MUSIC MAKES HIM WANNA TRY

The Neil Sedaka gig last night was absolutely fascinating. The audience in Colston Hall Bristol was not young. Even taking dye into account, I’d say the dominance of grey hair over not grey was three or even four to one. On this evidence, Sedaka’s constituency below 50 is negligible, below 30 virtually non-existent. There was a youngish-looking claque in the front row who were first on their feet at the end and who were rewarded with hand shakes from the man. Another youngish woman presented him with an inexpensive bunch of flowers and got a mouth-to-mouth kiss. But they were atypical. Generally we were sedate, though we certainly clapped and cheered our weight.

Now, let’s not beat about the bush. With obvious exceptions (my friends, for instance), men of East European Jewish origin are apt not to age well. And Sedaka looks like shit. He’s finally given up the piece, which is good in principle, but a bald run through the crown fringed by oiled hair that goes white where it’s too long at the back is not a good look. His distinct jowliness gives his head the shape of an inverted pear. I didn’t mind a bit sitting fairly far back.


Sedaka doesn't look like this
(from last.fm.com)

A passing comparison he claimed with Cary Grant was the most preposterous moment of the evening. Even when young, Sedaka may have been glittery glamorous in his Brilliantined, slightly exotic appearance but he was never, even remotely, sexy. (He actually dances better now than he did back then). Otherwise, though modesty, false or the other kind, is not one of Sedaka’s traits, he doesn’t pretend that longevity is not his strong suit. The second half began with a priceless Scopitone video of Calendar Girl from 1961. Sedaka says it was the first ever pop promo and if he wants to believe that I ain’t gonna argue. Each month is illustrated by a “girl” (as they of course were characterised then) parading in a supposedly appropriate outfit; this was a movie gambit for at least the fifteen years before that time. Neil himself has four (four!) changes of clothes in two-and-a-half minutes. It was shot in Rome in gloriously garish ‘60s colour. You can watch it here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BITaKu5Pm1g

but the print doesn’t begin to do the hues justice. Sedaka reports that he and his wife were sitting outside a Rome café when a woman came up and said “I was in your video. I was January”. Sedaka says “I didn’t believe her …” [perfect pause] “… she was old, old, old”.



Sedaka does look like this (from iCelebZ.com)

But here’s the thing. His voice is simply miraculous. It was always exceptional: those pristine top notes, as true as a bell, and the perfect taste with which it was deployed. His material could be icky but his delivery never was. And it’s still exquisite. No man of 70 should be able to sing like that. My partner David was at a gig by Crosby, Stills and Nash in mid-week and he reported that their voices took a couple of numbers to warm up and get into their stride (and Stephen Stills looked at death’s door, though Doctor Theatre kicked in pretty much as soon as he first attacked his guitar). At Bristol, I concentrated on Sedaka’s tone when the initial impact had passed (and my short hairs had lain down again) but the wear on it, even on sustained notes, was minimal. And the truth of his pitch never faltered through a two-hour set. When we were encouraged to sing along, I noticed that those early hits had been transposed down quite a few semi-tones. Fair enough. I also noted that not so many of us knew the lyrics to the verses as well as the choruses. He only did Oh Carol!, Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen and Breaking Up is Hard to Do, interspersed with more recent stuff, but I could have joined him on at least a dozen others of nearer 50 than 40 years’ vintage, word-perfect. Was I alone? (At one point in a more recent song he introduces a piano riff from an early B-side called One-Way Ticket. I hoped he might ask if anybody knew it but of course he didn’t. He never leaves such things to chance).

That’s one of his great strengths. His back catalogue is really vast. He’s recorded a few standards by other songwriters in his time – astutely chosen, beautifully done, even the tricky ones – but his stage act is all self-penned material and I swear he could play three or four weeks of gigs and never repeat himself. Not that repeating himself is against his nature; far from it. I know of no Sedaka album the content of which is wholly unique. He’s a compulsive recycler. Amazon lists 223 CDs over 19 pages, dominated by ‘Best of’ type compilations. Avoiding yet another copy of I Go Ape or Little Devil becomes a consideration when purchasing Sedaka.

Even so, he’s one of those songwriters who is simply full of music. The baroque composers – Vivaldi, JS Bach, Mozart, Handel, Haydn, Telemann, the Scarlattis – were like that. In our time, Leroy Anderson, Stevie Wonder, Elton John and now Rufus Wainwright are others, perhaps McCartney (you don’t have to like their stuff to acknowledge the fecundity).

But musical composition is his thing. Howard Greenfield was his lyricist for twenty years and he had a marvellous gift for the succinct, telling line. Greenfield only gets one look-in among the copious programme illustrations and an elegant tribute to him came quite late in the proceedings, followed by an emotionally restrained version of Our Last Song Together. Sedaka worked with Phil Cody for some years and also does his own words (all the new lyrics on the latest CD, The Music of My Life, are his). Both Cody’s and Sedaka’s are typically somewhat bloodless and generalised. If there’s a story to tell it is done smartly but most of these later lyrics are nearer the quality of Tim Rice or Don Black than Stephen Sondheim. There’s no arresting phrase, only banalities.

It doesn’t matter. The creamy, easy but fresh melodies are what carry him forward. Sedaka has never extended the form or created a masterpiece, a truly original song. He works within his comfort zone. His control – of the shape of a song and, just as surely, of the contours of his stage act – is absolute. And within that compass, he achieves a kind of perfection again and again. His early hits were perfect pop songs of the kind known as bubblegum. His mature works are completely crafted, wholly successful pieces of very palatable vin ordinaire. Some – Solitaire, Laughter in the Rain (“Michael Jackson’s favourite of my songs”), I Found My World in You, Standing on the Inside, Love Will Keep Us Together, That’s When the Music Takes Me – are rather more than that.

And just as surely Sedaka knows his audience. The selection of numbers was exactly right, the balance and contrasts unerringly plotted. His last encore took the roof off. Of course it did: it was Amarillo. Every face leaving the hall was shining with pleasure.

LABOUR PAINS

The Right Hon the Baron Mandelson of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and of Hartlepool in the County of Durham, First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and Lord President of the Council, has got lost in the post. As my regular readers will know, I am no fan of the way Royal Mail is presently run – my dispute with its managers about “guaranteed delivery” continues – but I am even less a fan of privatisation, either in part or whole. Mandelson blamed “market conditions” for the government’s withdrawal of its attempt to sell off about a third of the national postal operation but that is clearly not the whole of the story.

The unpopularity of (part-)privatisation within the Labour Party clearly played its part. The government may well only have managed to get the legislation through the Commons with opposition support. Peter Mandelson knows how damaging that would have been. He may come off as a meritocrat and pragmatist, inured from the electoral battle by his unelected membership of the upper house, but his roots are firmly in the party. Herbert Morrison, a legendary figure to anyone over 60 with any feel for British politics, was Mandelson’s maternal grandfather. Young Peter left the party for a time over the Vietnam War and, more than thirty years ago, was part of a Labour movement delegation to Cuba along with Arthur Scargill. The Blairite fixer who played such a central role in making Labour look electable again is a man whose nose for both strategy and tactics is still sensitive.

But it’s a pity that the government isn’t better at pre-empting the charge, levelled by both opposition and media, of a climb-down. The new Home Secretary Alan Johnson, another minister with an astute sense of what the party will wear, has effectively killed off the long campaign for mandatory ID cards. But this too is widely seen as a defeat for Labour in general and Gordon Brown in particular. Why is it not within the wit of Downing Street spin doctors to present these adjustments as a response to a different charge routinely made against this government: that it doesn’t listen?

It is at such levels of impression made upon the voters that elections are won and lost. On both these matters, the government is made to look weak. Mandelson’s shadow in the Commons, Kenneth Clarke, will certainly not become First Secretary of State if David Cameron gives him a cabinet post in any Tory administration, but Clarke easily and confidently dismissed the whole government in his scorn for the bitter pill that Mandelson was swallowing. Clarke has a great facility for appearing on top of his brief and yet affable and clubbable at the same time. He scores his points in the same way that any chap would while standing in the bar at the local cricket match. Brown’s advisors ought to pay attention.

The frontman of choice for Brown since his reshuffle has been Liam Byrne, Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Byrne is the sort of man the cut of whose jib would, if you took a free newspaper from him, make you still check your change. Ken Clarke may very well lie as comprehensively as Byrne appears to do but it never occurs to me that Clarke is lying whereas I wouldn’t believe Byrne even if he told me that the economy was in a worse state than the government had anticipated. With spokesmen like this, Brown doesn’t need enemies.

