The Obscurer

Tuesday 6th September 2005

Honours Even

A couple of years ago I was listening to the radio in my car when I heard an interview with the bloke who at that time was in charge of reforming the honours system (I can’t remember who he was). One thing he mentioned stuck in my mind; that the system should be reformed because (and I am paraphrasing here) “just being good at you job should not be a reason to be awarded an honour”.

Quite right too, I thought; but my elation was short lived. It soon became clear that the subject of this attack was the “ordinary people”; the dinner ladies and cleaners who receive modest honours in return for years of dedicated and unsung service. He wasn’t at all bothered about the sportsmen and actors who are annually awarded gongs for merely being successful in their chosen professions; it seemed that he thought this should continue.

The latest reform has just been announced, and in a move aiming to “improve transparency and accountability in the honours system” the new members of the eight committees that decide upon the awarding of honours have been announced; these committees include some famous names and non-civil servants for the first time.

Fair enough as far as it goes, but it is clear from the number of people involved on these committees that we can expect plenty more honours to be doled out twice yearly like toffees at an Everton home game. When compared to, say, the French system and their Legion d’honneur, the British system seems altogether sillier and less prestigious (although it is quite possible that I am praising the French system out of ignorance). I am not saying that there should be no system of honours at all; just that to receive an award should be for some sort of exceptional achievement, something significant or out of the ordinary. Just having been in a pop group for a long time shouldn’t mean you qualify.

It is interesting to look at some of the people who will have a say in where the next set of honours go. The most striking is Sir Bobby Robson, a man who can (but probably doesn’t) consider himself very lucky to have been knighted in the first place. He may be a lovely chap – and has had a fairly decent career – but nothing he has achieved suggests to me that he deserves what should be such a prestigious title.

Particularly when you talk about stars of sport or the arts, there already seems to be plenty of specific ways that success can be rewarded – the Booker Prize, Academy Awards, Olympic Medals – that I don’t see why on top of that you can get a knighthood for just being famous and hanging around for a bit. That is not to say however that such people should never get honours; winning the 1966 World Cup, for example, seems the sort of exceptional event that would be deserving of a knighthood; but only for the manager, or some truly remarkable player, not just the bloke who only played in the final because a better player was injured and who subsequently slutched a hat trick.

Ultimately then, I agree that you need to be more than just good at your job in order to be awarded an honour; but that goes for the rich and famous as much as for the rest of us. You shouldn’t need eight mammoth committees to decide how to allocate each year’s many awards; if only truly remarkable and admirable achievements were rewarded then fewer honours would be issued, and the whole system would gain more respect.

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Friday 2nd September 2005

A Drinking Song

Whatever my friends may think, I consider myself to be quite continental in my drinking habits; I mean, my favourite tipple is Belgium’s Stella Artois for a start. I do drink too much, but I prefer the “little but often” route to sclerosis rather than a binge drinker’s all out assault on my liver. I am far happier having a quiet pint or two with a meal or a book than I am downing pitchers of booze in a town centre Wetherspoons.

Much has been made of the changes to the licensing laws which are soon due to come into force, and for some reason many have waited until the last minute before making their objections known. Now that it is too late to change the legislation all sorts of people are predicting disaster once the new laws are in place.

A few weeks ago Judge Charles Harris QC commented that “Continental-style drinking requires continental-style people – people who sit quietly chatting away at cafe tables”, and almost daily there have been further comments from other people along the same lines. In response, it has been argued that why should decent law abiding folk be prevented from having a little drink after 11 o’clock?

I am in two minds about this one; on the one hand the current licensing laws are clearly outdated and anachronistic, and for that reason liberalisation is a good idea; on the other hand I have little doubt that the only real effect of the new laws will be that the pissheads of today will just drink even more tomorrow.

The thing is, it is not just continental-style people we need in order to have continental-style drinking, but continental-style bars, and I don’t think we are going to see many more of them come November. I often work late shifts, finishing work at 2 or 4 am, and sometimes I would quite like to pop into my local for a swift pint to unwind after a tough day; but I doubt my needs will be catered for once the new legislation comes into force. After all, there are no legal restrictions on coffee shops and libraries opening after 11 pm; the reason they don’t is presumably because doing so is simply not worthwhile. Similarly, I can’t see any quaint country pubs staying open on the off chance that I may wander in with my newspaper at half past four for a quiet drink; only places that can pack people in with happy hours and 2-for-1 offers are likely to find late opening profitable.

It is interesting to actually compare Britain with the rest of Europe. It is true to say that in other countries café owners are able to stay open later and longer; it is also true to say that many of them don’t bother. Last time I was in Paris we wandered around for ages trying to get a drink after 6 pm. There were dozens of cafés around and about our hotel, but having been open all day they shut for the evening when the proprietor went home to his family; and this was on a Saturday.

I think the fears that there will be an increase in violent disorder and drink related crime once the new licensing regulations come into force will be realised, although I don’t think that is necessarily a good reason for sticking with our current silly and restrictive opening times. I just think we need to be realistic; that if binge drinking is considered a problem now, then these changes are likely to make things worse.

And it may be true that British drinking habits have been formed as a consequence of our authoritarian licensing laws, and that the European attitude toward alcohol is to be admired; but the question is, how do we get there from here?

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Friday 19th August 2005

Jakers!

