August, the Russians and East Germans erected a bloody great nine-foot high barrier of breeze blocks and barbed wire across Berlin, dividing East from West, communism from capitalism.

How simple that made life. Everybody knew where they stood, by and large, knew which side they were supposed to be on at least. And, let's be honest, the Cold War was a damned sight more interesting than the one that replaced it - the war against terror, Islamic terror.

The likes of John Le Carre were free to write gripping political thrillers about the whole dirty business. These days not even stand-up comedians have the gumption to take on the Europhiles, global warmists and the martyrs who murder in the name of Allah.

In Defence of Scrooge

The most maligned character in English fiction after Shylock and Fagin is Ebenezer Scrooge.

In spite of his belated conversion from skinflint to benefactor in A Christmas Carol, he still epitomises meanness and joylessness; a body without a moral heart; a mind without a soul. 'A right old Scrooge' denotes somebody without either charity or generosity.

In Charles Dickens' Yuletide fable, Scrooge embodies two conflicting impulses: the absence of Christian charity and, after the three ghostly visitations, a desire for redemption through forgiveness. Dickens wants us to believe that the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future liberate Scrooge from cynicism and hard-heartedness; deep down, he becomes the person he always wanted to be.

Scrooge embodies Dickens' dearest fantasy: the possibility of real human happiness. Turned out all right in the end, then.

Intead of shaking a bony fist at the three apparitions and standing by his principles of Malthus and Speenhamland, Scrooge meekly succombs to what amounts to other worldly emotional blackmail and starts giving his worldy possessions away to the underserving Crachits.

Dickens, as sentimental as Charlie Chaplin about the underclass, wants us to believe that Scrooge pays Bob Crachit so little that the clerk can barely keep body and soul together. But look at the size of the Crachit household. Tiny Tim's abundance of siblings is a shocking reproach to his parents lack of restraint and responsibility.

Dickens, who sired numerous offspring himself, feared and patronised Victorian females of advanced views who anticipated birth control advocates such as Marie Stopes. Instead, he caricatured them as gin-sodden midwives like Mrs Gamp.

The portrayal of Scrooge as a moral defective scared into repentance, gamboling up to his nephew's house full of the joys of Christmas, is, of course, the biggest literary confidence trick after the resurrection of Sherlock Holmes from the Reichenbach Falls and James Bond's reapparance in Doctor No after dying from the poisoned boot of Rosa Klemp in From Russia With Love.

Scrooge is much more convincing when he says "Humbug!" This single exclamation separates Scrooge from the greed and commercialism of Christmas created by Dickens and his fellow Victorians. Karl Marx said that to live properly, Mankind needed to be free of the shackles of capitalism. You don't have to be a Marxist to understand that.

The depiction of Christmas as a time of unlimited jollity makes for good fiction, but that's all. The reality is different from the narrative we are encouraged to buy into. That's the way with narratives. Deep and abiding melancholy is the true spirit of Christmas Day as spouses spat, ungrateful children bicker and loopy old folk smelling of piss stare into the middle distance from the sofa, waiting to toast the Queen.

A Christmas Carol can be viewed as a betrayal of the values espoused in Oliver Twist and Hard Times. In these books, Dickens takes a stand against exploitation and the dessication of the human spirit by the urestrained, all-consuming forces of capital.

Almost in the words of Tiny Tim: God help us, everyone.

The Grand Remonstrance

On November 22, 1641, King Charles I got the shock of his life. The House of Commons had voted 159-148 in support of a rebuke to the monarch some 200 clauses long.

The Grand Remonstrance, supported by Parliamentarians such as George Digby, John Pym, John Hampden, Sir John Clotworthy and Oliver Cromwell, was a verbal cannonade the regal King did not expect from commoners.

His Majesty's revolting subjects could have rampaged through Cheapside and Westminster Hall, defacing public monuments and trying to set fire to government offices; but the 17th century MPs left that to the undergraduate sons and daughters of millionaire Rock stars and the well to do.

Instead these men of serious intent presented their document to the King...The Court of Star Chamber hath abounded in extravagant censures...whereby His Majesty's subjects have been oppressed by grievous fines, imprisonments, stigmatisings, mutilations, whippings, pillories, gags, confnements, banishments...

Any of that sound familiar? Incidentally, Cameron's Islanders out there might be interested to know that the German armies of Barbarossa employed a tactic, Kesselschlacht, or Caldron battle, designed to encircle Red Army brigades and prevent retreat. We know this as Kettling.