I’m not entirely persuaded that the Lord Mandelson is much of a vote-winner either. I’m very willing to believe that he deserves his high reputation for competence in management, diplomacy, administration, foresight and the black arts. But that doesn’t translate into the common touch. I suspect he does have one skill that, in the cliché, characterises gay men: that he’s good with old ladies. I dare say Baroness Thatcher rather likes him, as she liked Norman St John Stevas, whom Mandelson somewhat resembles in manner. But I doubt it plays well on the council estates where everyone believes Neil Kinnock’s shameless joke that Mandelson, while in a Hartlepool chip shop, pointed to the mushy peas and said he’d have some of that guacamole. A story like that doesn’t have to be true; the truth lies in the fact that it is told at all.

Mandelson’s elevation to the position of First Secretary of State was widely derided and the title scorned as if it were some kind of nasty unconstitutional innovation. In fact the title has been bestowed on a number of senior cabinet ministers as far back as Rab Butler and as recently as John Prescott. Having been elected deputy leader of the party by the party, Harriet Harman might have reason to feel peeved that Mandelson has been elevated to the position prima facie of deputy prime minister. But as neither of them is likely ever to rise to the top job, it hardly signifies. What they should all be concentrating on is doing everything to ensure that Gordon Brown is still prime minister in twelve months’ time. Getting rid of unpopular policies is a start. Finding ways to make a virtue of a U-turn would be better. Not introducing hard-to-sell policies in the first place would be best of all.

OVER the RAINBOW

The news media goes into overkill mode when faced with a story like the death of Michael Jackson. Editors evidently imagine that it’s impossible for them to run too much stuff about the deceased, especially if they can make use of that well tried and much loved soubriquet “the troubled star”. Jackson allows that in spades, of course. Given the gravity of some of the allegations that have surrounded him, it is thought appropriate to haul in the weightiest commentators to cover this aspect of his life. And out come the other superstars to make utterances quite as banal, hyperbolic, tacky and indeed incoherent as the maunderings of the fans, both on mic and on line, which are now considered an essential part of the mix.

from BBC website


This morning’s Guardian carried a front-page think-cum-reminisce piece to which I couldn’t resist emailing a rejoinder: “According to Richard Williams, Michael Jackson had a ‘terminal vibrato’ and was ‘terminally sentimental’. That’s what killed him then, right?” I know they won’t publish that. But even a distinguished scribe like Williams can fall into cliché under pressure of deadlines. That’s the trouble with news: they want it considered but they want it yesterday.

Commentators and fans alike – the one influencing the other and it’s chicken and egg -– have been drawing parallels with the deaths of Kennedy, Diana, Elvis. A better comparison, I suggest, is with Judy Garland, the fortieth anniversary of whose death Jackson survived by just three days. Both were child stars, ruthlessly exploited by their respective businesses. Both were vastly popular at their peak and attracted especially devoted (some might say demented) followers. Both were insecure in their sexuality and about their appearance, both of which they tried to adapt. Both were at their most dynamic when seen live, as the greatest performers always are. Both ran into colossal financial difficulties and could not keep their personal lives on track. Both became addicted to prescription drugs, which destroyed their health and certainly contributed to their deaths, Garland’s at three years younger than Jackson.


I don’t know if I think Jackson was very smart. Too unworldly ever to have a very shrewd take on things, I figure. I particularly think of his absurd, wide-eyed remark when he and Lisa Marie Presley met the press some three months into their mind-boggling marriage: “And they said it wouldn’t last!” Well, children, it lasted about two years, which, out here in the real world, is called “not lasting”.
from Answers.com website

Garland, on the other hand, had a brilliant brain. There’s an extant recording of a television interview she gave to Jack Paar that sets you back on your heels at the quickness and astuteness of her responses to the hackneyed probings of conventional showbiz. She doesn’t miss a nuance or an undertone and her answers are detailed, unconventional and lickety-spit. It’s a stunning turn. If the whole thing was scripted and rehearsed (often true in those days as more often true now than you want to think), she carries it off with complete conviction.

Next week, I’m going to a gig by Neil Sedaka. He’s never been a star to rival Jackson and it’s certainly never been at all hip to like him, as I have done for fifty years – Sedaka had his first hit the year Jackson was born. Even so, he wrote the best-selling song (in the UK) so far this millennium: none other than (Is This the Way to) Amarillo?

There are aspects of his shtik that I’m not keen on: those Liberace/Richard Clayderman touches of classique pretension, for instance. But Sedaka always had an exquisite singing voice, surprisingly little worn at 70, and with his writing partner Howard Greenfield (who died of Aids more than twenty years ago) composed a string of numbers that were, one after another, simply perfectly crafted pop songs. I’m sure there’ll be some dedicated fans there: women in their 60s and 70s still with beehive hair-dos. I suspect there’ll be much less of a gay contingent than you would get at a Jackson concert or (overwhelmingly) at a Garland show but I can live with that.

When Sedaka goes, especially if it’s not for two or three more decades, he perhaps won’t even make the news bulletins (though he certainly should; Gene Pitney did). And for those of us who liked him, that will actually be a mercy.

The WORLD is YOUR LOBSTER, MY SON

“Going somewhere nice this year?” barbers and other occasional acquaintances are apt to ask as summer gets into its stride.

I mean to return to “going somewhere” but for a moment permit me to dilate upon occasional conversations. Many quite like, even relish such time-passing. Not me. Being obliged to discuss immigration with a cab driver is, as far as I am concerned, the seventh circle of hell. Trapped in the barber’s chair, I find myself hoping that a light snooze will quickly overtake me or that I can dissemble one so that the transaction may be completed to the sound merely of clacking scissors and whirring clippers.

At my local barbers, there are two women who do a tolerable job with my hair and whom I have, over the years, sufficiently trained to meet my social needs. One is happy to be quiet. The first few times, she essayed: “Got the day off work?” How far do I need to feel required to voyage into an account of my working situation before she wishes she hadn’t asked? Do I really care whether she knows what my arrangements are? The other crimper is livelier but she is perfectly happy to swap anecdotes about dogs (or rather my dog tales for her grandchildren vignettes), even though most of both contributions are somewhat dog-eared. At least she does me the kindness of remembering that one of our dogs is a Great Dane.

There are two chaps there who cut hair too (including the new proprietor – needless to say a lot newer than either of the women because no barber is going to hand on his business to a woman) and I wouldn’t object to either of them looking after me, save that their only conversational topic is the one that bores me almost as much as reality television: football.

Going somewhere nice this year? Well, no we’re not. And thanks so much for asking because it reminds me that we haven’t actually “been away” since spring 2006 when we did a swing around the moors, the peaks, the dales and the lakes (not necessarily in that order) as a sort of honeymoon after our civil partnership ceremony. And it’s four-and-a-quarter years since we were abroad anywhere.

Are we extremely atypical? We are both at home all day most days. I have occasional forays to London, Oxford, Bath, Cheltenham, Bristol. David’s outings are even fewer and almost never more than a single over-night. I keep urging him to take off in the car for a week or ten days and he blows hot and cold about the idea but doesn’t take the plunge. I ponder setting off on a succession of buses (with my free pass) in the autumn and seeing where I get to. But we never talk of having a real holiday.

The first problem is the fact that we have the dogs. I always say that dogs are a much larger responsibility than children. When there was just the Dane, we took him two or three times to Landmark Trust properties and, although he found it a bit perplexing, he liked new scents and walks and soon settled. As he’s got older, he cleaves to the familiarity of home and is fussed by going further than our field. Twenty minutes away from base and he’s more than ready to retreat. We never took both of them to stay in a strange property though we have left them both with trusted house sitters. But now that the younger one is a special needs dog, taking them anywhere new is fraught with difficulty and imposing Tati’s medication and supervision regime on anyone else seems a lot to ask. Then of course house sitters add substantially to the cost of the holiday.

That’s the other thing. Like most people, we’ve been pulling in our horns lately. Provisions and utilities and … um … books and CDs are necessities. Jetting or even driving somewhere unfamiliar with no guarantee that you’ll have a good time seems a less sensible way to spend dwindling capital. On the other hand, we have numbers of friends in much more parlous financial straits than us who determinedly continue to take three or four foreign trips a year. I’m a little bemused by this but then none of them has such a comfortable and restorative place to spend every day as we do.

