The Obscurer

Thursday 14th October 2004

The Road To…

I don’t normally buy a newspaper, but yesterday, while waiting in a cafe for the latest repair on my car, I bought a copy of the Guardian. I am glad I did, as otherwise I doubt I would have heard of the the death from cancer at 52 of Pete McCarthy.

Pete McCarthy I think used to present reports on local news in North-West England, but this is a faint memory I am not happy to rely on. He certainly presented the excellent Channel 4 show “Travelog”, and was brilliant in “As It Happens”, the live, er, as-it-happens show he presented with Andy Kershaw where they spent 2 hours at any old spot in the world and chatted to the locals, and occasionally the the odd ex-pat Brit. I particularly remember the show they did from America when Clinton won his first victory in the 1992 Presidential Elections.

In more recent years he has probably found his greatest fame with his travel books about Ireland in McCarthy’s Bar and The Road to McCarthy. I have read neither, but millions of people have, and I always thought he was a top notch journalist.

His death became all the more poignant for me as it came on the same day as the Government’s report on Pensions, and the juxtaposition of the two events illustrates some of my feelings on its news reporting. The main point that was made, apart from the fact that pension schemes are not accruing enough income at the moment, is that as people are living longer, we need to plan accordingly. We have to get used to people having to work for 50 years and then drawing pensions for 20 years, and this change has to be financed.

Fine, but not great for the family of Pete McCarthy to hear; or for me. I have attended 3 funerals in the past 6 months; for one person in their 50’s, one in their 40’s and one in their 30’s. I suppose I have as much reason as anyone to take the “you never know what will happen to you, you may be hit by a bus tomorrow” attitude.

The pension situation has changed so much from around 8 years ago; then, my father was persuaded and cajoled into taking early retirement, taking a healthy redundancy package as an inducement, and then, 6 months later he was re-employed by the same firm on an increased salary as a private consultant. He was not the only one. Now, just a few short years later, we are being told we will have to work until we are Seventy; and that is just what they are saying now. Lord knows what they will say when I actually near retirement.

Well they can forget it. I am not going to be daft; I am following the pension advisers advice and I am confident my retirement plans are sufficient; at least until my pension fund starts to move the goalposts as they are threatening. But working until I am Seventy? No way. As soon as my pension reaches subsistence level then that is it, I’m off. As long as I have my family and my house I can happily survive on beans on toast and tap water. The sun will still shine in summer, and with my eyes closed, sat in my back garden, I could just as easily be in St. Tropez.

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Thursday 7th October 2004

It's Educational

Do you ever watch “The Daily Politics” on BBC2? You probably don’t. It’s on every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday around midday, and so is mainly the preserve of shift-workers, the workshy, and those people at home looking after their 15 month old son.

I am lucky enough to belong to all 3 groups! As a result I regularly watch the programme. Believe me it is a welcome relief from wondering whether or not they have changed the actress who does Bella’s voice on the Tweenies, or the “will they/won’t they” antics of Miss Hooley and PC Plum on Balamory!

Anyway, the other week the presenter Andrew Neil was talking to the former BBC political commentator John Cole. The subject was Shirley Williams, and they were talking about her legacy now that she has stepped down as Liberal Democrat’s leader in the Lords. They covered the obvious aspects of her being one of the first prominent female MP’s, her leaving the Labour Party to form the SDP, and then her part in merging the SDP with the Liberal Party. But eventually they covered her role as Education secretary in the Wilson Labour Government, and the closure of many Grammar Schools on her watch. Andrew Neil mentioned the fact that Northern Ireland had been spared this policy, and still had many excellent Grammar schools. “Yes,” said John Cole, and although I am paraphrasing wildly, he then stated “but we still have a lot of very poor Secondary Moderns we really need to work on.”

What is remarkable about that statement is that it is the only occasion in recent years that I can remember Secondary Moderns even being mentioned in the debate on Grammar Schools. It is almost as if they don’t exist. Perhaps the proponents of the Grammar system are ashamed of them, as if they were a rather embarrassing Aunt. But if you have the grammar school system then you must have secondary moderns; or something like them with a different name.

