April 18th - April 24th 2005
Sunday Cheers
Saturday A radcliffe
Friday Murdoch blog
Thursday Sun's out
Wednesday Bah
Tuesday Undour dyke
Monday Ricin
Sunday 24th April 2005
Reasons to be cheerful*
Goldsmith told Blair 'war could be illegal'
Prezza gives 'bloody Birt' a slapdown
Olympic bid scuppered by 'cash for flights' fiasco
(*and all of them on the front page of today's Independent.)
Saturday 23rd April 2005
A wee spot of bother
Urine trouble, Paula
Easy peesy for Paula
God knows I wouldn't want to come between the British press and their toilet humour, but surely what Ms Radcliffe (or 'Paula' as we're now allowed to call her) paused for was a shit, not a piss?
(Unless you truly can relieve stomach cramps with a wee - in which case I retreat behind my total ignorance of female athletic anatomy.)
Friday 22nd April 2005
In fact, the Sun's declaration for Labour is arguably not the most interesting thing that Rupert Murdoch has said lately - especially if, like me, you work for an online news organisation.
In a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors last week, the emperor of news told the assembled hack-moguls:
We need to realise that the next generation of people accessing news and information have a different set of expectations about the kind of news they will get, including when and how they will get it, where they will get it from, and who they will get it from... Internet portals are quickly becoming young consumers' favoured destination for news.
Newspapers as a medium enjoyed a virtual information monopoly for centuries. We never had a reason to second-guess what we were doing.
But those days are gone. The trends are against us...Unless we awaken to these changes, we will, as an industry, be relegated to the status of also-rans.
At News Corporation, we have a history of challenging media orthodoxies...
The challenge for us is to create an internet presence that is compelling enough for users to make us their home page.
We need to encourage readers to think of the web as the place to go to engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions about the way a particular story was reported, researched or presented.
At the same time, we may want to experiment with the concept of using bloggers to supplement our daily coverage of news on the net...
Murdoch's thumbs-up for bloggers - now that is a story.
Thursday 21st April 2005
For me, at any rate, the most intriguing moment of the election campaign to date came at around 0230 on Thursday morning as I staggered out of the all-night garage carrying milk and cigarettes and stopped to check out the front pages of the next day's papers:
In 1992, subsequent to its infamous front page on election day ("If Kinnock wins today, will the last person in Britain put out the light") the paper, equally infamously, claimed direct credit for the subsequent Tory victory ("It's the Sun Wot Won It").
The paper's public position this time round has been the subject of much fervent anticipation, especially after Rupert Murdoch invited Michael Howard to Mexico to address a News Corporation conference in Canjun. (Why Canjun? Well, why not?).
The Sun claims to be backing "Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for two reasons: Standing firm on Iraq and the lack of a real alternative"; conspiracy theorists will be quick to look for alternative explanations, and will be keeping a firm eye on the degree of regulation any future Labour government exercises over Murdoch's monopoly capitalism...
Wednesday 20th April 2005
Tuesday 19th April 2005
Obituary Watch
Barbara Bell was a woman who passionately, and defiantly, loved women at a time when the word "lesbian" was scarcely whispered, let alone acknowledged as a valid "life style". All her life she actively sought out - and found - other women like herself in places ranging from Girl Guide camps and Parisian clubs to a Watford approved school and a Nigerian village...
Barbara Bell will be remembered, above all, as a feisty, inspirational woman who spoke her mind and who, with her flamboyant persona, helped to subvert the stereotypical image of the dour dyke.
Monday 18th April 2005
Ricin terror attack
You could just about be forgiven for thinking that this week's conviction of Kamel Bourgass for "conspiracy to cause a public nuisance by poisons and/or explosives" amply demonstrates the dangers that any advanced civilisation faces from Islamic super-terrorists.
On the other hand (given the pre-election timing, given that it took two years to reveal that - contrary to initial reports - no ricin was actually found), you might think that this was just another neo-con-flavoured scare-stunt designed to make us vote to further curtail our own precious civil liberties.
The best - and traditional - way to decide would be for you to have examined transcripts of the trial as it progressed. Only you can't do that, because the trial of Bourgass, and all its associated reasoning by defence and prosecution lawyers, were subject to draconian reporting restrictions ostensibly applied to prevent cross-prejudice with a parallel trial at which Bourgass was, secretly, found guilty of murdering a policeman.
Even now that the latter trial has ended, however, it seems that reporters cannot agree on just what it was that Bourgass is supposed to have done.
Right-wing newspapers - who were, of course, swift to pounce on the anxiety-potential of the original arrests in the "Wood Green ricin plot" - have been delighted to justify their initial hysteria: viz. Alasdair Palmer writing in the Sunday Telegraph:
"He was a very dangerous terrorist, who was only stopped from perpetrating mass murder because the police managed to detain him before he was able to do what he wanted, which was to kill as many people in Britain as possible."
Newspapers of a more sceptical persuasion were quick to point out that Bourgass had actually been found not guilty of conspiracy to murder; the jury could only agree on the lesser, public nuisance, charge: viz. Severin Carrell and Raymond Whitaker in the Independent on Sunday:
"Anyone wanting to exploit the politics of fear could scarcely conjure up anything more potent than the news that a suspected terrorist cell had been making ricin, one of the deadliest poisons known to man, in a north London flat.
The eight men arrested alongside Bourgass have all been freed - so much for the terrorist cell.
The concept of Bourgass being somehow connected to al-Qa'eda, and of having had military training in Afghanistan, initiates from testimony by an acquaintance, one Mohammed Meguerba. Or, to be more precise, from limited extracts from a Algerian security police memo concerning Meguerba, a potential witness described by no less than Nigel Sweeney QC, the leading barrister for the prosecution, as an unreliable liar.
The assertion that material found (in a pestle) at Bourass's flat had tested positive as ricin was later withdrawn. (And it's not, as some have suggested, stached in some secret al-Qaeda store somewhere - once made, ricin degrades very quickly).
Equally laughable are the suggestions as to how Bourgass planned to distribute his non-existent poison, which range from "Terror on the Heathrow Express", through doctored toothbrushes, down to mixing it with Nivea and smearing it on car door handles on the ('bustling') Holloway Road.Ricin needs to be injected or ingested to be an effective poison.
As Duncan Campbell wrote in a (curiously off-line) piece for the Guardian last week:
We have all been victims of this mass deception. I do not doubt that Bourgass would have contemplated causing harm if he was competent to do so. But he was an Islamist yobbo on his own, not an Al Qaida-trained superterrorist. An Asbo might be appropriate.
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