You'll Take the High Road and I'll Take the Low Road

This Thursday, Scotland will have its long-awaited referendum on whether to become an independent country. A week or so ago, one single poll gave a tiny majority to those in favour – which has turned the Scottish question from a matter of purely local interest to the leading issue in British politics. For the moment.

The No Campaign, aka Better Together, has rightly taken a lot of stick for its abysmal campaign. Not only has it given nobody in Scotland a better reason to stay in the UK than the fear of something worse – missing the point entirely that the Yes Campaign’s principal appeal lies with the hope of something better.

Better Together’s hopelessness was funny until that poll last weekend startled the powers behind the campaign out of their complacency. The week just gone has seen, on the one hand the pitiful spectacle of the three main party leaders crawling up to Scotland to tell them how important the Scots are to Britain – after having treated the whole affair up to that point as having all the interest to them of a parish council by election. Too little, too late boys, although it was fun to see David Cameron talk about the “effing Tories”.

On the other hand, it has seen naked economic threats as various businesses based in Scotland (Standard Life) or doing a lot of business there  (BP) have “come out against independence”. As other people have pointed out, BP has no trouble doing business in countries like Russia and Zimbabwe, so quite what they’re afraid of happening in Scotland is unclear.

It’s depressing, isn’t it? The primary line of argument anyone was able to think of to keep the UK going started off as “think of all the things that could go wrong with your economy” and developed into “we will fuck your economy up if you don’t do what suits us”.

Scotland’s case is not really helped when some nutjob SNP types start calling for BP to be nationalised though. Nice one! That will bring the foreign investment flooding in!

If I was the sort of person who was able to develop a rational argument and see it through to a strong conclusion, I’d like to think I could have gone on to write something like this piece by Fintan O’Toole in the Guardian. Unfortunately, I am not that focused. So I’ll link to it instead and let you read it and be astonished at my perspicacity in having brought it to your attention...

For many people in Scotland, this may well be a matter of ethnic nationalism. Some of them may really hate “the English” and regard the 1707 Act of Union as colonisation.

For far more (I hope, at any rate), this is being seen as an opportunity to take back a stake in politics from a distant, uninterested Westminster. You don’t have to think Alex Salmond is any better than any of the other leaders to believe that decisions that affect you, your family and your friends should be made nearer to those people rather than further away.

That, I think, is what the British malaise about politics stems from – decisions that affect us are made far, far away from us. Geographically if you live in Scotland, but in all sorts of other respects as well.

It’s sharpened to an edge capable of cutting through only by the “national” fault line in the case of Scotland. As O’Toole says:

The Scottish independence referendum poses a very good question but suggests an inadequate answer. The question is: where does power lie? This is not a marginal problem to pose in a 21st century democracy. It cuts to the heart of a deep crisis in the relationship between people and politics. But the answer implied on the ballot paper is a geographical one: power lies in either London or Edinburgh. Most Scots – and most of the rest of us – know that while this choice is far from meaningless, it also rather misses the point.

Most people are still so bewitched by the 19^th century idea of the nation state that they can only imagine a group of people wanting to govern themselves, in their own interests, if they form a “national” group. Whether they acknowledge the legitimacy of that wish depends entirely on how they feel about that group (see, oh, I don’t know...the entire history of the 20^th century, for example).

One of the few things I remember from my political theory degree was a quote by a chap called Benedict Anderson, who called nationalities “imagined communities”.

That in turn made me think about all the people bleating last week about how their British identity was going to be harmed by the Scots becoming independent.

If they want to imagine another community, surely that’s up to them? And if it pains you so much, well, why not just carry on imagining that they’re still in your imaginary community? Are you still imaging the Irish in it too? Why don't we add some others? The Norwegians, perhaps. They're very tidy. 

That’s the psycho-cultural bit taken care of. If the Scots don’t feel like part of the same imagined community as us...well, that’s that really isn’t it? You can’t force them to imagine themselves as part of the same community as you.

SUBHEADING - It breaks up the text

But suppose they do still see themselves as British. Why does that HAVE TO entail being governed from Westminster under a single unitary state entity? It only does when you start assuming in mystical qualities about “proper” communities and their “natural” territories and (dare I say it) “god-given” rights.

The best reasons for Britain being governed by a single government are military reasons. This is an island, and a whole island is easy to defend. If someone else is in charge of part of the island, then you don’t have the natural advantages of being an island.

Britain being invaded is unimaginable. England being invaded with the connivance of a hostile Scotland is beyond unimaginable. We’re living in the 21^st century, FFS.

If anyone can tell me point out anything else that is ideally organised on the precise level of “the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” (plus its various overseas territories) then I’d be astonished.

Hence, large areas of policy are governed at the European level – precisely because markets bigger than the UK are more profitable, a trading bloc bigger than the UK has more international clout, standards in goods and services that are heavily traded need to be common across areas bigger than the UK etc etc.

But things should only be managed in bigger blocs, further away from the people affected, when that is efficient.

That old EU chestnut “subsidiarity” should be the norm and it should start at home. Power should be exercised as close to the people as possible, and it should ONLY be moved upwards to more distant, larger institutions when smaller bodies are clearly unable to do a good job.

I don’t think that nation states have a special privileged position above supranational bodies and subnational bodies. They are not the fount from while all authority flows upwards and downwards.

The idea that Britain will lose its seat at the top table internationally without Scotland is equally ridiculous. First and foremost, I believe that governments and states are there to promote the welfare of the people who live in their jurisdictions – and so international clout is only a means to that end, nothing more. National prestige for its own sake is meaningless.

Secondly, are we still sitting at the top table? Or are we on a little card table extension the USA has shoved onto the end to save our embarrassment when we turned up uninvited?

The other Alex S

Alexander Solzhenitsyn pointed out that only defeat can really bring a country to terms with itself –

never having recognised itself as having been defeated, Britain has no sense of its real place in the world. If losing Scotland forces a reassessment of Britain’s idiot pretensions and forces it to look at itself, so much the better.

