Remembering Lord Deedes (1913-2007)

Nonagenarian journalist Bill Deedes, who edited the Daily Telegraph for over a decade, died on the 17th of August aged 94.

He began as a journalist on the Morning Post in 1931, and continued in this profession for the rest of his life, joining the Daily Telegraph when it absorbed the Morning Post under William Ewart Berry.

However, he was also the MP for Ashford from 1950 and 1974, and served in Harold Macmillan's Cabinet from 1962 to 1964, first as Minister Without Portfolio and then Minister for Information.

Parodied by Private Eye with the spoof "Dear Bill" letters, Deedes also had a keen social conscience, and took a particular interest in Africa.

His final article, on Darfur
Deedes was also at the forefront of the Telegraph's Christmas Appeal, charming money out of callers while another journalist stood by to take down details.

It has been alleged that Deedes was the model for Evelyn Waugh's Boot, the protagonist of his 1938 novel Scoop. However, alternative models have been suggested, such as the former Daily mail correspondent William Beach-Thomas. Lord Deedes' death is a sad day for journalism, but he will live on through over half a century of reporting.

Tributes

Concerning alcohol

The murder of Gary Newlove has provoked Chief Constable Peter Fahay of Cheshire police to call for the drinking age to be raised to 21. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6947224.stm.
Thankfully, the Home Office are showing some (very) rare common sense and disagreeing.

I regard the raising of the drinking age to 21 as a terrible idea, as it will make alcohol seem more glamorous to children. European countries such as France, which have a far lower level of alcohol-related violence, introduce children to alcohol from an early age. In these countries, most parents have a glass of wine with their children at mealtimes. Why is it not possible for most parents to have the odd pub lunch with children in this country? Unless they are recovering alcoholics or extremely religious, they should be taking responsibility for their children's attitude to alcohol.

Perhaps if we stopped treating alcohol as if it was cocaine in a glass, children might be less concerned with drinking as much as possible. Maybe Fahay should liaise with other European police officers to discover how they have reduced alcohol-related crime. Given the number of UK police who enjoy attending USA police conferences, no-one can complain .

It's a great shame that a chief constable is prepared to make such an ill-informed statement. And it's also time for communities to elect their own chief constables, so more informed senior officers control what's going on out there. Sadly, 53% of those who voted on BBC News online agree with Fahay.

Headline chasing is all very well, but when alcohol related incidents are causing deaths it's time to implement the right solutions, regardless of how much anger they cause among the more conservative.

Having said this, much of Fahay's comments are more sensible. Although his suggestion to raise the drinking age is not mentioned on the Cheshire Police site, some of Fahay's other views on alcohol consumption can be found at http://www.cheshire.police.uk/

It also seems there is a confusion among the media as to how his name is spelt. Most newspapers spell his name with two a's, while the Guardian spell it "Fahey". Cheshire Police spell it Fahy, but I think that is a typo (easier done than some people realise).

If I have mis-spelled Peter Fahay's name, I apologise.

Stella Vine

I have said that Alexander Litvinenko’s likening of death to a chase was beautiful. Earlier this month I visited an exhibition of Stella Vine's paintings at Modern Art Oxford, at 30 Pembroke Street, with my mother and sister (the latter is a keen artist). There I saw another beautiful thing, Abi Red Shoes.

I was not enraptured by the gaze of the woman, nor by the background. What captured my attention was the transformation in the bottom right-hand corner from high heel to blood. Has the woman bought shoes made by sweatshop labour? Is that lump in the sand a body which she has buried using a plastic spade? Why not post below if you have an alternative idea?

The background is more like a desert than a beach. Perhaps this woman has killed someone and must now spend the rest of her life in the desert of a prison cell. We may be the police officers come to arrest her, her pose a means of defiance of conventions. She should be scared, but isn't.

Her bucket is on its side, tipping sand away. Perhaps instead of a body, it covers a hole. What could the subsiding of sand from the bucket into the hole symbolize? The blood may have been sweated symbolically by the woman, while digging the hole.

A link to Modern Art Oxford is http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/Exhibitions/

“When the guns roar, the public prosecutors fall silent” Anatoly Kucheren

“As I lie hear I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like…”

This imaginative reduction of death to a chase is a snippet of the late Alexander Litvinenko’s deathbed statement, released on the 24^th November 2006. I find the beautiful imagery of a black-clad Death (perhaps out of a Terry Pratchett novel) tapping Litvinenko on the shoulder and holding a half-empty hourglass rather beautiful, in stark contrast to the ugly events described within Blowing Up Russia.

Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) agent and Yuri Felshtinsky (a historian and writer) allege that the KGB still controls Russian life due to the infiltration of former KGB officers into the FSB, which was created in 1992 under the name MB (Ministry of Security). Litvinenko dismisses the corruption of the businessmen in Russia nicknamed “oligarchs”, accusing their critics of working for the FSB, and claims that the real oligarchs are those in the FSB and various ministries who are accused in Blowing Up Russia of corruption and mass murder. A key accusation is that the FSB plotted to bring about the two wars with Chechnya to prevent Russia becoming a democracy. It is claimed that the invasion of Grozny caused Yeltsin’s political career to move towards “the edge of an abyss”.

