Predictably bonkers

Oh no, not again! First Dilnot. Now Leveson. Faced with a crisis, whether the cost of social care or the collapse of trust in journalism, David Cameron sets up a commission or an enquiry, under distinguished and extremely intelligent experts, who spend many months of intensive work of evidence-gathering and deliberation. They then come up with long reports with workable conclusions.

Then in Parliament the Prime Minister makes polite noises about the reports as he presents his verdict. But when it comes down to the nub of the matter he weaves and ducks. What a shame! In the case of Dilnot, the Government has been dithering about the limit of contribution towards social care that people should be expected to make. The suspicion of course is that HMG wants to set it higher than Dilnot's recommendation, to reduce its own perfectly affordable input. The effect of that would of course be to penalise those with modest savings, as they'd lose a larger proportion than those with fat-cat pensions.

And now with Leveson the plan is to present a bill to Parliament which, as the Culture Minister, Maria Miller, admitted to John Humphris on the Today programme, is designed to prove Lord Leveson's proposal unworkable. Unsurprisingly virtually all today's newspapers have been rubbishing the report. When you come to think of it, that's a pretty strong recommendation for it. They don't want to see their licence to kill reputations, privacy and even worse curtailed - and that is what they fear a more independent effective regulatory body might do. In Parliament time and again we heard the old canard that Lord Leveson was proposing state regulation of the press, the myth which that same press is very busy promulgating. It is clear that he is not. He is proposing that someone guards those who are keeping an eye on the guardians of our freedom.

Lady Helena Kennedy QC, the great champion of free speech, compared the Prime Minister's rejection of Leveson's central recommendation to a genuine Whitehall memo that followed the last enquiry into press standards by Sir David Calcutt 20 years ago. "We know we're not going to do anything. We can't say we're not going to do anything, so we have to say something that covers up the fact that we're not going to do anything." As she said, it could have been a line out of Yes, Minister. The tragic thing is that "not anything" means nothing for people like the Dowlers and the McCanns. David Cameron assured such victims that he would ensure the implementation of Lord Leveson's proposals "unless they were completely bonkers". Apparently he reckons they are. Most of us know they're not, and wonder whether our politicians have learned anything from the past few years.

Why the picture at the top of this piece? Well, you know what they say about kicking things into the long grass... One way we can try to prevent this happening to the Leveson report is signing the petition launched today by Gerry McCann and Chris Jefferies, the traduced teacher from Bristol:   http://hackinginquiry.org/petition/.

"Mea culpa?"

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, has written a letter to The Sunday Telegraph today. In it he says, "Our recovery - already facing powerful headwinds from high oil prices and the debt burden left behind by the boom years - is being killed off by the crisis on our doorstep." The response from Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, was predictable: "It's deeply complacent and out of touch for George Osborne to blame Europe for a double-dip recession made in Downing Street. He will fool nobody with these increasingly desperate excuses."


Déjà entendu? Don't you remember the Labour Government saying our economic woes were all the fault of the American sub-prime market and the bankers? It's really not our fault, they said. Of course the Tory Opposition repeatedly asserted that the deficit was actually the result of the government's irresponsible stewarding of public finances. Of course it was their fault, they told us.


Life's not that simple. It's not black and white. No wonder so many people feel like Mercutio, dying because of the ancient feud between the Montagues and Capulets - "a plague o' both your houses"! If the consequences weren't so serious for the people in the middle, we might write it off as "Punch and Judy politics". However there are casualties - from the young unemployed with little prospect of finding a job, to the genuine disabled facing cuts in their support. And of course there's the cost of people's faith (and interest) in politics.


This coming week our political leaders will be in the spotlight in front of Lord Justice Leveson. I don't suppose the modus operandi of their politics will be focused on. Perhaps Her Majesty might have a word, when she has a chance after her strenuous week. She might remind them of the New Testament reading from her St Paul's service on Tuesday which was read by the Prime Minister: "Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honourable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." Did she choose it deliberately? I wonder.

Celebrities in The Sun

My dental practice has one deficiency - and that is its selection of reading matter. Besides a number of pamphlets about oral hygiene, how to brush your teeth and that sort of thing (which, I admit, is fair enough), there's precious little else. That's the reason I now take a book with me - not that the wait is usually long enough to pick up the thread again. (Yes, it's the NHS.) However, there are always old copies of Hello magazine. Yesterday there were four. All four covers featured Katharine, Duchess of Cambridge ("Kate" to Hello), and of course the princess of football, Victoria Beckham, popped up once or twice, as well as Britain's answer to Carla Bruni, Cheryl Cole. Poor Katharine, every time we've been for an appointment, there she's been, smiling soulfully out from a slightly dog-eared cover. I wonder whether she's featured so much because, being state property, she doesn't have an agent charging the magazine an exorbitant fee.