So, for all these reasons, I don’t think that Scotland being “another country” is a big deal at all. The trains will still go there, 300,000 Scots will still live in London, money will continue to flow north and south, and we’ll all feel the same about each other as we do now (ie general lack of interest) - but they will be running their affairs and we will be running ours.

How does that undermine anybody’s identity?

Whatever happens on Thursday – this whole process has opened up the kind of thinking and reflection you don’t often see in this country. If for no other reason, it will have done Britain some good because of that. 

Good Grammar? No Thing Cost!

I went to an English grammar school, but I don’t remember learning any English grammar while I was there.

Similarly, I have GCSEs in English Language and English Literature, but I don’t recall ever being really explicitly taught anything about the former. Just a lot of the latter.

I also did GCSE Latin, which is pretty much the only reason I know anything about grammar today. In retrospect, the modern languages we did at school covered a lot of grammar, but at the time I don’t think anyone really appreciated that that's what it was.

Now, before anyone loses their shit at me for despoiling their childhood, I’m not saying this is good or bad or even that this is what actually happened. This is just how I remember it 20+ years on.

What I am saying is that, on the internet these days, there seems to be a thing called being a “grammar snob” or even a “grammar Nazi” – which consists of sneering at other people’s ungainly efforts to express themselves, presumably from a position of knowing the “right” way to do it.  Or complaining about people who do that. Whatevs.

And I find this strange, because I find myself having – at best – an instinctive sense of what English grammar is and not an explicit understanding. I’m fairly well educated and I’ve made a living out of online content (not THIS! My real job!) for some years now. So I ought to know more than most, right?

I have found that it is only my vestigial knowledge of Latin (why does the stuff you learn at school stick around? “Then, first, before the rest and with a great accompanying crowd, Laocoon came blazing down from the citadel...”) and my subsequent attempts to learn German that have taught me what auxiliary verbs are and what “subjunctive” means. No English teacher ever did.

How many self-proclaimed grammar snobs can tell a gerund from a gerundive? I can’t. And how many of the tiny percentage who can say yes can only do so because they learned a different language?

Now, I don’t believe for one second that I have ever been unable to communicate with a fellow English speaker because of a lack of formal grammatical training. I suspect that one of the good things about this language is its openness to innovation (errors, if you prefer, snobs) and its flexibility.

Grammar snobs can piss off, telling people they are using language wrong. No - if you think language is a delicate flower that needs to be protected from use then you're wrong. The nail got knocked in whether you did it with a wrench or a hammer. When it comes to our own language (not your own), communication is what matters. 

But might our national problem with learning other languages not be ameliorated a little if all that conjugation and declension bollocks we got forcefed was treated as something we are already coping with just fine every time we speak or write? Something that is not completely new and alien, but just another way of doing something we’re doing all the time?

I certainly don’t want to be called a grammar snob, but a little grammar would surely help a lot.

Comments welcome below. First person who works in education to make a snidely predictable remark about Michael Gove wins a commemorative tea towel. 

David Bowie and his Opinions

“Scotland – stay with us”: so said David Bowie (via the medium of Kate Moss) at the Brit Awards earlier this week, causing a frenzy of online speculation over “what did he really mean?”, “how should we reassess his entire life and work in the light of that remark?” and “is it still ok to love him any more?” in the media.

You might as well be asking what David Bowie meant when he said “ha ha ha, hee hee hee, I’m a laughing gnome and you can’t catch me”.

Strange how “The Laughing Gnome” never seems to come up in the regular broadsheet Bowie wankfests.

I find the perplexity of apparently grown adults (men mostly) hearing an ageing pop star expressing a political opinion they disagree with pretty hilarious. Not as hilarious as Bowie’s performance in “Labyrinth”, but still pretty funny.

I don’t know why David Bowie supports the union, or for that matter why anyone would expect him to support Scottish independence. I suspect he wants Scotland to stay as part of the UK because he’s an old man and old men like things to stay the way they know them. Particularly old men who live abroad.

Surprise! Everyone has opinions. All the people of Scotland will have theirs too and those are the ones that matter. Well, the ones that bother to vote.

My opinion - which is worth precisely as little as David Bowie's - is here. 

The Ghost of Xmas TV Past

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

So said St Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians. As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the best lines in the Bible – right up there with 2 Kings 2: 23-24 (the bit about bears eating 42 youths who took the piss out of slaphead prophet Elisha).

"Go on baldy - AHHHH"

Christmas is a time (isn’t it?) when childish things have a tendency to come back out, no matter how carefully we have put them away.

We imagine (don’t we?) that because we remember things a certain way, that this is how they in fact should be – whether they were or were not actually ever so. And when things do not live up to those imaginary expectations, we are disappointed. The secretly-nurtured belief we all hold quietly in our hearts – that the present will never live up to the past - becomes ever so slightly harder.

Crikey. Two Bible references and a load of pop-psychology waffle and we’re only four paragraphs in. Might as well be in church, eh readers?

My point (aren’t we?) is that while nostalgia can be fun and comforting, when it starts to makes you resentful, you have to let it go.

That’s why it’s time to stop pretending that Christmas TV is some great collective experience, something makes the nation collectively pause to huddle together around a Radio Times.

Oh yes. This is about what’s on TV at Christmas.

If you want profundity, you’ve come to the wrong place.

Films

BBC1 gave us Toy Story 3 in the 3pm Christmas Day slot. I remember being so excited I could barely contain myself some year in the 1980s when it was Dumbo in that spot, or when it was The Empire Strikes Back.

My kids got Toy Story 3 on DVD LAST CHRISTMAS. They watch it IN THE CAR.

Network television – you cannot compete with the availability of films through other media. So don’t bother. If it’s nostalgia that makes you broadcast “family classics” at set times over the period, in my humble opinion that is BAD NOSTALGIA.

Classic Christmas Specials

What is this supposed to mean to me?