Am I rationalising in some way? My grandparents’ generation thought going to London was about as exotic an experience as the world had to offer. (Having said that, though, I remember the extraordinary adventure of my maternal grandmother, Fanny Allsop from Belper in Derbyshire, who, before she was married, got a job as personal assistant to Mrs John Jacob Astor when that lady was divorcing her legendary husband. Fanny accompanied Mrs Astor across the Atlantic on the Olympic just a hundred years ago and lived with her in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria. Mr Astor later perished on the Olympic’s sister ship, the Titanic). None of my other three grandparents, I think, ever strayed beyond these shores.

To my parents’ generation, “abroad” was still an almost unimaginable place. However, World War II took my father to Europe – he was in the D-Day landings and eventually got as far as Italy – and so the mystique began to dissipate. As a child, I was taken by my mother for a day in Paris and then a fortnight in Switzerland. Dad stayed home grumbling but he never wanted to go anywhere anyway. Our family never did anything unless Mum initiated it, organised it and oversaw it. Dad was a stay-at-home, only really happy in familiar surroundings, much like Fargo our Great Dane. He liked to quote that line from the World War I trenches: “If I knew a better ‘ole, I’d go to it”. Though we had seaside holidays in Britain, we never went abroad as a family. After I left home, Mum had a trip to Kenya with friends, Dad went to a bierfest in Germany (dragged there by friends) and the two of them once holidayed, most unexpectedly, in Tunisia. But that was it.

I have been considerably more relaxed about travel than either of my parents but it is not a compulsion or even a requirement for me. Of the places I have yet to visit, I would be sorry if I thought I would never get to Vienna or St Petersburg, the Amazon or Yosemite. And I would be positively distraught to learn that I had already enjoyed my last trip to New York or Rome, the Caribbean or the Far East.

I am not wholly persuaded that travel broadens the mind. My most-travelled friend (former friend nowadays) may be the most closed-minded person I ever knew (which is how he comes to be a former friend). And, as Sammy Cahn wrote: “It’s very nice to go travellin’/ But it’s so much nicer, yes it’s so much nicer to come home”.

By the by, that line I used as the title for this posting: it comes from Arthur Daley. It wasn’t written by Leon Griffiths or any other of the regular writers on Minder. George Cole’s son dreamt up the line and Cole paid him £5 for it and deployed it in an episode. I know this because, much to my surprise, I found myself acting as script executive for one series of Minder nearly twenty years ago. But that’s a story for another occasion …

STILL STANDING

As the smoke begins to clear after days on end of noise and confusion, stifling heat but precious little light, Gordon Brown has come through his backbenchers’ meeting and remains in Downing Street, horribly bloodied but remarkably unbowed. If the media are to be believed, this has been June’s only important story and yet there doesn’t need to be a general election until next May. A sense of proportion appears conspicuous by its absence from this saga.

If a week is a long time in politics – probably the only entirely true thing that Harold Wilson ever said – then eleven months is an eternity. The political climate and the electoral context will be different by next May, perhaps markedly different. None of us can know what the intervening months will bring. Few of us had any inkling a month ago that the overriding media story about politics through the second half of May would concern MPs’ expenses. Events, dear boy, events will occur and balances will shift. Although psephologists love to project the results of one completed election onto another still to be held, the exercise is wholly idle. The next election will be held in an unpredictable future.

The commentariat decided long ago that the Tories would win a general election in 2009 or 2010 and this conclusion brooks no discussion. Shorter memories than mine ignore that Labour was supposed to win the general election of 1992; even on the night, the BBC “called” it for them. Sir Robert Worcester of MORI, no less, “called” the 2004 US election for John Kerry after the polls closed and we went to bed happy that Bush was out. The Tories won the European elections handsomely in 2004 but lost the general election in 2005. Politics does not stand still, even overnight.

The media’s obsession with individual politicians – Westminster’s equivalent of celebrities – rather than policies seriously distorts the way that the electorate understands what is at stake in elections. I would like to have heard or read some debate on European issues ahead of the Euro-elections and some more on local issues ahead of the council elections but the media have neither time nor space for such matters, being swallowed up by speculation and the mad joy of crisis coverage.

Reporters will object that they are only reflecting the perfervid atmosphere in Westminster but this is disingenuous. Parliamentarians conduct a great deal of debate and evolve a great deal of policy that is never covered at all or only covered en passant in the media. Correspondents are much more interested in plotters and loudmouths in the Westminster village than mature, steady and reliable members who are, as the prime minister likes to put it, “getting on with the job”. And politicians are by nature liable to be attention-seekers. Those whose off-the-record gossip or on-the-record outspokenness makes them favourites of the media will inevitably enjoy the limelight. But they are not necessarily any more representative than the random vox pops that now pass for public comment on television news bulletins.

What’s more, politicians are inevitably influenced by the media. When headlines and broadcast packages are whipping up a frenzy, it is hardly surprising if MPs let it get to them. The frantic pace of the rumour mill is bound to turn heads but you take it seriously at your peril. The so-called “sources” that are credited with so much Westminster gossip are impossible for the reader or viewer to judge precisely because their opinions are unattributed. Given that there is no identifiable source, what is to stop the reporter making it up?

That the media are obsessed with who is up and who down rather than anything more substantial is simply demonstrated. Here are June’s successive main headlines from The Guardian and The Observer in the editions that reach us in the west country: “Brown insists he won’t step down as election rout looms” (June 1st); “Beleaguered Darling faces reshuffle axe” (2nd); “Labour’s day of resignation” (3rd); “Brown hangs on, for now” (4th); “The smooth assassin” (refers to James Purnell, 5th); “Bloodied Brown vows: ‘I will not walk away’” (6th); “Labour fears EU poll disaster will spark fresh crisis for PM” (7th); “Judgment day for Brown” (8th).

It’s noticeable how little in these headlines is genuine news and how much idle – and sometimes plain wrong, like the Darling line – speculation. It is hardly to be wondered at if a prime minister turns away from such febrile stuff and ignores it altogether – at which point, of course, the gossipmongers will say he is in denial.

I do not deny that Brown is a highly political animal with a taste for plots and black propaganda and low cunning. Of all the resignation statements to come out of this saga, the one that is perhaps most damaging for thoughtful observers is that of Jane Kennedy today, saying that she was repelled by the negative briefing and attempts to destabilize that emanate from Downing Street. The Damian McBride affair confirms that there is substance to this charge.

The prime minister would do well to rise above this game. One of his strengths has been that he is not Blair in the sense that he is not a snake oil salesman devoted to spin and gesture politics, something that also handily distinguished him from Cameron. But lately he has allowed himself to be persuaded to make some gestures that sit on him so awkwardly. It’s not merely the rictus smile on You Tube. It’s also the wholly unpersuasive pretence of being concerned about Jade Goody and Susan Boyle. Brown should leave this kind of thing to the more simpering breed of populist.

Meanwhile, the daily issue is: can he survive? Absurd question. Of course he can. He doesn’t, as far as we are aware, suffer from a terminal illness. He is relatively young and evidently has enormous reservoirs of resilience. So then: will he survive? Time will tell. Why bother with predictions no more well-founded than punts on the Grand National?

But look at the next general election from another perspective. If Labour does lose, no one will be able to account it a shock. Indeed, it will need to be a defeat of much greater resonance than those we have seen for the pundits to make much of it. From a moderately bloody defeat, Labour will recover and renew itself.

But if Labour wins it will be one of the greatest reversals of fortune in modern politics. The European elections have inured us to the unprecedented so we ought to understand that something extreme could happen again. Who is to say that David Cameron’s luck will not turn soon? He has set off on a course that could do his party great damage in his decision to ally himself with a rogues’ gallery of right wing and neo-fascist groupings in the European parliament. What will he do if the two new BNP MEPs apply to join?

For the Conservatives to lose the next election would be much more disastrous for them than it would be for Labour. It would mark a fourth defeat running and taint Cameron as the fifth failed leader in succession. And it would be against the most propitious set of circumstances an opposition party has faced at least since 1997. The challenger will not have the government quite so on the ropes as this for a long time to come. No wonder they are baying continuously for an election now. They may already sense that things could get better for Labour. To use the inflated language of contemporary political coverage, if the Tories lost they would be “finished”: the party would implode and there would need to be a realignment on the right. With the BNP and UKIP dug in at the European parliament, here would be a truly dangerous situation. Perhaps for all our sakes we should hope that Labour does indeed lose the next election.