I was reminded of this today listening to Rebekah Brooks' grilling at the Leveson Inquiry. I actually thought she did rather well, unruffled by the worst that the Inquiry QC, Robert Jay, threw at her and giving as good as she got. As one tweeter observed, if it was her intention, she was quite clever in giving the headline-writers a tasty crumb to deflect from the substance of the questioning: "LOL - Brooks reveals how PM signed his texts (until she told him what it meant)".

from The Huffington Post

At one point she was asked about the difference between Rupert Murdoch's and her own preference for news coverage in The Sun. "I preferred celebrities; he wanted more serious news." I guess, sadly, she is more in touch with The Sun's readership, although I must admit she came across as a rather sorted professional journalist, charming and determined... which might spell strength, or danger, depending where you're standing.

No, non, niet - no idea!

"Who was responsible for ethical compliance?" I've just been watching the evidence of the News of the World's lawyer, Tom Crone, to the Leveson Inquiry. When asked that question, he seemed totally stumped, and in the end came up lamely with, "The Chief Executive, I suppose," (i.e. James Murdoch). When it was pointed out that the CEO had notional responsibility for everything, he responded that his own role he considered to be litigation compliance for articles. It seemed to me disturbing that it emerged that neither the legal department nor anyone else in a newspaper was responsible for the morality of what it publishes - disturbing and symptomatic. I'm hoping that the Inquiry will have the effect of shifting the press from unethical towards ethical journalism.

I gather that a new expression has entered the language. It's "doing a Clegg" and means something like going AWOL. It of course arises from the deputy prime minister's conspicuous absence from his boss's side when he triumphantly reported his "NO" to the cheering/jeering House of Commons. Strictly speaking David Cameron did not veto the Merkozy plan; he didn't forbid or block it. He just opted the UK out. Still it made good press, echoing nicely President de Gaulle's "NON" to Britain's entry into the EEC in 1967. Now that was a veto. We had to wait until his fall before applying again and becoming a member in 1973. One can only hope that our PM doesn't follow that other theatrical "NO", or rather "NIET"-sayer, Nikita Khrushchev's habit of banging his shoe on the table to emphasize his immovability. So unEnglish!

I've recently read an essay by the distinguished Nobel Laureate, Professor Amartya Sen, entitled Violence and Civil Society (in CAM 64) in which he argues that conflict is not best solved by state-sanctioned force. He carefully examines the commonly perceived factors giving rise to violence, such as class, poverty and religion. But they aren't the whole story.

There were two passages which struck me: "For example, appeals to country and nationality played a rousing role in the immensely bloody war in Europe between 1914 and 1918, and a shared religious background did nothing to stop the Germans, the British and the French from tearing each other apart. Yet, today, the Germans, the French and the British mix with each other in peace and tranquillity and sit together to decide what to do in their continent without reaching for their guns." Well, that was the vision behind the EU! Quite important we don't forget it.

Then there was this: "Democracy is more than a collection of specific institutions, such as balloting and elections - it is also dialogue, freedom of information and unrestricted discussion. These are also the central features of civil paths to peace." For some reason this put me in mind of the Occupy camp in the heart of that least transparent of places, the City of London, outside St Paul's Cathedral.

I've been asked why the Falconer "Commission" has taken longer to come out than expected. The answer is, I have no idea. I don't think it's because they got wind of something I'd written in anticipation  - I'm not that important or that vain, I hope. I imagine it's a matter of waiting until the serious news clears out of the way to leave it room for maximum publicity.

In this context, I found Amartya Sen's comment on what he calls "the solitarist approach to human identity" (which sees human beings as members of just one group, defined solely by their native civilisation, or religion etc) illuminating: "The solitarist approach is an excellent way of misunderstanding (my italics) nearly everyone in the world. The same person can be, without contradiction, of Asian origin, a Christian, a socialist, a woman, a jazz musician, a doctor, and one who believes that the most important problem in the world today is how to make South Africa the cricket champion of the world." I doubt whether the professor knows such a person, but it's a point well made. To assume that one factor in somebody controls all they think and do is dumb. We are not machines; we're complex individuals trying to live together.