 I have and do enjoy a “classic” Christmas special. When I have been trapped indoors drinking all day and have finally got the kids to go to sleep, I can certainly see the appeal of watching a festive Morecambe and Wise Show or Only Fools and Horses.

But that’s not because it is actually any good. It’s because it’s comfortable and familiar, like an old pair of jogging bottoms. I can smile along without having to think at all, because I’ve seen them all a hundred times before.

It’s not that these programmes actually entertain. Instead they evoke the memory of having been entertained. Which may very well be a completely false memory.

Morecambe and Wise – for example – did their last Christmas special in 1983. I was 7 years old then. What did they mean to me then? Why should they mean anything more to me 30 years later?

Nothing, other than that over the years, culture has implanted the idea in my head that Eric and Ernie are an integral part of the Christmas experience.

Operation Yewtree, by the way, looks rather more likely to eradicate a lot of this kind of ‘70s and ‘80s nostalgia much quicker than any kind of critical reassessment of what our “traditions” mean to us will. 

Because you can’t have Christmas Top of the Pops without a memory of Jimmy Saville bedecked in tinsel, can you?

I notice that Rolf Harris has been swiftly replaced as the narrator of Olive the Ostrich. Innocent until proven guilty, eh Nick Jr?

Modern Christmas Specials

It doesn’t snow at Christmas in this country.

People do not buy the biggest Christmas tree they can find – with hilarious consequences.

Christmas jumpers are only worn ironically.

Why do programme-makers continue to perpetuate these myths about what Christmas is like and what people do at Christmas that are nothing but remnants of Victorian sentimentalism, 1970s bad taste and echoes of what they’ve seen in other Christmas episodes?

Oh Miranda...

How about someone tries to depict a 21st century Christmas that actually reflects people’s real experiences rather than a mid-century fever dream and hope against hope?

Or rather, don’t even bother. Because the TV may be the focal point of the living room – but unless it’s plugged into the Blu Ray Player, the Xbox and the internet – it is just not the focal point of family life any more. 

Russell Brand has my vote

You may have noticed Russell Brand being in the news a bit this week: not for his shagging or drug exploits or even for offending the delicate, but for saying that he doesn’t vote.

That derives from this, an article he wrote for the New Statesman – which he was guest editing this week.

Quite what it means to get a celebrity to “guest edit” a magazine, I don’t really know. How many crap contributions were spiked by Russell Brand? Did he give the advertising department a hard time for a lack of renewals? I suppose we’ll never know.

Anyway, over the course of 4,500 words, Russell Brand (celebrities are always to be referred to by their full names – that’s in the ODHSNM style guide. The editor would have a fit if I didn’t follow it) says this:

I don’t vote because to me it seems like a tacit act of compliance; I know, I know my grandparents fought in two world wars (and one World Cup) so that I’d have the right to vote. Well, they were conned. As far as I’m concerned there is nothing to vote for. I feel it is a far more potent political act to completely renounce the current paradigm than to participate in even the most trivial and tokenistic manner, by obediently X-ing a little box.

He also says:

Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people. A system that is apathetic, in fact, to the needs of the people it was designed to serve.

This has caused an eruption of ruffled pomposity from the political and media establishment this week – whose response to Russell Brand’s unauthorised trespass into their exclusive domain has been akin to the expression on the face of a wood pigeon that has just fallen out of a tree.

It is best summed up by the tired spectacle of that sneering symbol of everything that is loathsome and exclusive about the establishment, Jeremy Paxman, calling him a “trivial man” on Newsnight – followed by columnist after columnist commenting on this and then on each other’s comments, like a dog eating its own shit, sicking it up, and then eating it again.  

The argument appears to be that Russell Brand is not entitled to express an opinion on politics because he chooses not to vote, despite having a reasoned explanation as to why this is. Maybe Russell Brand's explanation can shed some light on why millions of other people don't vote - or is that an impossibility because he's a Hollywood celebrity? I'd suggest that he has more in common with those non-voters than anyone playing the Westminster game. 

Russell Brand is a witty man who expresses himself well, while also annoying people and being a monstrous show-off. Who else was like that? Socrates was a lot like that. You could argue that Jesus was a lot like that.

CLEARLY I AM NOT COMPARING RUSSELL BRAND TO JESUS OR SOCRATES. Come on, this isn’t the Daily Telegraph comments section.

You don’t have to agree with his point of view (Russell Brand even points out later in the article – YES, I DID read it all – that he acknowledges that apathy also comes from laziness and the inability to care about distant things) but he deserves a hearing. That’s what’s different between today and back then. 

Equally ridiculous looking

Russell Brand may not be the best person to explode the political/media/business cabal, but so what if what he says resonates with people? Paxman trivialises himself once again by playing the man not the ball. His persona and schtick is just as absurd as Russell Brand's. 

Plus, this is not a new point of view. Here’s HG Wells, 100 years ago talking about Parliament.

So far representative government has not had even the beginnings of a fair trial. So far we have not had representative government, but only a devastating caricature. 

Politicians are: 

Not really the elected representatives of the people; they are the products of a ridiculous method of election; they are the illegitimate children of the party system and the ballot-box 

Criticising the electoral system, HG Wells (the celebrity, not the conference centre) says 

The system lies, in fact, wholly open to the control of political organisations, calls out, indeed, for the control of political organisations, and has in every country produced what is so evidently demanded. The political organisations to-day rule us unchallenged. Save as they speak for us, the people are dumb. 

Echoing Russell Brand, HG Wells goes on: 

Elections of the prevalent pattern, which were intended and are still supposed by simple-minded people to give every voter participation in government, do as a matter of fact effect nothing of the sort. They give him an exasperating fragment of choice between the agents of two party organisations, over neither of which he has any intelligible control. 

Last quote, I promise: 

Our governments in the more civilised parts of the world to-day are only in theory and sentiment democratic. In reality they are democracies so eviscerated by the disease of bad electoral methods that they are mere cloaks for the parasitic oligarchies that have grown up within their form and substance. 