I attended a Comprehensive school, and I don’t have any complaints. I got my O levels (showing my age there), I got my A levels, I scraped a 2:2 in Economics at Bradford University, and they don’t just give them away, you know. I even got a Post-graduate Diploma in Marketing, although I am sure that is because my exam paper got mixed up with one belonging to someone who knew what they were talking about. So I think my Comprehensive education did me alright, and I suppose as a result I feel some loyalty to the system. Could I have achieved more if I had been educated in a Grammar school. Possibly; we will never know. But what if I had failed my 11-plus? What then. Just taking the, admittedly, narrow field of academic success, how would I have fared? Would my sights have been set on attending university at all? Would I have even sat my O levels, marked out instead for CSEs and vocational qualifications?

I am not closed to the possibility that there is an alternative. I certainly don’t discount the fact that there is a role for setting and streaming within Comprehesives; the Grammar school versus Comprehensive argument often gets confused with the argument for or against mixed-ability schooling, but it shouldn’t. The problem is that whenever the issue is discussed, Grammar school supporters talk of the greater success rates at Grammar school, which is probably not surprising if they have a greater proportion of the more intelligent pupils in the first place. But what happens to the pupils in those areas who fail to get into Grammar schools? Do they similarly do better than they would do under a Comprehensive system. I don’t know, because they never get mentioned. Where are the glowing descriptions of Secondary Modern successes, to complement the Grammar school tales?

Perhaps if I analysed all the figures comparing Comprehesives, Grammar schools and Secondary Moderns, I would find the grammar system is better, although let’s face it, if I were given the figures, I probably wouldn’t understand them. And perhaps there is an argument for splitting people into Grammar schools and Secondary Moderns, so each group of pupils can get an education tailored to their ability range; except historically the Secondary Moderns were the dumping grounds, the sink schools, the schools for the forgotten. Why would that be different now? Where would the better Teachers prefer to teach?

Those who support the grammar system I am sure deeply believe it is better, and they may be right. But until they start talking about what happens to those who fail the 11-plus, I will stay loyal to the Comprehensives.

PostScript: while I am talking about education, (tenuous link alert!) it seems an appropriate time to mention “rooblog“, a website I have been reading recently which appears to be written by a system support worker at a college in Salford. I am not usually a fan of personal type blogs – there is only so much I can read about a sophomore’s love life, and how she has just flunked a whole semester of math – but this is great. Funny, quirky, off-beat and very well written; if you love “Walking Like Giant Cranes” you will love this.

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Thursday 7th October 2004

Iraq Again Or

By now, I don’t think anyone is surpised that the Iraq Survey Group has announced there are no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Infact the worst they can say is that there is “framentary” and “circumstantial” evidence that Saddam wanted to restart a programme once the UN sanctions were removed. Was this really a good enough reason to go to war in the name of WMD.

I don’t think so. The reaction from our politicians has been risible. George Bush says Iraqi scientists still had the knowledge under Saddam to create CBRN weapons which could be passed onto terrorists; but presumably scientists with such knowledge, in Iraq or elsewhere, are able to do so if they want to, whoever is in charge of Iraq. Jack Straw says we now know the threat “in terms of intentions” was “even starker than we have seen before”; but surely not as stark as having WMD ready to fire in 45 minutes. Tony Blair has started talking about Saddam doing his best to subvert UN Sanctions, as if we went to war 18 months ago because of something the ISG has only just announced. It all seems a long way from a clear and present danger, a war we had to wage there and then as a last resort. But by now we are used to the justifications for war having changed. Jack Straw always talks of Iraq’s broken UN resolutions as if that is why we went to war, despite the fact there was no UN resolution authorising force; and anyway, surely the resolutions were about WMD, they were the mechanism and WMD still the stated reason we went to war. Tony Blair talks of not apologising for removing Saddam, and that history will forgive him, but do you remember anyone asking him to apologise for toppling the Baath party? And anyway, he specifically ruled out regime change in the run up to war.

