Should the Mail be next?

The top story on the Mail's website today (prior to the announcement of the NOTW closure) was - inevitably - about the scandal surrounding the News of the World, Rebekah Brooks, News international and Rupert Murdoch's increasingly evil looking media empire.

The headline to the story was, "Even war widows were on the News of the World hackers' hit-list: Who else have they targeted?" though it has since been updated and the original version has disappeared down the memory hole (1).

The unasked question was, "Who has the mail been targeting?"

You see, the NOTW was not the only prolific red top employer of shady private detectives. Even though its jounralists seem to have commissioned the most flagrant breaches of decency thus far revealed, they weren't even the most prolific of Steve Whittamore's clients.

Tory grandee Michael Ashcroft obtained a list of 305 journalists who had contacted Whittamore with requests that were either definitely, probably or possibly in breach of the Data Protection Act:

Nevertheless, the ICO data released to me shows that the 305 journalists, the identities of whom have yet to be revealed, commissioned no fewer than 13,343 separate lines of enquiry from Whittamore. These transactions can be subdivided into three categories:-

• those which are positively known to have constituted a breach of the Data Protection Act, of which there were 5,025.

• those in addition which were probably a breach of the Data Protection Act, of which there were 6,330.

• those lines of enquiry which were questionable, but in relation to which there was insufficient information to form a definitive view, of which there were 1,988.

The 305 journalists worked for a total of 21 newspapers and 11 magazines, although some journalists worked for more than one publication. However, the concentration of activity was striking. (2)

Ashcroft goes on to reveal the papers which the unnamed journalists worked for:

Daily Mail 58
Sunday People 50
Daily Mirror 45
Mail on Sunday 33
Sunday Mirror 25
News of the World 23
The People 19
Sunday Express 8
Daily Express 7
The Observer 4
Daily Sport 4
The Sun 4
Daily Star 4
Daily Record 2
The Times 1
Sunday Times 1
Evening Standard 1
Sunday Sport 1
Sunday Business News 1
Mail in Ireland 1
Sunday World 1

The Mail, for all its sanctimonious frothing and screeching, is top of the list. It can't all be harmless tattle about Cheryl Cole type bimbos. Wonder when its time will come?

1 - The original headline was, "Even war widows were on the News of the World hackers' hit-list: Who else have they targeted?" and I know this because I saved the headline. But googling it now redirects to another, unattributed, story, "End of the World: James Murdoch announces News of the World will close this Sunday," published by The Daily mail, 7th of July, 2011. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012035/News-World-close-Sunday-announces-James-Murdoch.html)
2 - "What Price Privacy Now," by Michael Ashcroft. Date of publication unclear. (http://www.lordashcroft.com/pdf/WhatPricePrivacyFoIAreply.pdf)

NOTW

So, the News of the World is to be closed, to spare Rupert Murdoch's blushes. 168 years, and snuffed out overnight because a geriatric antipodean is worried his other business deals might be affected. This is why Murdoch shouldn't be allowed any further access to the British media market. H's only interested in the NI brand.

Scuttling the NOTW is quite a spectacular act of desperation. If - as has been claimed over and again - it was just the action of a few rogue reporters blah blah blah - why the decapitation of a venerable title? It's a transparent act of sacrifice, the poor poker player throwing down a jack in the hope that everyone else has been bluffing.

It also begs the question, what haven't we heard yet that was so bad it required this sort of sacrifice?

Perhaps this is why:

Mark Stephens, head of media with Finers Stephens Innocent lawyer, said under British law the paper "may not be obliged to retain documents that could be relevant to civil and criminal claims against the newspaper—even in cases that are already underway."

If News of the World is to be liquidated, Stephens told Reuters, it "is a stroke of genius—perhaps evil genius."

"All of the assets of the shuttered newspaper, including its records, will be transferred to a professional liquidator (such as a global accounting firm). The liquidator's obligation is to maximize the estate's assets and minimize its liabilities. So the liquidator could be well within its discretion to decide News of the World would be best served by defaulting on pending claims rather than defending them. That way, the paper could simply destroy its documents to avoid the cost of warehousing them—and to preclude any other time bombs contained in News of the World's records from exploding." (1)

If so, then whatever still awaits revelation must be potent to warrant junking a whole newspaper. News International mustn't be allowed to get away with it.

1 - "News of the World closes – live coverage". Posted by Adam Gabbatt and David Batty, on the Guardian live Blog, 7th of July 2011. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/jul/07/news-of-the-world-closes-live-coverage)

More on Niggergate

According to Wikipedia, "In 1955, CBS tried to avoid controversial material in a televised version of the book, by deleting all mention of slavery and having a white actor play Jim." So the controversy is not new, nor are attempts to reconcile it. Turning 'nigger' into 'slave' seems a bit less drastic than turning Jim into a white man (1).

I've been trying to remember my own first encounters with the yarn. I think it was an audio tape version of the story - we had one of Tom Sawyer and one of Huckleberry Finn. I don't think either of these could have been more than forty minutes or an hour long, so a Hell of a lot of condensation and editing must have taken place.

As far as I can recall of that version of Huck Finn essentially consisted of Huck running away from Pap, living on an island for a bit, meeting Jim and embarking on a raft. I don't remember the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons, or the Duke and the Dolphin. And when Huck meets the Phelps, I don't seem to remember it is because Jim is now their slave, and locked in a shed. he just wasn't mentioned until Tom Sawyer appeared to announce he was free.

Even at the time, I recall feeling the conclusion of the story a bit odd, but it was always the idea of running away to live on an island that interested me more, so I was willing to let that pass.

I do recall, however, on reading the book later on, being startled not just at how much of the plot had been redacted in my childhood version, but also at the frequent appearance of the word nigger. While I can't be sure, this suggests that it had also been cut from the taped version I grew up with; though I do remember the beastly Injun Joe in the accompanying adaptation of Tom Sawyer, in all his politically incorrect glory.

According to the Daily Mail (2) (hardly the best source, but the one I have conveniently to hand), the use of 'nigger' in the text has lead to the novel being the "the fourth most banned book in U.S. schools." How many schools have actually banned it is less clear; though the lack of any number to materialize may indicate it is not great. I suspect the problem is more that it simply fades into the background, left untaught and unmentioned.

As for the actual process of substitution itself, I've been wondering if slave isn't more suggestive of the 19th century context than nigger is. The word probably seems worse, more demeaning and more insulting to us than it did to Twain and his contemporaries. So in that sense, we all know a slave is a possession, not a full person. Nigger, it seems, is something far worse now. So in that sense, Gribben may be retaining Twain's sense, if not his actual words.

It isn't being suggested that this should be the only edition available - the original and the expurgated version will exist side by side. The difference will be that students will be exposed to it. I doubt a great number of people who haven't encountered the tale as children feel a sudden urge to read it as adults; some, perhaps, but not a lot. Whereas those that have some familiarity with the book from childhood are more likely to revisit it, as I did.

1 - "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: controversy," wikipedia article relating to the novel by Mark Twain. Viewed 8th of January, 2010. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn#Controversy)
2 - "Political correctness takes on a great American novel: Huckleberry Finn removes N-word," by Tom Leonard. Published in the Daily Mail, 5th of January, 2010. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1344192/Huckleberry-Finn-removes-N-word-Political-correctness-takes-Mark-Twains-classic.html)

Warts, niggers and all

I've been embroiled in a few arguments about the excision of the word nigger from a new edition of Huckleberry Finn. As detailed yesterday (1), I'm wavering between cautious support and simply being unsure about where I stand. My indecision is final, and all that.