The FSB are also accused of committing acts of domestic terrorism including the Russian “apartment block bombings” in Buynatsk and Moscow. They are also accused of having planned a bombing in Ryazan, which was foiled. The election of Vladimir Putin as President cemented the control of the security services over Russia. An alternative candidate in the 2000 elections was another former KGB agent called Primakov, who pledged to jail 90,000 businessmen. That’s more people than are currently in jail in the UK. Primakov would have to arrest sixty people per day during his four-year term to fulfil this. Makes Blunkett look like a member of the Black Bloc.

The book ends with an appendix containing a transcript of the public commission set up to investigated the bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk, as well as the “Ryazan training exercise”, at which Felshtinsky and Litvinenko testified. Although the information contained within the book is invaluable to anyone wanting to understand modern Russia, I would criticize the way it is not clear within the book whether a paragraph is written by the authors or quoted from a newspaper article, due to the lack of speech marks. The translation of the book also prevents the style from flowing. I recommend reading up on Russia before starting the book. A general outline such as Robert Service's "Russia: from 1991 to the present". Incidentally, Blowing Up Russia is itself banned in Russia, perhaps because of it's "explosive" nature (according to the News of the World). Another book, this time more focused on Putin, that I recommend is Ana Poliykovskaya's Putin's Russia. If anyone who knows me wants to borrow my copy, I'm willing to lend it.

I’d like to close my account of the book with a link to journalists murdered in Russia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia. The page covers 2000 onwards, and lists journalists killed both in Russia and while covering the conflicts in Chechnya. Anyone interested in reversing this slaughter should join a local branch of Amnesty International or read the web site Reporters Without Borders. The English version is at http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20
but the site is also in Spanish and French. While you visit, please sign this petition to create an international commision to investigate the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in Moscow on 7th October. The link to this petition is below.
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19163#sp19163

Code Madeleine

Before I forget:

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/0508_codemaddie.shtml

The News of The World has launced a campaign to "keep our children safe on holiday" and has named it after missing child Madeleine McCann.

Firstly, it's nice to see the phrase "our children".

What does that obscure phrase mean? British children? My children? (I don't have any) The children of people who aren't "their" in some way?

Below a photo of Madeleine looking rather angry, they list six steps to prevent children being abducted, which in all fairness are mostly logical.

Still, it does seem odd that the News of the World is telling holiday resorts how to conduct themselves.

And it does irk me how this campaign is only focused on British tourists.

My Experience of Journalism

In between the completion of my second year as a BA English Literature student at the University of Sussex, and my December application for MA Journalism at Westminster, I completed two weeks work experience at local newspapers and helped produce my student newspaper, the Badger .

I also aquired references from my late Media Studies (and English) teacher at school, my Print Media elective tutor at the University of Sussex and my personal tutor at the University of Sussex.

Work experience is not easy to find in the Thames Valley region, due to the large numbers of university students in such a relatively small area.

However, I was able to commence my first week of work experience at the Swindon Advertiser on July 24^th 2006, and finished on July 28^th. .

During this week, I was able to discuss journalism with both journalists and editors, interview residents for “vox pops” (along with a journalist student from De Montford university) and learn how to use the “Scribe” system to input articles into the system so they could be published.

I also used reference books to write parts of the “On This Day” column each day.

I was also lucky enough to have an article published on the Mela, an Asian cultural festival, in the “Weekender” section of the paper.

The article is not online, but I am able to send a photocopy to anyone interested.

Of course, I submitted a photocopy as part of my application to Westminster University, as well as photocopies of the “On This Day” column.

The highlight of the week was travelling with a reporter to two different locations.

The first was a local community centre in Toothill, where Tony Blair had watched the removal of graffiti.

You can see a picture of a rather uncomfortable Blair at the centre here

I was struck by the desire of everyone present to contribute to the story, and was even able to interview a bystander myself.

The second location was Swindon Magistrates Court, where I was able to watch the trial of a repeat offender who had breached his ASBO.

My second week of work experience was on the 23^rd August 2006, and finished on the 29^th.

This time, it took place at the Bucks Herald in Aylesbury.

During this week, I was further able to question journalists about their craft, as well as write the “What’s On” column and follow journalists about on their beats.

I also proofread the paper and helped collate reports.

As before, the published material I produced at the Bucks Herald forms part of my portfolio.

The one downside of work experience was the cost of travelling. For example, Arriva charges £28 for a weekly ticket from Oxford to Aylesbury. Bus routes realy do need to be deregulated at the very least.

When I arrived back in at Brighton in September 2006, I also started a short course at City College Brighton and Hove, a further education college a short walk from where I was living at the time (Hollingdean) .

This course enabled me to brush up on my article writing as well as revising my knowledge of news angles.

I wrote some short features which were critiqued by the course leader, Elaine Hills-Harvey.

During October, I helped produce and publish my student newspaper for two weeks, guided by the then editor Matt Greene.

I also proofread much of the articles. Of course, I have contributed extensively to the Badger via article writing over the three years I have been a BA English Literature student at Sussex.