So if the politicians think they have done nothing wrong, what about the intelligence services? According to David Kay, the former leader of the Iraq Survey Group, speaking on Channel Four News, this is the real issue, and this is where the blame ought to lie. But hold on. I remember reading plenty of newspaper articles prior to the war casting doubt on the claims of WMD in Iraq, from the likes of former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter. Did the Prime Minister not read them? Did he not listen to Robin Cook’s resignation speech in the Commons, when he stated Iraq probably didn’t have WMD? Or did he just not want to believe.

Before the war, I didn’t know if there were WMD in Iraq or not. I thought that Hans Blix was in a better position than me to tell, and should have been given the time he felt he needed to find out. But I also felt that George Bush was bent on regime change, whatever the cost, for whatever reason, be it oil, unfinished business, strategic interests, or all three, and that Tony Blair had already decided to support him, come what may. Nothing I have heard since has changed my mind. I think Blair probably thought there were WMD in Iraq, but in the end it didn’t really matter what the intelligence said. When your mind is made up, you will believe what you want to believe. I don’t buy the idea that Blair decided on war on a cold examination of the intelligence. That looks to me like putting the cart before the horse.

In the end Hans Blix couldn’t have put it better in one of his last speeches to the UN Security Council before the war. He said if you asked him if whether Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions then it was, but if you asked him if UNMOVIC could conclude its inspections within months then it could. Put another way, if you want an excuse for war, then you have it, but if you wanted the WMD issue settled peacefully, that could be done. We had the excuse for war, and so we went to war. That is the politicians responsibility, not the intelligence services, as Blair more or less stated, inadvertently, when he rejected a request for the Butler Enquiry to look into the use of intelligence material, on the grounds that it is up to Government to decide on the basis of information.

I don’t want Blair to apologise for the war; that is expecting too much, and anyway, I wouldn’t believe him. But surely the time has come when he should stop grasping onto any new nugget of information about how Saddam may have, if he could, once every Preston Guild, have quite liked to get some WMD, and that this vindicates a war based in an immediate threat from unconventional weapons. Surely the time is long overdue when he tells us how he can justify the war because it removed Saddam, yet still not talk of regime change. In fact the time is long overdue when someone directly asks him explain that contradiction; does he now believes in regime change, and if not, then how can he rely on it to justify the invasion. You never know, he may come clean, and explain why regime change was justified, and where and when it should be permitted in the future. I would have more respect for him if he did, and you never know; he might just convince me.

PostScript: I am sick of writing and thinking about the Iraq War now, and so hopefully this will be my last post on the subject. But I wouldn’t bet on it!

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Thursday 30th September 2004

Parallel Ports

Now that the Olympics and Paralympics in Athens have closed, I would like to congratulate the Greeks on an excellent games. I am particularly happy at the way things have turned out as I was getting pretty fed up in the run up to the Olympics with the constant criticisms. I don’t think I have ever heard such stick aimed at the organization of the games in previous years, and I didn’t think it was fair. I am sure every city which tries to organise such a logistical task will encounter some problems, but from the start it almost seemed as if people expected and wanted Athens to fail, based on the prejudiced stereotypical image of the Greeks’ lack of organization. You would have thought that the Greek football team’s success in Euro 2004, surely a triumph of organization over ability, would have had people thinking twice, but all the way up to the Olympics we heard story after story about Athens’ lack of preparedness. That these have almost all turned out to be unfounded must give the organisers great pleasure.

In relation to the Paralympics in particular I was somewhat mystified by the Daily Mail’s front page comment the other day, questioning whether or not the BBC should be covering these “athletes” sports. Their quotation marks. David Thomas in the Telegraph made the same point. I imagine they may have changed their tune somewhat as the medals have piled in for the British team, but why shouldn’t the BBC or anyone else cover these sports? Paralympians are surely every bit as dedicated as their able bodies colleagues. In some cases, for example Basketball, I find the disabled version is a much better spectacle. There may not be the same audience for the Paralympics, and that is reflected in the lower profile it receives, but we are still seeing the top athletes in the world competing in their chosen sports; and in many cases they are more clearly sports than the sort of thing that passes for sport in the Olympics (synchronized swimming always springs unfairly to mind here). Thomas states we do not engage with Paralympians in the way we get worked up over able-bodied competition; but I cannot say I was exactly on the edge of my seat when the British yacht crews brought home the Gold medal. Of course, being the fastest person in the T5 wheelchair sprint does not have the same cache as the winner of the 100 metre sprint being the fastest person ever, but we don’t dismiss Kelly Holmes fantastic achievement on the grounds that she is only a woman, and the male runners would have hammered her in a straight race. And as for watching sport just to see the finest athletes, if I went to the City of Manchester Stadium every other week expecting to watch the best football team in the world, I would be very disappointed. (Actually, I did last week, but only because we were playing Arsenal).