Meanwhile a summer break lies ahead. The hysteria will wane. The government may get good news on the economic front. Mandelson might be persuaded from his reckless determination to sell off parts of the Royal Mail. The new cabinet could prove to be less ham-fisted than the last one. James Purnell, Hazel Blears and Caroline Flint will soon disappear from the public memory whereas moats and gardening expenses may linger longer. And things will happen. As far as Gordon Brown is concerned, there is still everything to play for, especially if he can steer the public’s attention towards policy where, it should note, there is still a resounding vacuum in the Tory’s programme for government. As the BBC's Nick Robinson is apt to observe, though more with an eye on prolonging the supposed “leadership crisis”, it’s not over yet.

The MUSIC GOES ROUND and ROUND

The prefects are moving in on illegal downloaders. Research revealed by something called the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property calculates that some 4.73bn (yes, billion) items are ripped off each year by illicit filesharers in Britain, let alone the rest of the world. For its part, the International Federation of the Phonograph Industry reckons that for every paid-for download to a British computer, there are six items that are stashed in collections without payment. These statistics, by the way, were stolen from an on-line article in The Guardian. As I have been buying the paper since before most of its New Media correspondents were born, I feel that I have already paid handsomely to make use of this info.



As one who certainly wishes to protect his own intellectual property rights, I don’t for a moment condone naked piracy. At the same time, I daily download material without paying for it and I do so with no compunction whatsoever. Permit me to explain.

I have never sought to watch a movie on-line or in any other circumstance on my iMac because I doubt that my screen (even at 17 x 11 inches) or my sound system will do it justice. I have picked up a couple of torrented episodes of American television drama serials that, for one reason or another, I missed on transmission but, believe me, that isn’t denying anybody any income because I am not about to buy the DVD of the whole of, say, season four of The West Wing just to bag one episode. In fact, if there had been no other way of accessing the missed episode, I would have been more likely to give up on the whole enterprise.



But I do download a lot of music. In the last year or two, I have certainly taken many more copies off filesharers’ sites than the “songs” (as they call each track) that I have paid for on iTunes or, lately, Amazon. Downloading is not anyway my preferred manner of collecting music. I will never love any recording medium the way that I – and those of my generation – loved vinyl but, even with the lack of tactile pleasure and vastly reduced user-friendliness of so-called jewel-cases and their booklets as opposed to album sleeves, I am reconciled to CDs (though I was a very late convert). And I will go out and buy CDs far sooner than download them, paid for or not.



But the music retail trade is in full retreat. It’s of course a chicken-and-egg situation but the fact is that I find it easier and easier to find what I want on-line and harder and harder in shops. Last Tuesday, I asked after classical CDs in the central Bristol branch of HMV and was told that they were to be found as “a sub-section of Easy Listening”. How grotesquely shaming. Mind, as the meagre selection on offer appeared to be dominated by the likes of Katherine Jenkins, Russell Watson and violin-scraping glam group Bond, it was perhaps not an inappropriate arrangement.

HMV originally built its business on selling recordings of classical music. When I first shopped at HMV in the 1960s – what was then its sole outlet, situated on the south side of Oxford Street – classical LPs were what greeted you as you entered the store on the ground floor. “Pop” and other vulgar stuff was relegated to the basement. In their day, I bet HMV made more relative income from the sale of 78s of Richard Tauber, Kathleen Ferrier or Dame Myra Hess than they ever have from CDs by Girls Aloud, Sonic Youth and Eminem.



There are now two branches of HMV on Oxford Street – both of them on the north side – and each does actually carry a very useful if (necessarily) not all that comprehensive range of both recent and standard-repertoire recordings, though not of course on the ground floor. I never leave either branch with fewer than a dozen purchases. London also boasts the legendary Harold Moores Records on Great Marlborough Street (where I rarely find what I’m looking for but discover all manner of other treasures while looking), the specialist Opera Shop on St Martin’s Lane and, in a different part of the forest, the fabulous Dress Circle on Upper St Martin’s Lane. The Virgin stores (which became Zavvi), that often had good selections for those who didn’t just want pop/pap, are gone now.

Down our way, we are pretty lucky with Bath Compact Discs and the timeless Duck, Son & Pinker, also in Bath; Sounds Good in Cheltenham; and Blackwells Music Shop in Oxford. But the internet has really opened up the retail of CDs and indeed LPs for the discriminating, largely because local storage is not an issue if your business is mail order or commercial downloading. These days, on-line shopping has made deleted recordings available in greater profusion than ever before.

And this brings me back to the matter of “pirated” acquisitions. While I am a steady purchaser of current recordings as mp3 downloads from iTunes – and I never dream of seeking free access to new or recent releases – the music I download for nothing is, in the first place, very largely by people (composers, songwriters, arrangers, performers) who are dead, frequently quite a long while dead. I am not denying residuals to these artists and if I am denying income to their descendants and other exploiters of their back catalogues (reissuers, repackagers) then I cannot feel badly about it.



Next, even among those artists who are alive, the examples of their work that I am most apt to download are long deleted. The only way I am likely to encounter this material otherwise is through high-priced specialist dealers or via the serendipity of charity and other junk-type shops. Either way, none of the profit is going to anyone associated with making the music. For the customer, getting what one wants by such means is considerably more of a lottery than is finding a like-minded filesharer on the net and gratefully copying the collection that he – let’s face it, it is always a ‘he’ – uploads to his blog. For the sites I am accessing without money changing hands are those set up by enthusiasts who take pleasure in sharing their interests. And there are hundreds of them.



Now I could go to, for instance, the incomparable Footlight Records store in New York City and spend a fortune on well-preserved long-players of show scores and standards singers but, again, only the store would make any money from it, not the songwriters or performers or musicians. And while I will assuredly always visit the store when I am in Manhattan, I wasn’t there yesterday when I was able, without leaving my study, to download for free a Dinah Washington 10-inch LP that the store might – or of course might not – have had in stock for (you can be sure) a pretty fancy price.

And here’s the crucial point. I am downloading the stuff because I can. It’s a resource that I am availing myself of. Take this treasure trove away and it will benefit the music industry nothing. Because it is there and for free, I am, on the one hand, filling a few gaps in my huge and ancient collection, from Scherchen conducting Mahler or Eleanor Steber singing Samuel Barber to long-deleted LPs of the likes of Lee Wiley and Moondog. On the other hand and much more significantly, I am greatly expanding my knowledge of areas of music on which I have previously had a much slenderer grasp – for example, jazz and blues – as well as widening my view of areas that hitherto I have always cherished – classical music, show tunes and standards. Thanks to the uploading enthusiasts, I have increased my store of stylists of the past, from Mabel Mercer to Johnny Mercer, by way of Carmen McRae, Gordon MacRae, Connee Boswell, Eve Boswell, Judy Holliday, Billie Holiday and all the rest. I have further investigated the music of Bernard Herrmann and Woody Herman, Bill Evans and Gil Evans and so on.



Now, I would never have bought these things, either because finding them would be too much trouble, too fraught with disappointment – imagine rushing home with a precious vinyl recording of Pablo Casals, say, or Luisa Tetrazzini and finding the surface noise was intolerable – or because I knew too little about the work and/or artist and would be reluctant to spend money on spec. I don’t mind a bit downloading for nothing and then investigating an artist whose work I am not familiar with – recently, for instance, Cannonball Adderley, Jane Froman, Charlie Patton – but I’m never going to hand over folding money for them, sight unseen.

So what I’m saying is this: the downloads that I am taking for free are having no effect whatsoever on the economy of the music business. Indeed, by widening the compass of my interests, this “illicit” activity is making it more, not less, likely that I will expand the number and scope of items on my shopping list. So the authorities should beware of jumping to the conclusion that by shutting down the filesharing market they would be righting a wrong. As with most issues, it just isn’t as easy as that. Unless of course the Department of Culture can ensure that CDs at competitive prices by, say, Blind Willie McTell, Sylvia Syms, Lotte Lehmann and Ellis Larkins will be generally available in perpetuity, it seems to me that it would be better all round if that true free market – the internet – were left alone.

A WORD from the WISE

The recent death of the writer and editor Anne Scott-James at 96 brought back vivid memories of one of the delights of my adolescence. My Word! was a panel game broadcast on the Home Service and its subject was words. Devised by Edward J Mason and Tony Shryane (who also dreamt up The Archers), it was, needless to say, literate and non-condescending, as indeed was most wireless output in those kinder times. It also had a theme tune, written by the great Vivien Ellis, that was a true call to arms with its first fifteen notes being persistently sounded thirds.

