Bob Smith
The good, the bad and the ugly
Also:
Islay McLeod
Dog of the year
Semi-literate letters from HM Revenue and Customs demanding money from the Midgie: ‘Nine out of ten UK citizens pay their Self Assessment tax on time, funding the public services that we all benefit from’. Why should the Midgie give his cash to the authors of such mangled prose?
The BBC’s policy of referring to anyone over the age of 60 as a ‘pensioner’. The disturbingly young persons who compile these bulletins called a 61-year-old woman, crushed to death by a folding bed in Benidorm, as an ‘elderly pensioner’. As if being crushed to death by a folding bed were not indignity enough.
Sir Ian Wood. The Midgie is not quite sure why this man, who wishes to concrete over Union Terrace Gardens in Aberdeen, is an irritation. He just is.
Volcanic ash. The Midgie can find nothing of interest to say about this subject other than that it was.
Team Glasgow, the so-called secret networkers who are ‘working behind the scenes to influence the workings of the city’ according to the Midgie’s rival sheet, the Sunday Herald. One of their supporters, one Lesley Sawers, irritated the Midgie with her gushing tosh about ‘positive, focussed, results-driven partnership working’, which managed to include four cliches in a single phrase.
The BBC’s shaky grasp of Scottish geography, claiming that Lerwick, where the Midgie has shared many a bite, is in the ‘north-east’ of Scotland.
Donald Trump, and Robert Gordon University, both deeply irritating, Trump’s accursed golf course, and the fawning regard for this man by Scottish politicians.
The snow (of course) and anyone who writes/broadcasts/talks about it. Alas, this qualifies the Midgie himself as one of the irritations of the year rather than, as he would prefer, one of the irritants.
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As the press become the
new thought police,
Vince Cable was always
cannon fodder in the ‘war’
with Murdoch
Kenneth Roy
Caricatures by Bob Smith
It would be lovely to write a piece dripping with gravy and seasonal goodwill. That had been the intention. I had arranged with Bob Smith to have a banner gallery of eight admirable Scots of 2010 and to say something obliging about each of them. But the flattery must wait until next week’s pre-Hogmanay edition, for today I am not full of seasonal goodwill. I am writing instead about Rupert Murdoch, who fails to inspire any goodwill.
Vince Cable has been hung out to dry, stripped of his Cabinet responsibility for media regulation after a few unguarded comments to Daily Telegraph journalists about his ‘war’ with the magnate and his resolve to prevent Murdoch from gaining a majority shareholding in BSkyB. The humiliation of the business secretary has been much discussed, his naivete a byword, his forthcoming appearance on ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ a political train crash – look how stupid the man has been, and now he’s twirling round the floor for Bruce Forsyth. Mr Cable can only hope that there is a heavy fall of snow over the weekend, resulting in paralysis of the public transport system and the further surrender of executive bonuses, if only to distract attention from the absurdity of his position.
But what, exactly, was the nature of the cause here? No one is suggesting that Mr Cable is other than a person of complete integrity. The name of the game was not to expose wrongdoing on his part, but simply to get inside his mind.
Less discussed, indeed scarcely discussed at all, is the method by which the Daily Telegraph obtained the embarrassing material. In yesterday’s edition of that coalition-supporting newspaper, I looked in vain for any comment on the technique of entrapment employed to lure Mr Cable. The journalists pretended to be constituents. In effect they fibbed their way into the story.
Yet the ethics are not on the agenda. The press, always vigilant about dodgy dealings in other trades, are curiously myopic about the foul mess in their own backyard. It seems no time at all since the Daily Telegraph was adopting a high moral tone about the squalid manipulation of parliamentary expenses, but when reporters from the same paper are less than transparent in their own professional lives, people like Vince Cable are somehow regarded as fair game.
Few journalists would pretend to be purer than the driven snow, of which there is so much about. Most of us would be prepared to present ourselves in a false identity. But there is a fairly clear pre-requisite for this sort of journalistic activity: our lies in pursuit of the story have to be justified by the nature of the cause. If there was some wrong to be righted, some injustice to be corrected, most of us wouldn’t hesitate to cut ethical corners.
But what, exactly, was the nature of the cause here? No one is suggesting that Mr Cable is other than a person of complete integrity. The name of the game was not to expose wrongdoing on his part, but simply to get inside his mind. We have to conclude from the remarkable success of the enterprise that more of the same will follow – that the press are the new self-appointed thought police.
The consequence of this week’s events is easy to predict. Politicians and other public figures will retreat into a bunker, saying very little to anyone outside a small circle of confidants. Candour in non-attributable conversation will be the victim of the Daily Telegraph’s folly; there will be more secrecy, not less, and the media will have only themselves to blame for the atmosphere of mistrust. Public life will be diminished, not that this will matter to the attack dogs of the press.
Meanwhile, Vince Cable is no longer at ‘war’ with Rupert Murdoch. The war is off and the only blood spilled, copious quantities of the stuff, is that of the business secretary. The prime minister, whose closest aide is a former senior employee of Murdoch, moved with abject alacrity to hand ministerial responsibility for the BSkyB bid to Jeremy Hunt, the media secretary and friend of Dr Spooner. It is safe to assume that Mr Hunt is a peace-loving sort, not at all in favour of hostilities with so powerful a figure, and that a way will be found to facilitate whatever it is that the demanding tycoon wishes to achieve from day to day.
As circulations dive into freefall, and advertisers flee to the internet, he is
the only proprietor left with the resources to go on employing them at a decent rate.
We should be clear, too, that few journalists and broadcasters will have much to say about Rupert Murdoch except in a wary and generally respectful
manner. The closeness of the relations between the new government and the Murdoch empire will remain a largely unexamined story, while the coverage of the telephone-tapping scandal at the News of the World during the editorial regime of the prime minister’s press secretary, a practice of which Mr Coulson claims to have known nothing, was never robust. It is now non-existent, except for the probing of the accused in the Glasgow perjury trial. In one of life’s unexplained coincidences, the inquisition of Mr Coulson in the High Court occurred on the same day as the Metropolitan Police cleared him of any wrongdoing.
Rupert Murdoch will remain off-limits for any serious scrutiny or attack. Most people in politics and the media are terrified of him, but for journalists there is a more pragmatic motive for silence. As circulations dive into freefall, and advertisers flee to the internet, he is the only proprietor left with the resources to go on employing them at a decent rate. Why would anyone want to offend such a person unnecessarily? Better to be discreet, failing to bite the hand that may one day be feeding you.
How silly of Mr Cable to believe that he could go to war with the man who runs Britain. The white flag was inevitable, with or without the assistance
of the Daily Telegraph. We have to be realistic: Vince Cable, a mere elected politician, was always cannon fodder.
SR will return with a special pre-Hogmanay edition at noon on
Thursday 30 December