Perhaps HG Wells was a “trivial man” too. He did, after all, write science fiction novels, thought bicycles were the future of warfare and was a prominent “useful idiot” for Lenin.  

Oops - now we can't take him seriously on anything

Perhaps I am a trivial man too. Almost certainly I am. 

And I'd much rather be one than the sort of creature a Paxman takes seriously. 

My point is simply that there has been a tradition of dissatisfaction with the (still) prevailing political orthodoxy that goes is more than a hundred years old. That critique is not new, nor is it something that establishment has a right to reject out of hand because a “celebrity” is putting it forward. 

You shouldn’t have to be nothing but “serious” to be taken seriously. Politics is not the sole domain of people who have never thought about or done anything other than politics. 

The meaning of “democracy” is not exhausted by the Westminster farce and the media wankers who tell you what you can think about it. Russell Brand has reached his own conclusions – so can you. It's as much ours as it is theirs. 

Top Five Pointless Conventions

Lots of things we take for granted in everyday life do not serve any reasonable purpose. Today, ODHSNM considers some of the most egregious.

Encore

So you’re watching a band. They’ve been on for a while and they haven’t played their most popular songs.

What’s this? They’re walking off the stage? But...but...NO! You must return! We, the audience, demand it!

What is the point of an encore? Everyone knows you’re going to do it. Band - you are not spontaneously responding to the audience. You’ve got a LIGHT SHOW sorted out for this bit, FFS.

Audience – you could all sit there in total silence and they’d still come back out and play the same three songs they intended to play all along. They're not going to waste that light show. 

Perhaps once an encore was a spontaneous response to audience demand. Now – like most of the grammar of pop music - it’s a ridiculous bit of play-acting nobody can remember why they do. Just don’t bother. 

Outside Broadcast

Suppose there has been some big news event, with a political element to it. Cue TV reports beginning:

“I am standing here outside Number 10 Downing Street...”

WHY? That is the last place on earth where anything relating to this news event is likely to happen. Nor are we convinced by the presence of a TV crew there that you are somehow at the heart of what is going on. You read a press release (or whatever) and drove the crew over there, the same as everyone else!

Why is it considered necessary to put a man in a coat in front of a well-known monument or some building that has a bearing on the story in question? Do you think we can’t grasp the idea of “politics” without a picture of the Houses of Parliament?

The 9 to 5

OK, not everybody works those particular hours, but the vast majority of us do. This is incredibly inefficient and detrimental to our collective well-being.

Rush hour, peak time fares, lunchtime queues, “all our operators are busy at the moment” – these are all side-effects of the idea that we all trying to do the same things at the same times.

Couldn’t we all stagger our working hours to avoid getting in each other’s way?

Yours sincerely

 Perhaps this valediction is in irreversible decline with letter-writing heading for extinction, but I for one will not miss it.

Firstly, at 37 years of age, I still struggle to spell it. Secondly, the whole sincerely/faithfully thing is a tiresome pinhead for pedantic angels to dance on.

But thirdly and most important, what the hell does it mean? In what sense am I claiming to be “yours”?

“I remain, Sir, your obedient servant”...? Is that what it’s derived from? If so, that’s not really how I want to sign off a letter. Because I don’t.

Parliament

Ha ha! A pun on the word “convention”.

But seriously, in what way is (i) the ability to get selected by a party machine as a candidate and (ii) the ability to make lawyerly speeches in the big green debating club in any sense correlated with (iii) having ideas about social and economic organisation that are likely to do any good and (iv) being competent to implement them?

It may have been suitable for a 19^th century Britain run by gentlemen for gentlemen, but it looks pretty preposterous today. 

PLEASE BE ADVISED - The convention that the photo and the text should be in some way related has been bypassed - this is a picture of a pelican put through Glitche.

Now We Are Three

It is three years on Tuesday since I started writing this blog.

Looking back, I see that I used to write a lot more serious social and political stuff - “a lot more serious” by own standards, I mean. I honestly don’t have opinions on many of the sorts of news events I used to comment on. It’s not that I don’t care... well, actually it is.

I feel like “the world” one sees through the mediation of the media (that’s what it does – hence the name) as opposed to what I see through my own eyes is too nauseating to think very hard about.

Another riot? Another massacre? More corruption? Impending doom? Meh.

What good is another opinion, echoing something someone has already said? What could I add to any debate?

Knowledge isn’t power – knowing just makes you realise how powerless you are.

Where’s the point of satire when reality is already beyond parody or is just so awful that to make a joke of it would be sickening?

And so I have written more and more about my life and my own perspective, throwing in a regular bit of bathos to make it amusing. Every time.

What am I doing this for? For the same 40 or so of you – for which I am very grateful, I might add – to carry on reading it week after week?

In the words of Emo Philips (who my wife hates, but who I think is a genius):

Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.

Troll Bait

Here, for your amusement, is a book Roger Jr selected from the library this week – “The Swirling Hijaab”.  

After seeing the Samantha Brick effect at work this week, I have figured out that publishing stuff which is going to wind people up into a frenzy of impotent rage is the way to the internet big time.

Because look – not only is this book about an Islamic thing, it also has a POLISH TRANSLATION! And it’s in a PUBLIC LIBRARY! For CHILDREN! In BRADFORD!

Start frothing, Mail readers!

Now, Roger Jr is in many ways representative of the bulk of the British public. That is to say, he can’t read and if he doesn’t get his own way immediately, he will throw a massive tantrum.

But you know what – when I read this to him last night, cultural difference wasn’t something he even noticed. It was just a nice story. Maybe there’s hope for the next generation after all, eh?

Bradford: Symbol vs Reality

Here in Yorkshire, there are two Bradfords. There are two places co-terminous in space but miles apart in other respects (or Respects, if you prefer) going by that name.

The first, which has been flung back into the public imagination in recent weeks, is “Bradford the Symbol” – Bradford, the illustration of whatever lesson the (inevitably London-based voice) you are listening to wishes to preach.