As well as this practical work, I have been a constant devourer of newspapers and magazines since I started my A-Level in Media Studies.

I purchase Private Eye every fortnight and have built up an archive of almost every issue between 1992 and the present, as well as a few copies from the sixties, seventies and eighties (And it doesn't date decades later).

I read the Independent, Guardian and Times most days, and read all the broadsheets at the weekend, as well as the occasional tabloid. (My tabloid consumption, is, I admit, something I need to brush up on, and I will make sure I read a tabloid every day once September starts).

I have also read extensivly on journalism and current affairs, including the diaries of Tony Benn and "The Baghdad Blog" by Salam Pax.

Lastly, I have been making a start on shorthand for the autumn.

"The Blair Years"

I’ve finally managed to get hold of a second-hand copy of The Blair Years, Alastair Campbell’s account of the years 1994-2003, when he was the news jester in the court of Tony Blair.

The jacket notes inform me that the book is the “most compelling and revealing account of contemporary politics [I] will ever read.”

Well, it’s nice to know that the publishers have such little faith in me.

The book can be read fairly quickly, once the reader gets used to the lack of paragraphs in each entry, reading more like a rant than a fluid account at the end of each day.

Campbell comes through as unsatisfied with the delivery and political attitudes of everyone, as if he is the teacher and the Labour Cabinet are a particular egotistical sixth form.

Blair is depicted as insecure and reliant on Campbell’s encouragement as well as his political advice.

Gordon Brown is more of a distant figure, as if he and Campbell have more of an awkward relationship.

Mandelson and Campbell often seen to vie for Blair’s attention, almost leading to fisticuffs between the two political manipulators.

Interestingly, Labour mainstay Tony Benn is only mentioned twice, although Campbell gets nine mentions in the 1991-2001 volume Free At Last.

The most interesting aspect of the Diaries is the close confidence between the late Alan Clark (also a diarist, and a much more structured and confiding one, writing from 1971 to 1999) and Campbell.

Clark was a maverick, and seemingly took great pleasure in noting the decline of the Tories “Mmmm, he said, maybe we’re fucked”.

Campbell seems to regard Clark as his own jester, noting in 1998 that Clark “always manages to cheer me up”. It is interesting to read Clark’s account of his conversations with Campbell, and as this article is being written for my “online diary” rather than for a publication I am free to concentrate on what I want.

One item that struck me, both when I first read Clark’s diaries and when I re-read them a few days ago, was that on December 4th 1998 Clark alleges that Campbell “twice offered me a peerage, incidentally”.

This phone call is not mentioned in Campbell’s diaries, indeed that day has no entry. It’s probable the offers were a joke, Clark would have been far to the right of any Labour peer, and would have hated the decrepid formalness of the House of Lords.

A footnote further on states that in January 1999, Clark was considering getting Campbell to “fix my being Speaker in the next House”. Clark clearly regards Campbell as a useful friend, one who apparently thinks highly of his political talents “A little later Alistair Campbell said, Why don’t you come over? I said I might leave the Tory Party if they put in Heseltine”, reads part of the entry for the 24^th June 1995.

As with the idea of Clark as peer, the idea of Clark as Speaker or as Labour MP is almost impossible.

It seems unlikely Clark would have been made a peer or Speaker by New Labour, nor would he have been accepted as an MP by the Labour Party as a whole.

Still, it provides an insight both into Clark’s wide considerations of his future, and into the discrepancy between Clark’s accounts and Campbell’s.

Perhaps Alistair does not remember these incidents, or Clark has simply imagined them as fantasy and became confused. Either way, I can only speculate.

It’s a shame no-one has asked Campbell to confirm or deny these offers. Campbell does not regard Clark as adding hugely to his political knowledge, more cheering him up by confirming his low opinion of John Major and the Tory cabinet, as low as another group of people opposed to New Labour, the unions and the Labour Left.

Unlike political diarists Benn, Ashdown or Clark, Campbell is very partisan. Those to the left of Blair in the Labour Party earn the disgust of Alistair, because they are a stumbling block to the project.

Clare Short is the principal ire magnet, constantly depicted as useless on television and critical of policy.

The only Old Labour figure who Campbell does not treat as a foe is Neil Kinnock, who is allowed to critique Campbell, and is the voice of the Left in the diaries. Campbell presents himself as fighting a battle, fighting for Blair against the Tories, most of Old Labour, the media and the demands of Northern Ireland politicians.

The diary is £25, and not really worth that amount of money (unlike Ronald Reagan’s diaries) but I managed to obtain a copy online for £12.

It’s worth considering that Campbell, as Private Eye has pointed out, has not only rewritten passages to add “context” and to remove legal complications (as he admits) but has not indicated which passages he has rewritten.

On a lighter note, Craig Brown’s parody is excellent. You can get it either by ordering the last July issue of Private Eye through the magazine itself, or whenever Brown brings out his next book (which sadly may be a while).

Brown’s Campbell is a foul-mouthed grump machine

“I’m sick of dealing with fucking wankers, I said to the Queen: you get all the shit and then they fuck you up the backside”.