Most of the counter arguments are based on the idea of the idea of the integrity of the author's work. That's a very valid concern, and one that I'm sure Gribben is alert to. It's what you might call the idealist position - we have to accept Huckleberry Finn, warts, niggers and all.

But, as I said, I think it misses the point. People are getting outraged over the symptom, rather than the disease. As Gribben pointed out, the book often isn't available in school libraries, and it isn't been taught; one of the absolute classics of American literature is being memory holed because schools are too scared - or too battle weary - to have anything to do with it.

Gribben is trying to reverse that, providing them with something that will retain 99.99% of the original, including the element of dehumanisation of Jim. This is what I'd call the pragmatist position.

The battle battle the Idealists want to fight has already been lost, because the book is gone from classrooms and school libraries. Gribben is trying to get it back there, salvage something from the rout of sanity in the culture wars.

Faced with the fact of the refusal of schools to stock an unexpurgated version, the pragmatist seeks a solution. The idealist sticks to some lofty principle of free speech and moral right; and loses by default.

If we get too hoity-toity and precious about it, take our niggers and go home, the status quo remains - and that's a victory for the barbarians, Flat Earthers, PC goons and identity politics junkies, unless we compel schools to stock certain books, which has similarly worrying overtones. With out resort to that extreme, the book will still be missing from school libraries and not being taught. Gribben's efforts, at least, mean the existence of Huckleberry Finn will be acknowledged.

I'm quite aware of the 'slippery slope' argument, and sympathetic to it (Wait until you see my edited version of Joseph Conrad's 'African of the Arcissus'). But I see this more as an effort to climb a bit of the way back up the slope, not helter-skelter further down it. A bigger battle is being lost than the excision of a single word from 'Huckleberry Finn' - the (hem) battle for good books in general.

1 - As described previously on lefthandpalm: http://lefthandpalm.blogspot.com/2011/01/with-regards-use-of-word-nigger-in.html

With regards the use of the word nigger in Huckleberry Finn

I'm not sure where I stand on this, to be honest (1).

Part of me rejects the idea entirely, as another symptom of the creeping crapification of everything, where our culture and history slowly blurs into a horribly banal MacDonalds vision of how things should be.

The other part of me - the part that occasionally labours as an English teacher - would quite like to be able to read a yarn like Huckleberry Finn without having to worry about it provoking violence every third page. If you want to discuss issues about racism with your students, and how perceptions have changed, that's one thing. If you're wanting to introduce them to a good story, that's another.

Given that some schools have banned the original book altogether, I think a lot of the opprobrium aimed at Dr Gribben is unwarranted. He''s trying to get the tale back into schools, who are the real culprits.

We already 'classic' texts extensively (Huckleberry Finn is actually quite a long and in places tedious book), this is just another stage in the process of blandification and and reduction that has been ongoing for decades. Compare any modern fairytale with its source in the Brothers Grimm and you'll see what I mean.

Of course, because it involves RACE and FREE SPEECH, liberals everywhere get to jump up and down and be excited about the deletion of a world they'd never use ... but I suppose if it gives them their little fix of danger and excitement, and makes their insulated, solar powered Ivory Towers seem a bit more edgy and street ...

Oh, the Daily Mail made itself look more than usually fantastically silly, reporting the story with a lot of frumping and huffing, but without the cojones to use the word itself:

New editions of Mark Twain’s classic novels about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer have triggered a row by removing all uses of the word ‘n*****’.

The title to the article also refers only to the 'N-word.'

If they won't print it, why get tetchy about someone else's decision to do the same?

1 - "Political correctness takes on a great American novel: Huckleberry Finn removes N-word," by Tom Leonard. Published in the Daily Mail, 5th of January, 2010. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1344192/Huckleberry-Finn-removes-N-word-Political-correctness-takes-Mark-Twains-classic.html)

Education, education, education

A spectacular example of The Telegraph trying to have it both ways:

raft of reforms introduced by the last Government – including a new curriculum for pre-school children and a generation of Sure Start centres – have had no impact on five-year-olds’ understanding of the basics.

An analysis of more than 117,000 children over an eight year period showed pupils’ early reading and picture recognition ability had actually declined slightly in the last decade.

The report by Durham University suggested that failure to develop key skills at a young age could hold children back throughout compulsory education and in later life. (1)

Not how they loudly proclaim that the Labour reforms to early childhood education have had, "no impact on five-year-olds' understanding of the basics," and then add they are actually getting worse in some areas. Only further down the article, they're forced to confess that,

An analysis of results showed a “statistically significant decrease” in children’s reading and shape recognition over eight years and a corresponding rise in maths results.

However, in both cases academics insisted differences were small and not “educationally significant”. (2)

See what they're doing there? In the opening paragraphs, they point out areas where a decrease was observed, even though the wonks behind the study say the decline isn't significant; and then they claim there's been no impact at all on the mastery of the basics - even though the study points out there has been a positive impact on mathematical ability, of an equally significant (or insignificant) magnitude.

There is something wrong with education, however, and I don't think it is something that wil be solved by throwing money into classrooms - though that will help. More teachers, smaller classes, better facilities will go someway, but won't resolve all the problems that confront parents, students, teachers, employers and everyone else who makes up interested society. Because the problems don't really lie in the classrooms. Dispatch once and for all myths about 'trendy teaching,' insidious creeping leftwing PC prizes-for-all ideology, and how all that is needed is the return of God and the cane to make everything better.

The problems originate in the whole messed up nature of the world schools exist in. Individualistic, selfish, me-me-me-now-now-nowism is so ingrained that the idea of actually having to work for something leaves a lot of people - not just school kids - completely baffled. Parents have children and are staggered to learn that they actually have to work - Quite Hard - to raise them into proper little people instead of feral beasts. Children are shocked to learn that they have to actually work to attain success at school. Employees are vaguely under the impression their employer is an entity that exists only to let them piss about online all day, and get paid for it. The whole world is awash with pitiful. selfish, short sighted and shorter minded, callow neo-barbarians who think the time it takes a modem to warm up in an insufferable imposition on them.

We live in a pretty fecked up society, where people are rootless and community is a quaint and archaic notion. We celebrate this anonymity, this alienation from a sense of belonging. It's an essential part of the doctrine of individualism, a consequence of our modern convenience culture. You can't, after all, really be a properly selfish little monad if you feel you belong somewhere and you're part of something as suspiciously collective as a community. heaven forbid that you might feel a sense of duty towards something other than yourself and your immediate family. People can move about pretty much as they please and live where they like. Unfortunately, we're still pretty tribal in our outlook and don't find this very comfortable, and it leads to isolated, anonymous cities, sundered families - who wants to look after aging relatives, anyway? move away to London, and claim you can't possibly afford a bigger house for them ... Which in itself is another symptom of our misbegotten up social priorities. In terms of education, it leads to a rootlessness, an unwillingness to invest emotional capital and effort in the process of learning. If it is all about me, why should I listen to you, or learn stuff that will make it easier for me to fit in with you? You should learn how to fit in with me ...