As long as that lesson revolves around (i) decline and stagnation or (ii) ethnic segregation, I should add.

So, we have the Bradford that proves David Cameron is out of touch – not something that requires a great deal of proving. We have the Bradford that proves Labour is finished in the north of England. And of course now we have Bradford the symbol of George Galloway’s spectacular victory/opportunism/ego (delete as your prejudices dictate).

We have the Bradford that proves that white working class people are awful. The Bradford that proves that poor people are all racists, and the Bradford that proves that they aren’t as well. British Bradford and not-British Bradford – take your pick, but just don’t come so close that you get your hands dirty with context!

I have particularly enjoyed the colourful depictions of “Bradree” or clan politics as if Bradford were in another world entirely.

I must confess to never having come across this myself, but hey I live in Bradford East not Bradford West and we have a nice, cost Lib Dem for an MP where we are. I’ve even heard we’re going to be made part of Leeds in the Boundary Review, so how’s about that for moving up in the world? Bradford won’t be my problem soon...

In contrast to symbolic Bradford, we have Bradford the reality. The reality of the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people, persistently made out to be victims or manipulated pawns with their individuality subsumed into their “group”.

It's supposed to look like this. 

Of course, Bradford has its problems and the pictures recently painted of symbolic Bradford are not false as such.

But they all just use Bradford to make another point, because nobody really wants to think about Bradford the reality for too long.  

Bradford may have the national attention for the moment, but if all we can’t rise above being just a sad example of what went wrong with (i) the cotton industry, (ii) Thatcherism, (iii) immigration, (iv) local politics or (v) methods of rhubarb cultivation, then it will be long forgotten before the public has finished picking the remnants of that pasty out of its teeth.

Westfield is not the only gaping hole in the centre of Bradford. The city can’t sit around waiting for London to rescue it. It’s not going to happen, with Galloway or without. While Bradford is a symbol of victimhood and a byword for awfulness it’s going to remain the way it is. 

Only if some dynamic local energy and motive force comes from within this city – or any city that isn’t London – can we hope to stop the relentless decline.

And that’s why, if you live in Bradford, you should REGISTER TO VOTE and then VOTE FOR an elected mayor on May 3^rd! Stop waiting for handouts and let’s start solving the problems ourselves!

Your Racist Friend

In the course of my work, I have to read and pretend to enjoy lots of extremely tiresome articles about social media, how freakin wonderful it is and how it can transform your business.

Apparently, it’s not enough for businesses to just sell things any more. They have to be part of your life as well. I suppose that stems from the Great God Google itself – which like the Christian God not only demands that you obey It on pain of damnation, but that you love It as well.

Much more entertaining are the articles about social media in the mainstream press – for example, this hilariously ill-informed piece from the Daily Mail, which claims that the mass-copyright-infinging-picture-collecting-social-network-for-girls Pinterest is in fact named after Harold Pinter.

I’ve been trying to get back into Twitter (not under the @RogerofSicily name, which I’ve pretty much abandoned – in spite of all the attractive but down-on-their-luck young ladies looking for love that I’ve never met before who have kindly decided to follow me), but it seems to me either like shouting into the void, standing next to some strangers having a conversation while smiling, nodding and trying to force your way in, or just doing email in public.

I do a bit of professional social media on Linkedin, under my real name - which, if you learn it, gives you the power to summon and command me (or at least to email me). But mostly I do social media on Facebook.

Which brings me on to the needlessly provocative and They Might Be Giants-referencing headline of this post.

The social media article I am waiting for is the one that tells you the right way to deal with connections who treat their social media presence as a way to carry across what Members of Parliament would politely and pompously call “saloon bar” language and attitudes into the public sphere.

There are things we might all say in private to shock, amuse or just to be transgressive for the hell of it – which we would nevertheless not say in public or to people we were not intimately familiar with and who we trusted. I will not deny saying things that are offensive or awful to get a laugh or just to be obtuse. In fact, I did such a thing last night (while watching Crufts of all things...) and Elvira bollocked me for it, because I had indeed crossed the line where shocking-good becomes shocking-bad.

Everyone does it but at the same time, everyone has a level at which they too would say “that’s out of order”.

So my question is, how should you respond to social media acquaintances who broadcast “jokes” or comments that you find offensive? They’re not speaking directly to you – or are they? They are inviting your response.

“Unfriend them”, you will say. Done that. Is that enough though? Is it enough to just walk away without saying anything?

You may think this is unduly pious, but as well as the standards of human interaction and mutual respect which I proclaim and attempt to uphold, I’m thinking of my own arse here. The Great God Google and – indeed – the security services suck up all this data (for our own good, of course).

People have lost their jobs and even been sent to prison for things they have said on social media. How long would it be before my online presence became guilty by association for having sat by and “tolerated” this?

PS – I couldn’t think of a suitable picture to go with this post, so I followed general internet protocol and put a picture of a cute animal on instead. 

A famous person spoke to me

I was on the phone to Elvira from Kings Cross Station, trying to make myself heard over the resonating boom of the platform announcements, when he strode into my field of vision.

To begin with, I wasn’t quite sure what it was. A hint of recognition captured my attention. There was a familiarity to this face amongst the thousands of strangers I had passed by, barely noticing, on my commute through the busiest and loneliest parts of the capital.

Then it struck me – I recognised him, like Fraggle Rock lighthouse against a stormy sea! But where did I know him from? Was it someone I knew? I looked at his brown coat with black collar. His black satchel. His blue checked shirt. His closely cropped hair, fooling no one in concealing male pattern baldness.

I knew the face, no doubt about it. Wait a minute – a flash of inspiration and I knew exactly who it was. It was none other than TV’s very own Phil Spencer, the Channel 4 property guru and co-host of once-must-see-now-hopelessly-retreading-the-same-old-ground sensation, Location Location Location!

My heart skipped a beat. Possibly two. I told Elvira I was looking at a real life celebrity – and not a rubbish one like the time I saw Richard Stilgoe in Leicester Square. Someone who people I told would have heard of.