When I first “listened in” (as we used to say) to My Word!, the regular teams were Frank Muir and Dilys Powell against Denis Norden and Nancy Spain. Scott-James joined when Spain died. Muir and Norden were then the eminences grises of broadcast comedy, having penned the imperishable radio sitcom Take It from Here and the raucous prep school comedy for television, Whack-O!, which starred ‘Professor’ Jimmy Edwards. Dilys Powell was the very doyenne of film critics, reviewing for The Sunday Times for nearly forty years and living, like Scott-James, into her nineties. Scott-James was less known to me aside from the programme, working as she then did for The Daily Mail.

The regular chairman of the quiz, at least in my time, was Jack Longland. Sir Jack, as he became, was an educationalist by profession and the sometime intrusion of a stuffed shirt into his manner rather illustrated the teaching cliché of the time. I remember one occasion when Longland carefully explained some reference, ending his discourse with the – no doubt rhetorical – question “d’you see?” “Yes, Jack” replied Norden with exquisitely understated waspishness. “I see”.

As a burgeoning wordsmith, I found the whole thrust of the quiz utterly absorbing. But the climax of the programme, in which the women took an unavoidable back seat, was the delightful indulgence of the taste for whimsy that Muir and Norden shared. At the start of the programme, Longland would announce a pair of sayings, quotes or other variety of construct that, at the end, would be subjected to an elaborately cod explanation of its derivation by the respective comedy writers. The pleasant fiction was maintained that the clever chaps would dream up these monologues during the course of the quiz.

One such that stays with me was “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” Scott-James having identified it as a line from Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind, Norden then launched into his own account. This involved a disquisition upon the unreliability of seasonal underwear and the need for applying animal skin to the nether regions, thus leading to Shelley’s indispensable advice: “if winter coms can spring, be fur behind”. The use of the term ‘coms’ – popular shorthand for the pre-central-heating one-piece woollen undergarment known as ‘combinations’ – unerringly dates the yarn.

For myself, I always favoured Norden’s fantasies, perhaps because Longland outrageously favoured Frank Muir: “by the extent and volume of your applause, Frank Muir wins that round and he and Dilys Powell win the contest”. Anybody not partisan could hear that the response of the studio audience showed no such regular favour.

Norden is now the only survivor of the programme. A friend who works in advertising says that he was the most charming, affable and punctilious person to work with. I always rather deplored Norden’s voice-overs, largely on grounds of the products he chose to support. I always hoped to meet him – never have – so that I could point out that I would be unable to accept an invitation to dine chez Norden for fear of being served Wimpyburgers washed down with Hirondelle.

By contrast, I would gladly have eaten anything at the table of Anne Scott-James who, after all, was an early commissioner of the columns of Elizabeth David. And I expect that I would have enjoyed fierce arguments with her husband (they divorced in the early 1960s) Macdonald Hastings who, though very right wing, was certainly charming and interesting if I recall accurately his regular reports for the BBC nightly magazine Tonight. Sir Max Hastings is their son.

****************************************************************

A parting note on this year’s magical May that ended yesterday. I happened to be using the binoculars in the garden that morning when I noticed a little face inside the entrance to the nesting box up in the ash. It was a nuthatch fledgling. He kept popping his head out, then withdrawing, sometimes disappearing but then returning to his vantage point. Suddenly he leaned right out of the box and then toppled in an ungainly fashion onto the perch strategically placed at right angles to the entrance. He tottered there a moment or two and then launched himself recklessly at the trunk opposite, landing safely, recovering from his sense of shock and then, with increasing confidence, hopping up the tree in the manner so characteristic of his species. After a few moments, I lost track of him among the leaves. No other face appeared at the nestbox entrance, at least not in the next few minutes. I don’t know whether nuthatches raise a single chick or whether he was the last to venture forth. But I felt that I had witnessed a sublime moment of nature’s everyday evolution. I hope he (or she) chooses to nest in our garden next year and bless us with the next nuthatch generation.




Nuthatch by Jiri Bohdal on Naturfoto website

POSTICHE GUARANTEES

My vast international readership will be viewing with growing concern the lack of any update on the dispute raging between me and Royal Mail as first illustrated in the posting 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' of April 26th last.

Royal Mail did indeed reply to my letter and there have been further exchanges since. Here is the correspondence that followed during this month:

Royal Mail Headquarters
5th Floor
148 Old Street
LONDON EC1V 9HQ

12 May 2009
[punctuation throughout sic]

Dear Mr Gilbert

Thank you for your letter of 26 April addressed to Donald Brydon. I have been asked to investigate your complaint and reply to you on his behalf.

May I begin by saying how sorry I am to hear that you have found our Special Delivery Service so disappointing. I fully appreciate the fact that you used this service specifically for the purpose of being able to confirm the item had been delivered the next working day unfortunately, we were unable to achieve this on this occasion.

I appreciate your definition of the term “guarantee” however, I should point out that we did in fact carry out the action you asked us to, by attempting to deliver the item by 1pm. At this point I should also explain that we offer a guaranteed delivery time, it would be impracticable to offer a guaranteed delivery, as there will always be occasions when we cannot accomplish this. The terms and conditions of the Special Delivery service state that if we fail to deliver your item by the delivery deadline, we will refund the postage in full. However, the guarantee cannot apply if no one is available or willing to sign for the item. On the reverse of the Special Delivery receipt customers are advised to check these terms and conditions. This can be done by means of our Special Delivery leaflet, which is available from any Post Office Counter.

Regarding the “While you were out card”, the postman responsible for the attempted delivery is confident that a card was left. Whilst, I accept that people make mistakes, there is no evidence to suggest that the correct procedure was not followed in this instance.

Turning if I may to the problems you experienced with our Customer Service representatives. All our staff are trained to a very high standard and should be able to deal with a customer enquiry in a polite and professional manner, consequently, it is extremely disappointing to hear that this has not been a customer’s perception. Under the circumstances I can only apologise unreservedly for the inadequacies you identified. Particularly with regard to the failure of a supervisor to leave a message on your answer phone. I fully appreciate the fact that this will have done little to restore your confidence in our services. However, I can assure you that we take such reports of failure very seriously as they may identify a need for further staff training.

Perhaps I should take this opportunity to explain that very few members of our staff have direct telephone lines. Whilst, some people do not like the use of automated telephone systems, they do save both our customers and staff a great deal of time routing the caller to the person best equipped to deal with their enquiry. However, I am sorry to hear that you find the system unsatisfactory.

I have enclosed a cheque for £7.00 to cover the cost of bringing this matter to our attention. Whilst, the Special Delivery Service was performed to a satisfactory standard, it appears that your subsequent enquiries were not dealt with to the very high standard our customers have every right to expect.

I trust you will accept this gesture of our goodwill along with my sincere apologies for any trouble and inconvenience we have caused you. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention and if I can offer any help or advice in the future please do not hesitate to contact me again.

Yours sincerely

Joan Siddron
Assistant to Board Members

*************************************
May 16th 2009


Dear Ms Siddron,

Thank you for your very comprehensive response of 12th inst to my letter to the Chairman of 26th ultimo regarding my experience of the Special Delivery service.

I am grateful for the cheque, though it ought not to have been withheld until the matter was escalated to the Chairman’s office. Moreover, you will perhaps understand if I suggest that the sound of it entering my account was reminiscent of a stable door being shut etc. You cannot know the discomfort caused to several individuals by the ramifications of Royal Mail’s failure to deliver the letter in question and no price can be placed upon that.

But the tenor of your argument suggests that this compensation is more in recognition of my treatment at the hands of Customer Services than of any sense that I might have been grievously misled by the claims made for the Special Delivery service. I demur.

Your third paragraph concludes: “On the reverse of the Special Delivery receipt customers are advised to check [the] terms and conditions. This can be done by means of our Special Delivery leaflet, which is available from any Post Office Counter”. On the first point, I was given no Special Delivery receipt. I was merely handed a regular till receipt that bears nothing on its reverse. Examining the till receipt, I see that it says towards the bottom “Please refer to separate terms and conditions”. It also says “Guaranteed Delivery Date: 31/03/2009”.

On the second point, I asked at the local post office yesterday morning for a copy of the Special Delivery leaflet. What I was given was a leaflet called ‘pricing made easy’ (your lower case) and a 44-page booklet, ‘mail made easy: A guide to our UK and International postal services and Code of Practice’. Having been specific in my request, I did not enquire further about the leaflet you mention. Had I asked for such a leaflet on the day I posted the letter, I would not have thought to query being handed such literature as this.

Regarding what is available in practice at branches of the Post Office, it often transpires that what is advocated from – and therefore assumed to happen by – head office does not actually prevail at ground level. Might I suggest (if I may put it this way) that you and your colleagues get out more.