The Daily Mail view is one that NBC appears to have echoed in the United States. From having 300 journalists in Athens for the Olympics, they have had not one for the Paralympics. Richard Caborn, the Sports Minister, thinks this will count against New York’s bid for the 2012 Olympics. This may well be a bit harsh on the New York bid team; I doubt they have much say on the scheduling policy of NBC. Unfortunately, the last time the games were in the US, in Atlanta, the Paralympics were widely considered a disaster. According to Tanni Grey-Thompson in an interview with Des Lynam last week, the organisers had no interest in the Paralympic Games at all; in fact half the facilities from the Olympics had been packed up by the time the Paralympics were underway, and there were barely any spectators. New York’s bid should be judged on it’s own merits, not based on the actions of NBC or the Atlanta organisers, but all the bidding cities’ plans for the Paralympics should play a part in the decision making. You wouldn’t expect a city which was not interested in the Olympics to be awarded the games, and so, I feel, should it be with the Paralympics.

However, if Caborn is right and this does affect New York’s bid, then it is obviously great news for London. Now we just need someone from Paris, Madrid and Moscow to similarly balls up and the games will be ours for the taking.

Update 2/9/04: to understand the reference to the eagle joke on my comment on this post, click here, on the excellent The Filter^ site.

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Sunday 26th September 2004

Extra Time

As I write this there is still no further news on the hostage Ken Bigley. Like everyone I am sure, my heart goes out to him and his family. I really cannot imagine the horror they all must be going through. I hope that no news is good news. It is important at this time for people to also say that we cannot and shall not give in to Terrorism, and that is quite right, but there is one minor way in which the Terrorists have forced a change.

On Friday night, on ITV1, I was about to watch “A Touch Of Frost” when the announcer said there was a change of schedule due to recent events, and instead they would be showing an episode of “Inspector Morse”. I took this to mean that something in the episode of “Frost” echoed Ken Bigley’s situation, and so it had been pulled.

Does this matter? Probably not. Personally, I have often thought there have been many over reactions in the past when this sort of thing has happened; one thinks of “Massive Attack” being renamed “Massive” during the 1991 Gulf War, and Top of the Pops skipping over any reference to Robert Miles’ tune “Children” in the week following the Dunblane tragedy. However, the world will not stop turning just because ITV have not shown a repeat of “Frost”, and I prefer “Morse” anyway.

But the episode of “Morse” had one character, played by Anna Massey, who gave birth to a still born baby; later on she was fooled into thinking that another character, played by Charlotte Coleman, was the baby who had died all those years ago, which ultimately led to the tragic climax where the girl stabbed to death the person she thought of as her Mother.

This struck me very personally; I had just returned from a wake, as a friend of mine had earlier buried his own Mother. Meanwhile, I have another friend in Hospital with complications during her pregnancy. For them, the TV programme rescheduled in order to avoid distress was far more likely to upset them. There must be hundreds of people in the country who feel the same.

What am I trying to say? I am not really sure, but I suppose I think that art and drama should be about moving us and engaging with us, and this may run the risk of offending us. But if we always try to avoid anything that may upset people then TV will ultimately be ever more timid and bland, and all we will be watching is programmes on pink kittens and sugar drops, with warnings beforehand for diabetic dog-lovers.

ITV will say they were just showing sensitivity under the current circumstances. Fair enough I suppose, and they are probably right. But I also reckon the Bigley family couldn’t care less which episode of which TV Detective was shown on Friday. No fictional drama could be worse, or could worsen, the real-life pain they must be going through.

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