And here at Kings Cross Station no less, where only seconds beforehand I had seen a bald female homeless person demanding that a hapless passer-by buy her a sandwich. She wasn’t asking for money – she was asking for a sandwich. Cheese and tomato in fact.

Oh, where else could you see an intimidating beggar one minute and a TV house buying expert in the same place? Where, but wonderful, magical London town?

He walked towards me. I had to stop describing him to my wife, lest he realise I was talking about him and I look like a star-struck peasant. He walked round behind me. I held my breath. He walked on, and had a bit of a look at what was on offer at Burger King.

I looked up at the departures board. Still my train had “not yet arrived”. But it was “on time”, so that was ok. I looked back - I had lost sight of Phil.

Thinking my brush with fame was over, and still having 20 minutes to kill, I went to buy a bottle of water and reflect on whether seeing Phil Spencer at a railway station in 2012 was better than seeing Bob Geldof at the National Gallery in 1998, or Phil Tufnell at Sharm el Sheikh airport in 2006.

Well, fate had not finished with me for the evening yet.

Who do you suppose was in the station shop, perusing the pot salads? Yes, him. Celebrities even eat better than us, I thought – but at the end of the day, I challenge anyone to spend £3.37 more satisfyingly than at McDonalds.

I joined the queue. As he walked towards the back of the queue, the woman in front of me greeted him. God, what an idiot, I thought. How embarrassing. For all of us. Especially me and Phil.

But Phil was delighted. Turns out they knew each other. Or something. I wasn’t listening. I was inspecting his face, in all its familiar high-definition detail – there, in conversational animation just a couple of feet in front of my very eyes. I could well imagine him, with resigned good humour, telling a young couple how unrealistic their expectations for £150,000 were, or casting a sly glance to the camera and saying that he’d found something this one – no matter how awkward she’d been so far – was going to love. I could almost hear Kirsty’s voiceover pretending to talk back to him in those prematurely headmistressy tones.

And then it happened.

Salad in hand, Phil turned to me and said “do you mind if I...”

He meant, “push in the queue in front of you and carry on talking to this lady”. But he didn’t finish the sentence. His star power completed it for him. It said “I am a popular TV personality, who you obviously recognise. Indeed, I’m sure I overheard you talking about me to your wife about five minutes ago, when I walked behind you. And now you’ve followed me in here, like a stalker. Oh yes, random people in crowds rarely catch my eye or say ‘Location Location Location’ as I’m passing by – so when they do, I always pay attention. I am sure you will indulge me, clearly the normal rules of railway station shopping do not apply”.

“Not at all”, I replied.  

Like this sort of thing happens to me every day.

The rest of the journey home after that was just a blur.

Further developments in mind control

Some days I feel like I’m the only person in the audience of War Horse who just sees a load of people waving bits of Meccano around inside a pair of tights.

When I see advertising copy, I don’t think “I will buy that” or even “I am going to ignore that” – instead my mind is thrown into a paroxysm of trying to work out precisely why the hidden persuaders have chosen those particular words.

For example: for most people “better than half price” just says the same thing as “less than half price”. But if that’s all it means, why not say it in the simplest way? Are we so prone to influence that we will think negatively or your product if we associate it with “less than”?

“Better than half price” is the plain clothes copper at the rave – it almost fits in, but ends up standing out by trying a little bit too hard.

Previously, I wrote about the infuriating apologies for “any inconvenience this may have caused” issued by so very sincere automated railway station tannoys – but in the toxic aftermath of Xmas, my current least favourite phrase is “own it now on DVD and Blu-Ray”.

First of all, even if I had a Blu-Ray player, I wouldn’t buy it on both formats. Like 99.9 per cent of the rest of the population, I’d buy one or the other.

Oh, but if we say “on DVD OR Blu-Ray”, then we are telling you NOT to buy both. Which you might do. If we hadn’t told you not to.

I can assure you, that you telling me not to would not affect whether I did or not.

However, my real hatred in this sentence is reserved for the word “own”.

“Buy it now” is just soooo vulgar. Emphasise benefits not features. It’s not “hand over your cash”. It’s “Martin Laurence’s hilarious ‘Big Momma’s – Like Father, Like Son’ could be yours to treasure and cherish until the end of time, and to have buried with you, clutched in your loving, dead embrace”.

Why not just say “buy it now”? That’s what you WANT isn’t it?

However, the prize has to go the above-pictured description of Clover Light.

As a way of saying “this is not butter” while giving you the impression that it is saying “this is like butter” it is absolutely unsurpassed.

I even went to their website, and I still don’t know what Clover Light is.

Doesn’t stop me eating it though. 

Downton Abbey is not real

Many apologies to the in-house staff psychiatrist at the Daily Telegraph, but I’m going to have to break it to them, no matter how far back it sets their and their readers’ collective therapy: Downton Abbey is not real. 

There is no such place. The people in it are made up. None of this actually happened. 

In fact, Downton Abbey is an ITV Sunday evening drama. Like Wild at Heart, or Heartbeat, or Where the Heart Is, it is designed to send you off to bed, all sleepy, cosy and nostalgaic, rather than wallowing in the usual end-of-weekend black pit of despair.

You must let go of the tragic delusion that it is the most important thing happening in Britain. 

Thierry Ennui

God, I hate football. Well, allow me to clarify slightly. Football itself is ok as far as it goes I suppose.  I’m not completely averse to the attractions of kicking a ball. What I hate is as follows (in Miss World order):

3. Professional football.

2. People talking about professional football.

1. People talking about professional football like in a way that supposes it is any more important than – say - what happened on Coronation Street last night.

It's not.

Listen - talking about football and footballers is no different from talking about wrestling and The Undertaker. Having pictures of footballers in and amongst your personal effects is no different from having a poster of Edward Cullen on your wall.

It IS a soap opera. Have you noticed that the media spends more time reporting on managers' complaints about referees' decisions, "will he won't he" transfer stories and the humorous off-field escapades of "characters" than the actual results of matches?