The pricing leaflet that I was given includes prices for Special Delivery. The notes twice use the phrase “guarantees delivery” in regard to this service. It makes no mention of any circumstances in which delivery cannot be guaranteed. Page 5 of the more substantial guide lists features of the various delivery services. The first of these is Special Delivery. Under a heading ‘Product features’, this service is characterised as “Guaranteed next day delivery” against which is an asterisk. The footnote to which one is thus directed states: “Guaranteed definition: delivered by 9.00am or 1.00pm or your money back”. You were perhaps a little irritated by my rehearsal of OED definitions of “guarantee” in my original letter. Now we have Royal Mail’s own definition. In this as in all other references, the guarantee is attached to the concept of delivery, not of attempted delivery, good intentions or wishful thinking.

Pages 6 and 7 provide further details of the Special Delivery service including a repetition of the words “This service guarantees delivery”. Neither here nor elsewhere in the booklet (which I have read thoroughly) is there any mention of any circumstance in which delivery cannot be guaranteed. So the only source for terms and conditions containing the get-out clause concerning attempted delivery that I have so far happened upon is the Royal Mail website. I hardly think that customers who approach a postal counter in good faith for information can acceptably be sent home to go on-line. This is not good Post Office Counters business practice.

The fact remains that the great weight of promotion to the public of Special Delivery obscures any possibility that the vaunted guarantee is no such thing. If you and your colleagues cannot directly spot the discrepancy between the repeated mantra “guarantees/guaranteed delivery” and your own statement that “it would be impracticable to offer a guaranteed delivery”, I certainly do not possess the linguistic or dialectical skills to make you conscious of it. There is a curious parallel between Royal Mail’s after-the-event invocations of a let-out clause that proves elusive – is it on a leaflet that may or may not be available at “any” Post Office Counter? – and those MPs who will not accept any responsibility for dubious practices over their expense claims because of a system of rules that they now discover to be inadequate. In both cases, I am certainly entitled to argue that good faith has not been the first consideration of best practice.

Because Royal Mail appears to be in corporate denial about this matter, it is now my intention to copy the entire correspondence to the Postal Review Panel.

Thank you for your time,


Yours sincerely,


W Stephen Gilbert

**************************************

20 May 2009
[punctuation throughout sic]

Dear Mr Gilbert

Thank you for your letter of 16 May, from which I was sorry to hear that you found my earlier reply unacceptable.

Having considered the matter most carefully I feel there is very little I can add to what I have said previously except, perhaps to apologise for the fact that the leaflet dedicated to the Special Delivery Service is no longer in print. However, I was concerned to hear from your letter that some Post Office Counters are frequently without certain items of stationary [sic] and simply refer customers to the website. Should you wish me to take this matter further, perhaps you would kindly send me details of the Post Offices in question.

It is of course always disappointing to hear that a customer has cause for complaint and even more so when we have been unable to offer an acceptable solution. I realise you will be disappointed with my reply, however, I feel I have clarified our position on this matter.

Thank you, once again for your letter and may I assure you of our best intentions at all times.

Yours sincerely

Joan Siddron

***************************************

May 27th 2009

Dear Ms Siddron,

Thank you for your further letter to me of 20th inst concerning the Royal Mail service flagged as “guaranteed delivery”.

Just for the record, when I wrote that “I hardly think that customers who approach a postal counter in good faith for information can acceptably be sent home to go on-line”, I did not intend to suggest that this is in fact the practice in post offices, rather that sending customers on-line would appear to be the only alternative if copies of the terms and conditions are not available in post office outlets. As I reported, I did not find in my local post office the leaflet to which you directed me.

But this is beside the point, which remains the one that you decline to address: that of Royal Mail offering a false guarantee. Depending upon the finding of the Postal Review Panel, I must tell you that my next action will be to explore with my lawyers whether there is a case against Royal Mail under the UCPD.

Yours sincerely*,


W Stephen Gilbert

* Please note: the sincerity of this letter cannot of course be guaranteed; I am only obliged to make an attempt to be sincere. For the small print, see my website.

***************************************

A couple of notes for my blog readers. The Postal Review Panel is an independent body that reviews complaints when the complainant is unsatisfied with Royal Mail's own investigation. I copied the correspondence (up to the end of the letter that announces my intention of approaching the PRP) and sent it with a brief (really!) covering note. I would not have known of the PRP's existence without mention of it appearing in standing copy at the bottom of each of Ms Siddron's letters. The PRP's acknowledgment informed me that a response would take up to 30 days.

I have also copied the correspondence (up to the same point) to my MP. He has necessarily been preoccupied with explaining a number of sleazy items from his parliamentary expenses but he has properly acknowledged receipt of my material and asked if there is anything specific I want him to do. I have resisted the temptation to tell him to stand down at the next election.

The UCPD is the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, issued by the European parliament, which subsumes some of the provisions of the old Trades Descriptions Act. In short, I am telling Royal Mail that I believe that describing their Special Delivery Service as one which "guarantees delivery" is an unfair practice because they can, by their own admission, make no such guarantee.

FARAGO and FARAGE

Mr Cameron calls confidently for a general election. Opposition leaders do that, you may remark, only when they are comfortably ahead in the opinion polls. They also demand that the national leader debate with them on television. If Gordon Brown had the wit, he would offer to debate with Mr Cameron only on condition that Mr Cameron, to whom the extreme right wing parties are the greater threat, undertake to debate on television with the leaders of UKIP and the BNP. You may rest assured that Mr Cameron would not agree to do so. Such an offer would expose the essential emptiness of Mr Cameron’s challenge.

But Mr Cameron should be careful what he wishes for. There is much evidence of the electorate being in a mood of “a plague on both your houses, including your second homes and those you have flipped”. The Sunday Times hazards that more than half of the sitting members will have been replaced (“swept away” is how it is characterised) when we know the results of the next general election: 325 is the curiously precise figure. Labour currently has 349 members taking the whip and there is no suggestion that all of those “swept away” will number among them: far from it.

Long before that election, on June 4th to be precise, there will be elections for the European parliament and for many local councils. The commentariat is increasingly convinced that these elections will hit Labour very hard – though Labour cannot proportionately fall a great deal further – but will also deplete the Conservatives and to a degree the Liberal Democrats (who, remember, were overtaken by UKIP in the popular vote last time round).

This is a dangerous moment. The liberal intentions of the Weimar Republic were swept away on popular sentiment for a break with the past that the National Socialists seemed to represent for Germans in 1933. Thereby, Adolf Hitler came to power and Europe was in the grip of cataclysm from which it would not begin to recover for a quarter of a century. It must be contemplated that UKIP or an unholy alliance of UKIP and the BNP may be in a strong position after the June elections, perhaps holding the balance of power on – or even (unthinkably) running – councils. Stranger things happen.

So Mr Cameron’s summer 2009 election would not necessarily produce the unassailable Tory majority that he fondly imagines. Perhaps the Commons intake of BNP and/or UKIP members would be so great that the Tories could only take a ruling role by going into coalition with either or both of these parties. In such a case, the Tories might need to ditch Cameron in favour of some leader more amenable to the extreme right: Eric Pickles, for instance. There’s your nightmare scenario, then: Pickles as Prime Minister, Nigel Farage as Foreign Secretary, Nick Griffin as Home Secretary and – oh, let’s see – Sir Fred Goodwin as Chancellor. Bring it on, Dave.

If it is because he is mindful of these possibilities that Mr Cameron has re-opened the Conservative candidates list and invited political greenhorns (not his phrase) to offer themselves, he is making a terrible mistake. We have seen how carefully-vetted, long-term members of the Tory party – and the other established parties -– have nonetheless treated the rules with cavalier disregard. How much more unmanageable the Tories would be if their big tent were to embrace a whole new self-chosen band of delegates with nothing undisclosed beyond their outsized egos. That way madness lies.

For an alternative script is being written: Get Me into Office – I'm a Celebrity. In this one, the likes of Esther Rantzen, Richard Branson, Joanna Lumley, Simon Cowell and Susan Boyle sit in a cabinet of National Government and solve all our problems by the application of star-power common sense. Don’t imagine that this is any less horrifying than the prospect of the BNP hosting – rather than merely being invited to – Buckingham Palace garden parties.

Celebrities entertaining political delusions are nothing new. Back in the 1960s, the crimper Raymond (said Raymonde) Bessone, known to one and all as Teazy-Weazy, decided he was going to stand as a Liberal candidate in the general election of 1964. Bernard Levin cordially invited him onto That Was the Week That Was to give a political account of himself and proceeded to destroy him with a ruthless despatch that took the breath away. Teazy withdrew from the candidates list the next day, understanding (as modern celebs may not do) that discretion is always the better part of valour.