Wailing about a lack of discipline in school is describing a symptom, not a cause. The problem is the change in the kids coming into the class, not the abscence of flogging - if they were the same sort of kids that you remember from whatever 'Golden Age' delusion you entertain, then it wouldn't matter. Good kids would behave well regardless of the discipline or lack thereof. The problem is, there are more and more problem kids disrupting classes and - in spite of the howls from predictable quarters - there isn't much that 'more dicipline' can do for them. They don't know how to cope with conflict, or respond to authority. They tend to get worse when challenged, not back down. And they wouldn't be frightened of caning or strapping, because that requires a degree of control over their own behaviour which they're not actually capable of, and, even more depressingly, a lot of them would be used to far worse at home.

I do not buy into the idea there has been a deliberate trend towards mediocrity so that all can achieve at the expense of the very best. There has a broadening of what is studied. Kids in the 1950s didn't learn about computing, boys weren't taught to cook, girls (and bright boys) didn't do wood work, no-one learned Japanese and so on. If we're going to increase depth, we have to accept a narrowing of subjects - and that can't be done because parents and politicians immediately wail that "Standards are slipping" if there is any move away from offering Latin and Glorification Of The British Empire Studies. Anyway, I think it's a bit of a myth that there was 'excellence' back then. There was less to learn, and people were herded into specific areas. The best of today are probably the equal of the best then, and the numbers achieving Besthood are probably about the same. Though they may be best at Japanese instead of Ancient Greek.

The archetypal teenager - sucking on a fag on her way to school, yawping into her mobile and pausing only to make an obscene gesture at a passerby or pull her sagging jeans up over her arse - isn't a symptom of the failure of modern education, but of changes in modern society. Mobile phones, cigarettes for all, obese, surly, lazy, unruly, low attaining students, they all have their roots in the wider community, not in the classrooms. If schools aren't performing adequately, it's because society itself is a miserable mess, not because the tawse was banned or because no-one studies Latin any more.

I'd say it is more to do with consumerism and the modern trend for instant gratification (school isn't sexy or fun), the amount of cash people think they have (since the whole country is living on debt and other people's money, we only think we have it, we don't really) which allows them to access far more fun and enjoyable products, and inculcates an attitude that everything should be continuously pleasurable for no significant effort, and a general trend towards selfishness and individualism - hardly a new thing, but now promoted as a virtue.

This doesn't apply to the children alone, but the parents as well, who are often failing to take responsibility, because they have had the same virtues instilled in them, and are now dismayed to find out that having children isn't actually all fun and gratifying, and even if they do want to make the effort, they struggle because modern life is so demanding and expensive that they can't physically stretch time out to include both parents working, maintaining a home, and adequately parenting.

As long as we continue to put the emphasis on careerism, individualism, consumerism and quick gratification of selfish desires, the problems in the schools and in society in general ain't going to go away.

1 - "Labour's pre-school reforms 'failing to raise standards'," by Graeme Paton. Published in The Telegraph, 14th of December, 2010. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8199247/Labours-pre-school-reforms-failing-to-raise-standards.html)

2 - ibid.

When I see a slave, I call it a slave ...

But in Texas, it seems that all this talk of slaves and slave rades and slavery and so on has been judged a bit too strong for school children.

Tempers are flaring in Texas over controversial proposed changes to the US state's public school curriculum.

The changes, put forward by the Board of Education's conservative members, include referring to the slave trade as the "Atlantic triangular trade".

Critics say the changes are ideological and distort history, but proponents argue they are correcting a long-standing liberal bias in education.

The conservatives are expected to prevail in Friday's final vote. (1)

"Atlantic triangular trade" - is this some weird new racial epithet? Can you refer to people of colour as 'triangles' at dinner parties without identifying yourself as an execrable racist? Or is it more street than that. Does it contrast with 'square' white people? Are Asians hexagonal?

Inverted political correctness is the new tool of the conservatives.

And yes, I'm quite away of the 'logic' behind the term 'triangular.' The ships went from Britain to Africa and then to America and then back to London. But that ships sailed these routes is not at all remarkable. Ships have always sailed in all sorts of directions and usually end up where they started. That the ships set out seeking slaves, transported slaves, and then carried the commodities produced by slaves back to Europe was.

Which is why we called it the slave trade.

1 - "Texas schoolbook fight heats up," unattributed article. Published by the BBC, 19th of May, 2010. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8693397.stm)

My favourite irony

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

'This Land is my Land' is something of an alternate national anthem in the USA, written by semi-mythical folk legend, Woodie Guthrie. What is usually ignored is that Guthrie was a life long socialist and the early versions of the song, as sung by Guthrie, contain verses criticising private land ownership, and the church and the government's failure to address the real needs of the American people.

Unsurprisingly, these verses are usually omitted, or replaced by less challenging fare:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

Joe Klein's biography of Guthrie is a remarkable book. As Klein remarks, Guthrie has become a bit of a folk myth, a hobo-like figure from the dust bowl, sanitized of his political convictions. I used to have a copy of it, but it was 'borrowed' by a friend of mine and never made it back to me. The last I heard, my friend wasin India, working in television. I like to think the book still out there somewhere, pursuing its own hobo-ish course across the sub-continent.

1 - 'This Land is My Land,' by Woody Guthrie, originally published in 1944. The full lyrics can be found on wikipedia, amongst others: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Land_Is_Your_Land#Original_1944_Lyrics

Eh, What? NuLabour's citizenshit proposals

Lord Goldsmith has unleashed his recommendations for improving citizenship in Britain (1). They include:

• Establishing a new national public holiday,
• Council tax discounts for volunteer work,
• Changes to current categories of citizenship,
• Language loans for new immigrants to learn English,
• A type of community service to enhance "citizen education",
• Special ceremonies for school-leavers. (2)

Look, its really easy to be cynical about these things. Government initiatives intended to increase 'cohesiveness' and 'community' are always limp-wristed, namby-pambly, silly and slightly embarrassing. ut criticism should be tempered with acknowledgement that there is a problem. Simply saying, "stuff that for a bunch of PC codswallop, I'm alrigh Jack," isn't a viable response.

That said, these proposals are terrible, ball-achingly bad. So I'm going to lay into them without any pretence of having better ideas to put forward.

Can you imagine what a new public holiday, lets call it Britannia Day, would be like? Can you envisage how horribly naff it would be? The whole idea just screams 'Millenium Dome.'

The problem with public displays of national chauvinism is that they always celebrate the wrong stuff. Britons are good at many things. Self-deprecation is one of them. But you can't celebrate self-deprecation. Anyway, it would only be an valid celebration of all things British if it could be held on when it guaranteed to rain, heavily. If it could be scheduled to coincide with a significant sporting defeat, even better. Then it might work. But the suggestion that it coincide with the queen's diamond jubilee provokes thoughts of Wat Tyler in me.

Council tax discounts for volunteer work sounds like a good idea, but as soon as you do that, it isn't volunteer work any more. Why work it through the convoluted tax system? Just send them a cheque as a reward for services rendered. Thoguh I suspect that the likes of the BNP and religious crackpots of all stripes will immediately define all their activities as volunteer work deserving of rebates. Only evil minded ass holes would put themselves forward for it. So another silly idea.

I have no idea what "changes to current categories of citizenship" means, but it sounds very sinister. It reminds me of the (deeply under-rated) film Starship Troopers, where human society was divided into 'civilians' and 'citizens' - the latter being the superior creatures who took it upon themselves to ensure the fascist regime ruling Earth was strengthened and replicated. So another bad idea.