There’s nothing that makes me want to chop off a nut more than the prospect of going into a pub that says “Big screen Sky Sports” on the outside. 

Here’s a little suggestion for newspaper sports editors. Why not rename your football supplement “Shouting Men”? That is invariably what you are going to put a picture of on the front of it.

Oh, and here’s a second suggestion – next time you think about how to make a pun using the word “Roo”, why not throw yourself in front of a train instead? 

I can't handle the truth

So, Blogger has a new interface which includes something resembling a child's version of Google Analytics.

Oh, I know I said I was never going to talk about SEO on here, but this is too interesting – by which I mean disheartening – to ignore.

Turns out round about one third of the traffic that has EVER come here has come in from people looking for pictures of Peppa Pig.

Back in March, I wrote a post about said pig, which was well-received and even got randomly linked to from a site promoting "real breast feeding" or something.

Ever since, I have been thinking that if I really want to give up work and write this nonsense for a living, I was going to have to sit and analyse a lot more episodes of Peppa Pig and think of something amusing to say about them. I've got quite a long way with this project so far and – even in the light of this setback - may well return to it in future.

Anyway, the goddam new interface has shown me (from a list of top URLs for incoming traffic) that it's not my ingenious interpretation of the Mummy Rabbit/Miss Rabbit dichotomy that has drawn in the readers. No, it's the fact that Google Images indexed the bloody picture.

So...LOOK! IT'S GEORGE! DINE-SAW!!!!!! LOOK AT MEEEEEEE!!!!!!

So WHY didn't you know about it?

When did pleading ignorance become the most sure-fire way of getting yourself out of any sort of trouble that happens on your watch?

Every week at work, I hear people attempting to exculpate themselves from their cock-ups with the lines "I didn't know" and "nobody told me".

And my response is pretty much always along the lines of "that you didn't know doesn't get you off the hook because it's your job to know – so you not knowing is negligent."

I am a hard boss like that.

The former US president Harry Truman famously had a sign on his desk saying "the buck stops here" – the great and good of our time do not appear to subscribe to that principle.

Rupert Murdoch, David Cameron and various chiefs of the Metropolitan Police have all, one way or another, insisted that the buck does not stop with them in relation to the phone hacking scandal (and of course the associated but separate "corruption of public institutions" scandal), because they did not know what was going on.

Putting aside the obvious "my arse, you didn't know" response, let's assume they really didn't know.

That's not a kind of "oops, what am I like?" oversight. For example, it's been made clear that unnamed people at Number 10 were actively discouraging anyone from letting Cameron know about the infilitration of the Met by former NoTW staff, to not tell Cameron about it so as to not "compromise" him.

Either that's a rather sinister conspiracy of silence or a rather touching example of unnamed sources laying down their lives for their master. I can't help but think that Cameron should have been told though, so that he could make the right decision, even if a prior decision made in the absence of certain information was, to a degree, compromising. It would certainly have been a forgivable sort of compromise.

However, all these people – and especially the Prime Minister and the police chiefs – whether they knew or not what was going on, should have known. And to say that they didn't is not an excuse. It's an admission of negligence, incompetence or plain stupidity.

So what they have all been saying is "I'm not responsible, because I am too lazy, corrupt or stupid do to the job I am paid to do to an acceptable standard".

And as my answer to that excuse typically is: if that's the case, you should seriously reconsider whether you should be in the job at all.

Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out, News of the World

I never thought that I'd get an opportunity to use this lovely photo of a slug crawling on a dog turd so soon – but it perfectly sums up how I feel about the News of the World.

A real "Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind." moment on Thursday when I heard that it was to be closed down.

I never really read it – just the occasional two-week old edition in a Chinese takeaway – but the paper was deservedly a byword for what everyone thinks is wrong with the British media, as evidenced by (i) a 168-year reputation (the NotW is even cited as a prime purveyor of sleaze in "Gravity's Rainbow" for god's sake – Slothrop was a faithful reader...); and (ii) the phone hacking (do we still need to call them "allegations"? I doubt it) exposed last week.

I genuinely struggled to think what could be more appalling than what the NotW did to the family of Milly Dowler. Celebrities and politicians, you can at least make an argument for tapping their phones – not necessarily a very good one, but it is possible to envisage a set of circumstances or even an alternate reality in which such an argument might not sound like a totally amoral pack of lies.

So I am glad it's closed down. And I wish no one had bought it yesterday – "good causes" notwithstanding (WHICH good causes, James Murdoch? Ones you pick? I'm not sure we can trust your interpretation of "good") – and instead that the public had collectively done a big poo on every pile of NotWs on every newsstand in the country.

I'm not saying it's the most disgusting newspaper in history, but at least Josef Goebbels didn't try to claw back some public sympathy with a charity edition of Der Angriff before he killed himself.

But let's not forget that politicians of every party – and even the bloody police – pussy-footed around the Murdoch press for decades. Their new-found bravery in denouncing it is a little too little, too late.

At the end of the day, News International is a business. As much as it often suits the media to pretend that it's serving a social function, it's in the business of making money. Politicians and the police are not. They have their functions bestowed on them by the public for the public and should exercise them without fear or favour – and yet Murdoch got both from everyone in public life.

But before we paint Rupert Murdoch up as the antichrist, just cast you mind back to who the last "press baron" we had in this country was... errr...It was Robert Maxwell, wasn't it? Stealing your own employees' pension fund is up there and getting close to deleting the phone messages of a murdered child in the disgusting stakes.

So, the new anti-Murdoch Milibandwagon should be careful how enthusiastic it gets. Show some contrition for your goddam complicity in the NotW's reign of terror, because if any of you had had the courage to challenge it sooner, we might not be here now.

That's why the idea of a government-regulated press is so completely ridiculous. The Press Complaints Commission might be a joke, but at least it's not a sick joke.

The political class is just as compromised as the leadership of News International – precisely because it has to be held accountable to a higher standard than a mere business.