King Charles, whom I cannot help but see as a cross between Franz Hals' portraits and Alec Guinness with a Scottish accent, responded with his own written broadside, an analysis of the premises of the accusations in the Grand Remonstrance... To the second prayer of the petition, concerning the removal and choice of councillors, we know not any of our Council to whom the character set forth in the petition can belong...there is no man so near to us in place or affection whom we will not leave to the justice of the law, if you bring a particular charge and sufficient proofs against him...

These men are still using the language of the King James II Bible, John Donne (the new philosophy calls all in doubt), Bacon and Shakespeare...Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;/ Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,/ And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;/ Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth break it...

Politics has not yet descended into the mire of spin. Pitch, of course, defileth. I would say that today, hardly anyone in the House of Commons would be capable of either the Grand Remonstrance or the King's rebuttal. As King Lear says so sanely, removed from the madness of hubris...Get thee glass eyes;/ And, like a scurvy politician, seem/ To see the things thou doest not...When the best principled words they could use failed, the King and Parliament resorted to war. Uncivil War.

There is an alternative to armed conflict, of course: lying. Lying of the sort John Pilger was talking about in his television film The War You Don't See: psy-ops, black ops, embedding compliant journalists, putting out disinformation from government sources, going after WikiLeaks trouble-maker Julian Asssange. In 1641, to give someone 'the lie' meant challenging them. These days we just lie.

Richard North calls for an assertion, a concerted demonstrable public assertion to remind MPs they are in Parliament on licence from the people and that power resides in the votes of the electorate. In so many words he is calling for a 21st century public version of The Grand Remonstrance.

I'd like to see it. Without the Metropolitan Police needing to resort to Kesselschlact. Alas, I think we're heading for a shit storm - the consequence of years of lies, chicanery and assertions like man-made global warming that are no longer seriously tenable.

I'm old-fashioned in this respect. I believe that bad faith, bad actions, will always come back and deliver a mighty kick in the arse. Although Mr Pilger is inclined to overstate his case in a particular direction, I think he's right to warn us that madmen are on the loose in the power elites of the mighty, and they haven't finished yet.

All That Money Can Buy

While Conservative Euro sceptic commentators praise Margaret Thatcher for making it impossible for John Major to succomb to the blandishments of the euro, never let it be forgotten that 'twas the Iron Lady herself who brought in Big Bang, and told us all to rejoice.

Building societies started behaving like banks and banks started behaving like corporate raiders and Stock Market traders. You can re-wind the film of the Credit Crunch all the way back to the mid-1980s when, to coin a phrase, money marketeers never had it so good.

While money makes the world go round, love of it remains the root of all evil. Look at Ireland. The real economy - manufacturing, exporting - is sound. It's the money mad marketeers who have turned everything upside down. I'm sympathetic to those who believe that Ireland is being used to bail out the discredited and threatened euro. Think of the euro as a vampire and all becomes clear.

Simpletons like me who stolidly pay their way, save up and turn down the offer of gold or platinum credit cards are the real enemy who must be destroyed. Hence the deluge of cold callers trying to flog me things I've not asked for, don't need and am not interested in. "Wow man," rapped the latest to try on the phone last week, "this is something you cannot turn down." Don't bet on it, man.

Financial independence has to be destroyed to preserve the illusion that we are all in debtors' prison, are all in thrall and have no choice left. Big Brother wants us to gamble with what we haven't got, wants us to suck up as much credit as possible, be as dependent on monumental abstractions like multi-billion dollar/pound/euro bail outs. Once you're hooked up to Dracula's blood-bank you are no better than a lush, a junkie, who will do what he's told to get what he needs. Dependency breeds political docility, doesn't it? But eventually even beaten dogs turn on their masters.

The plan is not merely to keep the euro boat afloat on the money markets; the real objective is to protect and preserve the untenable idea of making Northern European and South European economies wear the same coat. But for how much longer? Sooner or later Germany ain't gonna wear it. After Ireland, Portugal, Spain, perhaps Italy may crash and burn, we're told. Dark as things are getting, eventually Dracula will have to face the light.

Some think that could result in horrors we dare not imagine - no money, no transactions, no supplies, mass panic and public violence. If the centre cannot hold, maybe we will all be swept away in what Yeats called the "blood-dimmed tide". However, human resourcefulness is at least as great as the human capacity for hubris; but to come into play it has to be given freedom of movement. If you lose faith in that you might as well join the eco warriors and high priests of global warming who fervantly hope the end really is nigh.

But first we have to stop playing this poker game, where the loser is given larger sums of public money to keep on playing and losing. How that is to be done I have no idea. It depends on how long we go on letting the players who brought about this situation deal the cards. We're between the Devil and Daniel Webster.