George Monbiot seems to have a rather individual view of how the media reports environmental issues. A few weeks back, when reviewing Margaret Thatcher’s 1989 speech to the UN (I have no idea why), he stated that from 1992 onwards the BBC and Channel 4

purged environmental programmes from the schedules. I suspect they saw them as counter-aspirational and, in Channel 4’s case, bad for business. From then on, they could broadcast only furious attacks on environmentalism, such as Channel 4’s series Against Nature and BBC2’s Scare Stories. Most of the newspapers, with an eye on the interests of their proprietors and advertisers, followed their example.

Environmental campaigns – especially the mobilisation against the roads programme Thatcher launched – proliferated, but, shut out by the media, the issue soon fell off the political agenda.

This appears to me to be rather at odds with reality. Environmental issues are regularly featured throughout the media, and opponents of climate change rarely make an appearance. Indeed, the debate has largely moved on from whether climate change is happening to why climate change is happening (whether or not it is influenced by human behaviour), and what can or should be done about it.

In this debate, the idea of a return to nuclear power seems to be gaining some currency due to nuclear’s low levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Fans of nuclear power famously include the unlikely figure of James Lovelock, founder of the Gaia green movement. Fair enough, you may think, and perhaps the nuclear option should be considered; it certainly shouldn’t be excluded from the debate.

However, a recent edition of Coast on BBC2, which has reached the north of Scotland, included a feature on Dounray power station. There the presenter stated that Britain is expected to produce enough nuclear waste over the next 100 years to fill at least five Albert Halls. This is where we stand with our current, somewhat diminished nuclear programme.

Now, for me, this is a real worry. After all, at the moment, to the best of my knowledge, we have only one Albert Hall. Just to deal with our current output of nuclear toxins we are looking at having to build another four over the next century.

So what happens if, as has been suggested, we greatly expand our nuclear industry? How many Albert Halls will we then have to build? Are we going to have to face constructing hundreds, perhaps even thousands of Albert Halls, flooding our landscape, filling our valleys and towering over our dales, scaring areas of natural beauty on order to contain contaminated junk?

“Jakers!” as my good friend Piggley Winks would say; it is certainly worth thinking about. There are clearly no easy solutions to this problem of global warming.

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Wednesday 10th August 2005

Shepperton Redux

A few months ago, you may remember I wrote a book review of Shepperton Babylon by Matthew Sweet, a study of the obscure and forgotten history of the British film industry. Well, for those of you who were quite interested in the subject, but not interested enough to part with the £12.99 required to purchase a copy, you may like to know that BBC4 will be showing an hour long documentary based on the book.

It is due to go out on Thursday (11th of August) at 9pm, in the coveted “up against Extras” slot; fortunately, being a BBC4 programme, it is then repeated numerous time in the coming weeks, so there is no excuse for not watching it (unless you aren’t interested and simply don’t want to watch it, which sounds a pretty good excuse to me). The full details of the showing times can be found on this rather splendid website, which also includes wee video clips of the author being interviewed.

If the TV programme is half as good as the book then it will be fine indeed; although, as I explained previously, Matthew is an old school friend of mine, so my utterly biased opinion should probably be taken with a fair pinch of salt.

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Tuesday 2nd August 2005

More Heat Than Light

The new copy of Heat magazine has hit the news stands, and I have reacted with my usual enthusiasm; although this time, rather than ignore its publication I did briefly cast my eyes across a copy during a quiet moment at work (and it had to be a brief look; it’s been going like the proverbial chippy at work recently; a chip shop concession at Fred Karno’s Circus).

The magazine was lying around, left open at the prestigious “Page 29”, and it announced that Anna Friel had joined the Bugaboo club. “She’s done what”, you ask? Well, it seems that there is a brand of pram called Bugaboo; the pram of choice for certain celebrities – Gwyneth Paltrow, Stella McCartney and Sara Cox are fellow members of this club – and that is pretty much the gist of the story. So, to recap, someone I don’t care about has bought a brand of pram I have never heard of. Great. To Heat, however, this is not just news, this in fact qualifies as “Breaking News”, as the bright red banner at the top of the page testifies. Breaking News? I have often been critical of Sky News, commenting that for them no story is too small to be described as “Breaking” when they announce it on air; but I think even they would draw the line at this one.

Page 30 was something about Big Brother that I didn’t read, and Page 31 had a list of “celebrity couples” and informed the reader about whether or not they were “on” or “off”. You will be as devastated as I was to learn the Sarah Harding and Mikey Green have split up. Yes! Sarah Harding and Mikey Green! Who the fuck are they? I know the celebrity net is being cast wider these days, but you would think I would have a vague idea who Heat were talking about. An examination of the photograph of the unfortunate pair did not provide any clues; I have no idea who they are or what they do.

With that I left Heat magazine and carried on working. I know this post sounds a bit snobbish, and I honestly don’t mind people being interested in the lives of “celebrities” in a way that I am not, but I just do not understand how people can find such trivia of any interest at all. I don’t have a problem with people watching Big Brother for example, if that is what entertains them, but I cannot figure out why the participants become newsworthy the moment they step into the BB house. Oh well, each to their own I suppose.

And so, it is with a knowing irony that here, as promised (or threatened) in my previous post, is that picture of my son in his City kit, bearing down on goal. I understand that this is of no interest to anybody else, but blogs are often self indulgent, and this one is certainly no exception.

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