Not looking to good, is it?

There's nothing wrong with "language loans for new immigrants to learn English," but the fact that its being proposed here shows what a shoddy, shambollic state the british immigration system is. This should have been addressed years ago. And the 'indigenous' population needs help with talking and writing as well.

As for community service to enhance "citizen education," this again sounds Orwellian. It suggests the 're-education' camps in the PRC, where political dissidents are forced to work as slaves for western multi-nationals, to teach them the error of their way (4).

And speaking as a teacher, I would shoot myself if I had to sit through "special ceremonies for school-leavers." Seriously. And I thought the emphasise was on keeping kids in education, not tempting them to leave with the promise of a Certificate of Adulthood and a '$5 off' voucher for the local brothel.

So a big thumbs down for Goldsmith's idiotic proposals. WHich isn't to say that there isn't a problem. But I think the sreal solution is far simpler - redistribution. Societies where the gap between the top and the bottom is narrow tend to be better places, and have a stronger sense of their identity, than other places. Now, you might argue that the USA - where the disapirty between top and bottom is extreme - has a strong sense of identity. But it is also a miserable, crime ridden, divided and fractious place. You can't argue that a country with 1% of its population in prison is a happy country (5). And it is big on the sort of cant that Goldsmith is proposing. Which shows that they just don't work.

1 - 'Goldsmith unveils proposals to strengthen citizenship,' byRosalind Ryan and agencies, 11th of March, 2008, in The Guardian. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/11/britishidentity). The actual report can be read here: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2008/03/11/citizenship-report-full.pdf
2 - ibid.
3 - 'Wat Tyler,' Wikipedia article summaring the career of the Britain's Mao Tse-Tung, viewed on 13th of March, 2008.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Tyler)
4 - 'NZ pushes free trade with China forward,' by Sarah Matheson in the Epoch Times, 17th of September, 2007. (http://en.epochtimes.com/news/7-9-17/59871.html). It should be noted the source of this statistic is a member of Falun gong, and I have not been able to verify it. On the otherhand, given the size of the PRC, the vileness of the chinese government, a reverse burden of proof applies. It sounds so much like something they would do, that they need to demonstrate that they aren't.
5 - 'New High In U.S. Prison Numbers,' by N.C. Aizenman in The Washington Post, 29th of February, 2008. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/02/28/ST2008022803016.html)

The shocking crapness of Britain - top to bottom crapness that shocks!

Two unrelated happening for some reason seem to have linked themselves in my mind. On the one hand, a particualrly gruelling example of politcal snivel from the British culture minister Margaret Hodge, berating the Proms as being too exclusive (1). On the other hand, well liked British newsreader Carol Barnes has suffered a life-threatening stroke (2).

As I said, there is nothing to link these two stories and only a mind derranged by hatred of New Labour's pitful squandering of its historic opportunity and still sickened by the hideous outpouring of faux greif post Diana would perceive one. I possess such a mind, sadly.

Hodge delivered a speech (3) to an entity glorying in the name of the "IPPR think tank on Britishness, Heritage and the Arts," in which she criticsised the Proms as being too exclusive, complaining that "audiences for some of many of our greatest cultural events - I'm thinking particularly of the Proms - is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this," and that "this is not about making every audience completely representative, but if we claim great things for our sectors in terms of their power to bring people together, then we have a right to expect they will do that wherever they can."

Though Downing Street denied that she meant to actually criticise the Proms in anyway, because that isn't what New Labour does - the Proms, a spokesbeast assured us, were a "wonderful, democratic and a quintessentially British institution." So much for Hodges claim that she wanted to "challenge our sectors square on."

This sort of waffle is bad enough, but Hodge also explained what was good and why. Good things included the Angel of the North (4), Coronation Street and The Archers. Public holidays were good as well. These things, apparently, were "icons of a common culture that everybody can feel a part of," and "enhance a sense of shared identity," though why a lump of mis-shapen metal on a hillock outside Gateshead would make anyone feel part of anything, or inspire me to hug some random weirdo on Princess Street in Edinburgh at 3am, is lost to me.

Perhaps I am too cynical to understand. Maybe it works like this:

"The Angel, man! Have you seen it?"

"God! Yes! It's so beautiful. I realise, brother, we are all British together, we have a wondrous common heritage. Ambridge is the spiritual home for both of us. Let me take my knife from your stomach, brother, and kiss your wound in a spirit of inclusive Britishiness." (5)

Homing in on her purpose, she explained that this sense of cultural togetherness was important, especially to new migrants, who - perhhaps - might not get the all inclusiveness of The Archers. To deal with this problem, Hodge suggested surreal citizenship ceremonies for new-minted Britons, so they would appreciate the wondrous - and inclusive - culture that they were now part of:

She also suggested that British citizenship ceremonies be held in historic British buildings like castles, theatres and museums to help people "associate their new citizenship with key cultural icons"

Right. So telling Hamid that he's now a British citizen, swatting him on the asre with an arse-swatter made from athistle, rose, leek and shamrock, while standing at Marble Arch (a cultural icon if ever there was one) will make him British, and privy to the secrets of Coro and the Archers. Sorry, but I've been British for more years than I can remember, and I still don't get Coro.

Meanwhile, Carol Barnes was suffering a massive, life threatening stroke. This is, of course, at tragedy for her, but lots of people have strokes. Not many of them get into newspapers. Her tragedy is only important to her, her family and friends. I donm;t think it will stay private, however. While it won't get to the revolting demonstrations faux emotion we say post-Diana, there wll be a lot of expressions of grief over this. And by expressions, I mean that I don't think that it is real grief, but manufactured, phoney grief of people who feel they are somehow involved in Barnes's tragedy - or feel they ought to be. We should butt out and let family and friends get on with coping with it as best they can. But rubber-necking and gawping at the misery of others is the new (inter)national past time.

If Hodge wanted a "wonderful, democratic and a quintessentially British institution" then she should look at the new (inter)national past time of rubbernecking, gawping at the misery of others and feeling somehow involved with one of the "icons of a common culture" and her personal disaster becomes something "that everybody can feel a part of," giving us "shared sense of common cultural identity"?

Perhaps citizenship ceremonies could be held at Barnes's hospital bed, so the newly Britishified Brits will immidiately be able to take part in the national pastime of taking too much interest in the misfortune of others, and evermore "associate their new citizenship with key cultural icons."

I don't know what makes me more angry - the wafflely cant of politicians wittering about something as irrelevant as the Proms and holding up Coronation street as an exemplar of culture, or the sinister emotional incontinence increasingly demonstrated by the real British public. Hodge, I suppose, has made a prize fool of herself and probably a Pavlovian reaction in somepeople, who will now reach for their revolver if they ever hear the word culture again (though perhaps to shoot themselves to escape Hodge's belthering), where as the creeping emotionalism is a symptom of something dangerous developing in Britain.

(Credit where credits due: Omni, Lard, minge VHW and the rest on News)

1 - 'Proms not inclusive, says Hodge,' unattributed BBC stroy, 4th of March, 2008. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7276684.stm)
2 - 'Newsreader Carol Barnes 'close to death' - 4 years after daughter died in skydiving tragedy,' by Paul Revoir, Daniel Bates and Liz Hazelton in the Daily Mail, 5th of March, 2008)(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=525589&in_page_id=1770&ct=5)
3 - unless otherwise indicated, or onbviously fictional dialogue produced through the actions of my own sick mind, everything hereafter contained within quote marks is sourced from the BBC article identified in #1, above. Apart from the identification of the think tank, and some reported speech, it is all direct quotation culled from the report.
4 - The Angel, in all its dubious glory, can be seen at this web adress: http://www.gateshead.gov.uk/Leisure%20and%20Culture/multimedia/virtualtours/angel_java.aspx as of the 5th of March, 2008.
5 - This is the fictional dialogue produced through the actions of my own sick mind that I mentioned.