Now, let's erase the News of the World from history. Let's start by lobbying the surviving members of Queen to change the name of their chart-topping 1977 album. The fact that they haven't done it yet is A SCANDALOUS INSULT.

In defence of super injunctions

Look out! Here comes totalitarianism. Gor blimey, those super injunctions are an affront to justice and democracy, innit?

How is it remotely acceptable that a judge, sitting in private with lawyers acting on behalf of one side of a dispute, can rule that it is a criminal offence not only to reveal certain information, but also to reveal the existence of the ban on doing so?

That kind of a restriction certainly seems like a sledgehammer relative to the nut of a footballer's desire to keep his "playing away from home" secret LOL titter. "Playing away from home"... aaaahhhh.

Indeed, I started off writing this post thinking just that – that super injunctions are a disgusting abuse of power and process.

But then I changed my mind.

A non-super injunction is intended to "hold the ring" – to prevent a publisher from releasing confidential information until the matter can be argued in full. It is inherently a temporary ban on publication. So they call 'em "interim injunctions".

Plus, Section 12 of the Human Rights Act means that a judge should only give an injunction on request if it is likely to be proven later that the information should not have been released.

Breaking an interim injunction is contempt of court, and is therefore a criminal offence. That's in addition to any civil grief the publisher might subsequently end up in for breach of confidence, libel etc etc.

OK, there are problems even here of Minority Report-style "preventative" judicial action and the insertion of criminal penalties into what is basically civil law (a matter of the specific relationship between two parties, not something that is generally true to everyone).

But, should the press be allowed to ransack someone's reputation or jeopardise national security or whatever just to sell papers? Is there really a right to publish and be damned, or are there legitimate prior restraints on what can be made public?

Well, I've always thought that there are not. Being of a libertarian frame of mind (but not of the teabagging variety, I hasten to add), I generally believe that freedom matters more than other values.

But then you have to consider the repulsive ravenous beast that is the British press.

Imagine that we're not talking about publishing news here – something that can be ennobled with the mantle of "freedom of the press". What the press is doing in the case everyone is talking about right now is causing harm to an individual (and his family) for the amusement of others.

OK, harm to one's reputation is a fairly innocuous kind of harm. And a Premiership footballer being shown up as a serial shagger is hardly likely to lower anyone's opinion of him – because we all assume that's what they do for the rest of the week when they're not kicking a ball or doing coke.

It's all rather playground, isn't it? So let's recast this into the playground. The press is a bully who likes to pull other kids' pants down for a laugh. They do it every playtime, sometimes to the same person, sometimes to someone new – but they can relied upon to do it.

Is it ok to just let them get on with it, assuming that they will behave themselves this time, and punish them only after they've done it?

I'd say it isn't, and therefore some kind of pre-emptive warning to the effect of "if you pull little [insert name of mystery footballer here]'s pants down today, you'll be in big trouble" is legitimate.

That's what an interim injunction does. Section 12 of the HRA is there to encourage judges to bear in mind that occasionally the press is doing a genuine public service by exposing secret information (and the conduct of judges is another topic altogether) – as is the due process of law, conducted in open court, after the event, if the press decides to injunction notwithstandingpublish and be damned.

At the risk of sounding like a whingeing Goldsmith, I think there is a real difference between exposing a real scandal and revealing someone's bedroom antics – between the public interest and what some members of the public find interesting.

If we were talking about, say, the Pope having an affair, that should be published – because that would be a matter of someone not practising in private what they preach in public, and it would compromise his ability to hold that post.

But footballers are just paid to kick balls around. Like it or not, they're not there to be role models or to set a good example. They don't preach anything, so they can't be exposed as hypocrites. A public right to know everything about you is not the generic quid pro quo for being famous.

So exposing this footballer is purely being done for the sake of the public's amusement. And I'd say – reluctantly, I confess – that the distress that would be caused to him and his family is not offset by the amusement we'd all have laughing at him, being appalled by him, preening ourselves at our superiority etc.

Don't let the specifics of this case colour your view of the principles involved. Of course, the only person responsible for the footballer having something to hide – thereby putting his family at risk of this harm – is the man himself for having the affair.

Unquestionably, there is something thoroughly revolting about a rich man hiring out the criminal justice system to prevent someone from exposing his misbehaviour. His wife has a right to know, doesn't she? If she doesn't know now, well, she must be the only person in the world who doesn't.

That's the "injunction" bit. What about the "super" bit?

At first glance it seems horrendously Kafkaesque – to criminalise making a legal ruling public knowledge? How much more totalitarian can you get? See you in the Gulag comrade, I might have just condemned myself to a lifetime's hard labour without even knowing what I did wrong.

In principle, yes.

In practice, horseshit.

If an injunction is legally and ethically acceptable, en-supering it is just a logical extension – because we all know what the press would do. Indeed, even now, aren't we all having much more fun guessing around the "banned" story than to just hearing the honest, tawdry, dull truth of it?

If the press has something that is really in the public interest, they will publish it in breach of the law but probably get away with it. We're lucky to live in a country where that is the case. Just because there isn't a law banning the government from marching us all into death camps doesn't mean there is any greater likelihood of it happening than if there was.

We have to deal with realities and not hypothetical possibilities. The press can't be trusted to differentiate between what matters and what doesn't. Nor can the public. And I should know, because I am sadly part of both - I love to write and to read this kind of thing. That doesn't mean it's right and it certainly doesn't mean it's noble to expose it just because someone wants to conceal it.

The problem with super injunctions, I think, is not the principle, but – once again – the practice.

If I was up to the same thing as the unnamed footballer (which, Elvira, I am not!), I could not afford to protect myself and the Sicilys from the media mincer - something quite different to and not necessarily part and parcel of my family's right to know.

If the press decided to accuse me of robbing my employers by spending time writing blogs when I should be working...errr...I can't afford to defend myself.

The problem is not the law or the judges. It is the inequality of access to justice that put legal redress for harm or threats of harm beyond the reach of the majority.

Apologies for length...