In these days, celebrities are actively encouraged on all sides to imagine that they are omnipotent and all-knowing. They are not these things. Politicians – at least in this country – are moderately able to acquit themselves with a certain conviction because they toil long and hard in the foothills of political fame before becoming recognisable politicians. If celebrities don’t understand that, they should be made to do so. Jeremy Paxman should submit them to the Levin treatment: “So, Ms Rantzen, do you favour the structural, the well-specified or the reduced-form model of macroeconomics?”

What’s more, the bona fides of these arrivistes should be scrutinized at least as closely as are those of the parliamentarians to whom they consider themselves so morally superior. I’d like to hear, for instance, Sir Alan Sugar and Carol Vorderman harried into full disclosure of their financial arrangements before they get to put themselves forward as candidates. If the electorate are willing to allow themselves to be bedazzled into elevating people “off the telly”, they should have the opportunity to see all the feet of clay that lurk beneath the red-carpet gowns of celebs just as surely as in the publicly subsidized footbaths of MPs.

Meanwhile, the right wing parties are no whited sepulchres either. Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, has been unguardedly bragging of how he has got through £2million of expenses and allowances while sitting as an MEP in the Union from which he campaigns to withdraw the UK. This money has been spent, he reckons, on “the best of causes”. Meanwhile, members of his party who sit in the European parliament have a juicy record of dipping their hands in the till, including one jailed and another soon to be tried for money laundering. The BNP have had their collective collars felt too. Their elevation would be so constructive for relations with nations where young fanatics go to be trained as suicide bombers, wouldn’t you say?

The two embarrassments caused this last week by the BNP member who sits in the London Assembly ought to give people pause. At a moment when the committee charged with securing England as the venue for the football World Cup was discovering the thinness of its non-white composition, the BNP assemblyman turned up, perfectly legitimately, at the launch. His presence obscured the message that the committee wanted to send to the world. The same tribune of the people was given to understand that an invitation to a Buckingham Palace garden party would shortly follow and he made it known that he would be taking his leader, Nick Griffin, as his guest. More outrage and diplomatic discomfort. But this is the price of democracy. If the people are going to elect undesirables to represent them, those means by which they have traditionally carried out such representation cannot now be denied to them just because the establishment doesn’t find their participation comme il faut. The electorate need to have made clear to them all the implications of the way they vote. It’s no good using your ballot paper to make a protest and then regretting the result of your gesture. If you want to punish Labour or the Tories or the Lib Dems by voting Green or Workers Revolutionary Party, you may well find that your effective abstention from the important question has only succeeded in putting into the Commons a bunch of airheads and fascists.

MAY DAYS BE MERRY and BRIGHT

I’ve always said that autumn is the time of year that I like best, followed by spring, winter and – very much last – summer. I can’t stand heat. (Not that heat has been a summer characteristic lately; we certainly never guessed that we might have log fires burning in successive Augusts). But high summer is horticulturally the dullest time of year, in my view. And slapping on sun cream is a chore that ranks with ironing shirts.

Now I am beginning to feel that May is the most glorious month of all. Of course living surrounded by a satisfyingly unkempt garden and lots of trees and a field that is slowly being turned into a meadow means that May is more noticeable than it used to be when we lived in the city. It’s a dirty job, gracious living, but someone’s got to do it. And rather us than Tory grandees claiming public funds to have the wisteria removed from the garage roof and pipes re-laid under the tennis court.

As I slide into my dotage, it is the transience of May’s delights that tugs at the heartstrings too: the “blossomingest blossom” that the dying Dennis Potter could see from his bedroom window. Blossom doesn’t survive long, especially when it’s wet and windy. Today, like the weekend just past, is blustery between the showers but much holds on with gritted teeth, both flora and fauna. As I write, our lilacs are coming to the end of their brief span of glory. We have all three shades – dark, pale and white – vying with each other and with an ancient laburnum that is also in its full pomp, sharply contrasting with its brilliant yellow flowers (so much more arresting than the common-as-muck forsythia of early spring).

The apple and cherry blossom are done now and the magnolia so long gone it’s almost forgotten. But the late flowerers stand proud against the gale, especially the hawthorn which of course is also known as may. The old rhyme “Here we go gathering nuts in May” is really a rewrite of the notion of the nuts of the may tree – so it should be “nuts of may” – because of course there are no native plants that produce nuts in the spring. Our hedgerows – two sides of the field have full hedges – are full of white hawthorn, while square on to our conservatory is a red hawthorn, its carmine flowers just this side of full vulgarity. Its covering is at its height now. Next to the red hawthorn is an old and doubtless doomed pear tree into which David has allowed a pale pink Clematis Montana to climb. The clematis is in its best fig now. Another one, clean white, climbs along the house under the window of the shower room so that you dry yourself while gazing on the vista of the three lilacs and the laburnum with the white clematis framing the view. Elsewhere the honeysuckle has kicked in so that twilight invites a heady stroll through the garden, reeling from one outrageous perfume to the next.

Also close to the conservatory is an ash. Ashes are the property’s most numerous trees – we have not flinched to have one or two taken down for they seed promiscuously – and they are always the last to come into leaf. So while the fruit bearers and our gorgeous tulip tree – my favourite; we planted it to mark the millennium – are in full leaf, the acers are not far behind and even the tardy oaks are now well covered, the ashes still have the look of winter about them. Nothing undaunted, a pair of nuthatches are raising a brood in the long-established nesting box in the ash, despite having so little cover for their duties. We keep an eye out for magpies, crows, woodpeckers, squirrels and other predators of fledglings but we can’t manage a guard right through the hours of daylight. I feel protective towards them yet when we lived in town I wouldn’t have recognised a nuthatch if it jumped up and pecked me on the leg. Now I can tell one just from its flight, never mind needing to see one still and in repose and relative close-up.

The robins seem to have finished their child-rearing duties for the time being. They build against an outbuilding wall under the aforementioned Clematis Montana. We’ve seen fewer wrens obviously foraging this year. Maybe they nest later. Last spring we installed a so-called sparrow parade near the eaves in a roof gully. Sparrows prefer communal living. But I think we started too late and this year, at the crucial time, we had roofers up there, enough to put off any would-be nester. But sparrows have been as noticeable by their absence here as anywhere else. Does putting up a dedicated nesting box bring them in? Or do they need to be here first before the box is going to be spotted? It’s perhaps instructive that we put up a box specifically designed for nuthatches and tree creepers on the old oak, further away from our busy bird-feeders, yet the nuthatches opted for a generalised box that is on the main strip and not well protected. You can take a horse to water, you might say, but you can’t make it drink.

“What potent blood hath modest May” Emerson wrote. It is indeed a time of energy and promise. Wild deer sometimes venture into our field, despite the menace of our dogs. The fish are at last rising in the pond, having passed half a year in suspended animation near the bottom – and that’s twelve feet down. Already Ron the heron has visited several times, planning where he’ll stand to have the best chance of spearing something. I don’t rate his chances though we shall remain vigilant. But if last year’s kingfisher returns, I shall not begrudge him anything small that he can manage. He’s much too magical to resent.

THEY’RE ALL AT IT

Performing the onerous task of owning The Daily Telegraph from their tax haven in Monaco, the multi-millionaire Barclay Brothers must contemplate their organ's continuing revelations of footling expenses-fiddling by parliamentarians with an air of comfortable superiority.

I sent the above paragraph as a letter to The Guardian on Monday but it wasn’t used. I can hardly complain: the paper has given me a good run lately. But it’s interesting that the suggestion that dubious morality about money is not confined to Westminster is unwelcome in the press. Having worked as a journalist for many years, I know well enough that expenses on what used to be known as Fleet Street have always been a source of abuse. Media people will respond that it’s the misuse of public funds that signifies here but misuse is misuse and money is money whatever its source and the media were no less disdainful of the way bankers rewarded themselves before they received support from the government.

The press barons have never been slow to avoid paying their dues. Rupert Murdoch contributes no tax to the British government and employs an army of accountants to minimise doing so elsewhere. Lord Rothermere, owner of The Daily Mail, contrives to live in tax exile even though his main residence is in Wiltshire, a remarkable piece of juggling (his newspapers are registered in Bermuda and the wealth he inherited from his father was not subject to British penalties because Rothermere Sr lived under the rather less draconian tax regime in force in Paris).