Interesting ...

Reading The Roaring Nineties by Joseph Stiglitz, I was struck by the following comment, about executive pay in different cultures:

In Japan ... executive pay is typically 10 times that of the average worker; in Great Britain, executive pay is typically 25 times that of the average worker; by 2000 in America, CEOs were getting paid more than 500 times the wages of the average employee ... (1)

This is interesting for two reasons. First of all, the obscenity of the amounts involved in the American figures - though Stiglitz may be guilty of manipulating statistics (appropriately, as the chapter the quote occurs in is titled 'Creative Accounting') as he doesn't specify if the American figure is typical or extreme. In the Japanese and British figures, it is specified that they are typical (whatever that may mean) but it isn't clear that the same applies to the American figures.

More interesting was the memory this jolted. It reminded me of something I'd read in, of all places, an essay by Orwell. I grabbed my well thumbed copy of his collected essay's and leafed through it, eventually locating the half remembered comment. It occurred in The Lion and the Unicorn (2), a long essay Orwell wrote during the war. At one point he laid out a program for converting Britain's capitalist economy into a socialist one, as he saw little point in resisting Hitler just for things to carry on as before (3). One of his suggestions was

limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax-free income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one. (4)

So there we have it. The society that most closely matches Orwell's vision of socialist future is ... Japan.

1 - The Roaring Nineties: Seeds of Destruction, by Joseph Stiglitz. Can't provide an internet source, but the quoatation comes from chapter 5, page 124 of my copy.
2 - The whole can be read here: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/. The quotation comes from the third chapter of the essay, 'The English Revolution,' (http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_ter) section two. I find it very od that the top site on google for this essay is Russian.
3 - Orwell had no time for silly statements about one set of masters being as bad as another. He recognised that Hitler was genuinely evil, where as British capitalists were just fusty, stupid or cruel.
4 - Orwell, op. cit.

Ike Turner, 1931-2007.

Ponder this ...

Black Ike Turner, credited with writing the first rock'n'roll song, Rocket 88, made some great music, took too many drugs, treated his wife badly, and is demonised for it.

White John Lennon made some great music (and 'Imagine,' but lets just imagine that never happened ...), took too many drugs, treated his wife (the one before Yoko) badly, and was made into a saint.

Go figure.

Olive Walker II

Some random googling produced something interesting, a newspaper story from 2005 (1), about a cop who was involved in the investigation into the Olive Walker killing, featured in the first season of Sensing Murder (2).

Why is this interesting?

Because I recall a claim, made in that episode, that the Olive Walker case was very obscure, and only one reference to it could be found, in a book dedicated to New Zealand killings.

But this newspaper article gives the lie to that statement. Walker was killed in 1970, but the killing was still significant enough to warrant mention in 2005. The newspaper article states that "The brutal killing was front page news for weeks" (3). So someone researching unsolved deaths would most likely have come across reference to it, in spite of Sensing Murder's claims to the contrary.

Even more interesting is the timing of this newpaper article. It is dated 24th of July, 2005. The Episode of Sensing Murder that examined the Olive Walker case was broadcast in January 2006 (4). This begs the question, when was it actually filmed? Obviously, there would be a gap between the filming and the broadcast, but would that mean the filiming was prior to July 2005? .... Or (suspicious mind working overtime) just immediately after?

I susppose it is conceivable that the story was planted as subliminal publicity for the upcoming show. New Zealand's media establishment is small and cliquey, and it isn't impossible that someone at Ninox knew someone at the Daily Post. But the onus is on Ninox to demonstrate that they filmed before the article was printed.

Even if the episode was filmed prior to the newspaper story, and no-one passed the 'psychics' a complimentary newspaper to read on the plane, the claim that the murder was obscure is shot to pieces. But Sensing Murder making dubious claims is nothing new.

Incidentally, a few months after the broadcast of the Olive Walker episode, Deb Weber returned to Rotorua for a live show in May 2006 (5).Deb Weber wouln't have gone to Rotorua if she hadn't been on Sensing Murder. Her appearance, so soon after the broadcast of the Sensing Murder episode featuring Rotorua, is shameless milking of the publicity that she gained from her appearance on the show. It is exploiting the brutal murder of a teenaged girl.

Olive Walker's killer remains unknown, inspite of Deb's supposed contact with her spirit.

1 - "It's hard to leave behind an unsolved murder - retired cop," by Kelly Blanchard, in the Daily Post, 24th of July, 2005. (http://dailypost.co.nz/localnews/storydisplay.cfm?thesection=localnews&storyid=3645180)
2 - As described previously on lefthandpalm: http://lefthandpalm.blogspot.com/2007/02/sensing-murder.html
3 - Blanchard, op. cit.
4 - The 24th of January, 2006, to be precise. According to TV.com, anyway. (http://www.tv.com/sensing-murder/show/33563/episode.html)
5 - "Popular television psychic heads to Rotorua," unattributed article on the Rotorua District Council website, dated the 13th ofApril, 2006. Yes, I know. Always first with the news, me.(http://www.rdc.govt.nz/News+and+Events/Latest+News/Popular+television+psychic+heads+to+Rotorua.htm)

UPDATE: The administrator of the official Sensing Murder website (6) has advised that the Olive Walker episode was filmed in April 2005 (7). Thus, it pre-dates the Daily Post article. The question still remains about how genuinely obscure the case was, however.

6 - http://www.sensingmurder.co.nz/
7 - The administrator's response can be read on the Sensing Murder website, in the sub-forum dedicated tot he Olive Walker case. (http://www.sensingmurder.co.nz/regfrm/viewtopic.php?t=403)

Sensing Murder: Psychics Revealed

I didn't watch it. I tried to, but there were two issues. Three issues.

First, I was tired. The night before, Lurgee jnr decided to have a BAD NIGHT and by the time he finally decided sleeping was okay (cica 3am), I was too wide awake to sleep. So come yesterday evening, when the Sensing Murder: Psychics Revealed (1) was broadcast, I had been awake for A VERY LONG TIME.

Second, the part that I saw was just an extended promotion for the 'psychics.' I expected numbers for ticket booking lines to appear at the bottom of the screens. Given that I had been awake for A VERY LONG TIME, my willingness to stay up to watch that sort of thing was limited. A detailed profile of the 'psychics,' even one that assumed they were genuine, would have been interesting. But as usual, the Sensing Murder team provided a slick, nasty product with the gravitas of a souffle.

Third, and this by way of bearing out my criticism of the producers, even the short portion I did watch contained two outright untruths. First, they claimed, as they did in the Insight episode, that Nigel Latta was a sceptic. He is or was nothing of the kind. He made clear in the revised edition of his book, Into The Darklands And Beyond (2), that he was ambivalent about the existance of psychic powers. So not a sceptic at all. The other instance also involved Latta. The narrator declared "Nigel Latta is interested in a link between childhood trauma and the development of psychic powers." Cut to Latta, talking about how childhood trauma may make the victim percceive the world as a darker place, and make them more likely to feel negative (3). Nothing about psychic powers at all, or anything to indicate he was saying anything even close to what the narrator suggested he was.

In his book, Latta declared that he had "ideas about playing on a bigger stage" than as a clinical psychologist (4). I didn't realise this meant appearing on Sensing Murder and breakfast TV as a talking head. When he appeared on the Insight episode of Sensing Murder, I thought he had been taken advantage of by the show's producers, to give their shoddy product a veneer of respectability. Into The Darklands And Beyond revealed that he had some sort of long standing commitment to the show - the contacted him to do work for them on the first season, and he was pally enough to call producer Cinna Smith to ask about the show's authenticity (5). And last night he willingly appeared again. So he's witting party to the show, in all its nastiness and dissembling.

I admired Latta for his work with sex offenders and troubled children. But working on breakfast TV and Sensing Murder puts him into the sub-Oprah freakshow category. If he's trying to establish a platform from which to get a message across, he's a fool because he's lost his credibility. If he's doing it simply to promote himself, he should be ashamed (6). On the credit side, he's revised his comments on Sensing Murder to make it clear that he is not endorsing Webber's psychic powers. He complains about the amount of attention paid to his appearance on Sensing Murder, compared to that given to his other work. But that only begs the question, why did he agree to make a second appearance on the show? (7)

1 - 'Sensing Murder: Psychic Revealed,' broadcast by TV2 on Tuesday, 13th of November.
2 - 'Into the Darklands and Beyond,' by Nigel Latta, published by Harper Collins, 2007. Latta described his ambiguous position in the chapter describing his experiences on Sensing Murder.
3 - This is from memory, and not word-for-word, but I am positive that I have represented it fairly. If the producers would care to provide me with an accurate version, I'll be happy to ammend.
4 -'Into the Darklands: Updated Edition' by Nigel Latta, published by Harper Collins, 2005. The quotation is from from the final chapter, "Simple Things," page 301.
5 - As per #2, above.
6 - I'm sure he's quivering at the chastisement I'm handing out here. Interestingly, Latta has a show of his own coming out on TVNZ this year, according to his website (http://www.goldfishwisdom.co.nz/?t=15 - as at 14th November 2007.) A year ago I'd have watched it. Now I probably won't bother.
7 - From Latta's website, Goldfish Wisdom, as of 14th November, 2007: http://www.goldfishwisdom.co.nz/?t=46

Shakespearean nonsense

Some people who should know better are claiming (1) Shakespeare didn't write the plays attributed to him. Shakespeare authorship controversies are old hat - the involvement of Derek Jacobi gives this one a frission of respectability, but there isn't any weight behind their claims. Methinks that this may be more about Messrs Jacobi and Rylance engaging in a bit of self-promotion.

Jacobi's suggestion - that the plays were a group effort - is particularly odd. If this had happened, why would all the credit be given to one person, and a middling actor at that? Why is there no reference anywhere to this literary conspiracy? Why did they operate in secrey so dark that it completely fooled everyone of their contemporaries, who all thought that William Shakespeare wrote them? Wouldn't just one of them have wanted the acknowledgement and fame that the co-author of Hamlet, Lear and MacBeth would be entitled to?

There is no evidence that Shakespeare didn't write the plays, but there is evidence that he did, from Greene's reference to 'Shakes-scene' in A Groats Worth of Wit (2) onwards, but the most compelling reason for thinking that Shakespear wrote the plays is far more simple. It is easier, to my mind, to imagine the existance of on freakshly brilliant mind, than to imagine several such minds existing at the same time.

Also, who would be his collaborators? Shakespeare was far ahead of his rivals - there was no-one else writing for the stage who wrote like Shakespeare, apart from Shakespeare. Marlowe, even, was not writing like Shakespeare. Faustus was closer in spirit and theme to the Morality Plays than to MacBeth. Ben Johnson was caught up in fashionable ideas about the influence of elemental 'Humours' on the psyche - an silly, simplistic idea that can't describe Shakespeare's main characters. Shakespeare pre-empted Freud, for goodness sake. Do you think he was balancing Ichor and Phlegm when he created Hamlet? No-one but Shakespeare could have written the plays, because Shakespeare was too good to be more than one person at work. There isn't enough of that sort of genius to go round.

We wait, with interest, to see if Derek Jacobi will follow through on his convictions, and refuse to appear in any play attributed to hakespeare, unless his doubts abou tits authorship are made clear - "Derek Jacobi, starring in Someone-or-other's Julius Ceasar."

1 "Actors question bard's authorship," unattributed BBC article, 9th of September, 2007. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6985917.stm)
2- "A groats worth of wit"by Robert Greene, (http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/greene1.html)

On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill

This is an older book by Reginald Hill, but you will appreciate, after reading what follows, why I won't be scurrying out to by the new one, especially since it doesn't follow through on its promise to kill Dalzeil. Beulah? Bah!

I'd previously read Singing The Sadness by Reginald Hill and though I wasn't uncritical, I generally quite liked it. Knowing that Hill came in for heavy admiration, I figured that the intrusive jokiness I detected was a purposeful affectation, perhaps even a character trait - maybe Joey Sixsmith really does think everyone he meets looks like a star from the golden age of Hollywood. On further investigation, I am sad to report this is not the case. It is no stylistic affectation. 'Tis ingrained, as Shakespeare had it.

On Beulah Height is a book about child murder, which is a very serious thing to write about. Hill uses the killing of children to make crap jokes. Its not that he is an atrocious writer - when he writesstraight exposition he is streets ahead of Ian Rankin, for example. But he butts (sorry) into his narrative with supposedly clever asides with irritating regularity. It is intrusive as it disrupts the flow, and offensive, because this is a book about dreadful things.

For Agatha Christie, a bodywas simply a pretext for a smug bourgeoise 'tec to demonstrate how clever he or she was in solving the mystery (and hence how clever Christie was for pulling the wool over everyone's eyes). She did it very well, and her murders had a innocence about them - murder was an after dinner game for adults, it was never sexual and never involved children. Christie's books were so removed from the real world that it is churlish to criticise them as exploitative and cruel. At the other end, writers like Hammett and Chandler also made murder into entertainment - but it was always something grim and nasty, carried out by depressingly real people for horribly mundane purposes.

Hill writes about the nastiness, but in a supercilious and annoying way that makes me angry. As stated, he can write competently enough, though I note an irritating fondness of the exclamation mark and the elipsis, villans of punctuation best left behind with short trousers and acne. Dick Scott describes being warned off the exclamation mark by experienced journalists, who had dubbed them dog's pricks. Hill over-writes to an extent that would make Iain Banks blush. Sometimes it is almost impossible to work out what he is actiually trying to convey, he is so busy showing us how clever he thinks he is. Key scenes are ruined by throw-away jokes and snide comments.

Hill's characters seem thin and uninteresting. Characterisation is done with a sledgehammer - a character from Newcastle is not only called Geordie (fair enough, people might call him that), but his speech is littered with clunky 'Geordie-isms.' Hill also seems peturbingly concerned with his female character's sex lives - we are told a great deal about Mrs Pascoe's stupendous breasts and we meet Shirley Novello in the confessional, owning up to having shagged some bloke five times. Pascoe himself is a dull prig. Even the bloated and buccolic Dalziell is only intermittently interesting or convincing, but even his would-be gargantuan presence he is obscured by what seems to be a cast of thousands. The plot is spread thinly between a half dozen protagonists, and that is only the 'goodies.' Gone are the days of the mercurial loner stalking the mean streets in endless rain. I know that modern police work is not about one brilliant individual engaged in a philisophical quest disguised as a murder story - but if we have to spend so much time with all these folk, at least make them better company.