Nevertheless, the mother of parliaments has had good reason to cluck over her unruly children lately. And the way that the story has played has been instructive and rather unexpected. Public anger has seemed to grow and spread in response more to the stories about Tory misuse of public funds than to those featuring ministers and Labour backbenchers. As some have noted, it is more the nature of the claims – for swimming pool maintenance, cleaning Douglas Hogg’s moat, garden landscaping and other instances of gracious living in the shires – than the sums involved that has got up the noses of voters.

Worse for the politicians (and especially Tory ones), the party activists are up in arms. There is a suspicion taking root that the minority parties – by which is meant UKIP and even the BNP – will pick up support among the disaffected, perhaps significant support. Lord Tebbit, no less, has all but advised Tory voters to switch to UKIP, specifically urging them to “boycott” the three main parties in the European elections, as a protest against “misbehaving”. Tebbit is being disingenuous. Everyone knows that all three main parties are a good deal more communitaire than is he; he is merely using the present scandal as a pretext for not toeing the party line.

To his credit, David Cameron dealt swiftly and toughly with Tebbit, making it clear that any more overt disloyalty would lose him the party whip. Indeed, faced with a dangerously developing situation at a time when his party’s opinion poll lead was beginning to look unassailable, Cameron has been decisive and clear. In contrast, Gordon Brown has been elusive and ambiguous. Once more he has let Cameron pre-empt him so that any prime ministerial response of equal force and conviction looks what it is: tardy and derivative. At a moment when the Tories seemed suddenly vulnerable, Brown ought to have come on swift and deadly. This may have been his last moment to seize the initiative before the local and European elections. Vincent Cable’s devastating joke from eighteen months ago – “the House has watched transfixed the transformation of the Prime Minister from Stalin to Mr Bean” – produced at the time the blackest scowl ever seen on Gordon Brown’s face in the Commons. As the months have passed, the thrust has only seemed more apt and more earned. This gives no pleasure to someone like me who doesn’t want a Tory government. Why can’t we instead have a rapidly insurgent anti-Capitalist party like the one in France that is threatening to overtake the ineffectual Socialist opposition and destabilise the authority of President Sarkozy?

PIGS WILL FLY

We have received our government leaflet Important Information About Swine Flu. So that’s all right, then. I am finding that I can resist the temptation – it might be irresistible were I a few decades younger – to order extra copies (to a permitted maximum of five) in, say, Braille, Welsh, Gujarati, something called “simplified form Chinese” and “Farsi/Dari”.

I am not sure, however, whether I swallow an important part of the premise of this leaflet. That is indeed the word “important”. I have sought the “important” information supposedly contained therein in vain. A rather “important” question – you might surmise – is only posed (rhetorically, for immediate answering like an FAQ) on page 9 of the 10-page leaflet. This is “What Are the Symptoms?”

Given the customary hysteria generated by the media, this question might properly be posed, I would suggest, at the outset of the leaflet. But we toil through until the penultimate page and then read that the symptoms are these: “sudden onset of fever, cough or shortness of breath. Other symptoms can include headache, sore throat, tiredness, aching muscles, chills, sneezing, runny nose or loss of appetite” [the leaflet’s own bold]. It seems to me that people suffering from regular ’flu, asthma, period pain, hay fever, bronchitis, myocardial infarction, post traumatic stress disorder, tonsillitis, ME, the common cold, malaria, HIV, pregnancy or a panic attack could present some or all of these symptoms without having been within sneezing distance of anyone who’d ever been to Mexico. In sum, I wouldn’t feel at all comfortable seeing my doctor in the expectation that he would diagnose swine flu. The declared symptoms are way too symptomatic of fifty other conditions.

So what about pre-emptive action? Here the leaflet betrays evidence of having been penned by an academic or equally remote dweller within an ivory tower. Page 6 asks “What can I do to protect myself and others against flu?” Actually, nothing in the responses beneath directly addresses the first part of that question. Obviously, the most effective method of protecting oneself against swine fever is to give the widest possible berth to anyone who has been to Mexico or consorted with its pig-farming population in the last year or so. But I guess it would be ideologically unsound to print that.

The leaflet has a catch-all remedy for protecting oneself – “follow good hygiene practices” – but the said practices then listed all pertain to “prevent[ing] the spread of germs”; in other words, to protecting others rather than oneself: “Always carry tissues. Use clean tissues to cover your mouth and nose when you cough and sneeze. Bin the tissues after one use. Wash your hands with soap and hot water or a sanitiser gel often”.

The author of this advice has a bright and simple picture of each of us as we go about our lives. We are bowling along the street, hands free of impedimenta. We recognise with plenty of warning that a cough or sneeze is imminent. We reach into our pocket or purse to extract a tissue in good time to entrap the trauma’s effluvia. By happy chance, we are just passing a corporation bin into which we cast the now offending tissue, smiling benignly around us the while.

Oh, would it were thus. I have just begun the third week of my second cold in two months, the first having lasted three weeks, this second being worse. Both colds have been the severest I have suffered in forty years. Had I employed a fresh tissue very time I coughed, sneezed or blew my nose, I would have run through two large boxes of them each day. If we all did that, the world’s rain forests would be gone by the middle of October.

If I am out for the day, I am not going to lug two large boxes of tissues everywhere I go. What’s more, I am not going to be in a position to dispose of a soiled tissue every time I use one. If I am in the middle of a meal, a play, a bath, a round of golf, a concert, a shop, a dog walk across fields, a football match, sex, it just ain’t practical to bin a tissue straight after use. What’s more, many places – train and tube stations, shopping malls – long ago disposed of their rubbish bins for security reasons. Because it’s an almost invisible means of saving money, many councils have reduced the number of bins on streets and cut the frequency of garbage collection. It’s easy to advise “bin the tissues” if you don’t appreciate the reality of the scarcity of binning receptacles.


Your country needs you to use a tissue

Then comes the matter of washing one’s hands. Again, this is not a practical proposition if one is out and about. Public conveniences are many fewer in number than they were twenty years ago. Those that are available frequently do not provide the requisite hot water and maintenance is not so diligent that there is always some kind of soap dispenser filled and ready to dispense. The people who compile these leaflets simply have no idea what the real world is like.

The suspicion remains that the authorities are determined to demonstrate regularly that they are on top of this “crisis” because they can. That’s because they know that a pandemic of swine flu is really a very unlikely outcome. By behaving in a manner that seems diligent and comprehensive, they hope to gain credit when the concern blows over. Other crises that have materialised in the past and may do again in the future – floods, prison unrest, knife crime, a run on the banks, leaks about parliamentarians’ expenses – were not and will not be so containable. The government wants to be seen to be in control even though the forces it is pretending to manage are really rather overstated by the media.

I don’t think my friend who refers to the threatened plague as “whine flu” is very far off the mark.

PATSY for the OPPOSITION

It was a surprise to learn that Joanna Lumley is not allowed to live in this country. She is, after all, accounted “a good egg” by Dominic Lawson in his column in today’s Sunday Times, than which, to his class of commentator, there is no greater compliment. Miss Lumley has served Britain bravely through countless episodes of The New Avengers and Absolutely Fabulous, not to mention her roles in a great many advertisements and such socially important British films as The Satanic Rites of Dracula and Don't Just Lie There, Say Something!. All this, you would have thought, ought to have prompted the government to welcome her with open arms.

Perhaps the problem has been what appears to be her very large retinue, entirely made up, it would seem, of small gentlemen of a certain age originating from Nepal. These men could occasionally be glimpsed mutely in the background as Miss Lumley, sometimes waving what looked to be a distinctly offensive weapon, celebrated the achievement of embarrassing the Prime Minister, flanked by David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Never let it be said that the leaders of the opposition parties shirk an opportunity to be photographed with a glamorous celebrity.

It has become a truism that nothing is true unless it be spoken by a famous person. By the same token, everything done, said, acted out or imagined by a famous person is significant, powerful and worthy of our rapt attention. As a consequence, Joanna Lumley has not only provided what an otherwise obscure campaign required to capture the limelight, she has also entirely eclipsed the people who are the subject of the campaign.

Other causes will not be slow to learn the lesson. Brendan Barber, the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, is, I learn, to step down, acknowledging that the union movement has lost ground over recent years. He will be replaced by Paris Hilton. There are already moves afoot, apparently, to have the Labour Party’s re-election campaign fronted by somebody off the telly, apparently a favourite of ITV on Saturday nights, called, I think, Anton Dick. For the equivalent role in their own campaign, the Tories have, as I understand, unveiled people known as Katie and Peter. Don’t ask.


The Officer Class (pic from Guardian website)