The books flaws don't end there, however. There is a structural weakness. The problem is that the central event of the book - the murder of a little girl - is witnessed, no by one person, but by two. One of these people immediately and conveniently lapses into a coma before they can give the game away, and the other simply bites their tongue, for no convincing reason. Hill then brings the first witness out the coma, just in time to resolve everything and paper over the holes in the plot. Worse, he used exactly the same device in Singing The Sadness - putting a crucial witness incommunicado until it becomes absolutely necessary for them to speak - because Hill can't think of any other way to sort out his stew of red herrings.

But wait - there's more. Thinking about the second plot strand of On Beulah Height, I realised that for the 15 year old mystery to remain unsolved required YET ANOTHER character to have remained unconvincingly silent all these years. Sorry, but no, this just doesn't wash. This isn't a mystery, it is a mess. Yet it is acclaimed as a fine novel, an exemplar of the modern mystery genre. It is not. It is mince.

Sensing Murder: Insult II

I confess. I am one of the intanglible forces haunting Nigel Latta. After his appearance on Sensing Murder: Insight, the poor man must have received about 15,000,000 emails from every self-proclaimed sceptic, cynic, doubter, nay-sayer and scourge of the paranormal in New Zealand. I was one of them, in fact, I was two of them as I replied to his short - but courteous - response. Probably, the man is wondering why the legions who have responded to his appearance on one ludicrous TV show don't appear at his seminars on parenting, or buy his books.

Understandably enough, Latta didn't answer everyone individually, or all the questinos that were thrown at him. Instead, he published an account of his experiences on his website (1). He says he's pretty happy with the way that the Sensing Murder team presented his views. Though I was surprsied to read that, after afew moments reflection it made sense. After all, if you are going to let a smart, observant fellow like Latta watch you work, with the express intention of exposing any funny business, you're going to think carefully before trying any of that funny business. Equally, they would have had to have been foolhardy to try to manipulate or misrepresent Latta's comments. He would have been alert to that, and would have made sure that the deception was exposed. So they played it straight.

This doesn't answer important questions, however. True, they played it straight on this occasion. There are plenty of instances in other episodes when they have been seen to be guiding the psychics and breaking their own rules, however. In an earlier post (2) I linked detailed examinations of a couple of episodes. Here's a couple of gems from the much longer transcript (3) of the episode concerning the death of Alicia O'Reilly:

Kelvin: She's also talking about 'What Now?', as in the program, so 'What Now?', I've got to go into the eighties.

Rebecca: Alicia was murdered in 1980.

Rebecca's short concise statement implies that Kelvin's prediction is spot-on. What Rebecca and the production team deviously omit to tell the viewer is that the kid's TV program 'What Now?' did not go to air until 1981. Alicia was murdered one year before it began so it can never have been a show she watched. Never.

...

Kelvin looks at Alicia's drawing of a four storey house:

Kelvin: It's almost as if this girl's drawn her own life, before she's gone. It shows her house…

However Kelvin's guess is wrong, but we are not told this. Alicia lived in a single storey house. He continues:

Kelvin: It shows… her animal by the look, her dog, by the look of it.

A member of the production team is heard to respond very quietly:

Woman on production team: Cat.

Kelvin: Oh, cat is it? [Kelvin looks up at the person who said "cat" for confirmation and smiles]. She talked about the cats earlier. Oh it is too.

This is a blatant example of cheating. The production team not only tells the
psychic that they are wrong, they also give him the correct answer. (4)

Which shows that they do cock up, continually, and that the Sensing Murder team aren't always as scrupulous as they were when Latta was present. That is just a couple of examples of blatant guiding. There are plenty of others, and also instances where the production team may have unintentionalyl have guided the 'psychics.' Though long, the two transcripts are well worth a read.

Which brings us back to the queastion of how Weber was able to perform so well. I can't answer that. As I pointed out yesterday, the story of Margaret Walker has been publicised. It is reasonable to wonder if Weber had been aware of it beforehand, through the 20/20 program on it or the activities of Walker's son. Weber has a professional interest in unsolved murders, after all. It is possible she was familiar with the case. Even if the Sensing Murder production team were keeping everything above board, and Weber had no idea what case she was investigating, it would have been easy enough to identify it from a cold reading. It is even possible she didn't consciously recall the case, but her unconscious memory provided enough detail to give an impressive reading.

Latta goes further, pointing out that the 'psychics' have managed to identify information known only to police, and even identify suspects. I'm not convinced by either claim. In the case of Olive Walker, Weber prepared a fairly generic photofit of the supposed killer. If this was shown to police, along with firther clarifying information, it might have yeilded some sort of a match, but it proves nothing, except that there is a person who looks vaguely like the photofit and has a history of violence against women. Doubtless, an entirely different photofit would also have yeilded results. There are plenty of violent bastards out there.

As for Latta's claim that the 'psychics' came up with "specific names that were persons of interest to the Police but were never made public" (5), we'll have to take his word for it that these were specific, identifying names, not vague suggestions that the killer might have been called "Mike." Though even then, we're left with the fact that these "persons of interest" were not charged or arrested, and the killers remain unknown. And consider this: if the psychics unwittingly stumbled on something that the police were trying to hold back, one of these pieces of evidence that is known only to them and the culprit, and they felt this evidence might be signifigant, would they endorse the psychic's 'findings'? I think not.

1 - "Sensing Murder: Some Answers," by Nigel Latta, on http://www.goldfishwisdom.co.nz/, viewed 5th of September, 2007. (http://www.goldfishwisdom.co.nz/?t=46)
2 - As described previously on lefthandpalm: http://lefthandpalm.blogspot.com/2007/09/sensing-murder-insult.html
3 - "Sensing Murder Episode: A Bump in the Night," unattributed analysis of the episode on Silly Beliefs. (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~nogods/murder-1.html)
4 - ibid.
5 - Latta, op. Cit.

Sensing Murder: Insult

The news that Sensing Murder was returning filled me with dismay, but not surprise. The mix of psychic tomfoolery, murder mystery and graphic 'recreations' could hardly fail, and by making the programs look like CSI style drama, the producers may have quietened concerns about their shameless recycling of real pain and death and grief as entertainment.

I watched part of the previous series, and wrote a critique (1) of the episode featuring the murder of Olive Walker. Others have provided very detailed eviserations (2) of two other episodes from that series.

The new series was preceded by a special episode, titled Sensing Murder: Insight. It promised two things, First, a sceptic would witness the filming of a Sensing Murder case, featuring star Aussie psychic Deb Weber. Second, we would be up-dated on the progress of cases featured in the last series. The programme was astounding.

The most astonishing thing was the identity of the sceptic - what was Nigel Latta doing in this schlocky tabloid absurdity? Latta is a respected criminal psychologist, known for working with some of our most dangerous young killers (3) and with child abusers. He's a professional, sensible chap, with keen insight. I can't underastand what prompted him to lend crediblity to this balderdash.

His presence was especially odd, given the reservations he expressed about the honesty of the producers, suspecting - as I do - that a lot of footage is left out, and only the occasional correct guess is left in. The producers are also guilty of manipulating and distorting what the psychics say to try to make it credible, as shown in the Olive Walker case (4). Why Latta thought he would get a fair showing from people with a vested interest in protecting the program's shaky credibility is unclear.

Offered access to the filming, Latta should have insisted on the right to producing his own commentary, with control over content and context, rather than allowing the producers to pick what they wanted. Perhaps he made a trade off in the hope of being able to do a seperate expose. The producers suggested he wasn't able to account for what he witnessed, and was left with his scepticism severely tested by the end of it. I'd like to hear his side, unmediated by the producers of Sensing Murder.

At one point, he said that he thought Weber was genuine, and though he was clearly meant that he didn't think she was manufacturing a performance, the producers presented this so that it seemed he was endorsing her supposed psychic powers. Similarly, it seemed that many of his comments were cut off. I wondered how many but's or however's were left out. We don't know how long Weber spent communing with the spirit of the dead woman. We don't know how many false leads she followed before getting lucky. She managed to spell out part of the dead woman's name, but this was could have been little more than hangman style guessing, retaining correct guesses and discarding the incorrect.

Perhaps by watching for signaling - concious or unconscious - between Weber and the producers, Latta was looking in the wrong place. Perhaps the truth was simpler. The case Weber was 'investigating' was the murder of Margaret Walker. This had previously been featured on New Zealand television, on 20/20. The son of the dead woman has maintained - in spite of police findings of accidental death - that she was murdered by an unknown party. He has campaigned for the case to be re-opened (5). So the case is not obscure and it is reasonable to wonder if Weber may have been familiar with it. This would account for what Latta found most puzzling - Weber's ability to lead them straight to the house where Walker died - though if Weber was communing with the spirit of Walker, why the need to go walk-about at all? (6)

Once Weber was inside the house, I noticed that something interesting happened, or didn't happen. In the hallway where Walker died, after (according to the police) falling down the stairs, Weber walked straight up the stairs to describe how Walker went to the toilet before she met her death. In doing so, she passed right over the spot where Walker's body was found, without a moment's hesitation. It is surprising that the shade of Margaret Walker felt the pressing need to tell us about her bladder, before telling us about how she met her death. Maybe the dead have different priorities from the rest of us. If Weber was familiar with the case, it would also explain how she 'sensed' the death wasn't a murder. Naturally, the producers claimed was dramatic confirmation of the police version, though it confrimed nothing at all. I can stand in a hallway and declare whatever I like. It doesn't make it so.

The remainder of the program reviewed the six cases of the previous series. We were told that the police were investigating new information as a result of the series. They didn't explain - though it was apparent from comments made by a policeman interviewed early on - that this new information had arisen from the boost given to the cases by the programs, not from the 'leads' provided by the psychics. So, at best, you could say Sensing Murder is a tacky sort of crimewatch, encouraging people to come forward with information that might be helpful.

As it is, none of the cases featured in the previous series have been solved. Sensing Murder's producers claim they have managed to identify suspicious individuals, where descriptions or photofits have lead to a name being suggested, but police investigations have not lead to any arrests. Some of the details given by the psychics were clearly wrong - it was suggested the killer of Olive Walker had a distinctive tattoo. Police identified someone they already had in custody, based on the photofit composed by Weber. But no confirmation that he had the tattoo. Surely, with the person incarcerated, it would be fairly easy to check? So presumably, no tattoo.

The bottom line is that Sensing Murder has failed to provide any information that has lead to arrests. The six cases still remain unsolved. The psychics failed. The series, a nasty, tacky, exploitative piece of tabloid junk, should be shunned as an insult to the memory of the murdered people, and because of the insult it offers to their grieving kin, seeking comfort in the falsehoods and lies peddled by the program-makers and the so-called 'psychics.'

1 - As described previously on lefthandpalm: http://lefthandpalm.blogspot.com/2007/02/sensing-murder.html
2 - A general over-view otf the series, highlighting its flaws, and then two detailed examinations of the episodes 'A Bump in the Night' and 'A Fallen Angel' are available here: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~nogods/murder.html#heading-1a
3 - As described previously on lefthandpalm: http://lefthandpalm.blogspot.com/2007/07/bailey-junior-kurariki-applies-for.html
4 - See note 1, above.
5 - "Mother's Mysterious Death Haunts Son," unattributed One News article, 16th of September, 2005. (http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411365/611552). The 20/20 clip is available at the same web address.
6 - Weber hasn't always been so assured. The analysis of 'A Bump in the night' (see note 2) includes a descrption of Weber standing in the street, pointing at houses, one after the other, saying "That one?" until the 'positive statement' is confirmed by the production team, who also helpfully point the camera at the house before she has identified it. The other psychic on the case, Kelvin Cruikshank, was even less successful, eventually having to be told which house was the right one. Doh!

Would Orwell have been a blogger?

An amusing piece (1) in The Observer, by Robert McCrum. Should be followed by reading Orwell's essay, Politics and the English Language (2) , which is referred to by McCrum.

It is probably unfair to point out McCrums's occasional slips into un-Orwellian vagueness. He indulges in some bloated writing which probably wouldn't impress Orwell: "the democracy of the web is in danger of becoming a cacophonous nightmare ... there are a score of half-baked rants: ignorant, bilious, semi-literate and depressing." (3) Are four adjectives necessary? Why not just say they are badly written?

1- "Would Orwell have been a blogger," by Robert McCrum, in The Observer, 2nd of September, 2007. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2160684,00.html)
2- "Politics and the English Language," by
George Orwell. (http://www.george-orwell.org/Politics_and_the_English_Language/0.html)
3 - McCrum, op. cit.

Civil war memorial stolen by fascists

In a remarkably display of co-ordination, brute strength and determination, Francoist neo-fascists have stolen a mural (1) who died fighting for the Spanish republic in the civil war:

A monument to the British dead at one of the bloodiest encounters of the Spanish civil war has been torn down and carried away by rightwing extremists.

The monument is a huge stone plaque to 90 British volunteers in the International Brigades who were killed during the Battle of the Ebro.

The plaque names each of those who died while defending Republican Spain against a rightwing military uprising. "They died fighting for the liberty of Spain," it says.

Now the spot where it had stood for two years has been covered in graffiti left by the present-day supporters of the extreme right Falange party. "The Falange is still fighting," reads the graffiti in large red letters. (2)

Re-fighting yesterday's battles is one thing, but making war on the memorials of yesterday's battles is quite absurd. I'm actually quite pleased that fascist scum can't think of anything better to do with their time - stealing a large stone plaque located in an out of the way spot at night takes time and effort, and there ar efar more unpleasant or worrying things they could have done with their time. Still intelligence isn't a trait associated with the fascism.

The people who erected the plaque have said they'll put it back up, as many times as necessary (3). This is good. History is important. This incident might have the comic - almost pathetic -element identified by Marx when significant events are repeated (4), but this should be though of as an overly-ambitious student prank. Even comical pathetic fascist bastards are still capable of great wickedness, and their potential for evil should not be dismissed.

1 - "Civil war monument to British volunteers stolen," by Giles Tremlett in the Guardian, 31st of August, 2007. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,,2159549,00.html)
2 - ibid.
3 - ibid.
4 - "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon," by Karl Marx, 1852. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm)