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12zoewilliams
| 2UK
|
To be honest, I rarely believe the Queen when she addresses the nation; the Christmas number is too much of a duty call, and when she has anything to do with parliament, she always looks slightly sour - as we all would, I'm sure, were we required to endorse absolutely everything, while still pretending to be in charge just to save trouble.When she spoke at the second world war commemoration, though, everything was spot on. You can believe in the debt she feels to the veterans' generation, and the continuing resonance its sacrifices have for her. The only jarring note was this: sandwiched between references to their "resilience" and "courage" was mention of their "sense of humour".I don't think I'm being unfair to her majesty when I say this isn't a language I'd expect her to understand, still less namecheck as a national boon. There is certainly no public record of her ever having made a joke, unless her experiment with crossing the short-legged corgi with the shorter-legged dachshund was actually done in the name of humour. There is likewise no photographic record of her laughing or smiling, apart from when Motivator won the 2005 Derby, earning the monarch ... well, I have no idea what her bet was, but even it was a fairly modest sum, that still leaves a smile related to acquisition, rather than actual mirth.This isn't just blinkered republicanism - there are royals who manifestly have a laugh. Princess Margaret was one; I fancy that Prince Andrew sometimes enjoys a joke or two, albeit of a coarse and obvious nature. I am speculating wildly, but he has the big mouth of a man who likes to laugh.The point is, though, that if you were to find anyone with a solid and expressible sense of British identity, then definitely in their top five, and probably their top two, would be the royal family and A Highly Developed Sense of Humour. There are a number of contradictions here: for a start, our figurehead lacks the one quality that we think recommends us; and the minute you start pontificating on the quality of your humour, it almost certainly rules out the possibility that you have any. But modern nationhood is a complicated business, so you'd expect anomalies.The substance of our fabled wit, as we see it, is this: first, it is much more advanced than any other country's, especially Germany. When people discuss the Blitz spirit, it is very often in terms of the cockney sparrows who lose a leg and then make a hilarious pun about getting legless. We are happy to admit that our bombing of German cities was as devastating as theirs of ours, but we are absolutely determined that it go down in the annals: whoever bombed whom to pieces, we definitely had the most fun. Oh yes. Humour is bound up with pluck and stoicism, as if its prime function were to keep our mouths so occupied with drolleries that moaning and whining were literally impossible.This is something that came out immediately after last week's bombing, a swell of pride in the age-old grit of the Londoner, another bad thing happening without denting our character. It was different to the response in Madrid. The underlying feelings - shock, mourning, sympathy, defiance - were the same, but where they took to the streets to vent them, we have been rigidly business-as-usual.That's not to say that there was an instant cache of tube-bomb jokes circulating over the net - that may happen and it may not. My feeling is that we've all lost our stomachs for the hilarity of breaking the bereavement taboo, which is why disasters such as Beslan or the tsunami spawned nothing like the one-liners they used to.But whether we ever joke about the attack itself is irrelevant. The capital, even by Thursday evening, had its sense of humour back: grim, black and muted it may have been, but the pubs were full. In other cultures, resilience is manifested in dignity and vigil, but here we manifest it exactly as the Queen said: with a sense of humour. We must be OK, because we're ready with our poor wordplay once more.I think this explains why figures such as Ken Livingstone are more welcome in bad times than Tony Blair - not because Ken is incapable of gravitas, but because we know his base register is more skittish and mischievous, closer to the normality we seek instantly to resume.The funny thing is, disasters aren't that funny. Thursday wasn't, and I'm sure the Blitz wasn't exactly a laugh. To take pride in such a response is quirky - but if even the Queen has noticed, it must be true.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Zoe Williams .
|
To be honest, I rarely believe the Queen when she addresses the nation; the Christmas number is too much of a duty call, and when she has anything to do with parliament, she always looks slightly sour - as we all would, I'm sure, were we required to endorse absolutely everything, while still pretending to be in charge just to save trouble.When she spoke at the second world war commemoration, though, everything was spot on. You can believe in the debt she feels to the veterans' generation, and the continuing resonance its sacrifices have for her. The only jarring note was this: sandwiched between references to their "resilience" and "courage" was mention of their "sense of humour".I don't think I'm being unfair to her majesty when I say this isn't a language I'd expect her to understand, still less namecheck as a national boon. There is certainly no public record of her ever having made a joke, unless her experiment with crossing the short-legged corgi with the shorter-legged dachshund was actually done in the name of humour. There is likewise no photographic record of her laughing or smiling, apart from when Motivator won the 2005 Derby, earning the monarch ... well, I have no idea what her bet was, but even it was a fairly modest sum, that still leaves a smile related to acquisition, rather than actual mirth.This isn't just blinkered republicanism - there are royals who manifestly have a laugh. Princess Margaret was one; I fancy that Prince Andrew sometimes enjoys a joke or two, albeit of a coarse and obvious nature. I am speculating wildly, but he has the big mouth of a man who likes to laugh.The point is, though, that if you were to find anyone with a solid and expressible sense of British identity, then definitely in their top five, and probably their top two, would be the royal family and A Highly Developed Sense of Humour. There are a number of contradictions here: for a start, our figurehead lacks the one quality that we think recommends us; and the minute you start pontificating on the quality of your humour, it almost certainly rules out the possibility that you have any. But modern nationhood is a complicated business, so you'd expect anomalies.The substance of our fabled wit, as we see it, is this: first, it is much more advanced than any other country's, especially Germany. When people discuss the Blitz spirit, it is very often in terms of the cockney sparrows who lose a leg and then make a hilarious pun about getting legless. We are happy to admit that our bombing of German cities was as devastating as theirs of ours, but we are absolutely determined that it go down in the annals: whoever bombed whom to pieces, we definitely had the most fun. Oh yes. Humour is bound up with pluck and stoicism, as if its prime function were to keep our mouths so occupied with drolleries that moaning and whining were literally impossible.This is something that came out immediately after last week's bombing, a swell of pride in the age-old grit of the Londoner, another bad thing happening without denting our character. It was different to the response in Madrid. The underlying feelings - shock, mourning, sympathy, defiance - were the same, but where they took to the streets to vent them, we have been rigidly business-as-usual.That's not to say that there was an instant cache of tube-bomb jokes circulating over the net - that may happen and it may not. My feeling is that we've all lost our stomachs for the hilarity of breaking the bereavement taboo, which is why disasters such as Beslan or the tsunami spawned nothing like the one-liners they used to.But whether we ever joke about the attack itself is irrelevant. The capital, even by Thursday evening, had its sense of humour back: grim, black and muted it may have been, but the pubs were full. In other cultures, resilience is manifested in dignity and vigil, but here we manifest it exactly as the Queen said: with a sense of humour. We must be OK, because we're ready with our poor wordplay once more.I think this explains why figures such as Ken Livingstone are more welcome in bad times than Tony Blair - not because Ken is incapable of gravitas, but because we know his base register is more skittish and mischievous, closer to the normality we seek instantly to resume.The funny thing is, disasters aren't that funny. Thursday wasn't, and I'm sure the Blitz wasn't exactly a laugh. To take pride in such a response is quirky - but if even the Queen has noticed, it must be true.
|
12zoewilliams
| 2UK
|
Andrew Mackinlay MP tabled a question in parliament last week that only a Christian and a royalist could possibly have dreamed up: was Camilla Parker Bowles going to be added by royal warrant to the state prayers? These prayers are said in many churches (who'd have thought?), included Diana until 1996 (who knew?) and now mention only the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles. The palace responded that there were no plans to include the Duchess of Cornwall by name, though she was included "by implication, because churchgoers pray in general to the royal family" (who knew that?).It's a perfectly defensible decision by the Queen. The marriage between Charles and Camilla has any number of features that aren't particularly reputable - its genesis, for instance. Churchgoers may well object to praying for an adulteress (though they seem to be OK about praying for an adulterer). Some people would probably be upset at the insult to Diana's memory. Blah, blah and blah. They're all good reasons, but it's just not very Christian, is it?As we've seen from the myriad ambiguities of the pomp and semi-pomp surrounding this couple's union, there are no fixed rules where divorcees are concerned any more. The wife of the future king is not necessarily the future queen. The civil-ceremony nuptials of the future head of the church didn't, as it turned out, diminish his fitness for that job. The Queen can refuse to attend the ceremony, but still hold the reception.For all the dark foreboding while the pair were still just - gulp - lovers, none of this turned out to be any more far-reaching or constitutional than the kvetching of any other family about who pays for the bridesmaids' dresses. If the Queen wanted to have Camilla in the state prayers, there isn't a Diana-lover in all of England who could stop her. As it turns out, she'd rather not. Camilla has suffered so many snubs from this quirky woman she must be feeling pretty stoic, but it does make you wonder. Is a parish church the best place to vent a not-very-Christian decision, based on not-quite-forgiveness? Can't she just snub Camilla by inviting her to a cocktail party, but not to the dinner afterwards?This family doesn't just thrive on, it owes everything to, the delicately unasked question: how does it feel to be head of state with no political muscle? Does anyone get a shiver of embarrassment about being head of the church while having no obvious spiritual obligations? Is it a little bit weird to be bankrolled for foreign trips while pursuing your own business interests?Most of this refers to Prince Charles, I now realise, but doesn't a metaphorical plinth seem a bit jerry-built when, after you've been held aloft by the taxpayer, you start sniffing out tax loopholes as fervently as a cash-in-hand plasterer? More pertinent to the young princes, how would even a very intelligent youngster square an attempt to present a "modern" face with the fact that his very position is an anachronism?If the Queen thinks Camilla is too unsuitable a spouse to be named as such, why did she sanction the wedding? Ah, but she didn't - she just, you know, kind of did. That's this family all over. They don't want anything clarified. They treat contradictions like herpes - insoluble, unfortunate, but for God's sake don't mention them and, besides, didn't we all have fun getting into this mess?I had this argument once with someone who said tolerating ambiguity was the sign of a civilised society. It shut me up for a bit. But here, as in so many cases, ambiguity is just another word for bilge. Tolerating bilge is the sign of a lazy society. They're skating along on the carapace of our sloth, this family. I'm sure that's not what the divine right of kings was supposed to be about.
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Zoe Williams .
|
Andrew Mackinlay MP tabled a question in parliament last week that only a Christian and a royalist could possibly have dreamed up: was Camilla Parker Bowles going to be added by royal warrant to the state prayers? These prayers are said in many churches (who'd have thought?), included Diana until 1996 (who knew?) and now mention only the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles. The palace responded that there were no plans to include the Duchess of Cornwall by name, though she was included "by implication, because churchgoers pray in general to the royal family" (who knew that?).It's a perfectly defensible decision by the Queen. The marriage between Charles and Camilla has any number of features that aren't particularly reputable - its genesis, for instance. Churchgoers may well object to praying for an adulteress (though they seem to be OK about praying for an adulterer). Some people would probably be upset at the insult to Diana's memory. Blah, blah and blah. They're all good reasons, but it's just not very Christian, is it?As we've seen from the myriad ambiguities of the pomp and semi-pomp surrounding this couple's union, there are no fixed rules where divorcees are concerned any more. The wife of the future king is not necessarily the future queen. The civil-ceremony nuptials of the future head of the church didn't, as it turned out, diminish his fitness for that job. The Queen can refuse to attend the ceremony, but still hold the reception.For all the dark foreboding while the pair were still just - gulp - lovers, none of this turned out to be any more far-reaching or constitutional than the kvetching of any other family about who pays for the bridesmaids' dresses. If the Queen wanted to have Camilla in the state prayers, there isn't a Diana-lover in all of England who could stop her. As it turns out, she'd rather not. Camilla has suffered so many snubs from this quirky woman she must be feeling pretty stoic, but it does make you wonder. Is a parish church the best place to vent a not-very-Christian decision, based on not-quite-forgiveness? Can't she just snub Camilla by inviting her to a cocktail party, but not to the dinner afterwards?This family doesn't just thrive on, it owes everything to, the delicately unasked question: how does it feel to be head of state with no political muscle? Does anyone get a shiver of embarrassment about being head of the church while having no obvious spiritual obligations? Is it a little bit weird to be bankrolled for foreign trips while pursuing your own business interests?Most of this refers to Prince Charles, I now realise, but doesn't a metaphorical plinth seem a bit jerry-built when, after you've been held aloft by the taxpayer, you start sniffing out tax loopholes as fervently as a cash-in-hand plasterer? More pertinent to the young princes, how would even a very intelligent youngster square an attempt to present a "modern" face with the fact that his very position is an anachronism?If the Queen thinks Camilla is too unsuitable a spouse to be named as such, why did she sanction the wedding? Ah, but she didn't - she just, you know, kind of did. That's this family all over. They don't want anything clarified. They treat contradictions like herpes - insoluble, unfortunate, but for God's sake don't mention them and, besides, didn't we all have fun getting into this mess?I had this argument once with someone who said tolerating ambiguity was the sign of a civilised society. It shut me up for a bit. But here, as in so many cases, ambiguity is just another word for bilge. Tolerating bilge is the sign of a lazy society. They're skating along on the carapace of our sloth, this family. I'm sure that's not what the divine right of kings was supposed to be about.
|
12zoewilliams
| 2UK
|
It's a tough call for the policemen in charge of royal protection on the occasion of the family's big shindig. On the one hand, if the amiable hippies in charge of Glastonbury can get their heads around a ticket-only entry system, law enforcement officers of far more advanced jobsworth tendencies should have been able to prevent the gatecrash coup of a comedian dressed as a well-known terrorist. And yet, on the other hand, imagine the conversation - "I have a man here, sarge, dressed as Osama bin Laden." "That's no good. Where's the fun in that?" "Well, given that the right-thinking individual doesn't find terrorism in any way amusing, I imagine the joke is that Johnny Foreigner is a funny fellow." "Oh, I see, well you'd better let him in, then. That's the theme of the party." "Is that what Out of Africa means?" "Yup. Pretty much." In a craven attempt to get some goods on William's sex life, certain newspapers have decided that his fancy dress idea derives from the hots he harbours for Jessica Craig. According to the Sunday Times, she is a 21-year-old member of "Kenya's white elite", though whether you can ascend into this white elite just by being white, or whether you have to be loaded as well, remains unclear (lest there be any doubt, however, she is also loaded). The historian Andrew Roberts considers the theme as part of the wider family's relationship with the African continent. "There is an inverse proportion between the amount of time the Windsors spend in Africa and the amount of power they have there. After decolonisation, they went more and more." I suppose the message there is that this is a very nice family which just gets along much better with people it is not actively oppressing. The party theme is therefore a loud hello to celebrate the end of a pernicious empire. But really, to interpret this as either a romantic or a political gesture is to back away from the glaring truth that this is party theming as devised by a complete arse. First, although no reports have been exhaustive on the subject of Will's guest list, all the people who have been mentioned seem to have names that start with Second Earl of ... I wouldn't want to embarrass the palace by checking, but I am prepared to bet that the only black people at the party were members of the band. While nobody can force a young Botswana-travelled royal to have African acquaintances who are not members of its "white elite", the act of making his whitey friends dress up in feathers rather tastelessly underlines the fact. After all, you probably wouldn't have an American-themed party if you had Americans you wanted to invite. They would turn up in their regular clothes, for one thing, and besides, might experience feelings of miffedness. Imagine if someone in Africa had an English-themed party. There would be a lot of top hats and fans; some Jane Austen wear for people prepared to make the effort; a few wags might arrive with fake 12-bores and try to subjugate the rest of the party (with hilarious results); a costume of an animal commonly associated with our island (in all probability, a pig) might make an appearance. The japes would be many and varied, but from our point of view, pretty insulting, having fallen back on the keystone cliches of Englishness - that we are starchy, uptight, brutal and we like bacon sandwiches. Any attempt to represent a nation with its dress is bound to be reductive and therefore dehumanising. It stresses the otherness of foreigners, and rejects the global truth that most people, the world over, dress more or less the same, apart from the ones who can't afford a telly. Furthermore, if you look at the individual costumes chosen, you get an even stronger tang of - well, not wishing to bandy the "racism" word around too freely, let's call it "look at the funny natives-ism". There was a lot of leopard print and snakeskin which (on the basis of only one visit to Africa, granted), I'd say was a closer approximation of a Streatham singles night than an African style statement. Many of the older gentlemen dressed up in safari suits, which is like going to a Spanish-themed party with a beer, a burger and some vivid red sunburn (sure, there are English people in every country, and they tend to look funny, but you wouldn't say they defined that country's aesthetic). Fergie wore a long silver wig and whatever the message behind that, I'm sure, even if I knew, I would find it very offensive. And finally, there is something unsettling about the ongoing (I believe unrequited) love that the posh have for Africa. It does not focus on the realities of its countries in their modern form, but rather is shot through with a plangent nostalgia. And honestly, the subtext of any nostalgia about this continent has to be that it was better when we still owned it. All told, these are some very murky messages for a 21-year-old to be encouraging. It must be hard to get things right, living perpetually in the public eye. But he could afford to be a lot more dudelike, without getting any less regal.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Zoe Williams .
|
It's a tough call for the policemen in charge of royal protection on the occasion of the family's big shindig. On the one hand, if the amiable hippies in charge of Glastonbury can get their heads around a ticket-only entry system, law enforcement officers of far more advanced jobsworth tendencies should have been able to prevent the gatecrash coup of a comedian dressed as a well-known terrorist. And yet, on the other hand, imagine the conversation - "I have a man here, sarge, dressed as Osama bin Laden." "That's no good. Where's the fun in that?" "Well, given that the right-thinking individual doesn't find terrorism in any way amusing, I imagine the joke is that Johnny Foreigner is a funny fellow." "Oh, I see, well you'd better let him in, then. That's the theme of the party." "Is that what Out of Africa means?" "Yup. Pretty much." In a craven attempt to get some goods on William's sex life, certain newspapers have decided that his fancy dress idea derives from the hots he harbours for Jessica Craig. According to the Sunday Times, she is a 21-year-old member of "Kenya's white elite", though whether you can ascend into this white elite just by being white, or whether you have to be loaded as well, remains unclear (lest there be any doubt, however, she is also loaded). The historian Andrew Roberts considers the theme as part of the wider family's relationship with the African continent. "There is an inverse proportion between the amount of time the Windsors spend in Africa and the amount of power they have there. After decolonisation, they went more and more." I suppose the message there is that this is a very nice family which just gets along much better with people it is not actively oppressing. The party theme is therefore a loud hello to celebrate the end of a pernicious empire. But really, to interpret this as either a romantic or a political gesture is to back away from the glaring truth that this is party theming as devised by a complete arse. First, although no reports have been exhaustive on the subject of Will's guest list, all the people who have been mentioned seem to have names that start with Second Earl of ... I wouldn't want to embarrass the palace by checking, but I am prepared to bet that the only black people at the party were members of the band. While nobody can force a young Botswana-travelled royal to have African acquaintances who are not members of its "white elite", the act of making his whitey friends dress up in feathers rather tastelessly underlines the fact. After all, you probably wouldn't have an American-themed party if you had Americans you wanted to invite. They would turn up in their regular clothes, for one thing, and besides, might experience feelings of miffedness. Imagine if someone in Africa had an English-themed party. There would be a lot of top hats and fans; some Jane Austen wear for people prepared to make the effort; a few wags might arrive with fake 12-bores and try to subjugate the rest of the party (with hilarious results); a costume of an animal commonly associated with our island (in all probability, a pig) might make an appearance. The japes would be many and varied, but from our point of view, pretty insulting, having fallen back on the keystone cliches of Englishness - that we are starchy, uptight, brutal and we like bacon sandwiches. Any attempt to represent a nation with its dress is bound to be reductive and therefore dehumanising. It stresses the otherness of foreigners, and rejects the global truth that most people, the world over, dress more or less the same, apart from the ones who can't afford a telly. Furthermore, if you look at the individual costumes chosen, you get an even stronger tang of - well, not wishing to bandy the "racism" word around too freely, let's call it "look at the funny natives-ism". There was a lot of leopard print and snakeskin which (on the basis of only one visit to Africa, granted), I'd say was a closer approximation of a Streatham singles night than an African style statement. Many of the older gentlemen dressed up in safari suits, which is like going to a Spanish-themed party with a beer, a burger and some vivid red sunburn (sure, there are English people in every country, and they tend to look funny, but you wouldn't say they defined that country's aesthetic). Fergie wore a long silver wig and whatever the message behind that, I'm sure, even if I knew, I would find it very offensive. And finally, there is something unsettling about the ongoing (I believe unrequited) love that the posh have for Africa. It does not focus on the realities of its countries in their modern form, but rather is shot through with a plangent nostalgia. And honestly, the subtext of any nostalgia about this continent has to be that it was better when we still owned it. All told, these are some very murky messages for a 21-year-old to be encouraging. It must be hard to get things right, living perpetually in the public eye. But he could afford to be a lot more dudelike, without getting any less regal.
|
12zoewilliams
| 2UK
|
When the slings and arrows of the lottery deliver up a fortune that is truly outrageous, as onlookers we immediately try to wrestle it into a narrative. Without a narrative, it is just a wonderful stroke of life-changing luck that happened to some other people and didn't happen to us. That's just nauseating you can't live with that, not even for half an hour. One way to overcome it is to make out that the luck is cursed: the Times yesterday ran with a "tale of two lottery winners", in which the super-lout Michael Carroll had his myriad flaws adumbrated yet again, the number of cars he's crashed given yet again, his ludicrous poetry quoted yet again, to ram home the reassuring message that you can get as lucky as you like, but unless you have some laudable interior qualities you will not stay lucky. This message was reinforced by the contrasting case of Pat Griffiths, a winner so ascetic, so hard-working and unmaterialistic, that although she gave up her job editing the local paper, she hasn't stopped working, hasn't moved house and hasn't spent much more than she (probably) could have borrowed from a bank. "Why would we want to move?" she asks, rhetorically, to underline her deserving nature. "We already live in paradise on earth." Ah, Bisto. I feel better already. The Daily Mail, today, took a more gnomic stab at making sense of the luck. The married winners, sharing between them 45.5m, are from Newport. Wait, wait, there's more Newport is in Gwent, and Gwent has been home to seven winners (of, er, 8,000). This luck isn't wild! It's Jackpot Valley, it was preordained by the gods overseeing the intersection of good fortune and geomorphology. Of course, there are people who aren't superstitious, and aren't persuaded that Carroll and Griffiths represent the very reaches of good and evil; there are subtler ways we can kid ourselves that life is fair. The Fabian Society did some research a couple of months ago on perceptions of the super-rich and the underclass, and found that, in our urge to believe that money obeys the laws of the moral universe, we ascribe qualities to people, based on their income, for which we have absolutely no evidence. Respondents would freely assume that bankers, for instance, worked incredibly hard and/or had trained for a long time, or that people on working families' tax credit were lazy and had an unusual number of vices. Lottery winners rob us of these false assumptions: none of these people worked or trained their way to wealth. So it has to be a rags-to-riches tale. And you notice that the Liverpool syndicate who won the other half of the money are already being called "call centre workers" to make them sound skint, ground-down and depressed, even though they were mostly in management. Don't blame yourself. It's all useful salve on the suppurating sore of envy. I personally like to tell myself that they'll all blow their cash on drugs and petty property disputes with their new super-rich neighbours.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Zoe Williams .
|
When the slings and arrows of the lottery deliver up a fortune that is truly outrageous, as onlookers we immediately try to wrestle it into a narrative. Without a narrative, it is just a wonderful stroke of life-changing luck that happened to some other people and didn't happen to us. That's just nauseating you can't live with that, not even for half an hour. One way to overcome it is to make out that the luck is cursed: the Times yesterday ran with a "tale of two lottery winners", in which the super-lout Michael Carroll had his myriad flaws adumbrated yet again, the number of cars he's crashed given yet again, his ludicrous poetry quoted yet again, to ram home the reassuring message that you can get as lucky as you like, but unless you have some laudable interior qualities you will not stay lucky. This message was reinforced by the contrasting case of Pat Griffiths, a winner so ascetic, so hard-working and unmaterialistic, that although she gave up her job editing the local paper, she hasn't stopped working, hasn't moved house and hasn't spent much more than she (probably) could have borrowed from a bank. "Why would we want to move?" she asks, rhetorically, to underline her deserving nature. "We already live in paradise on earth." Ah, Bisto. I feel better already. The Daily Mail, today, took a more gnomic stab at making sense of the luck. The married winners, sharing between them 45.5m, are from Newport. Wait, wait, there's more Newport is in Gwent, and Gwent has been home to seven winners (of, er, 8,000). This luck isn't wild! It's Jackpot Valley, it was preordained by the gods overseeing the intersection of good fortune and geomorphology. Of course, there are people who aren't superstitious, and aren't persuaded that Carroll and Griffiths represent the very reaches of good and evil; there are subtler ways we can kid ourselves that life is fair. The Fabian Society did some research a couple of months ago on perceptions of the super-rich and the underclass, and found that, in our urge to believe that money obeys the laws of the moral universe, we ascribe qualities to people, based on their income, for which we have absolutely no evidence. Respondents would freely assume that bankers, for instance, worked incredibly hard and/or had trained for a long time, or that people on working families' tax credit were lazy and had an unusual number of vices. Lottery winners rob us of these false assumptions: none of these people worked or trained their way to wealth. So it has to be a rags-to-riches tale. And you notice that the Liverpool syndicate who won the other half of the money are already being called "call centre workers" to make them sound skint, ground-down and depressed, even though they were mostly in management. Don't blame yourself. It's all useful salve on the suppurating sore of envy. I personally like to tell myself that they'll all blow their cash on drugs and petty property disputes with their new super-rich neighbours.
|
12zoewilliams
| 2UK
|
Prince Philip has done something unprecedented. He has denied, in the strongest possible terms, that he ever called Princess Di a trollop or a harlot in any of his letters to her. This is not very regal behaviour, entering into a media mudfight, but apparently his hands were tied - Prince William had given him an ultimatum, and we can all imagine how shattering that was ("Deny these words, or I'll never look at you shyly from beneath my bambi hair ever again!" he probably said). Clearly, this kind of nonsense shouldn't detain us for a second, whether true or not. The facts of the matter are in no doubt - the people's princess was doing the nasty with someone other than her husband for some time before their separation. Therefore, to anyone capable of using words like "trollop" and "harlot" without laughing, that makes her a trollop. It may never be known whether Prince Philip said as much to her face, but since he gets such timeless joy from saying things like "Gosh, you're very black, aren't you? How hilarious!" to the faces of black people, it seems unlikely that he curbed himself in the face of the harlot. Anyway, in a case where one person's dead and the other one's cuckoo, it doesn't matter terribly who said what; it only matters that the extant one is behaving rather unusually. Devout royal watchers will have noticed that Philip made the news twice at the weekend - the other time, it was a brief mention of the fact that he was spotted ostentatiously leashing his Labrador while out walking, in tacit reference to Princess Anne's recent fine under the Dangerous Dogs Act. Obviously, he was making some kind of humorous statement, here: Labradors are charmless hulks of goodwill, they'd never maul anyone. Perhaps he was saying, "You crazy members of the public, I suppose you'll want me to leash my Labrador next!", or perhaps he was saying something else altogether. But the juxtaposition of the two stories does remind us that Princess Anne's case was also unprecedented. She isn't the first royal to own a dangerous dog, and she isn't the first to cause needless harm to her subjects by failing to do something that anyone with half a brain would have done, but she's certainly the first to be successfully prosecuted under the Dangerous Dogs Act. The Queen, normally a stickler for boring old precedent, also behaved somewhat innovatively during the trial of Paul Burrell. There's certainly no precedent in living memory for a queen to give evidence against herself in a case she really needn't have brought to court, if she'd known she was going to do that (I wonder if she can now prosecute herself for wasting her own time). All families have to break with tradition at some point, but there is a problem when the royals do it. Not because we set higher standards for them than we do for each other, since we're all perfectly aware how only-human they are. No, it's because precedent is all they've got. Precedent is all that's standing between them and the rest of busted-flush aristocracy; more importantly, from their point of view, it's all that's standing between them and proper income tax. It is an undisputed fact that nobody accords the royals any constitutional importance whatsoever. Of 101 Labour MPs questioned by BBC1's On the Record, 80% said the Queen should be stripped of all constitutional powers. These people are supposed to be in charge! Why don't they just put their votes where their views are? Because of convention. Why does Tony Blair waste all that time chatting to the Queen, when he has no intention of doing what she says, and she's not going to say anything anyway? Because that's how it's done. Why do we submit to being subjects rather than citizens? Because that's the way it's always been. If you spend one minute examining their role in the context of logic, rather than tradition, you cannot see the point of them. Even the staunchest monarchists, pressed on this family's purpose, can only come up with one of two things. Either, it's a tourist attraction (which I'd contest - or, better still, offset by building another London Eye). Or, they ask, "What do we put in their place?" - well, what indeed? A freely elected president? A toothless but benign head of state? Some kittens? It doesn't matter, so long as it's been given serious thought; so long as the final decision is reached in accordance with the principles of modern democracy; basically, so long as there is some idea behind it other than "Let's do what we did last year." Now, I'm not necessarily advocating the overthrow of the royal family, since on this issue, more than any other, I feel profoundly indifferent. I merely suggest that they should be a lot more careful, the next time they're tempted to wade imperiously into an issue, thinking to halt our tabloid chattering with one absolute assertion or denial. Every time they do something they've never done before, however tedious it is, they're clawing through their own safety nets. There may not be much dignity in silence, but there's always a chance we'll forget they're there.
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Zoe Williams .
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Prince Philip has done something unprecedented. He has denied, in the strongest possible terms, that he ever called Princess Di a trollop or a harlot in any of his letters to her. This is not very regal behaviour, entering into a media mudfight, but apparently his hands were tied - Prince William had given him an ultimatum, and we can all imagine how shattering that was ("Deny these words, or I'll never look at you shyly from beneath my bambi hair ever again!" he probably said). Clearly, this kind of nonsense shouldn't detain us for a second, whether true or not. The facts of the matter are in no doubt - the people's princess was doing the nasty with someone other than her husband for some time before their separation. Therefore, to anyone capable of using words like "trollop" and "harlot" without laughing, that makes her a trollop. It may never be known whether Prince Philip said as much to her face, but since he gets such timeless joy from saying things like "Gosh, you're very black, aren't you? How hilarious!" to the faces of black people, it seems unlikely that he curbed himself in the face of the harlot. Anyway, in a case where one person's dead and the other one's cuckoo, it doesn't matter terribly who said what; it only matters that the extant one is behaving rather unusually. Devout royal watchers will have noticed that Philip made the news twice at the weekend - the other time, it was a brief mention of the fact that he was spotted ostentatiously leashing his Labrador while out walking, in tacit reference to Princess Anne's recent fine under the Dangerous Dogs Act. Obviously, he was making some kind of humorous statement, here: Labradors are charmless hulks of goodwill, they'd never maul anyone. Perhaps he was saying, "You crazy members of the public, I suppose you'll want me to leash my Labrador next!", or perhaps he was saying something else altogether. But the juxtaposition of the two stories does remind us that Princess Anne's case was also unprecedented. She isn't the first royal to own a dangerous dog, and she isn't the first to cause needless harm to her subjects by failing to do something that anyone with half a brain would have done, but she's certainly the first to be successfully prosecuted under the Dangerous Dogs Act. The Queen, normally a stickler for boring old precedent, also behaved somewhat innovatively during the trial of Paul Burrell. There's certainly no precedent in living memory for a queen to give evidence against herself in a case she really needn't have brought to court, if she'd known she was going to do that (I wonder if she can now prosecute herself for wasting her own time). All families have to break with tradition at some point, but there is a problem when the royals do it. Not because we set higher standards for them than we do for each other, since we're all perfectly aware how only-human they are. No, it's because precedent is all they've got. Precedent is all that's standing between them and the rest of busted-flush aristocracy; more importantly, from their point of view, it's all that's standing between them and proper income tax. It is an undisputed fact that nobody accords the royals any constitutional importance whatsoever. Of 101 Labour MPs questioned by BBC1's On the Record, 80% said the Queen should be stripped of all constitutional powers. These people are supposed to be in charge! Why don't they just put their votes where their views are? Because of convention. Why does Tony Blair waste all that time chatting to the Queen, when he has no intention of doing what she says, and she's not going to say anything anyway? Because that's how it's done. Why do we submit to being subjects rather than citizens? Because that's the way it's always been. If you spend one minute examining their role in the context of logic, rather than tradition, you cannot see the point of them. Even the staunchest monarchists, pressed on this family's purpose, can only come up with one of two things. Either, it's a tourist attraction (which I'd contest - or, better still, offset by building another London Eye). Or, they ask, "What do we put in their place?" - well, what indeed? A freely elected president? A toothless but benign head of state? Some kittens? It doesn't matter, so long as it's been given serious thought; so long as the final decision is reached in accordance with the principles of modern democracy; basically, so long as there is some idea behind it other than "Let's do what we did last year." Now, I'm not necessarily advocating the overthrow of the royal family, since on this issue, more than any other, I feel profoundly indifferent. I merely suggest that they should be a lot more careful, the next time they're tempted to wade imperiously into an issue, thinking to halt our tabloid chattering with one absolute assertion or denial. Every time they do something they've never done before, however tedious it is, they're clawing through their own safety nets. There may not be much dignity in silence, but there's always a chance we'll forget they're there.
|
12zoewilliams
| 2UK
|
It's Prince Harry's birth-month; he's 21, you know. One time, when he was younger, he drank quite a lot, and his father made some noises about putting him in rehab. Now we're talking about it, I can't remember whether or not he did go to rehab, but I remember thinking it was the most ludicrous thing I'd ever heard, putting someone in rehab over a couple of Smirnoff Ices; you might just as well put someone in Broadmoor for killing a squirrel.He once went to a fancy-dress party disguised as a Nazi. He thought this was funny; a lot of people called it controversial. I found it impossible to determine why it would be either funny or controversial. (Really, unless it's the pelt of a creature you care about, who could care less what aristos wear to parties?) I know that he regrets wearing the outfit sincerely, according to some interview he gave to a TV company, which wasn't the BBC, whom he snubbed with his seminal coming-of-age message. He likes motorbikes, and has been photographed by Mario Testino with some grime on his face, looking like a young Marlon Brando, except in the respect of having any charisma, or beauty, or sex appeal. He used the word "arse", apropos of his time at Sandhurst. And, er, that's it.Contrary to popular wisdom, there is a much more serious image crisis in the younger generation of this family than there is in the older. However much the Queen or Prince Charles might be accused of being "out of date", starchy, slightly ridiculous, overfond of pets, they can get away with it, since they belong to a reticent generation. The young ones, however, are required to be accessible yet special. Having no special talents, their speciality must be something basically impossible - a classless version of aristocratic superiority; a faith-free version of divine right.They have been hailed as the great white hope, this generation, free from the tang of the seamy love hexagons that beset their parents, bringing with them a new informality and a new approachability, but it's those very qualities that make them even less viable than their forebears. Make your minds up, chums - do you want to be just like one of us, mucking in with your Sandhurst minions and swearing with the best of them, or do you want to be a breed apart? And if you're not the second, on what possible grounds would we laud you as the first?Politely aware of this tricksy business, our media construct certain fictions around these people to keep them afloat. The first is that they are beautiful. Everyone from Zara Phillips through Princess Beatrice to Prince William has been credited with some physical loveliness, on the basis that beauty is a perfectly comprehensible, modern thing to be celebrated for. Of course, it's wholly bogus; none of them is ever going to put the squeeze on Kate Moss. The second fiction is that their lifestyles are rarefied and unusual for reasons beyond the fact that they spend a lot of money on them. Again, patently bogus. The third is that they occupy an indispensable place in the nation's culture; in fact it is this lie of indispensability that has screwed them, since if they had been allowed to fade quietly into the background, slowly replacing "engagements" with actual "jobs", and "apartments" with actual "flats", they would be well on the way to moneyed normality by now.No such luck for young Harry, who has also exclusively revealed that he "likes to have a laugh". Our expectations of this family are not real, but that won't stop us making a fuss when they let us down; they couldn't fulfil them even if they were real. Nobody, come to that, is sure what these expectations are, but we'll know, next time a prince goes to a party dressed as a member of the Ba'ath party, what they aren't. It's a thorny, inconsistent business that seems to preclude almost all kinds of laugh. Would it not be easier just to pay tax?
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Zoe Williams .
|
It's Prince Harry's birth-month; he's 21, you know. One time, when he was younger, he drank quite a lot, and his father made some noises about putting him in rehab. Now we're talking about it, I can't remember whether or not he did go to rehab, but I remember thinking it was the most ludicrous thing I'd ever heard, putting someone in rehab over a couple of Smirnoff Ices; you might just as well put someone in Broadmoor for killing a squirrel.He once went to a fancy-dress party disguised as a Nazi. He thought this was funny; a lot of people called it controversial. I found it impossible to determine why it would be either funny or controversial. (Really, unless it's the pelt of a creature you care about, who could care less what aristos wear to parties?) I know that he regrets wearing the outfit sincerely, according to some interview he gave to a TV company, which wasn't the BBC, whom he snubbed with his seminal coming-of-age message. He likes motorbikes, and has been photographed by Mario Testino with some grime on his face, looking like a young Marlon Brando, except in the respect of having any charisma, or beauty, or sex appeal. He used the word "arse", apropos of his time at Sandhurst. And, er, that's it.Contrary to popular wisdom, there is a much more serious image crisis in the younger generation of this family than there is in the older. However much the Queen or Prince Charles might be accused of being "out of date", starchy, slightly ridiculous, overfond of pets, they can get away with it, since they belong to a reticent generation. The young ones, however, are required to be accessible yet special. Having no special talents, their speciality must be something basically impossible - a classless version of aristocratic superiority; a faith-free version of divine right.They have been hailed as the great white hope, this generation, free from the tang of the seamy love hexagons that beset their parents, bringing with them a new informality and a new approachability, but it's those very qualities that make them even less viable than their forebears. Make your minds up, chums - do you want to be just like one of us, mucking in with your Sandhurst minions and swearing with the best of them, or do you want to be a breed apart? And if you're not the second, on what possible grounds would we laud you as the first?Politely aware of this tricksy business, our media construct certain fictions around these people to keep them afloat. The first is that they are beautiful. Everyone from Zara Phillips through Princess Beatrice to Prince William has been credited with some physical loveliness, on the basis that beauty is a perfectly comprehensible, modern thing to be celebrated for. Of course, it's wholly bogus; none of them is ever going to put the squeeze on Kate Moss. The second fiction is that their lifestyles are rarefied and unusual for reasons beyond the fact that they spend a lot of money on them. Again, patently bogus. The third is that they occupy an indispensable place in the nation's culture; in fact it is this lie of indispensability that has screwed them, since if they had been allowed to fade quietly into the background, slowly replacing "engagements" with actual "jobs", and "apartments" with actual "flats", they would be well on the way to moneyed normality by now.No such luck for young Harry, who has also exclusively revealed that he "likes to have a laugh". Our expectations of this family are not real, but that won't stop us making a fuss when they let us down; they couldn't fulfil them even if they were real. Nobody, come to that, is sure what these expectations are, but we'll know, next time a prince goes to a party dressed as a member of the Ba'ath party, what they aren't. It's a thorny, inconsistent business that seems to preclude almost all kinds of laugh. Would it not be easier just to pay tax?
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10simonhoggart
| 2UK
|
Up early to go to Belfast for the historic first meeting of the new Northern Ireland executive. Peter Mandelson is on the radio, sounding historic. He asks us to reflect on the "enormity" of what has happened this week. I check it in the OED: "enormity - a monstrous wickedness, a crime or monstrous offence." Another word lost to the language. Belfast is as I remember it - permanently wet. The taxi roars up to Stormont, past the triumphalist Carson statue - how long can that survive? - to the massive parliament building, an edifice of a size and grandeur which would be appropriate if its denizens governed the Hapsburg empire, but which in this small, outlying province looks merely ridiculous. It was here 30 years ago that I heard Brian Faulkner, the last Unionist prime minister, offer places in government to nationalist politicians - a deal not unlike the one which has just been agreed. But that was in the earliest days of the troubles; they would get much worse, 3,000 dead worse, and Faulkner's offer was as pointless as sticking a traffic cone in front of a tank. You can tell how historic an event is deemed to be by the number of satellite TV trucks parked outside. Today I can see 13 - good news for history fans since that implies the story could make the Associated Press top twenty of the year's historic news events, somewhere between the Indian elections and the fall of Jeffrey Archer. Inside the building we wait for the new executive to turn up. William Hague came in the morning, but no one seems to have noticed. Finally a Sinn Fein party walked down the great staircase, past the statue of Lord Carnarvon, and addressed us, looking as they generally do, sour but historic. Gerry Adams spoke in Irish, then in English, but it didn't make any difference, since his words were lost, bouncing off the vast marble walls, the carved stone, the lavish brasswork, the painted ceiling and the massive chandeliers. Lord Carnarvon would have considered this lot Fenian bogtrotters. The sight of them standing in the midst of that splendour - "a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people" as it was called - might have made his statue crumble, but it was still upright when the party went back up, affording us the chance to notice that Gerry Adams climbs stairs rather like Groucho Marx, which is something you don't see on TV. The executive met for the first time at 3pm. I followed up the stairs to hear the Rev Ian Paisley, whose DUP is refusing to sit in the executive along with Sinn Fein, but whose ministers will take part in government and committees. Paisley is an unchanging constant, and you could measure the progress of the troubles by the whitening of his hair. "I have been told this is a daybreak - but there is no daybreak for the children of Northern Ireland!" He claimed - Paisley always has a scoop - that Bairbre de Brun, the Sinn Fein health minister, was demanding to know the religious affiliation of civil servants, so that she could sack the Protestants. Paisley's enduring appeal to his electorate is that he treats the Unionists as if they were the oppressed minority. On and on he roared. "You, the press, have told wicked lies! This is no new daybreak. It is a new night, and we do not know what midnight will bring!" I would have written more, but my Pentel which writes letters of fire had run out. As he ploughed on, the DUP assemblymen around him looked first embarrassed and then bored. Their evident ennui near their leader may be a hopeful sign. Messrs Trimble and Mallon emerged from the historic first meeting to report historically good progress. They were heckled. "What about those who were murdered?" shouted someone, who could have come from either side. In the crush I found myself jammed up against Martin McGuinness, the former IRA chief of staff who is now education minister. He is a big man, and was wearing a well-cut suit, with neatly trimmed hair and highly polished shoes. He looked like a minister, not a terrorist. Why was I just faintly reminded of the last chapter of Animal Farm?
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Simon Hoggart .
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Up early to go to Belfast for the historic first meeting of the new Northern Ireland executive. Peter Mandelson is on the radio, sounding historic. He asks us to reflect on the "enormity" of what has happened this week. I check it in the OED: "enormity - a monstrous wickedness, a crime or monstrous offence." Another word lost to the language. Belfast is as I remember it - permanently wet. The taxi roars up to Stormont, past the triumphalist Carson statue - how long can that survive? - to the massive parliament building, an edifice of a size and grandeur which would be appropriate if its denizens governed the Hapsburg empire, but which in this small, outlying province looks merely ridiculous. It was here 30 years ago that I heard Brian Faulkner, the last Unionist prime minister, offer places in government to nationalist politicians - a deal not unlike the one which has just been agreed. But that was in the earliest days of the troubles; they would get much worse, 3,000 dead worse, and Faulkner's offer was as pointless as sticking a traffic cone in front of a tank. You can tell how historic an event is deemed to be by the number of satellite TV trucks parked outside. Today I can see 13 - good news for history fans since that implies the story could make the Associated Press top twenty of the year's historic news events, somewhere between the Indian elections and the fall of Jeffrey Archer. Inside the building we wait for the new executive to turn up. William Hague came in the morning, but no one seems to have noticed. Finally a Sinn Fein party walked down the great staircase, past the statue of Lord Carnarvon, and addressed us, looking as they generally do, sour but historic. Gerry Adams spoke in Irish, then in English, but it didn't make any difference, since his words were lost, bouncing off the vast marble walls, the carved stone, the lavish brasswork, the painted ceiling and the massive chandeliers. Lord Carnarvon would have considered this lot Fenian bogtrotters. The sight of them standing in the midst of that splendour - "a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people" as it was called - might have made his statue crumble, but it was still upright when the party went back up, affording us the chance to notice that Gerry Adams climbs stairs rather like Groucho Marx, which is something you don't see on TV. The executive met for the first time at 3pm. I followed up the stairs to hear the Rev Ian Paisley, whose DUP is refusing to sit in the executive along with Sinn Fein, but whose ministers will take part in government and committees. Paisley is an unchanging constant, and you could measure the progress of the troubles by the whitening of his hair. "I have been told this is a daybreak - but there is no daybreak for the children of Northern Ireland!" He claimed - Paisley always has a scoop - that Bairbre de Brun, the Sinn Fein health minister, was demanding to know the religious affiliation of civil servants, so that she could sack the Protestants. Paisley's enduring appeal to his electorate is that he treats the Unionists as if they were the oppressed minority. On and on he roared. "You, the press, have told wicked lies! This is no new daybreak. It is a new night, and we do not know what midnight will bring!" I would have written more, but my Pentel which writes letters of fire had run out. As he ploughed on, the DUP assemblymen around him looked first embarrassed and then bored. Their evident ennui near their leader may be a hopeful sign. Messrs Trimble and Mallon emerged from the historic first meeting to report historically good progress. They were heckled. "What about those who were murdered?" shouted someone, who could have come from either side. In the crush I found myself jammed up against Martin McGuinness, the former IRA chief of staff who is now education minister. He is a big man, and was wearing a well-cut suit, with neatly trimmed hair and highly polished shoes. He looked like a minister, not a terrorist. Why was I just faintly reminded of the last chapter of Animal Farm?
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10simonhoggart
| 2UK
|
Gordon Brown arrived on the front bench in the Commons, laughing and joking with Tony Blair. Laughing and joking? With Tony Blair? Things must be desperate. The prime minister was about to shaft him. And so he did. Shortly after that he told us to expect a referendum on membership of the euro within - he implied - two years of the election. The chancellor himself would prefer it some time after a giant meteor has wiped out all life on earth. At least that way he'd know the result in advance. Step back with me two hours in time, to 1pm yesterday. I was at the Channel 4 Political Awards, to be shown at 8pm on Saturday. It'll be a funny show, so catch it if you can, though it goes out at the same time as Casualty. You might find it hard to tell the difference. ("This man's career is hanging by a thread! We need oxygen, a blood transfusion, and a heart transplant!" "But doctor, look, the Mandelson case file says 'do not resuscitate!'") At my table was Lembit Opik, the LibDem MP who has spent the last few years telling us that the meteor could strike at any time. I asked if we wouldn't have a few weeks' warning, to send up a nuclear device up to smash the rock before it hits us. He said we might get two minutes. What a cheery companion he proved to be. Jon Snow, the presenter, made a joke about Michael Meacher "only stopping by to pick up the rent". That got a big laugh. Lembit Opik appeared on camera talking about Gordon Prentice, a keen opponent of fox-hunting. He, Lembit, had suggested to him that it should remain legal, but there should be a regulatory agency called "Off-fox". Mr Prentice had replied "using the same words, but in the reverse order". There were some queeny "whoo, whoos" from the assembled pols and hacks, but Gordon Brown looked much amused. Stephen Pound, the Labour MP for Ealing, was briefly fooled on air by a phone call from Tony Blair - actually a member of Radio 4's Dead Ringers team. The prime minister would like to visit his constituency. "I can promise you no tomatoes," said Mr Pound, "but a few kiwi fruits and aubergines, perhaps..." The next winner was the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley, for his book about New Labour and their general contempt for the voters. It is said that Gordon Brown was a source for this work, but now regrets telling the author whatever it was he said. As the oeuvre was being praised, the chancellor looked thunderous. Margaret Beckett, two seats away, smiled a tight little smile. Mr Rawnsley praised his wife for all her help. "She is my rock, my comfort and my joy," he said. The chancellor's jaw literally hung open. He hugged himself, like someone signalling the maitre d' to bring a strait jacket. Then Mr Brown himself won the top award of all, for "the MP who has been the most outstanding figure in the House". They showed short clips of people praising him. He looked delighted. Who wouldn't be? Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews declared on the monitors: "He is an absolutely typical Lowland Scot. He believes in the virtues of toil, and plunder." Back in the Commons, Mr Blair was replying to William Hague. Did an early referendum on the euro mean within two years of the next parliament? (The Tory leader seems to have given up any hope of winning.) "Early in the next parliament would, of course, be within two years," Mr Blair replied. Mr Brown scowled. Win some, lose some. But he seems to win nearly all the time, so I don't suppose he'll mind too much.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Simon Hoggart .
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Gordon Brown arrived on the front bench in the Commons, laughing and joking with Tony Blair. Laughing and joking? With Tony Blair? Things must be desperate. The prime minister was about to shaft him. And so he did. Shortly after that he told us to expect a referendum on membership of the euro within - he implied - two years of the election. The chancellor himself would prefer it some time after a giant meteor has wiped out all life on earth. At least that way he'd know the result in advance. Step back with me two hours in time, to 1pm yesterday. I was at the Channel 4 Political Awards, to be shown at 8pm on Saturday. It'll be a funny show, so catch it if you can, though it goes out at the same time as Casualty. You might find it hard to tell the difference. ("This man's career is hanging by a thread! We need oxygen, a blood transfusion, and a heart transplant!" "But doctor, look, the Mandelson case file says 'do not resuscitate!'") At my table was Lembit Opik, the LibDem MP who has spent the last few years telling us that the meteor could strike at any time. I asked if we wouldn't have a few weeks' warning, to send up a nuclear device up to smash the rock before it hits us. He said we might get two minutes. What a cheery companion he proved to be. Jon Snow, the presenter, made a joke about Michael Meacher "only stopping by to pick up the rent". That got a big laugh. Lembit Opik appeared on camera talking about Gordon Prentice, a keen opponent of fox-hunting. He, Lembit, had suggested to him that it should remain legal, but there should be a regulatory agency called "Off-fox". Mr Prentice had replied "using the same words, but in the reverse order". There were some queeny "whoo, whoos" from the assembled pols and hacks, but Gordon Brown looked much amused. Stephen Pound, the Labour MP for Ealing, was briefly fooled on air by a phone call from Tony Blair - actually a member of Radio 4's Dead Ringers team. The prime minister would like to visit his constituency. "I can promise you no tomatoes," said Mr Pound, "but a few kiwi fruits and aubergines, perhaps..." The next winner was the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley, for his book about New Labour and their general contempt for the voters. It is said that Gordon Brown was a source for this work, but now regrets telling the author whatever it was he said. As the oeuvre was being praised, the chancellor looked thunderous. Margaret Beckett, two seats away, smiled a tight little smile. Mr Rawnsley praised his wife for all her help. "She is my rock, my comfort and my joy," he said. The chancellor's jaw literally hung open. He hugged himself, like someone signalling the maitre d' to bring a strait jacket. Then Mr Brown himself won the top award of all, for "the MP who has been the most outstanding figure in the House". They showed short clips of people praising him. He looked delighted. Who wouldn't be? Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews declared on the monitors: "He is an absolutely typical Lowland Scot. He believes in the virtues of toil, and plunder." Back in the Commons, Mr Blair was replying to William Hague. Did an early referendum on the euro mean within two years of the next parliament? (The Tory leader seems to have given up any hope of winning.) "Early in the next parliament would, of course, be within two years," Mr Blair replied. Mr Brown scowled. Win some, lose some. But he seems to win nearly all the time, so I don't suppose he'll mind too much.
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10simonhoggart
| 2UK
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The House discussed the leaking of the Stephen Lawrence report yesterday. Here was a crucially important document whose contents go to the roots of our national malaise. So naturally, it was the opportunity for a gigantic festival of hypocrisy, an orgy of cant, a saturnalia of double-speak. We heard a government minister actually suggest that he had tried to stamp on the early publication of the report 'out of respect for this House and its procedures.' Even some Labour MPs seemed taken aback. Respect for the House? The Government regards MPs much as a pharaoh looked on the slaves building his pyramid. He was glad to see them at work, and some tiny corner of him might even be grateful, but he would never dream of taking them on one side to discuss the plans. Jack Straw, previously the recipient of the kindest epithet any politician can give another 'a safe pair of hands' was in deep trouble. The mess over the injunctions had made him look foolish. The claim that he had acted in the interests of Parliament made him look weaselly as well. Then he alleged that his real motive was to avoid 'distress to the Lawrence family' whom, it turned out, he had not consulted on the matter. This was a desperate throw, an attempt to imply that anyone who criticised Jack Straw was actually trampling over people who have suffered agonies for more than six years. But the slaves behind him were well-drilled, having felt the knotted rope on their backs too often. They cheered all his assertions, even the most ridiculous, and when Norman Fowler said that he felt 'the strongest sympathy for the family' they actually yelled 'No!' Of course the shadow home secretary went over the top. The Tories always do. Perhaps they think no one will pay attention unless they froth with rabid fury. 'Humiliating climbdown' he said. 'Defies belief . . . defiance of parliamentary democracy . . . a shabby episode that shows this government at its worst.' Although, as Gerald Kaufman pointed out a few moments later, Mr Fowler's party had pursued Sarah Tisdall into jail, had tried to put Clive Ponting into jail, and had pursued the Spycatcher case all the way to Australia. So which was worse, a Tory claiming to be valiant for the freedom of the press, or a Labour backbencher implying that a problem does not exist if the last government got it wrong too? Mr Fowler had admitted that he was a director of a newspaper company, so Mr Straw startlingly accused him of 'speaking as a newspaper executive and not as an MP.' 'Cheap little man!' Mr Fowler muttered at this daft allegation. Tories demanded that he withdraw. Betty Boothroyd said she had been distracted and had not heard what Mr Straw had said. (Who could blame her? If I were Speaker I would have a miniature TV fitted to my arm rest, so that I could catch Captain Pugwash instead.) Mr Straw repeated the charge. 'Bullseye!' yelled some ridiculous Labour sycophant. Betty gently called on Jack to withdraw. 'I withdraw the remark,' he muttered. 'Apologise!' the Tories screamed. 'I apologise,' he mumbled at his chest, in the way which makes every parent yell: 'Say it as if you meant it!' There was a difference, he said, between a judicial inquiry and a 'run-of-the-mill government publication.' The implication of this, that the Government could leak what it liked when it liked, raised the Tories to new levels of ersatz anger. David Winnick, Keith Vaz and Diane Abbott tightened the hysterical atmosphere by, in effect, accusing the Conservatives of racism and contempt for the Lawrence family. 'I am disgusted . . . they did nothing about race and racism when they were in power!' said Mr Vaz, as if that had any bearing on Mr Straw's misjudgment. The House at its very worst, as we old Commons hands say.
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Simon Hoggart .
|
The House discussed the leaking of the Stephen Lawrence report yesterday. Here was a crucially important document whose contents go to the roots of our national malaise. So naturally, it was the opportunity for a gigantic festival of hypocrisy, an orgy of cant, a saturnalia of double-speak. We heard a government minister actually suggest that he had tried to stamp on the early publication of the report 'out of respect for this House and its procedures.' Even some Labour MPs seemed taken aback. Respect for the House? The Government regards MPs much as a pharaoh looked on the slaves building his pyramid. He was glad to see them at work, and some tiny corner of him might even be grateful, but he would never dream of taking them on one side to discuss the plans. Jack Straw, previously the recipient of the kindest epithet any politician can give another 'a safe pair of hands' was in deep trouble. The mess over the injunctions had made him look foolish. The claim that he had acted in the interests of Parliament made him look weaselly as well. Then he alleged that his real motive was to avoid 'distress to the Lawrence family' whom, it turned out, he had not consulted on the matter. This was a desperate throw, an attempt to imply that anyone who criticised Jack Straw was actually trampling over people who have suffered agonies for more than six years. But the slaves behind him were well-drilled, having felt the knotted rope on their backs too often. They cheered all his assertions, even the most ridiculous, and when Norman Fowler said that he felt 'the strongest sympathy for the family' they actually yelled 'No!' Of course the shadow home secretary went over the top. The Tories always do. Perhaps they think no one will pay attention unless they froth with rabid fury. 'Humiliating climbdown' he said. 'Defies belief . . . defiance of parliamentary democracy . . . a shabby episode that shows this government at its worst.' Although, as Gerald Kaufman pointed out a few moments later, Mr Fowler's party had pursued Sarah Tisdall into jail, had tried to put Clive Ponting into jail, and had pursued the Spycatcher case all the way to Australia. So which was worse, a Tory claiming to be valiant for the freedom of the press, or a Labour backbencher implying that a problem does not exist if the last government got it wrong too? Mr Fowler had admitted that he was a director of a newspaper company, so Mr Straw startlingly accused him of 'speaking as a newspaper executive and not as an MP.' 'Cheap little man!' Mr Fowler muttered at this daft allegation. Tories demanded that he withdraw. Betty Boothroyd said she had been distracted and had not heard what Mr Straw had said. (Who could blame her? If I were Speaker I would have a miniature TV fitted to my arm rest, so that I could catch Captain Pugwash instead.) Mr Straw repeated the charge. 'Bullseye!' yelled some ridiculous Labour sycophant. Betty gently called on Jack to withdraw. 'I withdraw the remark,' he muttered. 'Apologise!' the Tories screamed. 'I apologise,' he mumbled at his chest, in the way which makes every parent yell: 'Say it as if you meant it!' There was a difference, he said, between a judicial inquiry and a 'run-of-the-mill government publication.' The implication of this, that the Government could leak what it liked when it liked, raised the Tories to new levels of ersatz anger. David Winnick, Keith Vaz and Diane Abbott tightened the hysterical atmosphere by, in effect, accusing the Conservatives of racism and contempt for the Lawrence family. 'I am disgusted . . . they did nothing about race and racism when they were in power!' said Mr Vaz, as if that had any bearing on Mr Straw's misjudgment. The House at its very worst, as we old Commons hands say.
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10simonhoggart
| 2UK
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This week I was asked to write a chapter for a book about journalism, and I jokily emailed to say my fee would be £10,000. The commissioning editor wrote back to say that was a relief; the publishers had feared I might demand £10,000 per word.But I suspect something like that must have happened when Jonathan Ross's agent contacted the BBC. "Tell you, what, Jonno, we'll have a laugh, we'll ask for six mill a year, and settle for what? £500k? Twice what you're worth, mate, but no harm in trying, right?" Then the word comes back from Broadcasting House: "Yes, of course, six million is eminently reasonable. We'll send the contract over ..." Mr Ross's salary has now become the great symbol of BBC profligacy and financial incontinence, and there was much talk of it at the bash to celebrate 50 years of the Today programme this week. John Humphrys said in his speech he was sorry Jonathan Ross couldn't be with us: "He's at Buckingham Palace giving the king of Saudi Arabia advice about what to do with his money." It's the kind of thing that creates a boiling and roiling resentment in every other person who works for the BBC, especially in radio, where the fees are famously limp.The fact is that the BBC has such range, such clout, and so many outlets that it can create its own stars. It doesn't need to pay vast sums to bring in established people from outside (Graham Norton) and it doesn't need to beggar itself by holding on to those who are offered ridiculous sums elsewhere. You only need to look at Hancock and Morecambe and Wise to see what can happen to those who follow the cash.<b></b> There was much talk of great Today programme fiascos, such as the time Jack de Manio couldn't conduct an interview because he was locked in the toilet. Or the occasion at the start of the Iraq war when Tony Benn appeared to pronounce anathemas on all concerned. But instead of him, they accidentally played a tape of Mongolian throat music. "So, Mr Benn, what's your view?" "Wurghhh, urggh ..." I'd have enjoyed that. Ming Campbell was there looking happy and relaxed. We got on to the subject of lawyers who are also politicians, and he told a story about the late John Smith. He'd been defending a man accused of attempted murder with a knife. The fellow was convicted, so Smith paid the customary visit to the cells to commiserate and apologise. "Not to worry, Mr Smith," he said cheerfully, "you were so good I was believing you myself!"<b></b> It is my habit, when I pass near the ancient wine merchants of Berry Bros and Rudd in St James, London, to pop in and gaze at their fine wine room. Last time I looked the second most expensive wine on sale was a Chateau Petrus 1990 at £3,600 - per bottle. The priciest of the lot was the 1990 Chateau Le Pin, which now retails at £3,800. The grapes are not trodden by horny-footed peasants.People sometimes ask if it's worth it, and the answer is obviously no, except to folk who use such wine to demonstrate their enormous wealth. Absurd to imagine that it is a hundred times better than a fine claret from a less famous name, or even a thousand times better than Sainsbury's rouge.But wine pricing is a weird business. This week I went to the launch of the 1998 vintage of Pol Roger's prestige line, Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill. It is, as you would imagine, very delicious. And it costs £100 a bottle. But a tiny amount is made, and they are desperately anxious not to get the bling, rock stars and Russian millionaires image. So they refuse to provide it to people who they fear might sell it on to certain West End nightclubs or restaurants. Their long-term image is more important than the immediate profits.They told me darkly that there is a new breed of PR person whose job it is to reduce sales. Companies like Burberry have been horrified to see yobs wearing their design, and some champagne houses are similarly afflicted. So they employ people to discourage the wrong sort of customer. I wonder how they work? "Nah, mate, you don't want this stuff. Now, Woolworth's fiver-a-bottle bubbly, you'll love that ..."Next day I went to a tasting of vintage Hine cognacs (these events tend to come in clusters). We were taken through nine brandies, including the 1944, which was fabulous, by Bernard Hine. He is an outgoing, elderly chap with faultless English and a majestic white moustache. Among the terms bandied about to describe the brandies were "figs, crystallised fruit, gingerbread, honey, apricots, flowers, quince, toast, vanilla, cloves, mushrooms, orange peel, truffles and jasmine" - one of those corporate Christmas hampers in a bottle.At one point a guest said he thought he detected fuel. M Hine looked like a Bateman colonel. His eyes bulged and his nostrils dilated. "Fee-you-ell?" he shouted. "Fee-you-ell? I do not like that word!" I thought he was a little unfair - the greatest Rieslings, for example, often have a touch of kerosene, and believe me, it all adds to the flavour.<b></b> To a literary lunch in Cambridge, to plug my book of sketches, The Hands Of History, and the two round-robin books, now collected in paperback as The Christmas Letters. (Incidentally I'll be doing the annual round-up in January next year; all contributions very gratefully received.) I was slightly alarmed to see that I had been placed next to Princess Michael of Kent, whose image in the press has not always been entirely favourable. To my surprise, she turned out to be extremely friendly, unpretentious, and very chatty about all sorts of topics. For example, she does a lot of work with wildlife preservation, and she told me that baby elephants have ears as thin as the skin on a crispy duck. If they're orphaned they lack the shade of a parent. This means that sun cream has to be applied to their ears. Not many people know that.<b></b> Last week I said that Sir Geoffrey Bindman had, at the knighthood ceremony, stepped on to the kneeling stool and walked up next to the Queen. His son, Dan, tells me that this is untrue - instead he hopped straight on to the dais. I am glad to correct the record, and apologise for any inconvenience caused.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Simon Hoggart .
|
This week I was asked to write a chapter for a book about journalism, and I jokily emailed to say my fee would be £10,000. The commissioning editor wrote back to say that was a relief; the publishers had feared I might demand £10,000 per word.But I suspect something like that must have happened when Jonathan Ross's agent contacted the BBC. "Tell you, what, Jonno, we'll have a laugh, we'll ask for six mill a year, and settle for what? £500k? Twice what you're worth, mate, but no harm in trying, right?" Then the word comes back from Broadcasting House: "Yes, of course, six million is eminently reasonable. We'll send the contract over ..." Mr Ross's salary has now become the great symbol of BBC profligacy and financial incontinence, and there was much talk of it at the bash to celebrate 50 years of the Today programme this week. John Humphrys said in his speech he was sorry Jonathan Ross couldn't be with us: "He's at Buckingham Palace giving the king of Saudi Arabia advice about what to do with his money." It's the kind of thing that creates a boiling and roiling resentment in every other person who works for the BBC, especially in radio, where the fees are famously limp.The fact is that the BBC has such range, such clout, and so many outlets that it can create its own stars. It doesn't need to pay vast sums to bring in established people from outside (Graham Norton) and it doesn't need to beggar itself by holding on to those who are offered ridiculous sums elsewhere. You only need to look at Hancock and Morecambe and Wise to see what can happen to those who follow the cash.<b></b> There was much talk of great Today programme fiascos, such as the time Jack de Manio couldn't conduct an interview because he was locked in the toilet. Or the occasion at the start of the Iraq war when Tony Benn appeared to pronounce anathemas on all concerned. But instead of him, they accidentally played a tape of Mongolian throat music. "So, Mr Benn, what's your view?" "Wurghhh, urggh ..." I'd have enjoyed that. Ming Campbell was there looking happy and relaxed. We got on to the subject of lawyers who are also politicians, and he told a story about the late John Smith. He'd been defending a man accused of attempted murder with a knife. The fellow was convicted, so Smith paid the customary visit to the cells to commiserate and apologise. "Not to worry, Mr Smith," he said cheerfully, "you were so good I was believing you myself!"<b></b> It is my habit, when I pass near the ancient wine merchants of Berry Bros and Rudd in St James, London, to pop in and gaze at their fine wine room. Last time I looked the second most expensive wine on sale was a Chateau Petrus 1990 at £3,600 - per bottle. The priciest of the lot was the 1990 Chateau Le Pin, which now retails at £3,800. The grapes are not trodden by horny-footed peasants.People sometimes ask if it's worth it, and the answer is obviously no, except to folk who use such wine to demonstrate their enormous wealth. Absurd to imagine that it is a hundred times better than a fine claret from a less famous name, or even a thousand times better than Sainsbury's rouge.But wine pricing is a weird business. This week I went to the launch of the 1998 vintage of Pol Roger's prestige line, Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill. It is, as you would imagine, very delicious. And it costs £100 a bottle. But a tiny amount is made, and they are desperately anxious not to get the bling, rock stars and Russian millionaires image. So they refuse to provide it to people who they fear might sell it on to certain West End nightclubs or restaurants. Their long-term image is more important than the immediate profits.They told me darkly that there is a new breed of PR person whose job it is to reduce sales. Companies like Burberry have been horrified to see yobs wearing their design, and some champagne houses are similarly afflicted. So they employ people to discourage the wrong sort of customer. I wonder how they work? "Nah, mate, you don't want this stuff. Now, Woolworth's fiver-a-bottle bubbly, you'll love that ..."Next day I went to a tasting of vintage Hine cognacs (these events tend to come in clusters). We were taken through nine brandies, including the 1944, which was fabulous, by Bernard Hine. He is an outgoing, elderly chap with faultless English and a majestic white moustache. Among the terms bandied about to describe the brandies were "figs, crystallised fruit, gingerbread, honey, apricots, flowers, quince, toast, vanilla, cloves, mushrooms, orange peel, truffles and jasmine" - one of those corporate Christmas hampers in a bottle.At one point a guest said he thought he detected fuel. M Hine looked like a Bateman colonel. His eyes bulged and his nostrils dilated. "Fee-you-ell?" he shouted. "Fee-you-ell? I do not like that word!" I thought he was a little unfair - the greatest Rieslings, for example, often have a touch of kerosene, and believe me, it all adds to the flavour.<b></b> To a literary lunch in Cambridge, to plug my book of sketches, The Hands Of History, and the two round-robin books, now collected in paperback as The Christmas Letters. (Incidentally I'll be doing the annual round-up in January next year; all contributions very gratefully received.) I was slightly alarmed to see that I had been placed next to Princess Michael of Kent, whose image in the press has not always been entirely favourable. To my surprise, she turned out to be extremely friendly, unpretentious, and very chatty about all sorts of topics. For example, she does a lot of work with wildlife preservation, and she told me that baby elephants have ears as thin as the skin on a crispy duck. If they're orphaned they lack the shade of a parent. This means that sun cream has to be applied to their ears. Not many people know that.<b></b> Last week I said that Sir Geoffrey Bindman had, at the knighthood ceremony, stepped on to the kneeling stool and walked up next to the Queen. His son, Dan, tells me that this is untrue - instead he hopped straight on to the dais. I am glad to correct the record, and apologise for any inconvenience caused.
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10simonhoggart
| 2UK
|
The Tories are trying to turn Northern Ireland into a party political issue. They know they shouldn't really, but they just can't stop themselves.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Simon Hoggart .
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The Tories are trying to turn Northern Ireland into a party political issue. They know they shouldn't really, but they just can't stop themselves.
|
10simonhoggart
| 2UK
|
John Prescott paid a welcome visit to the House of Commons yesterday to launch his department's new white paper, Our Towns And Cities: The Future. This is a classic New Labour document, being printed on glossy paper and illustrated with colour pictures of the Elysium which is the new Britain. Happy people, many from ethnic minorities, gaze productively at computer screens. Pensioners get off a gleaming streamlined tram which has just delivered them promptly and inexpensively to their grandchildren. In New Labour's dream world, canals are for strolling by, past bustling pavement cafes where laughing groups of people drink cappuccino in the sun. And they're definitely not full of dead cats, condoms or rusted supermarket trollies. The prose has the same unreal quality. Nothing actually happens, nothing tangible is planned. But, we are promised, there will be "innovative developments", "local strategic partnerships" and "urban policy units". Town councils will have "new powers to promote wellbeing". As members of society, people will need to be able "to achieve their full potential" while "protecting the environment, both local and global." To make sure this happens, the government's "policies and programmes are the building blocks," and just in case we might think this may never happen, we're promised that "visions for the future will be developed". There will be a "key focus" here and a "coordinated effort" there. The government, in its wisdom, has "established a framework". The whole thing resembles those fantastical architect's drawings, in which slim, well-dressed figures stroll across tree-festooned piazzas, with no mention of empty burger boxes or gangs of glowering youths. But Mr Prescott's statement, far from being the jumble of words we have come to expect, was an oral version of the same thing. I have noticed that the time to become suspicious about this government is when it breaks into capital letters. This invariably represents not the real world, but some new initiative, programme or quango. He is setting up Regional Centres of Excellence. He has established a Neighbourhood Renewal Fund. He is considering an Urban Policy Board, and a Cabinet Committee is to hold an Urban Summit in the year 2002. Let's not forget the Integrated Transport White Paper, the New Deal for Communities and the Social Exclusion Unit. Capital letters were all over the shop, each in charge of a resonant abstraction. We hacks were abjured yesterday by Alastair Campbell, the prime minister's press secretary to mark the difference between scepticism and cynicism. My attitude to Mr Prescott's statement was a balanced mixture of both. At one point, for example, he reminded us that Lord Rogers had said, "people make cities, but cities make citizens". Tories giggled at this, crying "wozzat mean?" "Think about it!" he bellowed back, though I'm afraid I was none the wiser. You could say, "people make cars, but cars make drivers", or "people make alcohol, but alcohol makes alcoholics". This kind of talk spreads among the very people who use it. Mr Prescott got confused about the technical terms for a city. "The city of York already is a city, as is my own city of Hull is a city, and that I think is the definition of city and town." Faced with these massive piles of abstract thought, there was little the Tory spokesman, Archie Norman could say or do. "The only time we ever see the deputy prime minister," he grumped, "is when he has a glossy brochure or a disaster to announce." Or, I reflected yesterday, possibly both at the same time.
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Simon Hoggart .
|
John Prescott paid a welcome visit to the House of Commons yesterday to launch his department's new white paper, Our Towns And Cities: The Future. This is a classic New Labour document, being printed on glossy paper and illustrated with colour pictures of the Elysium which is the new Britain. Happy people, many from ethnic minorities, gaze productively at computer screens. Pensioners get off a gleaming streamlined tram which has just delivered them promptly and inexpensively to their grandchildren. In New Labour's dream world, canals are for strolling by, past bustling pavement cafes where laughing groups of people drink cappuccino in the sun. And they're definitely not full of dead cats, condoms or rusted supermarket trollies. The prose has the same unreal quality. Nothing actually happens, nothing tangible is planned. But, we are promised, there will be "innovative developments", "local strategic partnerships" and "urban policy units". Town councils will have "new powers to promote wellbeing". As members of society, people will need to be able "to achieve their full potential" while "protecting the environment, both local and global." To make sure this happens, the government's "policies and programmes are the building blocks," and just in case we might think this may never happen, we're promised that "visions for the future will be developed". There will be a "key focus" here and a "coordinated effort" there. The government, in its wisdom, has "established a framework". The whole thing resembles those fantastical architect's drawings, in which slim, well-dressed figures stroll across tree-festooned piazzas, with no mention of empty burger boxes or gangs of glowering youths. But Mr Prescott's statement, far from being the jumble of words we have come to expect, was an oral version of the same thing. I have noticed that the time to become suspicious about this government is when it breaks into capital letters. This invariably represents not the real world, but some new initiative, programme or quango. He is setting up Regional Centres of Excellence. He has established a Neighbourhood Renewal Fund. He is considering an Urban Policy Board, and a Cabinet Committee is to hold an Urban Summit in the year 2002. Let's not forget the Integrated Transport White Paper, the New Deal for Communities and the Social Exclusion Unit. Capital letters were all over the shop, each in charge of a resonant abstraction. We hacks were abjured yesterday by Alastair Campbell, the prime minister's press secretary to mark the difference between scepticism and cynicism. My attitude to Mr Prescott's statement was a balanced mixture of both. At one point, for example, he reminded us that Lord Rogers had said, "people make cities, but cities make citizens". Tories giggled at this, crying "wozzat mean?" "Think about it!" he bellowed back, though I'm afraid I was none the wiser. You could say, "people make cars, but cars make drivers", or "people make alcohol, but alcohol makes alcoholics". This kind of talk spreads among the very people who use it. Mr Prescott got confused about the technical terms for a city. "The city of York already is a city, as is my own city of Hull is a city, and that I think is the definition of city and town." Faced with these massive piles of abstract thought, there was little the Tory spokesman, Archie Norman could say or do. "The only time we ever see the deputy prime minister," he grumped, "is when he has a glossy brochure or a disaster to announce." Or, I reflected yesterday, possibly both at the same time.
|
0catherinebennett
| 2UK
|
In its latest bulletin from the frontiers of mental health research, the Daily Mail reports that Prince Charles seems to be, tragically, losing his tenuous hold on sanity, smashing china and losing his temper. "So just what is wrong with the Prince of Wales," probed Richard Kay. Well, it's pretty obvious isn't it? He's gone mad. Or worse. "Friends ... are increasingly concerned about his wellbeing." Which sounds as if the prince has joined Les Dennis, Winona Ryder, Michael Barrymore and Jeffrey Archer, all of whom have been reported, at various times, to be on "suicide watch". If only it were so easy! In jail, where the term originated, suicidal inmates can be checked every hour or more, through a handy peephole. But distressed celebrities are scattered all over the place, often behind closed doors, and quite impossible for their carers in the press to keep tabs on. The safest solution, surely, would be for Lord Rothermere or one of his competitors to establish a sort of celebrity Bedlam adjacent to their newsrooms into which these tragic individuals could be committed for their own good. With the stars monitored 24 hours a day by staff reporters and media mental health experts such as Raj Persaud, we could rest assured that everything was being done to stand between our favourite celebrities and their besetting problems with depression and alcoholism, shop-lifting and overweight and - perhaps saddest of all - crockery.
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Catherine Bennett .
|
In its latest bulletin from the frontiers of mental health research, the Daily Mail reports that Prince Charles seems to be, tragically, losing his tenuous hold on sanity, smashing china and losing his temper. "So just what is wrong with the Prince of Wales," probed Richard Kay. Well, it's pretty obvious isn't it? He's gone mad. Or worse. "Friends ... are increasingly concerned about his wellbeing." Which sounds as if the prince has joined Les Dennis, Winona Ryder, Michael Barrymore and Jeffrey Archer, all of whom have been reported, at various times, to be on "suicide watch". If only it were so easy! In jail, where the term originated, suicidal inmates can be checked every hour or more, through a handy peephole. But distressed celebrities are scattered all over the place, often behind closed doors, and quite impossible for their carers in the press to keep tabs on. The safest solution, surely, would be for Lord Rothermere or one of his competitors to establish a sort of celebrity Bedlam adjacent to their newsrooms into which these tragic individuals could be committed for their own good. With the stars monitored 24 hours a day by staff reporters and media mental health experts such as Raj Persaud, we could rest assured that everything was being done to stand between our favourite celebrities and their besetting problems with depression and alcoholism, shop-lifting and overweight and - perhaps saddest of all - crockery.
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0catherinebennett
| 2UK
|
In further sensational, never previously broadcast interviews, Princess Diana describes events which will astonish the public and cast yet further doubts on her husband's fitness to rule. The recordings were made by her voice coach, Peter Pension-Scheme, whose teaching methods included immortalising the Princess on compromising video tapes, which were left with him for safe-keeping. In one tape, he is heard encouraging her to discuss her troubled marriage: "You must have been desperate for a real, red-blooded man, given that your everyday life was a desperate vortex of disappointment, bulimia and unbearable sexual frustration." "Yeah," Diana says. Pension-Scheme: "Your husband wasn't really meeting your needs?" The Princess laughs. "Twice a year, birthdays and Christmas - and that was cancelled if either of them fell on the 13th of the month. Typical Libra." Pension-Scheme asks: "So you were forced to seek intimacy elsewhere?" "And how," Diana says, rolling her eyes. "Couldn't get enough - until we were found out. Then it was curtains." Although she does not mention any names, it is understood that she is referring to John Major, the former Tory prime minister. Pension-Scheme: "He's said to be a very well endowed man." Diana giggles again. "Shall we say I thought he was just drop dead gorgeous. I don't find it easy to discuss - but I used to fantasise about running away from all this, finding a little bungalow somewhere, and spending the rest of my life taking care of him - but it wasn't meant to be." Diana's intimate friendship with Mr Major is understood to have continued until he was thrown out of office in 1997. Asked if she thinks his electoral defeat had anything to do with MI5, Diana lowers her voice. "With a little help from You Know Who. I didn't know anything about it until Labour had been in for three weeks. Charles just came in and told me they'd won. By a landslide. Typical." Minutes later she had to put on her public face and go shopping. "I was devastated. Threw both of us down the stairs. Total and utter stitch up. But there was no way of proving it." The outgoing Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir John Stevens, has ordered an investigation into claims of voting irregularities in the 1997 election. Before she was due to make an important speech, Mr Pension-Scheme would urge Diana to focus on the most hurtful aspects of life with her husband, then imagine herself performing a seductive victory dance with Wayne Sleep. She says she was devastated to discover, during her engagement, that Charles snored. "Too late to change my mind. Completely shattering. He said he wasn't going to be the first Prince of Wales not to snore. Utterly typical." Pension-Scheme: "Anything really disgusting? On a totally confidential basis, obviously." Diana pauses. "The worst thing - never told a soul, just too dangerous - is the devil worshipping thing. Right from the start of our marriage, I'd hear these terrifying howls at Highgrove. Spine chilling. Charles used to say it was owls." Refusing to accept this explanation, a frightened Diana contacted one of her clairvoyants, Evelina Chequebook. "Evelina came down and said the place was emitting more high-potency evil than anywhere she'd ever experienced. Totally toxic. Did my head in. Told me I absolutely had to get the boys out of there, before they were sucked into it. Can you believe it?" Mr Pension-Scheme asks what happened. "Went to see the Top Lady, as I call her," Diana says. "Said, I happen know for a fact that Charles and Camilla and the Van Cutsems are devil-worshipping in the quinsy garden." But the Queen refused to intervene."Just said, 'Oh Charles is utterly insane. Always has been. Always will be.' I said, 'Insanity! I see mental instability of such magnitude in my role that you would never understand.' And that was it. Nada." The outgoing Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir John Stevens, has ordered an investigation into claims that a satanic cult is operating from Highgrove. In another sensational confession, Diana says she discovered the location of Lord Lucan. Invited by Peter Pension-Scheme to share any empowering but deeply private experiences which might extend her vocal range, the Princess reveals that she has the power to track down missing people and objects. "People who have passed on, they tell me stuff. Tracked Charles down once, with his Lady. Behind his faith shed. Boy, were they surprised. And an earring. And Elvis came through once, saying Lucan's not really dead at all. Got me so upset." "Where is he now?" Pension-Scheme interjects. "What's the exact address?" "He's living under a false identity in -" here the Princess checks herself. "I can't tell you. Too risky. And he begged me not to expose him. Knows what he did was wrong, but he's trying to rebuild his life. Absolutely begged. I said OK. Left it to fate. I know what goes around comes around." Asked if she has told anyone else about her psychic powers, Diana tells Mr Pension-Scheme that he's the first. "I know I can trust you." On the basis of new evidence, Sir John Stevens has ordered a re-investigation of Lord Lucan's disappearance. <B>Who is the 'melons' man? </B> <BR> Even as one sympathises with the women MPs who, as a new report alleges, have endured unforgiveable insults from male colleagues, their reluctance to disclose which individuals offered them 10,000 for sex (reported by Oona King), or shouted "melons" (Barbara Follett), or "literally" pinned them to a wall by the neck (unnamed woman MP), or expressed a desire to "roger" a nearby woman (reported by Jackie Ballard), is quite mystifying. Who are these men? If they are still in parliament, should they not be named, and if guilty, subjected to public emasculation without anaesthetic? Or at any rate, invited to step down. Not only is it wrong to protect these primitives, the steady drone of unresolved complaint, if it persists for much longer, might give people the unfortunate impression that many women MPs are disproportionately preoccupied with their own specialness and personal grievances. One is still grumbling about the "public school atmosphere". Yet another says she "dreads" PM's questions. Can nothing be done to help them? Some effective collective action might liberate female MPs and civilise rogue males, at the same time as encouraging women who regularly face worse treatment, in far harder circumstances, all over the country. Unless one explanation for this apparent passivity is that many of the more lurid offences reported this week actually occurred years ago, long before the breast-feeding reforms and the changes in Commons hours and culture which now make the woman MP's lot the envy of many full-time workers with four weeks annual holiday. Although, as Dawn Primarolo suggested, it can still be difficult for women MPs to escape from work in order to watch their children play in rugby or football matches. I wonder if they have considered doing so during important parliamentary debates. A debate, for example, like the one about David Blunkett's outrageous and ignorant proposal to restrict freedom of speech where it relates to religion. You couldn't help but notice, on Tuesday afternoon, that this long, non-boorish discussion did not feature a single contribution from a woman backbencher. Two female junior ministers spoke in defence of censorship. Perhaps there were some important matches on. <B>Ridicule us too, please </B><BR> Jackie Rowley, communications director for Charles Kennedy, emails to ask why the Lib Dem leader's card did not feature in a piece, published earlier this week, about politicians' Christmas cards. "Did you fail to mention the Kennedy card because it was too normal (and in aid of a constituency charity)?" she asks. I see that lack of space is no excuse for ignoring Mr Kennedy's almost unimproveable Christmas card (in aid of the Highland Hospice in Inverness), which depicts a croft in the foreground and, behind it, the sunlit eminence of Glencoe, partially obscured by a line of horizontal cloud. I am conscious that there may be other cards which ought to be described in the Guardian. If so, do let me know.
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Catherine Bennett .
|
In further sensational, never previously broadcast interviews, Princess Diana describes events which will astonish the public and cast yet further doubts on her husband's fitness to rule. The recordings were made by her voice coach, Peter Pension-Scheme, whose teaching methods included immortalising the Princess on compromising video tapes, which were left with him for safe-keeping. In one tape, he is heard encouraging her to discuss her troubled marriage: "You must have been desperate for a real, red-blooded man, given that your everyday life was a desperate vortex of disappointment, bulimia and unbearable sexual frustration." "Yeah," Diana says. Pension-Scheme: "Your husband wasn't really meeting your needs?" The Princess laughs. "Twice a year, birthdays and Christmas - and that was cancelled if either of them fell on the 13th of the month. Typical Libra." Pension-Scheme asks: "So you were forced to seek intimacy elsewhere?" "And how," Diana says, rolling her eyes. "Couldn't get enough - until we were found out. Then it was curtains." Although she does not mention any names, it is understood that she is referring to John Major, the former Tory prime minister. Pension-Scheme: "He's said to be a very well endowed man." Diana giggles again. "Shall we say I thought he was just drop dead gorgeous. I don't find it easy to discuss - but I used to fantasise about running away from all this, finding a little bungalow somewhere, and spending the rest of my life taking care of him - but it wasn't meant to be." Diana's intimate friendship with Mr Major is understood to have continued until he was thrown out of office in 1997. Asked if she thinks his electoral defeat had anything to do with MI5, Diana lowers her voice. "With a little help from You Know Who. I didn't know anything about it until Labour had been in for three weeks. Charles just came in and told me they'd won. By a landslide. Typical." Minutes later she had to put on her public face and go shopping. "I was devastated. Threw both of us down the stairs. Total and utter stitch up. But there was no way of proving it." The outgoing Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir John Stevens, has ordered an investigation into claims of voting irregularities in the 1997 election. Before she was due to make an important speech, Mr Pension-Scheme would urge Diana to focus on the most hurtful aspects of life with her husband, then imagine herself performing a seductive victory dance with Wayne Sleep. She says she was devastated to discover, during her engagement, that Charles snored. "Too late to change my mind. Completely shattering. He said he wasn't going to be the first Prince of Wales not to snore. Utterly typical." Pension-Scheme: "Anything really disgusting? On a totally confidential basis, obviously." Diana pauses. "The worst thing - never told a soul, just too dangerous - is the devil worshipping thing. Right from the start of our marriage, I'd hear these terrifying howls at Highgrove. Spine chilling. Charles used to say it was owls." Refusing to accept this explanation, a frightened Diana contacted one of her clairvoyants, Evelina Chequebook. "Evelina came down and said the place was emitting more high-potency evil than anywhere she'd ever experienced. Totally toxic. Did my head in. Told me I absolutely had to get the boys out of there, before they were sucked into it. Can you believe it?" Mr Pension-Scheme asks what happened. "Went to see the Top Lady, as I call her," Diana says. "Said, I happen know for a fact that Charles and Camilla and the Van Cutsems are devil-worshipping in the quinsy garden." But the Queen refused to intervene."Just said, 'Oh Charles is utterly insane. Always has been. Always will be.' I said, 'Insanity! I see mental instability of such magnitude in my role that you would never understand.' And that was it. Nada." The outgoing Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir John Stevens, has ordered an investigation into claims that a satanic cult is operating from Highgrove. In another sensational confession, Diana says she discovered the location of Lord Lucan. Invited by Peter Pension-Scheme to share any empowering but deeply private experiences which might extend her vocal range, the Princess reveals that she has the power to track down missing people and objects. "People who have passed on, they tell me stuff. Tracked Charles down once, with his Lady. Behind his faith shed. Boy, were they surprised. And an earring. And Elvis came through once, saying Lucan's not really dead at all. Got me so upset." "Where is he now?" Pension-Scheme interjects. "What's the exact address?" "He's living under a false identity in -" here the Princess checks herself. "I can't tell you. Too risky. And he begged me not to expose him. Knows what he did was wrong, but he's trying to rebuild his life. Absolutely begged. I said OK. Left it to fate. I know what goes around comes around." Asked if she has told anyone else about her psychic powers, Diana tells Mr Pension-Scheme that he's the first. "I know I can trust you." On the basis of new evidence, Sir John Stevens has ordered a re-investigation of Lord Lucan's disappearance. <B>Who is the 'melons' man? </B> <BR> Even as one sympathises with the women MPs who, as a new report alleges, have endured unforgiveable insults from male colleagues, their reluctance to disclose which individuals offered them 10,000 for sex (reported by Oona King), or shouted "melons" (Barbara Follett), or "literally" pinned them to a wall by the neck (unnamed woman MP), or expressed a desire to "roger" a nearby woman (reported by Jackie Ballard), is quite mystifying. Who are these men? If they are still in parliament, should they not be named, and if guilty, subjected to public emasculation without anaesthetic? Or at any rate, invited to step down. Not only is it wrong to protect these primitives, the steady drone of unresolved complaint, if it persists for much longer, might give people the unfortunate impression that many women MPs are disproportionately preoccupied with their own specialness and personal grievances. One is still grumbling about the "public school atmosphere". Yet another says she "dreads" PM's questions. Can nothing be done to help them? Some effective collective action might liberate female MPs and civilise rogue males, at the same time as encouraging women who regularly face worse treatment, in far harder circumstances, all over the country. Unless one explanation for this apparent passivity is that many of the more lurid offences reported this week actually occurred years ago, long before the breast-feeding reforms and the changes in Commons hours and culture which now make the woman MP's lot the envy of many full-time workers with four weeks annual holiday. Although, as Dawn Primarolo suggested, it can still be difficult for women MPs to escape from work in order to watch their children play in rugby or football matches. I wonder if they have considered doing so during important parliamentary debates. A debate, for example, like the one about David Blunkett's outrageous and ignorant proposal to restrict freedom of speech where it relates to religion. You couldn't help but notice, on Tuesday afternoon, that this long, non-boorish discussion did not feature a single contribution from a woman backbencher. Two female junior ministers spoke in defence of censorship. Perhaps there were some important matches on. <B>Ridicule us too, please </B><BR> Jackie Rowley, communications director for Charles Kennedy, emails to ask why the Lib Dem leader's card did not feature in a piece, published earlier this week, about politicians' Christmas cards. "Did you fail to mention the Kennedy card because it was too normal (and in aid of a constituency charity)?" she asks. I see that lack of space is no excuse for ignoring Mr Kennedy's almost unimproveable Christmas card (in aid of the Highland Hospice in Inverness), which depicts a croft in the foreground and, behind it, the sunlit eminence of Glencoe, partially obscured by a line of horizontal cloud. I am conscious that there may be other cards which ought to be described in the Guardian. If so, do let me know.
|
0catherinebennett
| 2UK
|
In Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, PG Wodehouse recorded the sterling response of Beach, the butler, on discovering Lord Emsworth's son in a drawing room with a sack of rats in his hand. "With a murmured apology, he secured the sack and started to withdraw. It was not strictly his duty to carry rats, but a good butler is always ready to give and take. Only so can the amenities of a large country house be preserved." Anyone who has marvelled, in recent days, at the duties routinely performed by Paul Burrell in his days of butling for the Prince and Princess of Wales may find that the Wodehouse passage has lost some of its old impact. They may feel that in comparison with the demands on Burrell's give and take, Beach's was barely tested. For a man, like Burrell, who might, at any time, be ordered to retrieve one of Diana's unwilling lovers from his hiding place in a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, or have a book thrown at him by Prince Charles as a punishment for second-rate lying, or be despatched to Paddington to stand proxy for the Princess as the saviour of deserving prostitutes, or be sent out by his mistress to buy pornography for her teenage son, the efficient disposal of a sack of rats would probably have presented a nice break from routine. For Burrell's unfortunate colleague, the valet who had to hold Prince Charles's hospital specimen pot while the royal membrum virile pissed into it, rat-securing could only have offered a glimpse of a better, more beautiful life. Of the many unanswered questions currently stacking-up, Sherlock Holmes-fashion, in the wake of the Burrell trial, the most fascinating is not, surely, the issue of why the Queen dallied so long before springing Burrell from the witness box, nor why our senior police investigators are so spectacularly thick, nor what possessed Burrell to remove boxes of old pop CDs, as well as letters, from proximity to those beastly shredding Spencers, but the far more intriguing subject of the Windsors' execrable treatment of their servants. How have they got away with it for so long? Naturally, confidentiality agreements and the official secrets act have been helpful to the feudal tradition. Had it not been for Burrell's trial, Prince Charles must have felt quite confident that no one would find out that fibbing to his wife formed part of the Highgrove butler's job description. Wendy Berry, who wrote an engrossing account of her servitude at Highgrove (and one which was rather kinder, though otherwise consistent with the subsequently published recollections of Ken Wharfe, the detective, and Patrick Jephson, Diana's secretary) had to flee to America after Prince Charles took out an injunction on her book, one which remains in place, ensuring that no part of it can be quoted. But even with this legal deterrent to gossip, it is remarkable how little, until now, has been disclosed by their servants about the preposterous expectations and demands of members of the royal family. Most people will have waited until the Burrell trial to discover that Prince Charles is notorious not only for temper tantrums but for the ludicrous and time-wasting requirement, like a child who cannot leave the house without her comfort blanket, that his personal arrangements, even in hospital, should replicate those at Highgrove. Thanks to Burrell, we now know that for the heir to the throne, there can be no disruption without a van-load of transitional objects. Also that this ardent believer in the dignity of mankind prefers, when at home, to recreate the social arrangements of Altman's satire, Gosford Park - a film, incidentally, which Charles has screened for guests at Sandringham: quality in the comfy chairs, servants in the hard ones at the back. Perhaps they were lucky. The Queen, by Burrell's account, prefers the lower orders to stand in her presence, even when, as in his own, notorious case, their encounter lasts for three hours. As for these bullied butlers and dressers, valets and housemaids, only proximity to power - and, of course, the free accommodation - can explain why so many are content to indulge their masters, remaining mutely loyal, infinitely discreet. For Burrell, Diana's intimacy and trust must have compensated for the dignity he forfeited when she appointed him Rock of the Bedchamber, a sort of gentleman-procurer responsible for delivering her lovers, stowed in a car boot, in and out of Kensington Palace. Similarly, his sovereign's abrupt recollection of their chat - "the Queen came through for me" - seems instantly to have made up for her two years of forgetfulness. Those who now condemn Burrell for telling his story should perhaps marvel instead at his forbearance during the many years of being pelted with books by the heir apparent and besieged by out-of-hours calls from the moody princess while unwanted presents from colonial visitors stoked the Highgrove bonfires. Moreover, even as they add to the gaiety of nations, the Burrell confessions may effect some improvement in palace working conditions. Next time some troublesome Helot has him reaching for the nearest, book-shaped missile, the Prince of Wales may want to think twice, and send for a rat sack instead.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Catherine Bennett .
|
In Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, PG Wodehouse recorded the sterling response of Beach, the butler, on discovering Lord Emsworth's son in a drawing room with a sack of rats in his hand. "With a murmured apology, he secured the sack and started to withdraw. It was not strictly his duty to carry rats, but a good butler is always ready to give and take. Only so can the amenities of a large country house be preserved." Anyone who has marvelled, in recent days, at the duties routinely performed by Paul Burrell in his days of butling for the Prince and Princess of Wales may find that the Wodehouse passage has lost some of its old impact. They may feel that in comparison with the demands on Burrell's give and take, Beach's was barely tested. For a man, like Burrell, who might, at any time, be ordered to retrieve one of Diana's unwilling lovers from his hiding place in a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, or have a book thrown at him by Prince Charles as a punishment for second-rate lying, or be despatched to Paddington to stand proxy for the Princess as the saviour of deserving prostitutes, or be sent out by his mistress to buy pornography for her teenage son, the efficient disposal of a sack of rats would probably have presented a nice break from routine. For Burrell's unfortunate colleague, the valet who had to hold Prince Charles's hospital specimen pot while the royal membrum virile pissed into it, rat-securing could only have offered a glimpse of a better, more beautiful life. Of the many unanswered questions currently stacking-up, Sherlock Holmes-fashion, in the wake of the Burrell trial, the most fascinating is not, surely, the issue of why the Queen dallied so long before springing Burrell from the witness box, nor why our senior police investigators are so spectacularly thick, nor what possessed Burrell to remove boxes of old pop CDs, as well as letters, from proximity to those beastly shredding Spencers, but the far more intriguing subject of the Windsors' execrable treatment of their servants. How have they got away with it for so long? Naturally, confidentiality agreements and the official secrets act have been helpful to the feudal tradition. Had it not been for Burrell's trial, Prince Charles must have felt quite confident that no one would find out that fibbing to his wife formed part of the Highgrove butler's job description. Wendy Berry, who wrote an engrossing account of her servitude at Highgrove (and one which was rather kinder, though otherwise consistent with the subsequently published recollections of Ken Wharfe, the detective, and Patrick Jephson, Diana's secretary) had to flee to America after Prince Charles took out an injunction on her book, one which remains in place, ensuring that no part of it can be quoted. But even with this legal deterrent to gossip, it is remarkable how little, until now, has been disclosed by their servants about the preposterous expectations and demands of members of the royal family. Most people will have waited until the Burrell trial to discover that Prince Charles is notorious not only for temper tantrums but for the ludicrous and time-wasting requirement, like a child who cannot leave the house without her comfort blanket, that his personal arrangements, even in hospital, should replicate those at Highgrove. Thanks to Burrell, we now know that for the heir to the throne, there can be no disruption without a van-load of transitional objects. Also that this ardent believer in the dignity of mankind prefers, when at home, to recreate the social arrangements of Altman's satire, Gosford Park - a film, incidentally, which Charles has screened for guests at Sandringham: quality in the comfy chairs, servants in the hard ones at the back. Perhaps they were lucky. The Queen, by Burrell's account, prefers the lower orders to stand in her presence, even when, as in his own, notorious case, their encounter lasts for three hours. As for these bullied butlers and dressers, valets and housemaids, only proximity to power - and, of course, the free accommodation - can explain why so many are content to indulge their masters, remaining mutely loyal, infinitely discreet. For Burrell, Diana's intimacy and trust must have compensated for the dignity he forfeited when she appointed him Rock of the Bedchamber, a sort of gentleman-procurer responsible for delivering her lovers, stowed in a car boot, in and out of Kensington Palace. Similarly, his sovereign's abrupt recollection of their chat - "the Queen came through for me" - seems instantly to have made up for her two years of forgetfulness. Those who now condemn Burrell for telling his story should perhaps marvel instead at his forbearance during the many years of being pelted with books by the heir apparent and besieged by out-of-hours calls from the moody princess while unwanted presents from colonial visitors stoked the Highgrove bonfires. Moreover, even as they add to the gaiety of nations, the Burrell confessions may effect some improvement in palace working conditions. Next time some troublesome Helot has him reaching for the nearest, book-shaped missile, the Prince of Wales may want to think twice, and send for a rat sack instead.
|
0catherinebennett
| 2UK
|
For loyal followers of Prince Charles's career, Mark Bolland's statement only confirmed something that became evident years ago, even before Jonathan Dimbleby's biography and television documentary introduced us to the suffering, misunderstood outsider who is our future king. As long ago as 1982, in one of my favourite Prince Charles speeches (in which he lectured the BMA on the benefits of healing), our embryonic dissident anticipated disapproval with a short digression about the role of the intellectual outcast, reminding the doctors of the persecution of the 16th-century physician, Paracelsus: "He is probably remembered more for his fight against orthodoxy than for his achievements in the medical field. As a result of his unorthodox approach to medicine in his time, he was equated with the damnable Dr Faustus."Such, the doctors gathered, was Charles's estimation of his own, heretical role. "Perhaps," he told them, "we just have to accept it is God's will that the unorthodox individual is doomed to years of frustration, ridicule and failure in order to act out his role in the scheme of things, until his day arrives and man-kind is ready to receive his message ..."Later, he appears to have extended this analysis to include the obstacles to popularity faced (though now, mercifully overcome) by his mistress; certainly he could be heard telling her in the Camillagate tape, "You suffer all these indignities and tortures and calumnies." By this time, it seems, the prince had come to feel that his sufferings so far surpassed the occasional comparison with Dr Faustus as to approach the trauma of contemporary political dissidents.Bolland's evidence, together with the extracts from the Chinese Takeaway diary, also suggest that, since styling himself a medico-mystical sort of seer, doomed to suffer the mockery of the ignorant for possessing insights whose truth would only be revealed long after his death (when they'd all be sorry), Prince Charles has developed into a roving, proactive campaigner for human rights, more along the lines of a one-man Amnesty International. And a campaigner, incidentally, who knows what it is to be spied on, followed, and publicly denounced in his struggle to win freedom of speech for the hereditary monarchy.This is the unafraid, outspoken dissident who refused to dine with President Jiang Zemin, out of solidarity for the Dalai Lama, and determined that this deliberate snub should be advertised in the press, where the Chinese delegation would read it - and either fume with frustrated social ambition, or renounce their claim to Tibet.And this is the outspoken dissident who is also a close ally and companion of the rulers of Saudi Arabia, where, as he is presumably aware, many of the liberties he craves for the oppressed Chinese are routinely denied to subjects of the Saud dynasty. Possibly, he prefers the Arab rulers' noble, hawk-carrying look to that of the yellow-tinged Chinese "waxworks" in their ill-fitting suits. Or it could be a question of artistic affinity. In 2001 Charles and Prince Khalid al-Faisal held a joint exhibition of their paintings; watercolour prince reaching out to oil-painting prince, across the human rights divide. Unless it is the very different feel of human rights violations, when they are imposed by a hereditary monarch who has been educated at an English public school. If so, this would explain Charles's trip to Bhutan, a few years ago, where the torture and ethnic cleansing of Nepalese speakers did not prevent him enjoying hours in the company of the absolute monarch, King Wangchuck.What manner of dissident, then, does Prince Charles aspire to be? He travels too much to have a lot in common with Aung San Suu Kyi, and while his zeal for writing letters betrays some affinity with the late Mary Whitehouse, the astonishing range of his known interventions (one senses the existence of many more, of which we remain unaware) - medicine, China, history teaching, architecture, GM foods, Shakespeare, the compensation culture, religion, farming, hunting, cancer care, nano-technology, mutton, political correctness gone mad - makes him more reminiscent, surely, of Gandhi, whose unorthodoxies also extended beyond revolutionary political thinking to embrace spirituality, morality, dietary restrictions, and dress.True, Gandhi is indelibly associated with non-violence and sexual restraint, while the Prince has been known to throw books and wrench washbasins off walls, but in their shared sense of destiny, their search for the truth, ambitions for their country, and strict rules about what to eat for breakfast, the two might be spiritual brothers, each filled with a profound sense of mission to do what is right. "You have to stand against the whole world although you may have to stand alone," Gandhi said. "You have to stare in the face the whole world although the world may look at you with blood-shot eyes. Do not fear. Trust the little voice residing within your heart." Or, as it might be, sitting on your throne.It could be, of course, that when he inherits, the Prince plans at once to abandon controversy, emulating instead his stoical mother, who this week received at the palace - with her habitual lack of complaint - a reception for expatriate Australians including Clive James, Germaine Greer, and her old tormentor, Rolf Harris. But given the prince's existing commitment to saying the unsayable on any subject from grey goo to the power of coffee enemas, the acquisition of a throne seems more likely to inspire still greater flights of unfettered self-expression. At liberty to snub or flatter any political leader he chooses, King Charles III will be free to invite the entire Saudi royal family to hunt in St James's Park, to commission Quinlan Terry to beautify both the interior and facade of Buckingham Palace with ornamental pineapples, and - once a week! - to introduce prime ministers as yet unborn to the mysteries of integrated medicine, before reading to them, for hours at a time, from Shakespeare's Henry V or the King James Bible. There will no mummy to glare at him, no daddy to mock him, and more importantly, no interfering little Bollands where there should be only pleasing and agreeable favourites. No one will dare implore him to avoid controversy and ludicrous contradictions (such as helicopter travel and lectures on global warming). Mankind, in short, will be ready to receive his message. He will be our first absolute dissident.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Catherine Bennett .
|
For loyal followers of Prince Charles's career, Mark Bolland's statement only confirmed something that became evident years ago, even before Jonathan Dimbleby's biography and television documentary introduced us to the suffering, misunderstood outsider who is our future king. As long ago as 1982, in one of my favourite Prince Charles speeches (in which he lectured the BMA on the benefits of healing), our embryonic dissident anticipated disapproval with a short digression about the role of the intellectual outcast, reminding the doctors of the persecution of the 16th-century physician, Paracelsus: "He is probably remembered more for his fight against orthodoxy than for his achievements in the medical field. As a result of his unorthodox approach to medicine in his time, he was equated with the damnable Dr Faustus."Such, the doctors gathered, was Charles's estimation of his own, heretical role. "Perhaps," he told them, "we just have to accept it is God's will that the unorthodox individual is doomed to years of frustration, ridicule and failure in order to act out his role in the scheme of things, until his day arrives and man-kind is ready to receive his message ..."Later, he appears to have extended this analysis to include the obstacles to popularity faced (though now, mercifully overcome) by his mistress; certainly he could be heard telling her in the Camillagate tape, "You suffer all these indignities and tortures and calumnies." By this time, it seems, the prince had come to feel that his sufferings so far surpassed the occasional comparison with Dr Faustus as to approach the trauma of contemporary political dissidents.Bolland's evidence, together with the extracts from the Chinese Takeaway diary, also suggest that, since styling himself a medico-mystical sort of seer, doomed to suffer the mockery of the ignorant for possessing insights whose truth would only be revealed long after his death (when they'd all be sorry), Prince Charles has developed into a roving, proactive campaigner for human rights, more along the lines of a one-man Amnesty International. And a campaigner, incidentally, who knows what it is to be spied on, followed, and publicly denounced in his struggle to win freedom of speech for the hereditary monarchy.This is the unafraid, outspoken dissident who refused to dine with President Jiang Zemin, out of solidarity for the Dalai Lama, and determined that this deliberate snub should be advertised in the press, where the Chinese delegation would read it - and either fume with frustrated social ambition, or renounce their claim to Tibet.And this is the outspoken dissident who is also a close ally and companion of the rulers of Saudi Arabia, where, as he is presumably aware, many of the liberties he craves for the oppressed Chinese are routinely denied to subjects of the Saud dynasty. Possibly, he prefers the Arab rulers' noble, hawk-carrying look to that of the yellow-tinged Chinese "waxworks" in their ill-fitting suits. Or it could be a question of artistic affinity. In 2001 Charles and Prince Khalid al-Faisal held a joint exhibition of their paintings; watercolour prince reaching out to oil-painting prince, across the human rights divide. Unless it is the very different feel of human rights violations, when they are imposed by a hereditary monarch who has been educated at an English public school. If so, this would explain Charles's trip to Bhutan, a few years ago, where the torture and ethnic cleansing of Nepalese speakers did not prevent him enjoying hours in the company of the absolute monarch, King Wangchuck.What manner of dissident, then, does Prince Charles aspire to be? He travels too much to have a lot in common with Aung San Suu Kyi, and while his zeal for writing letters betrays some affinity with the late Mary Whitehouse, the astonishing range of his known interventions (one senses the existence of many more, of which we remain unaware) - medicine, China, history teaching, architecture, GM foods, Shakespeare, the compensation culture, religion, farming, hunting, cancer care, nano-technology, mutton, political correctness gone mad - makes him more reminiscent, surely, of Gandhi, whose unorthodoxies also extended beyond revolutionary political thinking to embrace spirituality, morality, dietary restrictions, and dress.True, Gandhi is indelibly associated with non-violence and sexual restraint, while the Prince has been known to throw books and wrench washbasins off walls, but in their shared sense of destiny, their search for the truth, ambitions for their country, and strict rules about what to eat for breakfast, the two might be spiritual brothers, each filled with a profound sense of mission to do what is right. "You have to stand against the whole world although you may have to stand alone," Gandhi said. "You have to stare in the face the whole world although the world may look at you with blood-shot eyes. Do not fear. Trust the little voice residing within your heart." Or, as it might be, sitting on your throne.It could be, of course, that when he inherits, the Prince plans at once to abandon controversy, emulating instead his stoical mother, who this week received at the palace - with her habitual lack of complaint - a reception for expatriate Australians including Clive James, Germaine Greer, and her old tormentor, Rolf Harris. But given the prince's existing commitment to saying the unsayable on any subject from grey goo to the power of coffee enemas, the acquisition of a throne seems more likely to inspire still greater flights of unfettered self-expression. At liberty to snub or flatter any political leader he chooses, King Charles III will be free to invite the entire Saudi royal family to hunt in St James's Park, to commission Quinlan Terry to beautify both the interior and facade of Buckingham Palace with ornamental pineapples, and - once a week! - to introduce prime ministers as yet unborn to the mysteries of integrated medicine, before reading to them, for hours at a time, from Shakespeare's Henry V or the King James Bible. There will no mummy to glare at him, no daddy to mock him, and more importantly, no interfering little Bollands where there should be only pleasing and agreeable favourites. No one will dare implore him to avoid controversy and ludicrous contradictions (such as helicopter travel and lectures on global warming). Mankind, in short, will be ready to receive his message. He will be our first absolute dissident.
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0catherinebennett
| 2UK
|
As with Diana's death, so with her inquest: it is impossible to predict how customarily sober, hysteria-proof individuals will react. In 1997 one soon learned not to ridicule the mass keening, just in case a formerly dependable fellow cynic turned out to be a born-again vigil-fancier. Today, while people who should know better discuss the contents of Diana's womb, cautious types who would not trust Mohamed Fayed to look after their sandwiches, let alone a deposit box, are aligning themselves with the obstreperous shopkeeper. Accordingly, anyone who puts their trust in seat belts rather than in the imprecations of Mr Fayed is likely to be asked to prove a negative. How can we be sure the car accident wasn't assassination? How do we know Charles didn't do it? Because it's risible? "You don't know him, do you?" was the dark rejoinder from an acquaintance who normally considers himself far removed from vulgar speculation. Well, no. But still: to go from temper tantrums to what-the-butler-saw to a murder rap in three months - shouldn't even a preposterous, priapic, self-styled defender of faiths be considered innocent until proven guilty? It would help his cause, of course, if the behaviour of Charles and his family were not so incorrigibly shifty. If the Windsors had not shown themselves to be overwhelmingly averse to public scrutiny - whether it related to marital disharmony, tax avoidance, domestic servants' memoirs, malicious prosecution or flogging official gifts - there might now be more inclination to believe that Diana's death was, as the official version had it until yesterday, an accident. With an inquest, as the royal coroner explained, which was only put off for six years because of adminstrative reasons to do with the French. And not, therefore, anything whatsoever to do with a defensive and secretive royal family. Why believe him? Only a year ago the official version had it that our normally astute sovereign - the same one whose wisdom has been prized by a succession of prime ministers - had somehow forgotten a conversation with Paul Burrell in which he told her he would take some royal bits and bobs into safekeeping. A recollection which, when it came back to her - at a crucial stage of the butler's trial for theft - not only saved Burrell from jail, but coincidentally prevented more embarrassing disclosures from the witness box. Disclosures from Burrell, that is, not the Queen (the royal family still considering itself exempt from giving evidence in a criminal trial). Shortly afterwards, when the same trial prompted allegations of financial impropriety in Prince Charles's household, the official version assured us that the best possible person to investigate the alleged malpractice was Charles's very own private secretary, an accountant called Sir Michael Peat. More recently there was some deliberate-looking obfuscation about which of Princess Anne's killer dogs had dispatched a corgi. When it was announced - after an internal inquiry, presumably headed by Peat - that it was Florence and not, as initially alleged, the known criminal Dotty, we were assured that, this killing being a first offence, the beast should live, like Dotty, to bite another day. Concealment has become so reflexive a royal habit that even when something of little consequence is reported, the palace can be relied upon to try to suppress it. Thus, after two batches of Mirror photographs portraying life at court, with its tabletop Tupperware and two-bar fires, in an endearingly frugal light, the palace responded with one of its traditional royal injunctions. Paul Burrell's book, which shows the Queen to be just as noble and gracious as it says in the anthem, is considered so damaging that its publisher, Penguin, must not be allowed anywhere near a forthcoming hagiography of the Queen Mother. All this pointless evasiveness only adds, now, to a general suspicion that the truth is being suppressed. The very last-minuteness of yesterday's intervention by the former royal coroner, with his repellent Amanda Burton-style confidences from the autopsy room, recalls the Queen's last-minute intelligence about her conversation with Burrell. Why did Mr Royal Coroner never mention it before? Another year or so of gruesome Diana-related histrionics beckon, and like the last time, the uncomprehending, arrogant inhabitants of the palace must accept responsibility for much of the excitement outside. If its officials will dissimulate about the extinction of a corgi, who is going to trust them on the death of a princess? <B>My fellow columnist, Osama</B>With his first column for this paper, my new colleague, Osama bin Laden, reminds us how rarely today's commentators attempt to take the long view. Leaving aside our regular references to the emperor who made his horse a consul, and the occasional, hazy deployment of Walter Bagehot, most journalists clearly feel that too much dwelling on the past will sound either schoolmasterish, or show-offy, or both at the same time. No such scruples beset Mr Bin Laden, who this week compared Arab rulers who cooperate with the Americans with "our forefathers, the Ghassanids". Perhaps sensing that parts of his audience may not be au fait with these forefathers - whom I now understand to have been an ancient, pre-Islamic tribe living in what are today's Jordan and southern Syria - he supplied the following gloss: "Their leaders' concern was to be appointed kings and officers for the Romans in order to safeguard the interests of the Romans by killing their brothers, the peninsula's Arabs. Such is the case of the new Ghassanids, the Arab rulers. Muslims, if you do not punish them for their sins in Jerusalem and Iraq, they will defeat you. They will also rob you of the land of the two holy places." Did the early Ghassanid collaborators do so much damage? Wouldn't we have heard about it? Even at this distance? A rudimentary search confirms that the Ghassanids were, as Bin Laden states, successful and accomplished vassals of the sixth-century Byzantines. In the Oxford History of Byzantium, Robert Hoyland quotes a Ghassanid poet addressing his master: "Do you not see that God has granted you such a degree of power that you will observe every king trembling at your feet; for you are the sun, the kings are stars, and when the sun rises, no star will be seen." Less than a century afterwards the Ghassanids had been crushed in battle and absorbed into the rapidly expanding Islamic empire. Indeed, from this admittedly unscholarly perspective, it is hard to see how the defeat of the Ghassanid collaborators could be anything other than a reassuring precedent for the jihad-minded Bin Laden reader. Still, whatever the lesson of the Ghassanids, Bin Laden's latest references to ancient history confirm comments made by Bernard Lewis, in his enlightening and lucid The Crisis of Islam. "In current American usage," he says, "the phrase 'That's history' is commmonly used to dismiss something as unimportant ... The Muslim peoples, like everyone else in the world, are shaped by their history, but unlike some others, they are keenly aware of it." It is hard, he adds, "to imagine purveyors of mass propaganda in the west making their points by allusions dating from the same period, to the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy in England or the Carolingian monarchs in France". And even if our politicians did go in for more historical allusions, alluding to the past is not the same as trying to enforce it. If there is no point in arguing with Bin Laden's implacable call to arms, there is every reason to try to comprehend his appeal to his followers. Which requires some acquaintance with history. Which, as we know, is not compulsory in the national curriculum for children over 14: precisely the age, some teachers point out, that they begin to understand it.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Catherine Bennett .
|
As with Diana's death, so with her inquest: it is impossible to predict how customarily sober, hysteria-proof individuals will react. In 1997 one soon learned not to ridicule the mass keening, just in case a formerly dependable fellow cynic turned out to be a born-again vigil-fancier. Today, while people who should know better discuss the contents of Diana's womb, cautious types who would not trust Mohamed Fayed to look after their sandwiches, let alone a deposit box, are aligning themselves with the obstreperous shopkeeper. Accordingly, anyone who puts their trust in seat belts rather than in the imprecations of Mr Fayed is likely to be asked to prove a negative. How can we be sure the car accident wasn't assassination? How do we know Charles didn't do it? Because it's risible? "You don't know him, do you?" was the dark rejoinder from an acquaintance who normally considers himself far removed from vulgar speculation. Well, no. But still: to go from temper tantrums to what-the-butler-saw to a murder rap in three months - shouldn't even a preposterous, priapic, self-styled defender of faiths be considered innocent until proven guilty? It would help his cause, of course, if the behaviour of Charles and his family were not so incorrigibly shifty. If the Windsors had not shown themselves to be overwhelmingly averse to public scrutiny - whether it related to marital disharmony, tax avoidance, domestic servants' memoirs, malicious prosecution or flogging official gifts - there might now be more inclination to believe that Diana's death was, as the official version had it until yesterday, an accident. With an inquest, as the royal coroner explained, which was only put off for six years because of adminstrative reasons to do with the French. And not, therefore, anything whatsoever to do with a defensive and secretive royal family. Why believe him? Only a year ago the official version had it that our normally astute sovereign - the same one whose wisdom has been prized by a succession of prime ministers - had somehow forgotten a conversation with Paul Burrell in which he told her he would take some royal bits and bobs into safekeeping. A recollection which, when it came back to her - at a crucial stage of the butler's trial for theft - not only saved Burrell from jail, but coincidentally prevented more embarrassing disclosures from the witness box. Disclosures from Burrell, that is, not the Queen (the royal family still considering itself exempt from giving evidence in a criminal trial). Shortly afterwards, when the same trial prompted allegations of financial impropriety in Prince Charles's household, the official version assured us that the best possible person to investigate the alleged malpractice was Charles's very own private secretary, an accountant called Sir Michael Peat. More recently there was some deliberate-looking obfuscation about which of Princess Anne's killer dogs had dispatched a corgi. When it was announced - after an internal inquiry, presumably headed by Peat - that it was Florence and not, as initially alleged, the known criminal Dotty, we were assured that, this killing being a first offence, the beast should live, like Dotty, to bite another day. Concealment has become so reflexive a royal habit that even when something of little consequence is reported, the palace can be relied upon to try to suppress it. Thus, after two batches of Mirror photographs portraying life at court, with its tabletop Tupperware and two-bar fires, in an endearingly frugal light, the palace responded with one of its traditional royal injunctions. Paul Burrell's book, which shows the Queen to be just as noble and gracious as it says in the anthem, is considered so damaging that its publisher, Penguin, must not be allowed anywhere near a forthcoming hagiography of the Queen Mother. All this pointless evasiveness only adds, now, to a general suspicion that the truth is being suppressed. The very last-minuteness of yesterday's intervention by the former royal coroner, with his repellent Amanda Burton-style confidences from the autopsy room, recalls the Queen's last-minute intelligence about her conversation with Burrell. Why did Mr Royal Coroner never mention it before? Another year or so of gruesome Diana-related histrionics beckon, and like the last time, the uncomprehending, arrogant inhabitants of the palace must accept responsibility for much of the excitement outside. If its officials will dissimulate about the extinction of a corgi, who is going to trust them on the death of a princess? <B>My fellow columnist, Osama</B>With his first column for this paper, my new colleague, Osama bin Laden, reminds us how rarely today's commentators attempt to take the long view. Leaving aside our regular references to the emperor who made his horse a consul, and the occasional, hazy deployment of Walter Bagehot, most journalists clearly feel that too much dwelling on the past will sound either schoolmasterish, or show-offy, or both at the same time. No such scruples beset Mr Bin Laden, who this week compared Arab rulers who cooperate with the Americans with "our forefathers, the Ghassanids". Perhaps sensing that parts of his audience may not be au fait with these forefathers - whom I now understand to have been an ancient, pre-Islamic tribe living in what are today's Jordan and southern Syria - he supplied the following gloss: "Their leaders' concern was to be appointed kings and officers for the Romans in order to safeguard the interests of the Romans by killing their brothers, the peninsula's Arabs. Such is the case of the new Ghassanids, the Arab rulers. Muslims, if you do not punish them for their sins in Jerusalem and Iraq, they will defeat you. They will also rob you of the land of the two holy places." Did the early Ghassanid collaborators do so much damage? Wouldn't we have heard about it? Even at this distance? A rudimentary search confirms that the Ghassanids were, as Bin Laden states, successful and accomplished vassals of the sixth-century Byzantines. In the Oxford History of Byzantium, Robert Hoyland quotes a Ghassanid poet addressing his master: "Do you not see that God has granted you such a degree of power that you will observe every king trembling at your feet; for you are the sun, the kings are stars, and when the sun rises, no star will be seen." Less than a century afterwards the Ghassanids had been crushed in battle and absorbed into the rapidly expanding Islamic empire. Indeed, from this admittedly unscholarly perspective, it is hard to see how the defeat of the Ghassanid collaborators could be anything other than a reassuring precedent for the jihad-minded Bin Laden reader. Still, whatever the lesson of the Ghassanids, Bin Laden's latest references to ancient history confirm comments made by Bernard Lewis, in his enlightening and lucid The Crisis of Islam. "In current American usage," he says, "the phrase 'That's history' is commmonly used to dismiss something as unimportant ... The Muslim peoples, like everyone else in the world, are shaped by their history, but unlike some others, they are keenly aware of it." It is hard, he adds, "to imagine purveyors of mass propaganda in the west making their points by allusions dating from the same period, to the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy in England or the Carolingian monarchs in France". And even if our politicians did go in for more historical allusions, alluding to the past is not the same as trying to enforce it. If there is no point in arguing with Bin Laden's implacable call to arms, there is every reason to try to comprehend his appeal to his followers. Which requires some acquaintance with history. Which, as we know, is not compulsory in the national curriculum for children over 14: precisely the age, some teachers point out, that they begin to understand it.
|
0catherinebennett
| 2UK
|
If the public, as Lord Justice Scott Baker declared this week, really does have "concerns" about the death of Princess Diana, it has a funny way of showing it. For all the "groundless suspicion" which, according to the judge, still exists in minds of many people, scarcely any of these haunted individuals turned up in court 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice this week, to have their anxieties officially allayed. To avoid disappointment, the courts had even laid on a special marquee, with a screen and rows of chairs. In the event, a two-man tent from Millets would have accommodated the spillover, with room to spare.Assuming it is not the fear that Prince Philip might demand their execution that keeps everyone away, it seems that Diana's death has become one of those odd subjects, like the likelihood of a November election, that is of consuming fascination to the media, even as it evokes, among the bulk of civilians, only a fathomless indifference. Where, the papers ask, did Henri Paul go in those crucial eight minutes? If we don't know now, after two official inquiries, we may well have to live with that mystery. Though of course we hope M Paul did not - as he certainly could have - use these missing minutes to ring the Duke of Edinburgh with the news that he was already pissed and about to get in the car.Meanwhile, as the Mail asked about a picture of Diana in a lift, "What did her smile signify?" That Diana liked going in lifts? Or did she really, as the Daily Mirror avers, have "not a care in the world"? If the inquest finds that this was indeed the case, Tina Brown will certainly want to go back to her authoritative Diana Chronicles and adjust at least one word in her opening tour de force, an extended piece of Ritz hotel realite ("Diana was at the end of a chaotic night out, and her mood was sour"). And what about the surpassingly awful "dis-moi oui" ring? Was it a straightforward taste accident on the part of her lover, or, as some sources have hinted, a sinister plot by MI6 to make Dodi and Diana look vulgar?In reality, after three days of evidence (the jurors rested on the fourth, prior to next week's fact-finding trip to Paris) - the one, compelling mystery is that, following both a French inquiry and a British one, Mohamed Al Fayed should have prevailed on the authorities to recruit a judge, 12 jurors and an army of 30 lawyers, so they could all spend another six months, and an estimated £10m, weighing up what Lord Justice Scott Baker likes to call the "building blocks for the conspiracy to murder theory".One important block, raised on day one, was whether Diana was pregnant. Put forward by Mr Fayed, the claim for pregnancy was apparently supported in the past. with the evidence consisting of a personal phone call to Mr Fayed, and a Sunday People picture of the Princess forgetting to hold her tummy in. Producing it for the court, the judge described as "famous" (in what is presumably an unconscious echo of Dylan's cadences) this "photograph of Diana in a leopard print swimsuit", before pointing out that it was taken before her relationship with al Fayed's son had begun. Thus, "her physique" - as he delicately put it, could have nothing to do with Dodi.None the less, the judge reassured the court that this seeming impossibility would be soberly investigated - "the question of whether Diana was pregnant at the time of her death is one that will be explored". So, too, will be the question of her embalming - a process held by Mr Fayed to be part of a conspiracy to conceal the secret pregnancy. So will the question of Diana's engagement to Dodi Fayed, which is also alleged by Mr Fayed, though, one gathers, by none of Diana's close friends.Now that they see the enormous consideration being extended to Mr Fayed and his theories about the murderous nature of Prince Philip, many amateur investigators must wish that they, too, had put some of their more ambitious conjectures before the court. Is there no plan, for example, to examine the popular theory that Diana planned to stage her own death, in order to withdraw from public life? It can hardly be more preposterous than allegations made by the late princess herself, according to the judge, when she told an astonished lawyer that the queen was about to abdicate, while she and Camilla were both to be "put aside". Lord Justice Scott Baker revealed that Lord Mishcon said that Diana told him that Camilla was not really Charles's lover, but a "decoy" for his real favourite, the nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke. "She had also," the judge went on to say, "been told that Miss Legge-Bourke had been operated on for an abortion and that she (HRH) would shortly be in receipt of a certificate."It is tempting, once you're in the conspiratorial frame of mind, to see the judge's patient rehearsal of this dreadful stuff as, if not actually subversive, his meaning way of emphasising the abject, tabloid-serving agenda of this inquest. Hopefully, Lord Justice Scott Baker can only bear to talk about Dodi's girlfriend, Kelly, and Diana's famous leopard-print bathers - dishing out the original snap, with the rest of the court papers, for closer inspection by the masses - because he believes that if this final Diana fest is what it takes to once and for all satisfy Mr Fayed, then it is his duty, as the fourth coroner on the case, to get the job done.This might also explain the absurd court commentary that accompanies every single frame of the videos from the Ritz hotel. "The Princess of Wales is carrying Dodi Al Fayed's cigar box", a policeman said, presumably in case someone were subsequently to allege it was a bomb, or a baby's coffin. "Trevor Rees-Jones is looking at his phone and notebook." Later, as Henri Paul goes through a revolving door, "you will see him holding his cigarillo box in his hand".If Mr Fayed refuses to withdraw his accusations without having his months in court, then maybe we really do have to hear, again, about the embalming and the ring, about Paul Burrell's fears and Prince Philip's letters - not to mention the hitherto unsuspected role of cigar boxes and abortion certificates in the life of our favourite princess. Then again, is Mr Fayed remotely likely to retreat, if Prince Philip turns out, on the balance of probabilities, not to be a ruthless killer? You can't help thinking that it might have simpler, and definitely cheaper, if our secret services had just added him to the hit list.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Catherine Bennett .
|
If the public, as Lord Justice Scott Baker declared this week, really does have "concerns" about the death of Princess Diana, it has a funny way of showing it. For all the "groundless suspicion" which, according to the judge, still exists in minds of many people, scarcely any of these haunted individuals turned up in court 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice this week, to have their anxieties officially allayed. To avoid disappointment, the courts had even laid on a special marquee, with a screen and rows of chairs. In the event, a two-man tent from Millets would have accommodated the spillover, with room to spare.Assuming it is not the fear that Prince Philip might demand their execution that keeps everyone away, it seems that Diana's death has become one of those odd subjects, like the likelihood of a November election, that is of consuming fascination to the media, even as it evokes, among the bulk of civilians, only a fathomless indifference. Where, the papers ask, did Henri Paul go in those crucial eight minutes? If we don't know now, after two official inquiries, we may well have to live with that mystery. Though of course we hope M Paul did not - as he certainly could have - use these missing minutes to ring the Duke of Edinburgh with the news that he was already pissed and about to get in the car.Meanwhile, as the Mail asked about a picture of Diana in a lift, "What did her smile signify?" That Diana liked going in lifts? Or did she really, as the Daily Mirror avers, have "not a care in the world"? If the inquest finds that this was indeed the case, Tina Brown will certainly want to go back to her authoritative Diana Chronicles and adjust at least one word in her opening tour de force, an extended piece of Ritz hotel realite ("Diana was at the end of a chaotic night out, and her mood was sour"). And what about the surpassingly awful "dis-moi oui" ring? Was it a straightforward taste accident on the part of her lover, or, as some sources have hinted, a sinister plot by MI6 to make Dodi and Diana look vulgar?In reality, after three days of evidence (the jurors rested on the fourth, prior to next week's fact-finding trip to Paris) - the one, compelling mystery is that, following both a French inquiry and a British one, Mohamed Al Fayed should have prevailed on the authorities to recruit a judge, 12 jurors and an army of 30 lawyers, so they could all spend another six months, and an estimated £10m, weighing up what Lord Justice Scott Baker likes to call the "building blocks for the conspiracy to murder theory".One important block, raised on day one, was whether Diana was pregnant. Put forward by Mr Fayed, the claim for pregnancy was apparently supported in the past. with the evidence consisting of a personal phone call to Mr Fayed, and a Sunday People picture of the Princess forgetting to hold her tummy in. Producing it for the court, the judge described as "famous" (in what is presumably an unconscious echo of Dylan's cadences) this "photograph of Diana in a leopard print swimsuit", before pointing out that it was taken before her relationship with al Fayed's son had begun. Thus, "her physique" - as he delicately put it, could have nothing to do with Dodi.None the less, the judge reassured the court that this seeming impossibility would be soberly investigated - "the question of whether Diana was pregnant at the time of her death is one that will be explored". So, too, will be the question of her embalming - a process held by Mr Fayed to be part of a conspiracy to conceal the secret pregnancy. So will the question of Diana's engagement to Dodi Fayed, which is also alleged by Mr Fayed, though, one gathers, by none of Diana's close friends.Now that they see the enormous consideration being extended to Mr Fayed and his theories about the murderous nature of Prince Philip, many amateur investigators must wish that they, too, had put some of their more ambitious conjectures before the court. Is there no plan, for example, to examine the popular theory that Diana planned to stage her own death, in order to withdraw from public life? It can hardly be more preposterous than allegations made by the late princess herself, according to the judge, when she told an astonished lawyer that the queen was about to abdicate, while she and Camilla were both to be "put aside". Lord Justice Scott Baker revealed that Lord Mishcon said that Diana told him that Camilla was not really Charles's lover, but a "decoy" for his real favourite, the nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke. "She had also," the judge went on to say, "been told that Miss Legge-Bourke had been operated on for an abortion and that she (HRH) would shortly be in receipt of a certificate."It is tempting, once you're in the conspiratorial frame of mind, to see the judge's patient rehearsal of this dreadful stuff as, if not actually subversive, his meaning way of emphasising the abject, tabloid-serving agenda of this inquest. Hopefully, Lord Justice Scott Baker can only bear to talk about Dodi's girlfriend, Kelly, and Diana's famous leopard-print bathers - dishing out the original snap, with the rest of the court papers, for closer inspection by the masses - because he believes that if this final Diana fest is what it takes to once and for all satisfy Mr Fayed, then it is his duty, as the fourth coroner on the case, to get the job done.This might also explain the absurd court commentary that accompanies every single frame of the videos from the Ritz hotel. "The Princess of Wales is carrying Dodi Al Fayed's cigar box", a policeman said, presumably in case someone were subsequently to allege it was a bomb, or a baby's coffin. "Trevor Rees-Jones is looking at his phone and notebook." Later, as Henri Paul goes through a revolving door, "you will see him holding his cigarillo box in his hand".If Mr Fayed refuses to withdraw his accusations without having his months in court, then maybe we really do have to hear, again, about the embalming and the ring, about Paul Burrell's fears and Prince Philip's letters - not to mention the hitherto unsuspected role of cigar boxes and abortion certificates in the life of our favourite princess. Then again, is Mr Fayed remotely likely to retreat, if Prince Philip turns out, on the balance of probabilities, not to be a ruthless killer? You can't help thinking that it might have simpler, and definitely cheaper, if our secret services had just added him to the hit list.
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0catherinebennett
| 2UK
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Since the American showman David Blaine believes himself to be the new Houdini, it follows that he should, like his more gifted predecessor, have decided to bring his tricks to London. It was, says Ruth Brandon in her biography of Houdini, the reception of his manacle escapes on the London stage that confirmed his "uttermost hopes and expectations". Houdini became so famous here, she adds, that Lord Northcliffe, the newspaper proprietor, visited his dressing room, asking advice on various topical events. And who knows? If Blaine's new stunt - "his toughest endurance feat yet" - comes off, maybe our own newspaper proprietors will soon be seeking enlightenment from this most sapient of nappy wearers. At the time of writing, however, it seems unlikely. So far from confirming his uttermost hopes and expectations, Blaine's encounter with the British public appears to have been his first ever encounter with sustained derision. After two days in which the magician came under assault from fish and chips, eggs, golf balls, laser pens, wake-up calls from bhangra drums and women displaying their breasts, a spokesman for Sky television, which has bought the rights to this stunt, regretted that not everyone had been "respectful to the challenge... unfortunately you will always get one or two thugs". But the antics of these one or two had been enough to frighten Blaine's organisers into surrounding his crane-and-dangling-box arrangement with some untidy wire fencing. Now, with its profusion of electrical wires, tents and heavies, his "Above the Below" encampment below Tower Bridge looks about as edifying as the back end of a funfair. Still, should you be looking for an agreeable picnic spot, I can think of no better place, just now, than below the above: the area of dusty, trodden-down prairie over which Blaine now languishes for a living. Not because the magician himself is much to look at. In a few weeks time, when he begins, like all ill-nourished down-and-outs to resemble someone who could be Lord Lucan, it might be different. For now, the visiting daredevil simply looks greasily out of sorts, podgy enough to last several weeks, and seems to share Tony Blair's lack of inhibition about yawning and picking at himself in public. No, the place is worth a detour not in order to admire Blaine, but to participate in an exhilarating act of collective ridicule. If you can take some food with you, so much the better. If not, I have discovered, even a blob of oily ice cream from the van tastes exquisite when consumed in the suspended company of the preposterous, faux-starving Blaine. Improved security had done little, when I visited, to bring about the desired reverence for Blaine's very public diet. And the previous night's adulatory C4 documentary, in which the visitor proclaimed, "I'm an artist, nothing more, nothing less," probably hadn't helped, even if it had attracted more people. Anyone who remembered Blaine's parting speculation about his chances - "Will the air supply suddenly get cut off and cause suffocation... even death?" - had only to look up to realise that the simple answer to this question, was, no, it wouldn't. You'd think he would have known that. Not with those two little windows. The disparities between the advertised, and real event were such that you wondered if there could have been some kind of mistake. Weren't Tower Bridge and the Thames meant to be somehow involved, instead of just picturesquely adjacent? And on telly, a wide-eyed Nicky Campbell had referred repeatedly to "solitary confinement". Blaine had also stressed a desire for "no distractions... I think that's the purest state you could be in... " In practice, he has made his lit-up box the pinnacle of a non-stop party. Passing riverboats and vans tootle jolly hellos at him. Women wave. Spectators guffaw more or less in his face, shout at him to "put the kettle on", mime flying with their arms, threaten to come back with signs reading: "Are you mental or what?" When, laboriously, Blaine wraps a sheet round himself and makes as if to wee into a hidden tube, there are uproarious shouts of, "He's having a piss!"; then, "He can't still be having a piss"; then, "No - he's wanking!"; then - after the business is seemingly complete - hearty cheers and applause. Next, in his solitary confinement, Blaine takes up what we know, from Campbell's breathless tribute, to be "his journal". "Day one," says a man behind me, "Sat in a glass box." "Day two, still sitting in a glass box. Day three... " Paid observers inform us that after a while Blaine's body will begin a metabolic process known as "ketosis", in which, if I understand correctly, it eats itself for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A year or so ago, this might have sounded quite awful and impressive. Alas for Blaine, one in 10 Britons have now learned from Dr Atkins that ketosis is in fact a "wonderful process" - that beatific stage of the slimming regime when the dieter begins to burn his own fat reserves, and so starts to become a lovelier, more streamlined person. Lucky Blaine! For different reasons, people who have been unable to eat because of advanced illness, and their relatives, may also find themselves indifferent to Blaine's agonies. If agonies they are. Though, being notably well covered, he seems unlikely to be as indifferent to food as Kafka's hunger artist, who never found any food that he liked, as Blaine's task is presumably made easier by the 5m he will earn from this episode of professional fasting. Aside from micturate and attend to his journal, Blaine also waves for the cameras, turns over to show his tattoo, moves his sheet around, scratches his head and, from time to time, fills a water bottle from another tube. These actions are duly texted, photographed, reported and filmed on mobile phones - mostly redundant devices which seem almost to have been waiting for this still more redundant event in order to prove that they may, after all, occasionally serve a purpose: "No, he's just sitting there, no, he hasn't moved, no, it's really funny... " This was not, you gathered from the Blaine programme, the intended response to ostentatious fasting, an act repeatedly introduced as "his toughest endurance feat yet". The crowd are supposed, like the American multitudes before them, to faint with anxiety, empathise through the long nights, discern some noble purpose in his supposed travails in the ice, up pillars, inside glass containers. Instead they watch, eat and cackle. To anyone who has recently felt downcast by popular displays of credulity and celebrity worship, this massed derision should come as a reassuring, even an inspiring, sight. In fact, the prospect of Blaine at the mercy of a good humoured, but predominantly satirical crowd, composed of visitors of all ages, classes and ethnicities, hints at some residual, collective good sense, which can tell the difference between a huckster and a hero, and thus differentiates us from Americans. If Blaine could be induced to stay, for all time, in his silly box, there could be many worse ways of acquiring British nationality by composing some appropriate insult in the English tongue, then throwing an egg at him.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Catherine Bennett .
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Since the American showman David Blaine believes himself to be the new Houdini, it follows that he should, like his more gifted predecessor, have decided to bring his tricks to London. It was, says Ruth Brandon in her biography of Houdini, the reception of his manacle escapes on the London stage that confirmed his "uttermost hopes and expectations". Houdini became so famous here, she adds, that Lord Northcliffe, the newspaper proprietor, visited his dressing room, asking advice on various topical events. And who knows? If Blaine's new stunt - "his toughest endurance feat yet" - comes off, maybe our own newspaper proprietors will soon be seeking enlightenment from this most sapient of nappy wearers. At the time of writing, however, it seems unlikely. So far from confirming his uttermost hopes and expectations, Blaine's encounter with the British public appears to have been his first ever encounter with sustained derision. After two days in which the magician came under assault from fish and chips, eggs, golf balls, laser pens, wake-up calls from bhangra drums and women displaying their breasts, a spokesman for Sky television, which has bought the rights to this stunt, regretted that not everyone had been "respectful to the challenge... unfortunately you will always get one or two thugs". But the antics of these one or two had been enough to frighten Blaine's organisers into surrounding his crane-and-dangling-box arrangement with some untidy wire fencing. Now, with its profusion of electrical wires, tents and heavies, his "Above the Below" encampment below Tower Bridge looks about as edifying as the back end of a funfair. Still, should you be looking for an agreeable picnic spot, I can think of no better place, just now, than below the above: the area of dusty, trodden-down prairie over which Blaine now languishes for a living. Not because the magician himself is much to look at. In a few weeks time, when he begins, like all ill-nourished down-and-outs to resemble someone who could be Lord Lucan, it might be different. For now, the visiting daredevil simply looks greasily out of sorts, podgy enough to last several weeks, and seems to share Tony Blair's lack of inhibition about yawning and picking at himself in public. No, the place is worth a detour not in order to admire Blaine, but to participate in an exhilarating act of collective ridicule. If you can take some food with you, so much the better. If not, I have discovered, even a blob of oily ice cream from the van tastes exquisite when consumed in the suspended company of the preposterous, faux-starving Blaine. Improved security had done little, when I visited, to bring about the desired reverence for Blaine's very public diet. And the previous night's adulatory C4 documentary, in which the visitor proclaimed, "I'm an artist, nothing more, nothing less," probably hadn't helped, even if it had attracted more people. Anyone who remembered Blaine's parting speculation about his chances - "Will the air supply suddenly get cut off and cause suffocation... even death?" - had only to look up to realise that the simple answer to this question, was, no, it wouldn't. You'd think he would have known that. Not with those two little windows. The disparities between the advertised, and real event were such that you wondered if there could have been some kind of mistake. Weren't Tower Bridge and the Thames meant to be somehow involved, instead of just picturesquely adjacent? And on telly, a wide-eyed Nicky Campbell had referred repeatedly to "solitary confinement". Blaine had also stressed a desire for "no distractions... I think that's the purest state you could be in... " In practice, he has made his lit-up box the pinnacle of a non-stop party. Passing riverboats and vans tootle jolly hellos at him. Women wave. Spectators guffaw more or less in his face, shout at him to "put the kettle on", mime flying with their arms, threaten to come back with signs reading: "Are you mental or what?" When, laboriously, Blaine wraps a sheet round himself and makes as if to wee into a hidden tube, there are uproarious shouts of, "He's having a piss!"; then, "He can't still be having a piss"; then, "No - he's wanking!"; then - after the business is seemingly complete - hearty cheers and applause. Next, in his solitary confinement, Blaine takes up what we know, from Campbell's breathless tribute, to be "his journal". "Day one," says a man behind me, "Sat in a glass box." "Day two, still sitting in a glass box. Day three... " Paid observers inform us that after a while Blaine's body will begin a metabolic process known as "ketosis", in which, if I understand correctly, it eats itself for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A year or so ago, this might have sounded quite awful and impressive. Alas for Blaine, one in 10 Britons have now learned from Dr Atkins that ketosis is in fact a "wonderful process" - that beatific stage of the slimming regime when the dieter begins to burn his own fat reserves, and so starts to become a lovelier, more streamlined person. Lucky Blaine! For different reasons, people who have been unable to eat because of advanced illness, and their relatives, may also find themselves indifferent to Blaine's agonies. If agonies they are. Though, being notably well covered, he seems unlikely to be as indifferent to food as Kafka's hunger artist, who never found any food that he liked, as Blaine's task is presumably made easier by the 5m he will earn from this episode of professional fasting. Aside from micturate and attend to his journal, Blaine also waves for the cameras, turns over to show his tattoo, moves his sheet around, scratches his head and, from time to time, fills a water bottle from another tube. These actions are duly texted, photographed, reported and filmed on mobile phones - mostly redundant devices which seem almost to have been waiting for this still more redundant event in order to prove that they may, after all, occasionally serve a purpose: "No, he's just sitting there, no, he hasn't moved, no, it's really funny... " This was not, you gathered from the Blaine programme, the intended response to ostentatious fasting, an act repeatedly introduced as "his toughest endurance feat yet". The crowd are supposed, like the American multitudes before them, to faint with anxiety, empathise through the long nights, discern some noble purpose in his supposed travails in the ice, up pillars, inside glass containers. Instead they watch, eat and cackle. To anyone who has recently felt downcast by popular displays of credulity and celebrity worship, this massed derision should come as a reassuring, even an inspiring, sight. In fact, the prospect of Blaine at the mercy of a good humoured, but predominantly satirical crowd, composed of visitors of all ages, classes and ethnicities, hints at some residual, collective good sense, which can tell the difference between a huckster and a hero, and thus differentiates us from Americans. If Blaine could be induced to stay, for all time, in his silly box, there could be many worse ways of acquiring British nationality by composing some appropriate insult in the English tongue, then throwing an egg at him.
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0catherinebennett
| 2UK
|
If the government is to persuade us, contrary to appearances, of its determination to end discrimination against older people, it really must ensure that its senior members avoid dismissing eminent legal figures who have said something controversial as "muddled and confused old codgers". Not only does the insult reinforce malicious stereotypes and dishearten all of us currently struggling with the concept of unending subjection, it signally misrepresents two men who are, it seems to me, trying to teach us something rather beautiful about the transience and essential unimportance of material possessions. When Lord Irvine says that "most people" would not be "disturbed" at first, or maybe second time burglars not going to prison, it can only be because he expects us, like him, to care more for the spiritual life than we do for inanimate things. Notice how he does not dwell on the sentimental value of what might have been taken: a grandmother's wedding ring, say, rather than a mobile phone. No, to him it is all so much heavy baggage, dragging us down. Neighbours in Cheyne Walk, where there have been 40 burglaries in the past three years, have complained that Irvine is unsympathetic. Have they considered that Lord Irvine might have his mind on higher things than the acquisition, or loss of, as it might be, fine art, or hand-made wallpaper or second homes in Scotland? Similarly, though I have no knowledge of the extent of his property and other assets, I feel sure that Lord Woolf has only the highest motives when he asks us to imprison burglars only if their crimes are aggravated by violence or undue frequency. Lying awake, heart racing, listening for robber-sounds recently (the neighbours on either side having both been burgled in the past week, at night, from the empty street), I try to benefit from Lord Woolf and Lord Irvine's teachings. All is illusion. You can't take it with you. What goes around comes around. It's probably just a gentle novice burglar, so it doesn't count anyway. Isn't it rather sweet of this keen young burglar to force the window while you sleep, thus avoiding unnecessary panic? If he - they? - came upstairs, would turning the other cheek help? Meditating on this, I can almost hear these two great sages chorusing "Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can." I can, actually. Once you realise there are no police to speak of, hardly any convictions, no significant deterrents for all but the most dedicated and violent offenders - it's the easiest thing in the world.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Catherine Bennett .
|
If the government is to persuade us, contrary to appearances, of its determination to end discrimination against older people, it really must ensure that its senior members avoid dismissing eminent legal figures who have said something controversial as "muddled and confused old codgers". Not only does the insult reinforce malicious stereotypes and dishearten all of us currently struggling with the concept of unending subjection, it signally misrepresents two men who are, it seems to me, trying to teach us something rather beautiful about the transience and essential unimportance of material possessions. When Lord Irvine says that "most people" would not be "disturbed" at first, or maybe second time burglars not going to prison, it can only be because he expects us, like him, to care more for the spiritual life than we do for inanimate things. Notice how he does not dwell on the sentimental value of what might have been taken: a grandmother's wedding ring, say, rather than a mobile phone. No, to him it is all so much heavy baggage, dragging us down. Neighbours in Cheyne Walk, where there have been 40 burglaries in the past three years, have complained that Irvine is unsympathetic. Have they considered that Lord Irvine might have his mind on higher things than the acquisition, or loss of, as it might be, fine art, or hand-made wallpaper or second homes in Scotland? Similarly, though I have no knowledge of the extent of his property and other assets, I feel sure that Lord Woolf has only the highest motives when he asks us to imprison burglars only if their crimes are aggravated by violence or undue frequency. Lying awake, heart racing, listening for robber-sounds recently (the neighbours on either side having both been burgled in the past week, at night, from the empty street), I try to benefit from Lord Woolf and Lord Irvine's teachings. All is illusion. You can't take it with you. What goes around comes around. It's probably just a gentle novice burglar, so it doesn't count anyway. Isn't it rather sweet of this keen young burglar to force the window while you sleep, thus avoiding unnecessary panic? If he - they? - came upstairs, would turning the other cheek help? Meditating on this, I can almost hear these two great sages chorusing "Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can." I can, actually. Once you realise there are no police to speak of, hardly any convictions, no significant deterrents for all but the most dedicated and violent offenders - it's the easiest thing in the world.
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0catherinebennett
| 2UK
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B> Why have we read so little about David Blunkett in recent days? </B><BR> Rightly or wrongly, many newspapers have taken the view that Blunkett and his latest crime-busting initiative are of less immediate interest to their readers than the scandal which now threatens to engulf the royal family - for another week, at least. <B> What scandal is that? </B> <BR>To summarise, one which depicts many members of the royal family, both nuclear and extended, as callous, feuding, screwed-up and, more interestingly, as potential perverters of the course of justice. Their servants, warring cliques of voracious, sometimes vicious sycophants who hail from an impressively wide range of the sexual spectrum, are also no better than they should be. <B> Says who? </B><BR> Everyone, really. Paul Burrell, the butler, who was generally acclaimed, before he became the country's most reviled tittle-tattler, as "the man Diana called her rock", insists that the Spencers, who wanted to "crush the rock", are grasping hypocrites. His - possibly former - friend, Rosa Monckton, added that they had cheated Diana's godchildren out of their inheritance. Meanwhile, his own enemies, who include a former (male) Australian lover and the divorced gay comedian, Michael Barrymore, insist that the butler - who is married, with two children - is himself untrustworthy, having airbrushed a strenuous-sounding gay past from his CV. <B> Is homosexuality compulsory for royal servants? </B><BR> On the contrary. In the Kensington closets the princess's cast-off clothes competed for space with happily married fathers of two. <B> What has the royal yacht Britannia got to do with it? </B><BR> According to some uncharitable reports, Burrell was aboard during an incident involving a number of crew members, royal staff and a quantity of gay pornography. It was after this that the queen reportedly advised him that he might find himself a wife. <B> And how is that remotely relevant to the truth or otherwise of Burrel's disclosures? </B> <BR>Beats me. <B> Worse things happen at sea, don't they? </B> <BR>And on land too. This weekend George Smith, a former colleague of the butler (divorced, two children) joined in the general unburdening, confiding to the Mail on Sunday that he was the victim of a homosexual rape, allegedly enacted by a trusted royal servant (married, two children) of Prince Charles (divorced, two children). Snaking out of these accusations and counter accusations is another rumour of a sexual encounter said to be so compromising that it could jeopardise the future of the royal family. Then again, they were saying that 10 years ago, after the Camilla tape, but even the Italians no longer call Charles Tamponcino. <B> How did it start? </B> <BR>With a police raid in January 2001. Officers led by the top vertigo-sufferer, Maxine de Brunner, knocked up Burrell at dawn, reportedly demanding to know the whereabouts of "the crown jewels". <B> Was there any evidence Burrell had profited from theft? </B> <BR>The police, unaware of his work as a media etiquette expert, believed his earnings were dishonestly acquired. <B> How could they be so stupid? </B><BR> Or determined. We must surmise, like the queen, that there are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge. <B> When were the crown jewels moved to Runcorn? </B><BR> Don't be obtuse. It can't have escaped even Guardian readers that the "crown jewels" we are talking about here are the contents of an initialled box in which Diana had hidden a variety of potentially incriminating treasures, including letters from Prince Philip calling her a "trollop", ex-lover James Hewitt's signet ring and a tape she had recorded (apparently, after plying him with drink), of one servant recalling his alleged rape by another. This box, which seems to have been almost as magically accommodating as Pandora's, may also have contained video diaries of the princess making more unflattering accusations about her in-laws. <B> Who filmed her? </B><BR> Possibly Martin Bashir, who served the Princesss for a while in a junior-rock-like capacity. This apparently ended after he vouchsafed, somewhat incautiously, to Burrell, that he would "like to give her one". <B> Regina v Burrell: </B><BR> When Burrell appeared at the high court, charged with the theft of 342 comically disparate objects, the judge, Mrs Justice Rafferty, did her utmost to safeguard the reputation of Regina and Co by censoring documents in court, but the case immediately offered treasurable, if pitiable glimpses of the sort of relationship Princess Diana had enjoyed with her family. Her brother, hero of the funeral, who has made the dead Diana into a successful tourist attraction, had previously refused her use of a house on his land, fearing invasion of his privacy. There might have been more, but the case against Burrell collapsed just before he was due to give evidence, Regina having suddenly recalled a conversation with Burrell, in which he had told her he would remove papers for safe-keeping. <B> Why didn't she intervene earlier? </B><BR> Odd, isn't it? Perhaps there are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge. <B> And the Spencers? </B><BR> One possible explanation for both the royals and the Spencers's carelessness in allowing that gossip-seeking missile, Burrell the chance to detonate in court, was that all the parties involved were engaged, in what, thanks to the concluding scene of Quentin Tarantino's film, Reservoir Dogs, we recognise as a Mexican Standoff. Both the royals and the Spencers, presumably aware of his gay past, may have hoped that Burrell's own sense of self-preservation would deter him from revealing unpalatable truths about them. But it didn't, and all have now had their reputations battered. <B> Why? </B><BR> Partly because Burrell, who may not, after all, be terribly bright, failed to grasp that discretion (though less cathartic than a 300,000 deal with the Mirror) would be both safer and more lucrative than confession. Partly because it was too late. As well as the revelations about the Spencers offered in open court, a signed legal statement by Burrell written to prove his rock-like status with the princess, had already been leaked to the press, disclosing that his extensive duties included smuggling her lovers, such as Dr Hasnat Khan, in and out of the palace, as well as buying pornography for her son and conveying her donations to prostitutes at Paddington Station. <B> What very discreet prostitutes. </B> <BR>Absolutely. At a time when even royal servants seem to have forgotten their sacred duty of silence, how reassuring to find that in some professions at least, there is still some regard for decency and discretion. They are an example to us all. <B> Who was Dr Armani? </B><BR> This mystery American, who used often to interrupt Hasnat Khan as he laboured over an open heart, turns out to be have been the Princess of Wales, using one of her amusing aliases. It was another trick of the fun-loving princess's to tease the public by buying pregnancy tests in Boots. Burrell further disclosed that "Dr Armani" once went out to see Khan wearing only her jewellery and a fur coat. He did not disclose whether it was the same evening that Diana threw an unwanted fur coat out of her car-window, aiming it at another of those immensely discreet beggar-women who inhabit the streets of London, but we must hope not. As Bagehot says, it is not good to let daylight in on magic. Especially on a chilly evening. At home, the adaptable Burrell would also prepare easily regurgitated food such as custard and rice pudding for his mistress. Khan appears to have preferred Kentucky Fried Chicken, so much so that Burrell would often find him hiding - vainly, for Diana was nothing if not persistent - in the Colonel's Fulham outlet. <B> Is that what rocks do? </B><BR> There seems to be no precise job description. In court, Frances Shand Kydd claimed that her daughter had a quite a collection of rocks - so many, you gathered, that if she had only scattered a few hardy alpines between them and placed them on a south-facing terrace, they might have taken a prize at the Chelsea Flower Show. Since then, a positive avalanche of self-styled rocks has suggested that if Burrell was principal boulder, he was surrounded by some very prominent pebbles. <B> Still, hardly a constitutional crisis. </B><BR> If you believe Tony Blair. But Burrell also confirmed that there was, indeed, a "rape tape" in existence, ditto a victim, and possibly evidence of a palace cover-up. Not to mention a perpetrator. <B> Charges presumably nullified by the butler's own economy with the truth? </B><BR> Not necessarily. His principal challenger is Michael Barrymore, who claimed, "Paul Burrell seduced me as Diana lay dead." <B> Every seduction since September 1 1997 has taken place with Diana lying dead. </B><BR> True, and it should be remembered that Barrymore, whose own reputation has yet to recover from the mysterious death of a young man in his swimming pool, is not generally renowned for the peerless quality of his testimony. His ex-wife, recording her suffering in a new book, recalled "He was out of his head on drugs at Di's funeral." <B> What part did Daniella Westbrook play in all this? </B><BR> Due to some tabloid oversight, there are still a few celebrity names missing from What the Butler Saw, but this is sure to have been corrected by the end of the week. <B> Why are some newspapers suddenly so interested an obscure royal servant called Michael Fawcett? </B><BR> Apparently because of concerns over his role in selling unwanted gifts received by the Prince of Wales. "Fawcett the Fence", as he is reportedly refered to by some colleagues, appears in a much used photograph of the Prince of Wales taken while shooting at Sandringham. <B> Do people really still wear trousers like that? </B><BR> Apparently. <B> This doesn't quite explain the intensity of their interest in him does it? </B><BR> Possibly not. <B> Does any of this actually matter? </B><BR> There are three schools of thought. <B> 1 The long view. </B><BR> Endorsed by none other than royal biographer, Ben Pimlott, who has dismissed the whole thing as "boring, frankly", this school thinks we should all grow up. The Butler-fest only tells us something we already knew: we are abjectly in thrall to celebrity gossip. As for constitutional significance: how, the long-viewers say, can this little of bit palace unpleasantness possibly compare with the sexual and fiscal vagaries of Charles II, the trials of Queen Caroline, the deeply felt hostility towards that goody goody, Queen Victoria? Besides, if you want a royal family, why complain that they're not like decent ordinary folk? Plotting, bossing and showing-off is what they are for. <B> 2 The short view. </B><BR> Endorsed by almost everyone else, this school holds it to be self-evident that the whole Burrell affair, having multiplied our knowledge of the private life of the royal family by about 1,000 times in two weeks, is necessarily fascinating. And where are the tapes? <B> 3 The exalted view. </B><BR> Goes "I'm not interested in the individuals, so much as the institution. If only we could put all this infantilising, prurient rubbish behind us, and engage in a really exciting debate about what a detailed constitution for a republic might look like ...Did she really go out in fur coat with nothing under it?" <B> When was that glorious jubilee? </B><BR> June 5 was the day of the flypast. Remember? Many republicans and doubters, among them Ros Wynne Jones of the Mirror, accepted that, whatever you might say about them, the royal family truly is for ever. "My republican dream was shattered", wrote Ros. Watching the flypast, she thought, the queen must have realised "that the celebrations were not just for the last 50 years but for the next 50, during which her family were now guaranteed to remain at the heart of public life". Only a few months later, it looks as if Ros's arithmetic might have been a bit out. "It is not Paul Burrell whose reputation is seriously under attack", the Mirror wrote yesterday, "but that of the Royal Family and their advisors". Maybe it was the sight of the planes, rather than the royals, that misted up our eyes. <B> So how about another flypast? </B><BR> Assuming that the queen, Charles, and Philip were actually on board the planes, it might just work. But best wait, perhaps, until Princess Anne has appeared in court to answer for Eglantyne Jebb, her devil dog, to save her having to catch up later. <B> Are there any winners? </B><BR> Kentucky Fried Chicken? After all, if top heart surgeons eat it, it can't be all that bad. <B> And the biggest losers? </B><BR> Last week, by common consent, it was the man whose sense of duty drove him to hold Prince Charles's specimen bottle. Only now is it dawning that according to the arcane, below-stairs rituals of the royal household, such a task might be considered a privilege. So it's the bottle I feel for. And those poor little princes.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Catherine Bennett .
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B> Why have we read so little about David Blunkett in recent days? </B><BR> Rightly or wrongly, many newspapers have taken the view that Blunkett and his latest crime-busting initiative are of less immediate interest to their readers than the scandal which now threatens to engulf the royal family - for another week, at least. <B> What scandal is that? </B> <BR>To summarise, one which depicts many members of the royal family, both nuclear and extended, as callous, feuding, screwed-up and, more interestingly, as potential perverters of the course of justice. Their servants, warring cliques of voracious, sometimes vicious sycophants who hail from an impressively wide range of the sexual spectrum, are also no better than they should be. <B> Says who? </B><BR> Everyone, really. Paul Burrell, the butler, who was generally acclaimed, before he became the country's most reviled tittle-tattler, as "the man Diana called her rock", insists that the Spencers, who wanted to "crush the rock", are grasping hypocrites. His - possibly former - friend, Rosa Monckton, added that they had cheated Diana's godchildren out of their inheritance. Meanwhile, his own enemies, who include a former (male) Australian lover and the divorced gay comedian, Michael Barrymore, insist that the butler - who is married, with two children - is himself untrustworthy, having airbrushed a strenuous-sounding gay past from his CV. <B> Is homosexuality compulsory for royal servants? </B><BR> On the contrary. In the Kensington closets the princess's cast-off clothes competed for space with happily married fathers of two. <B> What has the royal yacht Britannia got to do with it? </B><BR> According to some uncharitable reports, Burrell was aboard during an incident involving a number of crew members, royal staff and a quantity of gay pornography. It was after this that the queen reportedly advised him that he might find himself a wife. <B> And how is that remotely relevant to the truth or otherwise of Burrel's disclosures? </B> <BR>Beats me. <B> Worse things happen at sea, don't they? </B> <BR>And on land too. This weekend George Smith, a former colleague of the butler (divorced, two children) joined in the general unburdening, confiding to the Mail on Sunday that he was the victim of a homosexual rape, allegedly enacted by a trusted royal servant (married, two children) of Prince Charles (divorced, two children). Snaking out of these accusations and counter accusations is another rumour of a sexual encounter said to be so compromising that it could jeopardise the future of the royal family. Then again, they were saying that 10 years ago, after the Camilla tape, but even the Italians no longer call Charles Tamponcino. <B> How did it start? </B> <BR>With a police raid in January 2001. Officers led by the top vertigo-sufferer, Maxine de Brunner, knocked up Burrell at dawn, reportedly demanding to know the whereabouts of "the crown jewels". <B> Was there any evidence Burrell had profited from theft? </B> <BR>The police, unaware of his work as a media etiquette expert, believed his earnings were dishonestly acquired. <B> How could they be so stupid? </B><BR> Or determined. We must surmise, like the queen, that there are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge. <B> When were the crown jewels moved to Runcorn? </B><BR> Don't be obtuse. It can't have escaped even Guardian readers that the "crown jewels" we are talking about here are the contents of an initialled box in which Diana had hidden a variety of potentially incriminating treasures, including letters from Prince Philip calling her a "trollop", ex-lover James Hewitt's signet ring and a tape she had recorded (apparently, after plying him with drink), of one servant recalling his alleged rape by another. This box, which seems to have been almost as magically accommodating as Pandora's, may also have contained video diaries of the princess making more unflattering accusations about her in-laws. <B> Who filmed her? </B><BR> Possibly Martin Bashir, who served the Princesss for a while in a junior-rock-like capacity. This apparently ended after he vouchsafed, somewhat incautiously, to Burrell, that he would "like to give her one". <B> Regina v Burrell: </B><BR> When Burrell appeared at the high court, charged with the theft of 342 comically disparate objects, the judge, Mrs Justice Rafferty, did her utmost to safeguard the reputation of Regina and Co by censoring documents in court, but the case immediately offered treasurable, if pitiable glimpses of the sort of relationship Princess Diana had enjoyed with her family. Her brother, hero of the funeral, who has made the dead Diana into a successful tourist attraction, had previously refused her use of a house on his land, fearing invasion of his privacy. There might have been more, but the case against Burrell collapsed just before he was due to give evidence, Regina having suddenly recalled a conversation with Burrell, in which he had told her he would remove papers for safe-keeping. <B> Why didn't she intervene earlier? </B><BR> Odd, isn't it? Perhaps there are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge. <B> And the Spencers? </B><BR> One possible explanation for both the royals and the Spencers's carelessness in allowing that gossip-seeking missile, Burrell the chance to detonate in court, was that all the parties involved were engaged, in what, thanks to the concluding scene of Quentin Tarantino's film, Reservoir Dogs, we recognise as a Mexican Standoff. Both the royals and the Spencers, presumably aware of his gay past, may have hoped that Burrell's own sense of self-preservation would deter him from revealing unpalatable truths about them. But it didn't, and all have now had their reputations battered. <B> Why? </B><BR> Partly because Burrell, who may not, after all, be terribly bright, failed to grasp that discretion (though less cathartic than a 300,000 deal with the Mirror) would be both safer and more lucrative than confession. Partly because it was too late. As well as the revelations about the Spencers offered in open court, a signed legal statement by Burrell written to prove his rock-like status with the princess, had already been leaked to the press, disclosing that his extensive duties included smuggling her lovers, such as Dr Hasnat Khan, in and out of the palace, as well as buying pornography for her son and conveying her donations to prostitutes at Paddington Station. <B> What very discreet prostitutes. </B> <BR>Absolutely. At a time when even royal servants seem to have forgotten their sacred duty of silence, how reassuring to find that in some professions at least, there is still some regard for decency and discretion. They are an example to us all. <B> Who was Dr Armani? </B><BR> This mystery American, who used often to interrupt Hasnat Khan as he laboured over an open heart, turns out to be have been the Princess of Wales, using one of her amusing aliases. It was another trick of the fun-loving princess's to tease the public by buying pregnancy tests in Boots. Burrell further disclosed that "Dr Armani" once went out to see Khan wearing only her jewellery and a fur coat. He did not disclose whether it was the same evening that Diana threw an unwanted fur coat out of her car-window, aiming it at another of those immensely discreet beggar-women who inhabit the streets of London, but we must hope not. As Bagehot says, it is not good to let daylight in on magic. Especially on a chilly evening. At home, the adaptable Burrell would also prepare easily regurgitated food such as custard and rice pudding for his mistress. Khan appears to have preferred Kentucky Fried Chicken, so much so that Burrell would often find him hiding - vainly, for Diana was nothing if not persistent - in the Colonel's Fulham outlet. <B> Is that what rocks do? </B><BR> There seems to be no precise job description. In court, Frances Shand Kydd claimed that her daughter had a quite a collection of rocks - so many, you gathered, that if she had only scattered a few hardy alpines between them and placed them on a south-facing terrace, they might have taken a prize at the Chelsea Flower Show. Since then, a positive avalanche of self-styled rocks has suggested that if Burrell was principal boulder, he was surrounded by some very prominent pebbles. <B> Still, hardly a constitutional crisis. </B><BR> If you believe Tony Blair. But Burrell also confirmed that there was, indeed, a "rape tape" in existence, ditto a victim, and possibly evidence of a palace cover-up. Not to mention a perpetrator. <B> Charges presumably nullified by the butler's own economy with the truth? </B><BR> Not necessarily. His principal challenger is Michael Barrymore, who claimed, "Paul Burrell seduced me as Diana lay dead." <B> Every seduction since September 1 1997 has taken place with Diana lying dead. </B><BR> True, and it should be remembered that Barrymore, whose own reputation has yet to recover from the mysterious death of a young man in his swimming pool, is not generally renowned for the peerless quality of his testimony. His ex-wife, recording her suffering in a new book, recalled "He was out of his head on drugs at Di's funeral." <B> What part did Daniella Westbrook play in all this? </B><BR> Due to some tabloid oversight, there are still a few celebrity names missing from What the Butler Saw, but this is sure to have been corrected by the end of the week. <B> Why are some newspapers suddenly so interested an obscure royal servant called Michael Fawcett? </B><BR> Apparently because of concerns over his role in selling unwanted gifts received by the Prince of Wales. "Fawcett the Fence", as he is reportedly refered to by some colleagues, appears in a much used photograph of the Prince of Wales taken while shooting at Sandringham. <B> Do people really still wear trousers like that? </B><BR> Apparently. <B> This doesn't quite explain the intensity of their interest in him does it? </B><BR> Possibly not. <B> Does any of this actually matter? </B><BR> There are three schools of thought. <B> 1 The long view. </B><BR> Endorsed by none other than royal biographer, Ben Pimlott, who has dismissed the whole thing as "boring, frankly", this school thinks we should all grow up. The Butler-fest only tells us something we already knew: we are abjectly in thrall to celebrity gossip. As for constitutional significance: how, the long-viewers say, can this little of bit palace unpleasantness possibly compare with the sexual and fiscal vagaries of Charles II, the trials of Queen Caroline, the deeply felt hostility towards that goody goody, Queen Victoria? Besides, if you want a royal family, why complain that they're not like decent ordinary folk? Plotting, bossing and showing-off is what they are for. <B> 2 The short view. </B><BR> Endorsed by almost everyone else, this school holds it to be self-evident that the whole Burrell affair, having multiplied our knowledge of the private life of the royal family by about 1,000 times in two weeks, is necessarily fascinating. And where are the tapes? <B> 3 The exalted view. </B><BR> Goes "I'm not interested in the individuals, so much as the institution. If only we could put all this infantilising, prurient rubbish behind us, and engage in a really exciting debate about what a detailed constitution for a republic might look like ...Did she really go out in fur coat with nothing under it?" <B> When was that glorious jubilee? </B><BR> June 5 was the day of the flypast. Remember? Many republicans and doubters, among them Ros Wynne Jones of the Mirror, accepted that, whatever you might say about them, the royal family truly is for ever. "My republican dream was shattered", wrote Ros. Watching the flypast, she thought, the queen must have realised "that the celebrations were not just for the last 50 years but for the next 50, during which her family were now guaranteed to remain at the heart of public life". Only a few months later, it looks as if Ros's arithmetic might have been a bit out. "It is not Paul Burrell whose reputation is seriously under attack", the Mirror wrote yesterday, "but that of the Royal Family and their advisors". Maybe it was the sight of the planes, rather than the royals, that misted up our eyes. <B> So how about another flypast? </B><BR> Assuming that the queen, Charles, and Philip were actually on board the planes, it might just work. But best wait, perhaps, until Princess Anne has appeared in court to answer for Eglantyne Jebb, her devil dog, to save her having to catch up later. <B> Are there any winners? </B><BR> Kentucky Fried Chicken? After all, if top heart surgeons eat it, it can't be all that bad. <B> And the biggest losers? </B><BR> Last week, by common consent, it was the man whose sense of duty drove him to hold Prince Charles's specimen bottle. Only now is it dawning that according to the arcane, below-stairs rituals of the royal household, such a task might be considered a privilege. So it's the bottle I feel for. And those poor little princes.
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0catherinebennett
| 2UK
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In a speech this week, Prince Charles suggested that people remember not to fill their kettles too full. Here he explains why: It seems to me that most people instinctively understand that to make a cup of tea it is not necessary to boil an entire kettle! And I, for one, simply cannot sit here and do nothing while, all around the world, whole kettles are boiled, regardless of the tragic consequences. Do we need kettles at all? I happen to think their benefits are limited. In my quest to address the challenge of making tea without using a kettle, I sought to create a new example of sensitive, cauldron-based boiling that reflected local tradition and character. Despite a few early hiccups (very few supposedly advanced vacuum flasks are capable of keeping water at boiling point, even on the relatively short helicopter flight to Scotland), I am pleased to report that we are beginning to make a difference. Since a promising experiment with heated stones led to one or two minor injuries, all our tea at Highgrove has been made using energy from an open fire, kept burning for the purpose, or inside a seasonal compost-warmer. I happen to think that when consumers appreciate the difference between water that has been prepared without a thought, in a few seconds, and liquid from a pot, like ours at Highgrove, which has taken hours, perhaps days, of careful tending to reach boiling point, they too will reject kettles as not just unnecessary, but unacceptably black.
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Catherine Bennett .
|
In a speech this week, Prince Charles suggested that people remember not to fill their kettles too full. Here he explains why: It seems to me that most people instinctively understand that to make a cup of tea it is not necessary to boil an entire kettle! And I, for one, simply cannot sit here and do nothing while, all around the world, whole kettles are boiled, regardless of the tragic consequences. Do we need kettles at all? I happen to think their benefits are limited. In my quest to address the challenge of making tea without using a kettle, I sought to create a new example of sensitive, cauldron-based boiling that reflected local tradition and character. Despite a few early hiccups (very few supposedly advanced vacuum flasks are capable of keeping water at boiling point, even on the relatively short helicopter flight to Scotland), I am pleased to report that we are beginning to make a difference. Since a promising experiment with heated stones led to one or two minor injuries, all our tea at Highgrove has been made using energy from an open fire, kept burning for the purpose, or inside a seasonal compost-warmer. I happen to think that when consumers appreciate the difference between water that has been prepared without a thought, in a few seconds, and liquid from a pot, like ours at Highgrove, which has taken hours, perhaps days, of careful tending to reach boiling point, they too will reject kettles as not just unnecessary, but unacceptably black.
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3jonathanfreedland
| 2UK
|
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's been the rallying cry of the defenders of our ancient, unwritten constitution through the ages - if not always in those words. Sure, say the old guard, our patchwork quilt of unspoken custom and tacit tradition may not make logical sense when set out on a clean sheet of paper - that's one good reason why we keep it unwritten. But, insist the keepers of the flame, our non-systematic system has held up just fine for centuries. So long as it still works, there's no need to change it. The trouble is, that's no longer true. The system is not working: it is broke - and we need to fix it. For the test of any constitution is the quality of governance it produces. In just the last few years we have seen all too clearly how well our system works: from the great pension scandal of the mid-1980s to the BSE calamity of the 1990s, from the outbreak of sleaze to the sell-off of our railways, from the poll tax to the debacle of the Dome - the proof is all around us of a standard of government that is just not good enough. In each case the system did not contain the checks and balances, the basic scrutiny, that might have weeded out bad legislation and prevented disastrous mistakes. This cannot be the exclusive fault of this administration or that individual politician. It happens too often for that. Rather, as both the Scott inquiry into the arms-for-Iraq affair or the Phillips report on BSE concluded, the flaw lies in the system itself - the way we are governed. And that means our constitution. The British people woke up to this fact long ago, even if few dare say it. Polling data consistently show a decline in esteem for our institutions and the system which links them together. While 48% expressed "quite a lot of confidence" in the House of Commons in 1985, that figure had halved by 1995. A year later a European Union poll found that Britons had less faith in their parliament than the people of any member country bar Portugal. Local government's standing has never been weaker, with turnout in council elections dropping like a stone. Trust in our institutions is in freefall, with the young especially disenchanted. One Mori survey found 71%of first-time voters convinced their ballot would "make little or no difference to their lives". We are beginning to vote with our feet - by staying away from the polling station. Britain's turnout figures are in decline, with recent by-elections lucky to involve more than 30% of the vote. In one Leeds seat, the turnout fell below one in five of all registered voters. It all adds up to a growing loss of faith in our system of governance. These trends are not wholly new: reformers have seen the need for a radical overhaul of our constitution for decades. But now there is an extra urgency. For not only is the old system not working well: it is beginning to come apart. Since 1997 Labour has undertaken a raft of constitutional changes so radical they have historians reaching for the 1830s to find a precedent. Whether it's the rolling programme of devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland or the partial reform of the House of Lords, the current government has shattered forever the traditionalist belief that our system is a frail, mystical thing that belongs in a glass case and can never be touched by human hand. The conservative conviction that the constitution has remained unaltered for centuries - and therefore cannot be changed in future - is gone. The patchwork quilt can be repaired and even renewed: after all, it's unravelling already. <B> Four nations</B><BR> Specifically, Labour's changes have exposed to the light questions that had long been buried - and which now demand to be answered. Take devolution. Until 1997 Britain had never really come clean about its true nature as a multi-national entity: the four constituent nations each had their own cabinet department, but Britain was essentially a unitary state governed from Westminster and Whitehall. Devolution has blown that apart. It has forced us to recognise that there are distinct countries within Britain, each with the right and ambition to govern itself - whether through a parliament in Edinburgh or assemblies in Cardiff and Belfast. The days of crypto-federalism seem to be over: thanks to devolution, Britain has acted like a country ready to come out as a federal entity. But not completely. For Labour's decentralisation may have brought to the surface a clutch of dilemmas about Britain, but it has not resolved them. So, for example, most Britons now accept that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland deserve home rule - but what about England? Should Westminster serve as a federal legislature, dealing only with UK-wide problems - or should it double as a de facto English parliament? Why does one of the island nations, Scotland, have more autonomy than the others? Who should sit and vote in the Westminster parliament; in the terms of the famed West Lothian question, why should Scottish MPs vote on exclusively English matters when English MPs have no say on exclusively Scottish ones? What Labour has done is to open a can of worms: the worms were always there, we just couldn't see them before. Now the can is open we cannot look away. Perhaps the best illustration is the House of Lords. Some around Tony Blair might once have thought that expelling all but 92 of the hereditary peers would solve the problems of Britain's second chamber. Instead it's done the opposite, suddenly drawing attention to the absurd democratic deficit in parliament. When the hereditaries were there, the whole body could be written off as some Ruritanian joke. But Blair's reforms have prompted Britons to take a closer look. They now see a supposedly reformed second chamber barely more democratic than the blue-blood body it replaced - in which not a single member is elected. Leaving well alone, as the Tories used to advocate, was one thing. Now, say many Britons, if you're going to tinker with the upper house, you might as well make it democratic. <B> Shattered mystique</B><BR> And that's a view which is beginning to apply to our entire constitution: now that Labour has broken the taboo by daring to change it, logic demands that it be changed properly - and democratically. For the current, spatchcocked arrangement of old custom and New Labour modernisation risks being the worst of both worlds, creating a constitution that makes no sense and lacks the old (if spurious) defence of ancient continuity. The mystique has shattered at last; now our very system of government is up for grabs. Even the Conservatives are discussing radical, constitutional change: witness William Hague's flirtation with the notion of an English parliament. There is one last factor which makes urgent our need for a new constitutional settlement. Britain may be an island, but we are not alone. The changes inside the United Kingdom have coincided with profound shifts outside it, too. We are days away from a summit in Nice which will debate and decide the future shape of the European Union. Who should govern? A simple majority of member nations or each state by wielding its individual veto? How should the peoples of Europe be bound together? With a common currency and a shared military force - or as a loose, free trade area? How should Europe declare its values? With communiques and treaties or with a basic law? In other words, the European Union is in the midst of constitutional upheaval, too. Beyond even Europe's boundaries, there is a similarly profound argument. The global anti-capitalist movement unleashed in Seattle and Prague asks who should rule the world - its people or the corporations and the World Trade Organisation? On the streets with the protesters or in the summit rooms of Nice, the debate turns on a single word: sovereignty. Put simply, who should be in charge? That's an issue for the world, as it grapples with the domination of Microsoft or Big Oil and gropes for a new regime of global governance. It's an issue for Europe, as it works out whether sovereignty can be pooled or only diluted. And it's an issue for Britain: who is sovereign in our land? What it all adds up to - the weaknesses of Britain's old system, the changes made by Labour and the worldwide confusion over sovereignty - is a need: we are crying out for a new constitutional settlement. We urgently require a new dispensation that would work better than the current set-up, improve the quality of our governance and yield better outcomes and better policies that would affect all Britons' lives. A new dispensation would also complete some unfinished business left over from Labour's programme of constitutional reform, turning today's "unsettlement" into a settlement. For those who care about the survival of Britain that has become an urgent task: for if we do not decide a future for the union of our nations, then that union will simply unravel. Britain will break apart. Our country needs this new settlement within our borders to work out our place in the world beyond them. Many reformers have argued that so long as we remain confused over our own sovereignty, we have little chance of sharing or pooling it with others. When the relationship between Scotland and England is still vexed, is it any wonder we cannot find the right connection between Britain and France? We need to make a change. We need to replace an unwritten constitution which consists of one abstract idea - the crown-in-parliament - with a settlement that fits the nation we have become and the world that now exists. We cannot wear the old, moth-eaten garb of the past any longer: we have outgrown it. This is a new century and a new millennium: we need a new constitution. <B>Related stories - news</B><BR> <BR> <B>Related stories - comment</B><BR><BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> <B>Related stories - background</B><BR>
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Jonathan Freedland .
|
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's been the rallying cry of the defenders of our ancient, unwritten constitution through the ages - if not always in those words. Sure, say the old guard, our patchwork quilt of unspoken custom and tacit tradition may not make logical sense when set out on a clean sheet of paper - that's one good reason why we keep it unwritten. But, insist the keepers of the flame, our non-systematic system has held up just fine for centuries. So long as it still works, there's no need to change it. The trouble is, that's no longer true. The system is not working: it is broke - and we need to fix it. For the test of any constitution is the quality of governance it produces. In just the last few years we have seen all too clearly how well our system works: from the great pension scandal of the mid-1980s to the BSE calamity of the 1990s, from the outbreak of sleaze to the sell-off of our railways, from the poll tax to the debacle of the Dome - the proof is all around us of a standard of government that is just not good enough. In each case the system did not contain the checks and balances, the basic scrutiny, that might have weeded out bad legislation and prevented disastrous mistakes. This cannot be the exclusive fault of this administration or that individual politician. It happens too often for that. Rather, as both the Scott inquiry into the arms-for-Iraq affair or the Phillips report on BSE concluded, the flaw lies in the system itself - the way we are governed. And that means our constitution. The British people woke up to this fact long ago, even if few dare say it. Polling data consistently show a decline in esteem for our institutions and the system which links them together. While 48% expressed "quite a lot of confidence" in the House of Commons in 1985, that figure had halved by 1995. A year later a European Union poll found that Britons had less faith in their parliament than the people of any member country bar Portugal. Local government's standing has never been weaker, with turnout in council elections dropping like a stone. Trust in our institutions is in freefall, with the young especially disenchanted. One Mori survey found 71%of first-time voters convinced their ballot would "make little or no difference to their lives". We are beginning to vote with our feet - by staying away from the polling station. Britain's turnout figures are in decline, with recent by-elections lucky to involve more than 30% of the vote. In one Leeds seat, the turnout fell below one in five of all registered voters. It all adds up to a growing loss of faith in our system of governance. These trends are not wholly new: reformers have seen the need for a radical overhaul of our constitution for decades. But now there is an extra urgency. For not only is the old system not working well: it is beginning to come apart. Since 1997 Labour has undertaken a raft of constitutional changes so radical they have historians reaching for the 1830s to find a precedent. Whether it's the rolling programme of devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland or the partial reform of the House of Lords, the current government has shattered forever the traditionalist belief that our system is a frail, mystical thing that belongs in a glass case and can never be touched by human hand. The conservative conviction that the constitution has remained unaltered for centuries - and therefore cannot be changed in future - is gone. The patchwork quilt can be repaired and even renewed: after all, it's unravelling already. <B> Four nations</B><BR> Specifically, Labour's changes have exposed to the light questions that had long been buried - and which now demand to be answered. Take devolution. Until 1997 Britain had never really come clean about its true nature as a multi-national entity: the four constituent nations each had their own cabinet department, but Britain was essentially a unitary state governed from Westminster and Whitehall. Devolution has blown that apart. It has forced us to recognise that there are distinct countries within Britain, each with the right and ambition to govern itself - whether through a parliament in Edinburgh or assemblies in Cardiff and Belfast. The days of crypto-federalism seem to be over: thanks to devolution, Britain has acted like a country ready to come out as a federal entity. But not completely. For Labour's decentralisation may have brought to the surface a clutch of dilemmas about Britain, but it has not resolved them. So, for example, most Britons now accept that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland deserve home rule - but what about England? Should Westminster serve as a federal legislature, dealing only with UK-wide problems - or should it double as a de facto English parliament? Why does one of the island nations, Scotland, have more autonomy than the others? Who should sit and vote in the Westminster parliament; in the terms of the famed West Lothian question, why should Scottish MPs vote on exclusively English matters when English MPs have no say on exclusively Scottish ones? What Labour has done is to open a can of worms: the worms were always there, we just couldn't see them before. Now the can is open we cannot look away. Perhaps the best illustration is the House of Lords. Some around Tony Blair might once have thought that expelling all but 92 of the hereditary peers would solve the problems of Britain's second chamber. Instead it's done the opposite, suddenly drawing attention to the absurd democratic deficit in parliament. When the hereditaries were there, the whole body could be written off as some Ruritanian joke. But Blair's reforms have prompted Britons to take a closer look. They now see a supposedly reformed second chamber barely more democratic than the blue-blood body it replaced - in which not a single member is elected. Leaving well alone, as the Tories used to advocate, was one thing. Now, say many Britons, if you're going to tinker with the upper house, you might as well make it democratic. <B> Shattered mystique</B><BR> And that's a view which is beginning to apply to our entire constitution: now that Labour has broken the taboo by daring to change it, logic demands that it be changed properly - and democratically. For the current, spatchcocked arrangement of old custom and New Labour modernisation risks being the worst of both worlds, creating a constitution that makes no sense and lacks the old (if spurious) defence of ancient continuity. The mystique has shattered at last; now our very system of government is up for grabs. Even the Conservatives are discussing radical, constitutional change: witness William Hague's flirtation with the notion of an English parliament. There is one last factor which makes urgent our need for a new constitutional settlement. Britain may be an island, but we are not alone. The changes inside the United Kingdom have coincided with profound shifts outside it, too. We are days away from a summit in Nice which will debate and decide the future shape of the European Union. Who should govern? A simple majority of member nations or each state by wielding its individual veto? How should the peoples of Europe be bound together? With a common currency and a shared military force - or as a loose, free trade area? How should Europe declare its values? With communiques and treaties or with a basic law? In other words, the European Union is in the midst of constitutional upheaval, too. Beyond even Europe's boundaries, there is a similarly profound argument. The global anti-capitalist movement unleashed in Seattle and Prague asks who should rule the world - its people or the corporations and the World Trade Organisation? On the streets with the protesters or in the summit rooms of Nice, the debate turns on a single word: sovereignty. Put simply, who should be in charge? That's an issue for the world, as it grapples with the domination of Microsoft or Big Oil and gropes for a new regime of global governance. It's an issue for Europe, as it works out whether sovereignty can be pooled or only diluted. And it's an issue for Britain: who is sovereign in our land? What it all adds up to - the weaknesses of Britain's old system, the changes made by Labour and the worldwide confusion over sovereignty - is a need: we are crying out for a new constitutional settlement. We urgently require a new dispensation that would work better than the current set-up, improve the quality of our governance and yield better outcomes and better policies that would affect all Britons' lives. A new dispensation would also complete some unfinished business left over from Labour's programme of constitutional reform, turning today's "unsettlement" into a settlement. For those who care about the survival of Britain that has become an urgent task: for if we do not decide a future for the union of our nations, then that union will simply unravel. Britain will break apart. Our country needs this new settlement within our borders to work out our place in the world beyond them. Many reformers have argued that so long as we remain confused over our own sovereignty, we have little chance of sharing or pooling it with others. When the relationship between Scotland and England is still vexed, is it any wonder we cannot find the right connection between Britain and France? We need to make a change. We need to replace an unwritten constitution which consists of one abstract idea - the crown-in-parliament - with a settlement that fits the nation we have become and the world that now exists. We cannot wear the old, moth-eaten garb of the past any longer: we have outgrown it. This is a new century and a new millennium: we need a new constitution. <B>Related stories - news</B><BR> <BR> <B>Related stories - comment</B><BR><BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> <B>Related stories - background</B><BR>
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3jonathanfreedland
| 2UK
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We know it's gripping. We know it's fun. But does it really matter? And does it matter enough to justify the current media hyperventilation about "the greatest crisis for the royal family since the abdication of 1936"? Certainly not, says constitutional historian and stout royalist Vernon Bogdanor: "It's a storm in a teacup." For him, all the Burrell affair has spawned is a string of accusations, aired in newspapers rather than made formally to the police, with nothing proven whatsoever. The frenzied speculation that has been piled on to these fragments of gossip would never have made it into print if the target had been a celebrity or politician, says Bogdanor. "But because the royal family will never sue for libel and can't answer back, the press has been allowed to run riot. It's a shame, he adds, because after the exertions of the jubilee the Windsors deserved a rest and "some peace and quiet". He is right about one thing. There is no constitutional crisis here: that only happens when the sovereign and parliament are locked in a stand-off which the system itself cannot resolve. We'd have one of those if the Queen refused to sign, say, a law banning foxhunting. We're nowhere near that. Strictly speaking, 1936 was not that kind of crisis either. Edward VIII always insisted he would go along with the wishes of his ministers and when that meant stepping down, he did as he was told. Even so, the abdication is remembered as a trauma for the royal family - it's the chief reason why the Queen has never countenanced an early retirement for herself - and that is the way the current drama should be judged. As Edward and Mrs Simpson proved, it's not only strict constitutional crises that can rock an institution to its roots. At first glance, the stakes seem much lower this time: even the most hysterical of pundits is not predicting a 1936-style removal of a sitting monarch. Yet the damage the Burrell saga could yet inflict on the royal family should not be underestimated. It may not be on a par with the abdication, but this is surely the greatest threat to the house of Windsor since then. For one thing, this affair touches the Queen herself. One of the remarkable features of Elizabeth II's long reign has been her sure-footed avoidance of controversy. Her five decades on the throne have included not so much as a gaffe. Indeed, one thing which has made life so hard for republicans these last 50 years is that the Queen has kept her copybook unstained: she has been the very model of an impartial, above-the-fray head of state. Only now has she made her first error. Her 11th-hour intervention in the Burrell case - suddenly remembering a crucial conversation with the accused and thereby bringing his prosecution to a juddering halt - has, at the very least, saddled the Queen with the appearance of impropriety. Her failure to step forward earlier with such material evidence looks a lot like obstruction of justice. Her decision to step in when she did - just as Burrell was about to testify, spilling some embarrassing royal beans - looks like meddling in justice to save one's own skin. A second factor puts the last 12 days into a different category from all the ructions that have gone before. For the talk now is of criminal, rather than emotional, wrongdoing. In the royal scandals of the past, the great revelation was that the Windsors were not as squeaky clean as their "model family" image cracked them up to be. Whether it was Margaret's thwarted love for Group Captain Peter Townsend or the icy reception granted to the young Diana, the big discovery was that the royals were all family Christmases on the outside - and cold-hearted dysfunction on the inside. Even the "war of the Waleses" in the 1990s merely revealed the prince as a callous man who was unfaithful to his wife. It wasn't flattering, but Charles was accused of nothing illegal, nor anything, in truth, that would make him unfit to be king. The current scandal is different. Even putting aside the Queen's intervention in the Burrell trial, the latest "rape tape" claims pose a threat of a graver order than anything before. At the heart of the matter is the suggestion that St James's Palace hushed up a rape claim made by one employee against a trusted Charles aide. George Smith says he was raped in 1989; there was no investigation until 1996 - and even then, it was the palace, not the police, which did the investigating. Smith also testifies that he saw an incident involving a member of the royal family and a palace servant that, if made public, would cause "irreparable" damage. The guessing game about that has begun, and the suspicion is hardening that it was Smith's testimony which the royals were so anxious to keep out of court, and why they moved so swiftly to close Burrell's trial down. Whatever the truth of Smith's second claim, the suggestion that a rape charge was not pursued in order to save the hide of a Charles favourite is serious business. Forget talking to plants, dreaming of life as a tampon or scribbling nuisance letters to government ministers - this casts the heir not as a crank, but as a perverter of the course of justice. The prince's creation of an internal inquiry is a bad joke: what could be more inappropriate, when the very charge that needs probing is that the palace saw fit to keep out the police and act as judge and jury on its own? As for the other claims that have filled the popular prints, they could wreak some damage, too. No one minds that there is a gay circle below stairs in Britain's assorted palaces. But they do mind when they hear of high-value gifts, undeclared and sold on for profit. They do mind when they hear accusations of a corrupt, closed world where serious crimes can go unpunished. The closest parallel here is with Tory sleaze. In the end, the details mattered less than the vague sense that the Conservatives believed their power was so unchallengeable they regarded themselves as above the law. If Britons come to see the Windsors the same way, as ridden with royal sleaze, it will be a hard view to shift. As the Tories have learned to their cost, sleaze can blight an institution. And this, perhaps, is the biggest danger of all. The royalists' strongest argument is that the monarchy alone serves as a channel, connecting the British people to its past. That unique bond was on show at the death of the Queen Mother, they say. But what happens if that channel starts getting clogged with a whole lot of other emotions? At Sunday's remembrance ceremony, the Queen laid a wreath for our fallen service men and women. Today she will open parliament. She can perform that role partly because she has lived through some of the very moments of British history she symbolically commemorates, and also because her personal record has been so clean. But would we see a future King Charles the same way - especially if there was not just a crown but a legal question mark hovering above his head?
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Jonathan Freedland .
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We know it's gripping. We know it's fun. But does it really matter? And does it matter enough to justify the current media hyperventilation about "the greatest crisis for the royal family since the abdication of 1936"? Certainly not, says constitutional historian and stout royalist Vernon Bogdanor: "It's a storm in a teacup." For him, all the Burrell affair has spawned is a string of accusations, aired in newspapers rather than made formally to the police, with nothing proven whatsoever. The frenzied speculation that has been piled on to these fragments of gossip would never have made it into print if the target had been a celebrity or politician, says Bogdanor. "But because the royal family will never sue for libel and can't answer back, the press has been allowed to run riot. It's a shame, he adds, because after the exertions of the jubilee the Windsors deserved a rest and "some peace and quiet". He is right about one thing. There is no constitutional crisis here: that only happens when the sovereign and parliament are locked in a stand-off which the system itself cannot resolve. We'd have one of those if the Queen refused to sign, say, a law banning foxhunting. We're nowhere near that. Strictly speaking, 1936 was not that kind of crisis either. Edward VIII always insisted he would go along with the wishes of his ministers and when that meant stepping down, he did as he was told. Even so, the abdication is remembered as a trauma for the royal family - it's the chief reason why the Queen has never countenanced an early retirement for herself - and that is the way the current drama should be judged. As Edward and Mrs Simpson proved, it's not only strict constitutional crises that can rock an institution to its roots. At first glance, the stakes seem much lower this time: even the most hysterical of pundits is not predicting a 1936-style removal of a sitting monarch. Yet the damage the Burrell saga could yet inflict on the royal family should not be underestimated. It may not be on a par with the abdication, but this is surely the greatest threat to the house of Windsor since then. For one thing, this affair touches the Queen herself. One of the remarkable features of Elizabeth II's long reign has been her sure-footed avoidance of controversy. Her five decades on the throne have included not so much as a gaffe. Indeed, one thing which has made life so hard for republicans these last 50 years is that the Queen has kept her copybook unstained: she has been the very model of an impartial, above-the-fray head of state. Only now has she made her first error. Her 11th-hour intervention in the Burrell case - suddenly remembering a crucial conversation with the accused and thereby bringing his prosecution to a juddering halt - has, at the very least, saddled the Queen with the appearance of impropriety. Her failure to step forward earlier with such material evidence looks a lot like obstruction of justice. Her decision to step in when she did - just as Burrell was about to testify, spilling some embarrassing royal beans - looks like meddling in justice to save one's own skin. A second factor puts the last 12 days into a different category from all the ructions that have gone before. For the talk now is of criminal, rather than emotional, wrongdoing. In the royal scandals of the past, the great revelation was that the Windsors were not as squeaky clean as their "model family" image cracked them up to be. Whether it was Margaret's thwarted love for Group Captain Peter Townsend or the icy reception granted to the young Diana, the big discovery was that the royals were all family Christmases on the outside - and cold-hearted dysfunction on the inside. Even the "war of the Waleses" in the 1990s merely revealed the prince as a callous man who was unfaithful to his wife. It wasn't flattering, but Charles was accused of nothing illegal, nor anything, in truth, that would make him unfit to be king. The current scandal is different. Even putting aside the Queen's intervention in the Burrell trial, the latest "rape tape" claims pose a threat of a graver order than anything before. At the heart of the matter is the suggestion that St James's Palace hushed up a rape claim made by one employee against a trusted Charles aide. George Smith says he was raped in 1989; there was no investigation until 1996 - and even then, it was the palace, not the police, which did the investigating. Smith also testifies that he saw an incident involving a member of the royal family and a palace servant that, if made public, would cause "irreparable" damage. The guessing game about that has begun, and the suspicion is hardening that it was Smith's testimony which the royals were so anxious to keep out of court, and why they moved so swiftly to close Burrell's trial down. Whatever the truth of Smith's second claim, the suggestion that a rape charge was not pursued in order to save the hide of a Charles favourite is serious business. Forget talking to plants, dreaming of life as a tampon or scribbling nuisance letters to government ministers - this casts the heir not as a crank, but as a perverter of the course of justice. The prince's creation of an internal inquiry is a bad joke: what could be more inappropriate, when the very charge that needs probing is that the palace saw fit to keep out the police and act as judge and jury on its own? As for the other claims that have filled the popular prints, they could wreak some damage, too. No one minds that there is a gay circle below stairs in Britain's assorted palaces. But they do mind when they hear of high-value gifts, undeclared and sold on for profit. They do mind when they hear accusations of a corrupt, closed world where serious crimes can go unpunished. The closest parallel here is with Tory sleaze. In the end, the details mattered less than the vague sense that the Conservatives believed their power was so unchallengeable they regarded themselves as above the law. If Britons come to see the Windsors the same way, as ridden with royal sleaze, it will be a hard view to shift. As the Tories have learned to their cost, sleaze can blight an institution. And this, perhaps, is the biggest danger of all. The royalists' strongest argument is that the monarchy alone serves as a channel, connecting the British people to its past. That unique bond was on show at the death of the Queen Mother, they say. But what happens if that channel starts getting clogged with a whole lot of other emotions? At Sunday's remembrance ceremony, the Queen laid a wreath for our fallen service men and women. Today she will open parliament. She can perform that role partly because she has lived through some of the very moments of British history she symbolically commemorates, and also because her personal record has been so clean. But would we see a future King Charles the same way - especially if there was not just a crown but a legal question mark hovering above his head?
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3jonathanfreedland
| 2UK
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William Hague had a dose of it yesterday, just as Tony Blair had before him. Neither of them would have been surprised: after all, it has become the quasi-divine right of party leaders to be swamped in the ovations and adulations of their party conference. But one man will have no such luck. David Trimble will not be forced to adopt a pose of shy modesty, halting the rolling applause of delegates when he faces the Ulster Unionist conference tomorrow. On the contrary, he will face an audience at least half of which is plotting his downfall - scheduled for a special meeting of the party's ruling council at the end of the month. The plotters are the likes of William Thompson, one of Trimble's MPs who yesterday offered this comradely assessment of his leader's position: "He is on the skids and cannot survive." Thompson and friends want Trimble to pull out of Northern Ireland's fledgling administration, thereby collapsing the institution. As the secretary of state, Peter Mandelson, warned yesterday, that's a fast track to putting 1998's Good Friday agreement in the deep freeze if not the morgue. The plotters' motives are a mix of conviction - they reckon the agreement has brought unionists too little and republicans too much - and self-interest: after the hardliners of Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists snatched the UUP stronghold of South Antrim in a byelection last month, they fear for their own political skins. So Trimble has no shortage of reasons for walking away from the peace process: he wants to keep his job. Nor would he lack arguments. He could say the South Antrim result shows his community has lost faith in the accord. He could point to the early release of terrorist prisoners and the proposed name change of the Royal Ulster Constabulary as proof of how much unionists have been asked to give - and the lack of progress on decommissioning as proof of how little they have won in return. He could cite the loyalist civil war and yesterday's bomb alert on the Belfast-Dublin railway line, almost certainly the work of dissident republicans, as evidence that the peace process has brought plenty of process - but all too little peace. For all that, he should not walk away from the peace table. First, he should remember that, when the unionist people had a chance to vote on the Good Friday agreement, they voted yes. That moral mandate remains - and with it a moral obligation not to destroy the accord. Only a no vote in a new referendum can remove that duty. Second, he has a powerful response to those who say the agreement has brought unionists nothing. Trimble can boast - indeed should have spent two years boasting - that, thanks to the deal he negotiated, unionists have won enormous gains. For the first time, republicanism has accepted the partition of Ireland, confirmed by Sinn Fein's presence in the Belfast executive and assembly. What's more the Irish Republic has given up its historic claim to the north, rewording its constitution accordingly. No unionist leader ever won such a prize before. But if these advances seem abstract, Trimble should ask unionists to look around. Yes, there is still violence - from the fratricidal feuding on the Shankill Road to the enduring menace of the Real IRA - but the once all-pervasive threat from the provisionals has been quieted. The IRA has made as clear as it can its resignation from warfare, opening up its once top-secret arsenals to outside inspection - unimaginable a decade ago. More concrete still, unionists can see the change the peace process has made - with foreign investment flowing in and business at last allowed to flourish. If none of that prevails, Trimble should ask the nay-sayers what they would do in his place. Do they really think that ending self-rule in Northern Ireland would make decommissioning more likely - that if unionists say no, then republicans will say yes? What logic is it that makes the rejectionists believe they can refuse every compromise - keep the RUC as it is and share no power with nationalists -yet still expect the other side to keep giving? Mandelson is right: unless both sides give and take, there can be no accord. That means nationalist flexibility on policing and republican movement on decommissioning, but it also requires a reciprocal approach from unionism. For peace processes have their own dynamic: if one side refuses to budge then the other does, too. The result is not always a return to the status quo ante, but something worse - a lurch back into all-out confrontation. If they doubt it, unionists need only look at that other stalled peace process -now spilling blood in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Those seeking the removal of David Trimble, unionism's most accomplished peacemaker, should think on that. The absence of peace is not a vacuum - it is war.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Jonathan Freedland .
|
William Hague had a dose of it yesterday, just as Tony Blair had before him. Neither of them would have been surprised: after all, it has become the quasi-divine right of party leaders to be swamped in the ovations and adulations of their party conference. But one man will have no such luck. David Trimble will not be forced to adopt a pose of shy modesty, halting the rolling applause of delegates when he faces the Ulster Unionist conference tomorrow. On the contrary, he will face an audience at least half of which is plotting his downfall - scheduled for a special meeting of the party's ruling council at the end of the month. The plotters are the likes of William Thompson, one of Trimble's MPs who yesterday offered this comradely assessment of his leader's position: "He is on the skids and cannot survive." Thompson and friends want Trimble to pull out of Northern Ireland's fledgling administration, thereby collapsing the institution. As the secretary of state, Peter Mandelson, warned yesterday, that's a fast track to putting 1998's Good Friday agreement in the deep freeze if not the morgue. The plotters' motives are a mix of conviction - they reckon the agreement has brought unionists too little and republicans too much - and self-interest: after the hardliners of Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists snatched the UUP stronghold of South Antrim in a byelection last month, they fear for their own political skins. So Trimble has no shortage of reasons for walking away from the peace process: he wants to keep his job. Nor would he lack arguments. He could say the South Antrim result shows his community has lost faith in the accord. He could point to the early release of terrorist prisoners and the proposed name change of the Royal Ulster Constabulary as proof of how much unionists have been asked to give - and the lack of progress on decommissioning as proof of how little they have won in return. He could cite the loyalist civil war and yesterday's bomb alert on the Belfast-Dublin railway line, almost certainly the work of dissident republicans, as evidence that the peace process has brought plenty of process - but all too little peace. For all that, he should not walk away from the peace table. First, he should remember that, when the unionist people had a chance to vote on the Good Friday agreement, they voted yes. That moral mandate remains - and with it a moral obligation not to destroy the accord. Only a no vote in a new referendum can remove that duty. Second, he has a powerful response to those who say the agreement has brought unionists nothing. Trimble can boast - indeed should have spent two years boasting - that, thanks to the deal he negotiated, unionists have won enormous gains. For the first time, republicanism has accepted the partition of Ireland, confirmed by Sinn Fein's presence in the Belfast executive and assembly. What's more the Irish Republic has given up its historic claim to the north, rewording its constitution accordingly. No unionist leader ever won such a prize before. But if these advances seem abstract, Trimble should ask unionists to look around. Yes, there is still violence - from the fratricidal feuding on the Shankill Road to the enduring menace of the Real IRA - but the once all-pervasive threat from the provisionals has been quieted. The IRA has made as clear as it can its resignation from warfare, opening up its once top-secret arsenals to outside inspection - unimaginable a decade ago. More concrete still, unionists can see the change the peace process has made - with foreign investment flowing in and business at last allowed to flourish. If none of that prevails, Trimble should ask the nay-sayers what they would do in his place. Do they really think that ending self-rule in Northern Ireland would make decommissioning more likely - that if unionists say no, then republicans will say yes? What logic is it that makes the rejectionists believe they can refuse every compromise - keep the RUC as it is and share no power with nationalists -yet still expect the other side to keep giving? Mandelson is right: unless both sides give and take, there can be no accord. That means nationalist flexibility on policing and republican movement on decommissioning, but it also requires a reciprocal approach from unionism. For peace processes have their own dynamic: if one side refuses to budge then the other does, too. The result is not always a return to the status quo ante, but something worse - a lurch back into all-out confrontation. If they doubt it, unionists need only look at that other stalled peace process -now spilling blood in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Those seeking the removal of David Trimble, unionism's most accomplished peacemaker, should think on that. The absence of peace is not a vacuum - it is war.
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3jonathanfreedland
| 2UK
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London was once again a city of migrants yesterday. For the second time in two weeks, the capital's streets were filled not with the usual cars and buses but thick, snaking columns of people on the move.These refugees from the city did not march with wagons piled high or bundles on their back, but with suitcases on wheels and mobile phones in their hands - just as they had a fortnight ago. Told that the London Underground had been closed, they were setting off on the long march back home."Oh no, not again," was the first thought to pass through Isabelle Hans's mind. A charity worker, she found herself barred from her office just around the corner from Warren Street tube, the building hidden behind the blue and white plastic ribbons of a police cordon - just as it had been on July 7.Initial word suggested a macabre rerun of that fateful day: four explosions, three trains and a bus, one blast for each point of the compass around the centre of London.The pattern looked identical, so Londoners repeated their own behaviour, as if weary veterans of this new form of urban warfare.They texted their friends and family; they picked up snippets of news from portable radios or the internet; they cut short their working day and left offices in mid-afternoon for a journey on foot which they knew could take several hours.Even if the ritual was a repeat, the mood seemed different. Much was made of the stoicism of Londoners on July 7, an unruffled calm exhibited even by those who narrowly escaped the attacks. Yesterday, by all accounts, was not like that.Witnesses at the Oval station and elsewhere said that once they heard the sound of an explosion, or breathed in the acrid smell of smoke, passengers fell rapidly into a collective panic.There were reports of desperate stampedes as people rushed to get off trains and out of stations.One man at Warren Street station showed the television cameras a pile of sandals and flip-flops he had collected - abandoned by their owners as they "ran for their lives".Caitlin Jackson, 22, was at Leicester Square station as it was being evacuated."I never saw people move as fast as that in my life. Everybody was quiet, it was all silent. But they had that panicked look on their faces."Perhaps on July 7 the sheer surprise of the attacks numbed Londoners' reactions. The memory of July 7, the fear that they were about to experience an equally lethal rerun, seems to have had the opposite effect yesterday.The atmosphere lifted a bit once word spread that there were no fatalities. There was little of that July 7 tremble in the voice yesterday."It's more fascination than panic," said David Sanderson, a business analyst at the Abbey bank, who had headed out in the lunch hour only to be shut out of his place of work. He joined the crowd behind police lines at Warren Street, waiting and watching.He was on the normally thronging thoroughfare of Tottenham Court Road, now quiet, filled with pedestrians and the occasional fire engine or police car. In common with several roads in the capital, what is usually a traffic-filled artery had become little more than a wide pedestrian path.But once the panic subsided, it was not the stubborn resilience of London cliche that was revealed. Instead there was frustration, irritation and a glimpse of the one thing terrorists crave most: fear and a glum recognition that maybe life cannot go on as normal.Dean Seddon, 23, had made the salesman's journey to London from St Helens - against his wife's wishes. "She was going mad with me for coming," he said. At Charing Cross station he had been faced with a "wave of people, saying 'Run! Run!'" And now he thought his wife was right. Pulling his trolley-suitcase, hoping he could somehow get back to Merseyside, he had resolved not to come back to the capital "for a while" at least.Heidi Ashton, 20, had her three-year-old son asleep in a pushchair and had made up her mind too. No more buses or tubes for her, and certainly not for her child. Ms Jackson had just got off the phone after speaking to her parents, back in her native Canada. They had told her that enough was enough; it was time to come home."Personally, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety; I'm pissed off," said Martina Leeven, 35, an officer with the Changing Faces charity. That morning, she had asked herself whether it was really safe to travel on the Underground. She had decided not. Pointing at her orange trainers, she told how she had, for the first time, done the hour's walk from Bethnal Green instead. "I'm wondering, is this my life now?"She felt angry, not so much at the politicians or even the terrorists, but at "the state of the world".Her colleague, Michelle Bativala, agreed. The revelation that one of the July 7 bombers had been a primary school teacher had shaken her badly. "Before you were looking for someone fanatical," she said. "Now it could be anyone."Ms Leeven said she had not seen anyone rushed or panicked, but rather "walking around with a question mark on their faces." It seemed to describe London itself: not quaking - yet - nor deluged with fresh grief. But etched with a giant question mark, wondering what tomorrow might bring.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Jonathan Freedland .
|
London was once again a city of migrants yesterday. For the second time in two weeks, the capital's streets were filled not with the usual cars and buses but thick, snaking columns of people on the move.These refugees from the city did not march with wagons piled high or bundles on their back, but with suitcases on wheels and mobile phones in their hands - just as they had a fortnight ago. Told that the London Underground had been closed, they were setting off on the long march back home."Oh no, not again," was the first thought to pass through Isabelle Hans's mind. A charity worker, she found herself barred from her office just around the corner from Warren Street tube, the building hidden behind the blue and white plastic ribbons of a police cordon - just as it had been on July 7.Initial word suggested a macabre rerun of that fateful day: four explosions, three trains and a bus, one blast for each point of the compass around the centre of London.The pattern looked identical, so Londoners repeated their own behaviour, as if weary veterans of this new form of urban warfare.They texted their friends and family; they picked up snippets of news from portable radios or the internet; they cut short their working day and left offices in mid-afternoon for a journey on foot which they knew could take several hours.Even if the ritual was a repeat, the mood seemed different. Much was made of the stoicism of Londoners on July 7, an unruffled calm exhibited even by those who narrowly escaped the attacks. Yesterday, by all accounts, was not like that.Witnesses at the Oval station and elsewhere said that once they heard the sound of an explosion, or breathed in the acrid smell of smoke, passengers fell rapidly into a collective panic.There were reports of desperate stampedes as people rushed to get off trains and out of stations.One man at Warren Street station showed the television cameras a pile of sandals and flip-flops he had collected - abandoned by their owners as they "ran for their lives".Caitlin Jackson, 22, was at Leicester Square station as it was being evacuated."I never saw people move as fast as that in my life. Everybody was quiet, it was all silent. But they had that panicked look on their faces."Perhaps on July 7 the sheer surprise of the attacks numbed Londoners' reactions. The memory of July 7, the fear that they were about to experience an equally lethal rerun, seems to have had the opposite effect yesterday.The atmosphere lifted a bit once word spread that there were no fatalities. There was little of that July 7 tremble in the voice yesterday."It's more fascination than panic," said David Sanderson, a business analyst at the Abbey bank, who had headed out in the lunch hour only to be shut out of his place of work. He joined the crowd behind police lines at Warren Street, waiting and watching.He was on the normally thronging thoroughfare of Tottenham Court Road, now quiet, filled with pedestrians and the occasional fire engine or police car. In common with several roads in the capital, what is usually a traffic-filled artery had become little more than a wide pedestrian path.But once the panic subsided, it was not the stubborn resilience of London cliche that was revealed. Instead there was frustration, irritation and a glimpse of the one thing terrorists crave most: fear and a glum recognition that maybe life cannot go on as normal.Dean Seddon, 23, had made the salesman's journey to London from St Helens - against his wife's wishes. "She was going mad with me for coming," he said. At Charing Cross station he had been faced with a "wave of people, saying 'Run! Run!'" And now he thought his wife was right. Pulling his trolley-suitcase, hoping he could somehow get back to Merseyside, he had resolved not to come back to the capital "for a while" at least.Heidi Ashton, 20, had her three-year-old son asleep in a pushchair and had made up her mind too. No more buses or tubes for her, and certainly not for her child. Ms Jackson had just got off the phone after speaking to her parents, back in her native Canada. They had told her that enough was enough; it was time to come home."Personally, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety; I'm pissed off," said Martina Leeven, 35, an officer with the Changing Faces charity. That morning, she had asked herself whether it was really safe to travel on the Underground. She had decided not. Pointing at her orange trainers, she told how she had, for the first time, done the hour's walk from Bethnal Green instead. "I'm wondering, is this my life now?"She felt angry, not so much at the politicians or even the terrorists, but at "the state of the world".Her colleague, Michelle Bativala, agreed. The revelation that one of the July 7 bombers had been a primary school teacher had shaken her badly. "Before you were looking for someone fanatical," she said. "Now it could be anyone."Ms Leeven said she had not seen anyone rushed or panicked, but rather "walking around with a question mark on their faces." It seemed to describe London itself: not quaking - yet - nor deluged with fresh grief. But etched with a giant question mark, wondering what tomorrow might bring.
|
3jonathanfreedland
| 2UK
|
Sometimes an apology is easier to give than to receive. We all know it from our own lives. The one who says sorry can sit back, happy that the moral high ground is theirs, that they have done their bit. But the person who has been handed the apology, what can they do? They may not be ready to accept it; they may still feel too bitter to forgive. Yet if they reject it, they will be damned as obstinate and mean-spirited. As it is around the kitchen table, writ small, so it is in Northern Ireland this week, writ large and tragic. On Tuesday the IRA offered its "sincere apologies and condolences" to the families of those "non-combatants" it killed or injured during the 30 years of the Troubles. In a statement cast more in the language of psychotherapy than armed struggle, the IRA declared an end to "denying collective failures and mistakes or closing minds and hearts to the plight of those who have been hurt". In nine short paragraphs, the IRA used the word hurt three times, pain and grief twice each. And, in a break from past form, it blamed the British government not once. Still, like so many apologies, this one will not be enough to heal the divided Northern Irish family. You could tell that straightaway. Some unionists followed the lead of Tom Donnelly, whose sister was killed on Bloody Friday - the 1972 IRA atrocity the imminent anniversary of which prompted the latest statement. He confessed himself overwhelmed by the apology, which he said gave him great hope. But others, perhaps most, were cynical. They dismiss the IRA's words as yet another ploy by the republican movement to further its own political ends. Specifically, they note a looming deadline: next Wednesday the British government has to declare whether or not the IRA is sticking to its ceasefire. If the answer is no, then Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble - who set the deadline - will demand Sinn Fein be ejected from Northern Ireland's self-ruling executive. To sceptical unionist eyes this week's apology was "pure PR", an IRA attempt to get into Tony Blair's good books before judgment day. Which says something about the mood on the unionist street. Support for the Good Friday agreement remains strong among the business community and the well-heeled. But among the rank and file, says one senior UUP official, deep disenchantment has set in. Plenty of unionists regarded the 1998 deal as a "moral outrage" from the beginning - they were only prepared to hold their tongue in the hope that republicans were serious about "getting out of the violence business". But the past 12 months have eroded what little faith there was in republicanism's peaceful intentions, say unionists. Last August's arrest of three republican operatives in Colombia, later charged with collaboration with the FARC narco-terrorist movement, blew the first major hole in unionist confidence. The March break-in at the Castlereagh security building - when ultra-sensitive security files were stolen - and ongoing street violence in Belfast have done the rest of the damage. Now, say unionists, disillusion is so deep that if elections for the Northern Ireland assembly - due next May - were held tomorrow, Ian Paisley's anti-agreement Democratic Unionists would sweep Trimble's party to oblivion. Blair, they say, has to reassure unionists fast. One move they would like to see next week, and which they insist is possible, is an American return to the peace process, in the form of a US team flown in to judge ceasefire compliance. Any envoy appointed by George "war on terror" Bush would be trusted by unionists and, they say, would buy Trimble valuable time. That's not how republicans see it. They dismiss the US notion as fanciful for the same, strict reason they apply to all new initiatives: such a mechanism is not mentioned in the Good Friday agreement, which republicans refer to with jesuitical rigour. The same goes for current talk of a possible plea by Blair next week for a "widening" of the IRA ceasefire: if it's not in the agreement, it's not going to happen. Besides, they believe that Tony Blair will not hand down the damning verdict on the IRA that Trimble is looking for: it won't be a clean bill of health from the PM, but enough to keep Sinn Fein in government. Was the apology designed to nudge that along? Few would doubt it. The timing, at least, smacks of the choreographed sequence between the IRA, London and Dublin that has become so familiar. But don't miss the big picture, say republicans. This apology was "a big deal" - a hard move to make for a self-styled national liberation movement, which believes its cause was always just. It was not that long ago that Sinn Fein leaders could barely express regret about bombings and killings. Now the IRA itself, in its own words, apologises for the grief, pain and hurt it has inflicted. So which side is right: the unionists who dismiss this week's statement as a self-serving trick or republicans who want respect for having acted honourably? Maybe a useful way to answer the question is with a thought experiment. The year is 2031, and it is early September. Suddenly the TV news hums with word of a statement from the ruling council of al-Qaida. It speaks of regret for the suffering it inflicted 30 years earlier, on September 11. Would those words heal the families of those lost in New York and Washington? Probably not. But would it say something about al-Qaida's intent to kill again, especially if that organisation had been on a ceasefire for the previous six to eight years? Wouldn't the whole world feel relieved if al-Qaida ever said such a thing? So maybe it would have been better if the IRA apology had extended to everyone, including the "combatants" of the RUC and army, still regarded as heroes by unionists. And maybe the IRA move was prompted by opportunism - but what Machiavellian purpose were republicans trying to pursue, exactly? Only to stay in government, as is their right under the agreement. Like it or not, all these alleged "ploys", whether the decommissioning of arms or this week's apology, have been to one end: to keep the peace process afloat, now that republicans have decided that the process is in its own strategic interest. Republicanism is on a journey, slow and incomplete, away from its paramilitary past to a political future. It is not neat or perfect, but it looks more real with each passing month. Not to see it requires a closed heart, to be sure, but also a pair of closed eyes. In peace processes, as in life, sometimes you have to know how to say yes.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Jonathan Freedland .
|
Sometimes an apology is easier to give than to receive. We all know it from our own lives. The one who says sorry can sit back, happy that the moral high ground is theirs, that they have done their bit. But the person who has been handed the apology, what can they do? They may not be ready to accept it; they may still feel too bitter to forgive. Yet if they reject it, they will be damned as obstinate and mean-spirited. As it is around the kitchen table, writ small, so it is in Northern Ireland this week, writ large and tragic. On Tuesday the IRA offered its "sincere apologies and condolences" to the families of those "non-combatants" it killed or injured during the 30 years of the Troubles. In a statement cast more in the language of psychotherapy than armed struggle, the IRA declared an end to "denying collective failures and mistakes or closing minds and hearts to the plight of those who have been hurt". In nine short paragraphs, the IRA used the word hurt three times, pain and grief twice each. And, in a break from past form, it blamed the British government not once. Still, like so many apologies, this one will not be enough to heal the divided Northern Irish family. You could tell that straightaway. Some unionists followed the lead of Tom Donnelly, whose sister was killed on Bloody Friday - the 1972 IRA atrocity the imminent anniversary of which prompted the latest statement. He confessed himself overwhelmed by the apology, which he said gave him great hope. But others, perhaps most, were cynical. They dismiss the IRA's words as yet another ploy by the republican movement to further its own political ends. Specifically, they note a looming deadline: next Wednesday the British government has to declare whether or not the IRA is sticking to its ceasefire. If the answer is no, then Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble - who set the deadline - will demand Sinn Fein be ejected from Northern Ireland's self-ruling executive. To sceptical unionist eyes this week's apology was "pure PR", an IRA attempt to get into Tony Blair's good books before judgment day. Which says something about the mood on the unionist street. Support for the Good Friday agreement remains strong among the business community and the well-heeled. But among the rank and file, says one senior UUP official, deep disenchantment has set in. Plenty of unionists regarded the 1998 deal as a "moral outrage" from the beginning - they were only prepared to hold their tongue in the hope that republicans were serious about "getting out of the violence business". But the past 12 months have eroded what little faith there was in republicanism's peaceful intentions, say unionists. Last August's arrest of three republican operatives in Colombia, later charged with collaboration with the FARC narco-terrorist movement, blew the first major hole in unionist confidence. The March break-in at the Castlereagh security building - when ultra-sensitive security files were stolen - and ongoing street violence in Belfast have done the rest of the damage. Now, say unionists, disillusion is so deep that if elections for the Northern Ireland assembly - due next May - were held tomorrow, Ian Paisley's anti-agreement Democratic Unionists would sweep Trimble's party to oblivion. Blair, they say, has to reassure unionists fast. One move they would like to see next week, and which they insist is possible, is an American return to the peace process, in the form of a US team flown in to judge ceasefire compliance. Any envoy appointed by George "war on terror" Bush would be trusted by unionists and, they say, would buy Trimble valuable time. That's not how republicans see it. They dismiss the US notion as fanciful for the same, strict reason they apply to all new initiatives: such a mechanism is not mentioned in the Good Friday agreement, which republicans refer to with jesuitical rigour. The same goes for current talk of a possible plea by Blair next week for a "widening" of the IRA ceasefire: if it's not in the agreement, it's not going to happen. Besides, they believe that Tony Blair will not hand down the damning verdict on the IRA that Trimble is looking for: it won't be a clean bill of health from the PM, but enough to keep Sinn Fein in government. Was the apology designed to nudge that along? Few would doubt it. The timing, at least, smacks of the choreographed sequence between the IRA, London and Dublin that has become so familiar. But don't miss the big picture, say republicans. This apology was "a big deal" - a hard move to make for a self-styled national liberation movement, which believes its cause was always just. It was not that long ago that Sinn Fein leaders could barely express regret about bombings and killings. Now the IRA itself, in its own words, apologises for the grief, pain and hurt it has inflicted. So which side is right: the unionists who dismiss this week's statement as a self-serving trick or republicans who want respect for having acted honourably? Maybe a useful way to answer the question is with a thought experiment. The year is 2031, and it is early September. Suddenly the TV news hums with word of a statement from the ruling council of al-Qaida. It speaks of regret for the suffering it inflicted 30 years earlier, on September 11. Would those words heal the families of those lost in New York and Washington? Probably not. But would it say something about al-Qaida's intent to kill again, especially if that organisation had been on a ceasefire for the previous six to eight years? Wouldn't the whole world feel relieved if al-Qaida ever said such a thing? So maybe it would have been better if the IRA apology had extended to everyone, including the "combatants" of the RUC and army, still regarded as heroes by unionists. And maybe the IRA move was prompted by opportunism - but what Machiavellian purpose were republicans trying to pursue, exactly? Only to stay in government, as is their right under the agreement. Like it or not, all these alleged "ploys", whether the decommissioning of arms or this week's apology, have been to one end: to keep the peace process afloat, now that republicans have decided that the process is in its own strategic interest. Republicanism is on a journey, slow and incomplete, away from its paramilitary past to a political future. It is not neat or perfect, but it looks more real with each passing month. Not to see it requires a closed heart, to be sure, but also a pair of closed eyes. In peace processes, as in life, sometimes you have to know how to say yes.
|
3jonathanfreedland
| 2UK
|
Tears, especially male ones, are becoming a frequent sight on British television. In the past week alone, several of the ambitious, thrusting men competing to be Alan Sugar's apprentice on BBC2 cracked under the stress and started welling up. Meanwhile, minor celebrities, worn down by the strain of singing pop duets for Just the Two of Us, similarly shooed away the camera, lest it discover them weeping.Yet the men on another BBC programme remained steadfastly free of tears. In Facing the Truth, victims and perpetrators of violence in Northern Ireland met each other under the gentle gaze of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. They told and heard stories to break the heart, and sometimes their eyes grew moist, but these men did not cry.These remarkable films, shown over three successive nights, prompted a whole range of thoughts. First, they were a reminder of the sheer strangeness of the Troubles. Citizens of this country recalled their campaigns to kill each other; how they saw themselves and their targets as "soldiers", how they studied files, drawn up by self-styled "intelligence officers", telling them how to track down and murder their quarry. How they did this while pretending to live ordinary lives. Michael Stone, notorious for his 1988 killing spree at Milltown cemetery, used to rub dirt and sand into his clothes so that his wife would think he was a builder. One of his targets drove a Mother's Pride delivery van. Few described it this way at the time, but these programmes left little doubt: on the streets of the United Kingdom, there was a civil war.Facing the Truth prompted a question: why has Northern Ireland not had its own truth and reconciliation commission, analogous to the one Archbishop Tutu chaired in South Africa? Why had it been left to television, to the BBC, to organise one? Watching, it became clear the province needs such a process: there is no shortage of pain or people yearning to bear witness.But the programmes asked a larger question. For what was noticeable in several of the filmed encounters was a subtle, unstated pressure - not on the culprits to show contrition, but on the victims. Those who had lost limbs or loved ones were under pressure - to forgive.Carefully and sensitively, the grieving relatives were led to a climax: how would they close the meeting? Would they be able to reach out and shake the hand of those who had wrought such havoc? There was something uncomfortable about this, for it is part of a larger pressure, not confined to this TV series, which demands that those who have suffered most must also be the most generous.Which is why I feel for the Rev Julie Nicholson, the vicar who has quit her Bristol pulpit because she can no longer preach forgiveness - not after her daughter, Jenny, was killed in the July 7 bombings last year. As a Christian, Nicholson clearly felt under enormous pressure to say she could forgive Mohammed Sidique Khan, who had blown up himself and six others at Edgware Road station. But she could not do it.And now I wonder why we ask such a thing of those who have been bereaved so cruelly. Of course, there are people who are able, somehow, to meet this challenge. The mother of Anthony Walker, the Liverpool teenager murdered by racist thugs wielding an ice axe, somehow emerged from the trial of her son's killers to declare: "I have got to forgive them. I still forgive them." Last year the mother of Abigail Witchells, stabbed in front of her toddler child, spoke of her "enormous sadness" on hearing of the suicide of her daughter's presumed attacker. She said his death was the "real tragedy of the story" - and that she had forgiven him.I confess to being both in awe of and baffled by the compassion of such people. Of course, none of us can know how we would respond to so desperate a plight, but I struggle to understand how you could forgive the killer, or attempted killer, of your own child. I do not know how it would be possible to hold anything in your heart but rage and pain.There are philosophical objections one could muster too. Surely the only person who can forgive a crime is its direct victim: Anthony Walker has the authority to forgive his killers - but he is not here. For believers, I have sympathy with those who say that if forgiveness is in the hands of anybody it is, like judgment, in the hands of God alone.But these are not the prevailing or even popular assumptions. Instead, we exalt those who can forgive and regard those who cannot as guilty of a kind of moral weakness. We demand that those who have been brought low reach highest.There might be a way through this - and it would begin with an attempt to define our terms. Forgiveness has entered casual parlance as a psychological term, shorthand for "moving on", for no longer holding a grudge, even for feelings of equanimity or empathy towards the person who hurt you."If it is that, it can't be done," says Giles Fraser, vicar of Putney and author of Christianity and Violence. He dismisses the idea of "loving" the man who has harmed you or your family as "morally perverse, even if I understood what it meant. How could feelings of anger and loss coexist with that love?" That definition of forgiveness, the one we seem to demand from those who have suffered most, is little more than "cheap Christian rhetoric".No, forgiveness should be a much more realistic, pragmatic business. In Fraser's eyes, to forgive someone is merely to vow that you will not respond to their crime in kind. If they have killed, you will not kill back: you will choose instead to end the cycle of violence. On this definition, forgiveness is the literal opposite of revenge.This is a move that is much easier to imagine. Sylvia Hackett, whose husband Dermot was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries, has clearly moved beyond wanting to do to Michael Stone what he and his comrades did to her. But on Monday night's programme she seemed to feel that was not enough; she forced herself to walk over to Stone and shake his hand. When he placed a second hand on hers, she recoiled and fled from the room. It was too much. She may not have wanted to kill Stone, but nor did she want to be his friend. Yet our present day notions of forgiveness confuse the two.Not that the eschewing of revenge should be considered something small: it is not forgiveness lite. In most circumstances, we can give up our right to seek direct vengeance in favour of justice: we may not kill the killers, but at least we will see them behind bars. But in some places - Northern Ireland and South Africa among them - there is not even that comfort. Justice has been sacrificed in the pursuit of peace. That is why Michael Stone, originally sentenced to 684 years in jail, is now a free man, released under the Good Friday agreement.So we should alter what we mean by forgiveness. It is not a syrupy inscription in a greetings card; it is a painful, practical step taken by those who want to end the killing. It is not some impossible ideal: it is, properly defined, achievable - and no less admirable for that.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Jonathan Freedland .
|
Tears, especially male ones, are becoming a frequent sight on British television. In the past week alone, several of the ambitious, thrusting men competing to be Alan Sugar's apprentice on BBC2 cracked under the stress and started welling up. Meanwhile, minor celebrities, worn down by the strain of singing pop duets for Just the Two of Us, similarly shooed away the camera, lest it discover them weeping.Yet the men on another BBC programme remained steadfastly free of tears. In Facing the Truth, victims and perpetrators of violence in Northern Ireland met each other under the gentle gaze of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. They told and heard stories to break the heart, and sometimes their eyes grew moist, but these men did not cry.These remarkable films, shown over three successive nights, prompted a whole range of thoughts. First, they were a reminder of the sheer strangeness of the Troubles. Citizens of this country recalled their campaigns to kill each other; how they saw themselves and their targets as "soldiers", how they studied files, drawn up by self-styled "intelligence officers", telling them how to track down and murder their quarry. How they did this while pretending to live ordinary lives. Michael Stone, notorious for his 1988 killing spree at Milltown cemetery, used to rub dirt and sand into his clothes so that his wife would think he was a builder. One of his targets drove a Mother's Pride delivery van. Few described it this way at the time, but these programmes left little doubt: on the streets of the United Kingdom, there was a civil war.Facing the Truth prompted a question: why has Northern Ireland not had its own truth and reconciliation commission, analogous to the one Archbishop Tutu chaired in South Africa? Why had it been left to television, to the BBC, to organise one? Watching, it became clear the province needs such a process: there is no shortage of pain or people yearning to bear witness.But the programmes asked a larger question. For what was noticeable in several of the filmed encounters was a subtle, unstated pressure - not on the culprits to show contrition, but on the victims. Those who had lost limbs or loved ones were under pressure - to forgive.Carefully and sensitively, the grieving relatives were led to a climax: how would they close the meeting? Would they be able to reach out and shake the hand of those who had wrought such havoc? There was something uncomfortable about this, for it is part of a larger pressure, not confined to this TV series, which demands that those who have suffered most must also be the most generous.Which is why I feel for the Rev Julie Nicholson, the vicar who has quit her Bristol pulpit because she can no longer preach forgiveness - not after her daughter, Jenny, was killed in the July 7 bombings last year. As a Christian, Nicholson clearly felt under enormous pressure to say she could forgive Mohammed Sidique Khan, who had blown up himself and six others at Edgware Road station. But she could not do it.And now I wonder why we ask such a thing of those who have been bereaved so cruelly. Of course, there are people who are able, somehow, to meet this challenge. The mother of Anthony Walker, the Liverpool teenager murdered by racist thugs wielding an ice axe, somehow emerged from the trial of her son's killers to declare: "I have got to forgive them. I still forgive them." Last year the mother of Abigail Witchells, stabbed in front of her toddler child, spoke of her "enormous sadness" on hearing of the suicide of her daughter's presumed attacker. She said his death was the "real tragedy of the story" - and that she had forgiven him.I confess to being both in awe of and baffled by the compassion of such people. Of course, none of us can know how we would respond to so desperate a plight, but I struggle to understand how you could forgive the killer, or attempted killer, of your own child. I do not know how it would be possible to hold anything in your heart but rage and pain.There are philosophical objections one could muster too. Surely the only person who can forgive a crime is its direct victim: Anthony Walker has the authority to forgive his killers - but he is not here. For believers, I have sympathy with those who say that if forgiveness is in the hands of anybody it is, like judgment, in the hands of God alone.But these are not the prevailing or even popular assumptions. Instead, we exalt those who can forgive and regard those who cannot as guilty of a kind of moral weakness. We demand that those who have been brought low reach highest.There might be a way through this - and it would begin with an attempt to define our terms. Forgiveness has entered casual parlance as a psychological term, shorthand for "moving on", for no longer holding a grudge, even for feelings of equanimity or empathy towards the person who hurt you."If it is that, it can't be done," says Giles Fraser, vicar of Putney and author of Christianity and Violence. He dismisses the idea of "loving" the man who has harmed you or your family as "morally perverse, even if I understood what it meant. How could feelings of anger and loss coexist with that love?" That definition of forgiveness, the one we seem to demand from those who have suffered most, is little more than "cheap Christian rhetoric".No, forgiveness should be a much more realistic, pragmatic business. In Fraser's eyes, to forgive someone is merely to vow that you will not respond to their crime in kind. If they have killed, you will not kill back: you will choose instead to end the cycle of violence. On this definition, forgiveness is the literal opposite of revenge.This is a move that is much easier to imagine. Sylvia Hackett, whose husband Dermot was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries, has clearly moved beyond wanting to do to Michael Stone what he and his comrades did to her. But on Monday night's programme she seemed to feel that was not enough; she forced herself to walk over to Stone and shake his hand. When he placed a second hand on hers, she recoiled and fled from the room. It was too much. She may not have wanted to kill Stone, but nor did she want to be his friend. Yet our present day notions of forgiveness confuse the two.Not that the eschewing of revenge should be considered something small: it is not forgiveness lite. In most circumstances, we can give up our right to seek direct vengeance in favour of justice: we may not kill the killers, but at least we will see them behind bars. But in some places - Northern Ireland and South Africa among them - there is not even that comfort. Justice has been sacrificed in the pursuit of peace. That is why Michael Stone, originally sentenced to 684 years in jail, is now a free man, released under the Good Friday agreement.So we should alter what we mean by forgiveness. It is not a syrupy inscription in a greetings card; it is a painful, practical step taken by those who want to end the killing. It is not some impossible ideal: it is, properly defined, achievable - and no less admirable for that.
|
3jonathanfreedland
| 2UK
|
The list of victims is long. At the head of it should be the nearly 3m animals slaughtered and burned, along with the 68,000 cows, sheep and pigs set to follow them on to the funeral pyres. Next on the list would be the clutch of farmers who, despite 125m already pledged in compensation, will be driven out of business by an epidemic that swept through their land as devastating as a tornado. After them, the hoteliers and restaurateurs who saw their livelihoods dry up as the world's travellers declared Britain a medievally benighted no-go area. Who else might we list as victims of the great foot and mouth crisis of 2001, now said to be in its endgame? We probably should add the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, which seems set for a post-election cull of its own: the death sentence may even be declared in today's Labour manifesto. Along with Maff, place its hapless minister, Nick Brown. He, too, looks set for the chopping block - though that will not be announced by Tony Blair in Birmingham today. The victims are many and we will hear their stories for years to come. More reluctant to come forward may be those who want to bury this episode along with the animal carcasses. They are the culprits. For any examination of this extraordinary saga - which paralysed a nation and suspended democracy for the only time in our peacetime history - reveals a complete systemic failure. Not one group or institution involved emerges with any credit; they all failed in their most basic duty. Long after the last pyre has stopped burning, foot and mouth will stand as an indictment of British public life - and of the very way we govern ourselves. Since no institution is immune, let's start with my own. The media failed from the outset, by never explaining the most basic facts of this disease. When I wrote in February that foot and mouth was not a killer, but amounted to flu for animals and, at worst, a cold-sore for human beings, I was inundated with shocked responses from readers who had watched TV, read the papers and listened to the radio - but had never once been told the symptoms of a condition instantly branded a national emergency. For weeks the media aired terrifying pictures and wore long faces but refused to perform its fundamental task: stating the facts. Next we should target government, at every level. Maff did almost everything wrong. Civil servants succumbed to that perennial bureaucratic habit: instead of thinking, they reached for the files. They saw that the past response to foot and mouth had always been to shut down the countryside and impose a blanket policy of slaughter. That was how it had been in 1967, so that's how it would be in 2001. Even the "no entry" signs Maff produced were printed in retro, postwar type: emblems of a dumb obedience to the past script and a failure to think anew. Ministers were no better. Nick Brown did not demand a strategic overview from his department; he simply went for crisis control. He obeyed his civil servants, followed precedent and ordered mass slaughter. But even that he did not do properly, failing to move quickly enough, allowing crucial time to elapse between spotting the disease and killing infected animals. If he had just talked to a few agricultural historians, he would have heard how a 1920s outbreak spread chiefly because of the delay from report to slaughter. But he never learned that lesson. Still, the buck hardly stops with him. The biggest cock-ups occurred far above his pay grade. The army was called in too late; there was complete indecision on the countryside - first visitors were told to keep out, then urged to come back in - and constant vacillation on vaccination, with talks, consultations and delays but no resolution. All these failures belong not to Nick Brown, but Tony Blair. As a prime minister who declared himself in personal charge of this crisis, it fell to him to enlist the MoD or to make a firm decision on vaccination. That he did neither dents his constant boasts of competence: on foot and mouth he dithered as badly as John Major ever did. These are, however, minor charges on the PM's rap sheet. His greatest failure was one of leadership. He should have been able to do what Maff and Brown did not - to see the big picture. He should have asked why the policy of slaughter existed in the first place, rather than blindly following it. He would have been told the aim was to eradicate foot and mouth as quickly as possible so that Britain could soon regain its disease-free status. If he'd wondered why that mattered, he would have been told it was essential for Britain's meat export industry. "How much is that worth?" he might have asked, only to be told, on Maff's own figures, that the total amounted to 592m. He could then have compared that sum to the 64bn generated by British tourism, and worked out whether it was worth jeopardising that - by showing the world TV pictures of Britain in flames - for the sake of selling lamb, pork and beef abroad. In other words, a genuine act of leadership would have been to bin Maff's outdated files and think about the British economy that exists today. He could have stopped the slaughter, opting for limited vaccination instead - saving billions of pounds and millions of animals. He did not, because that would have risked antagonising the farming lobby - next in line in the great foot and mouth rollcall of shame. Their weepy protests for their slaughtered herds, even as they refused a vaccination policy that might have saved animal lives, exposed the farming lobby for what it is: defenders of an economic interest. It was their short-sighted, profit-seeking pursuit of the export trade that drove the insane slaughter policy. As the veterinary historian Abigail Woods puts it: "The economic interest of a small section of the farming community seems to have governed the country." The prosecution is not finished yet. The animal welfare movement was missing in action throughout the whole ordeal. Their only presence came in the form of RSPCA inspectors, cheerfully on hand during the mass culls. They did not raise their voices in protest; they did not attempt the blockades they once mounted to stop live exports of veal calves or the demos they stage outside laboratories involved in animal experimentation. They stayed silent, perhaps believing that such creatures were doomed through intensive farming anyway, and that a funeral pyre was no worse than an abattoir. Maybe, says Woods, "they would rather save a single fox than a couple of million cattle". Their record is appalling, along with everyone else connected with this sorry story. We need a serious, probing public inquiry to lay bare what really happened. For a kind of collective madness descended on these islands - and we were all infected by it.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Jonathan Freedland .
|
The list of victims is long. At the head of it should be the nearly 3m animals slaughtered and burned, along with the 68,000 cows, sheep and pigs set to follow them on to the funeral pyres. Next on the list would be the clutch of farmers who, despite 125m already pledged in compensation, will be driven out of business by an epidemic that swept through their land as devastating as a tornado. After them, the hoteliers and restaurateurs who saw their livelihoods dry up as the world's travellers declared Britain a medievally benighted no-go area. Who else might we list as victims of the great foot and mouth crisis of 2001, now said to be in its endgame? We probably should add the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, which seems set for a post-election cull of its own: the death sentence may even be declared in today's Labour manifesto. Along with Maff, place its hapless minister, Nick Brown. He, too, looks set for the chopping block - though that will not be announced by Tony Blair in Birmingham today. The victims are many and we will hear their stories for years to come. More reluctant to come forward may be those who want to bury this episode along with the animal carcasses. They are the culprits. For any examination of this extraordinary saga - which paralysed a nation and suspended democracy for the only time in our peacetime history - reveals a complete systemic failure. Not one group or institution involved emerges with any credit; they all failed in their most basic duty. Long after the last pyre has stopped burning, foot and mouth will stand as an indictment of British public life - and of the very way we govern ourselves. Since no institution is immune, let's start with my own. The media failed from the outset, by never explaining the most basic facts of this disease. When I wrote in February that foot and mouth was not a killer, but amounted to flu for animals and, at worst, a cold-sore for human beings, I was inundated with shocked responses from readers who had watched TV, read the papers and listened to the radio - but had never once been told the symptoms of a condition instantly branded a national emergency. For weeks the media aired terrifying pictures and wore long faces but refused to perform its fundamental task: stating the facts. Next we should target government, at every level. Maff did almost everything wrong. Civil servants succumbed to that perennial bureaucratic habit: instead of thinking, they reached for the files. They saw that the past response to foot and mouth had always been to shut down the countryside and impose a blanket policy of slaughter. That was how it had been in 1967, so that's how it would be in 2001. Even the "no entry" signs Maff produced were printed in retro, postwar type: emblems of a dumb obedience to the past script and a failure to think anew. Ministers were no better. Nick Brown did not demand a strategic overview from his department; he simply went for crisis control. He obeyed his civil servants, followed precedent and ordered mass slaughter. But even that he did not do properly, failing to move quickly enough, allowing crucial time to elapse between spotting the disease and killing infected animals. If he had just talked to a few agricultural historians, he would have heard how a 1920s outbreak spread chiefly because of the delay from report to slaughter. But he never learned that lesson. Still, the buck hardly stops with him. The biggest cock-ups occurred far above his pay grade. The army was called in too late; there was complete indecision on the countryside - first visitors were told to keep out, then urged to come back in - and constant vacillation on vaccination, with talks, consultations and delays but no resolution. All these failures belong not to Nick Brown, but Tony Blair. As a prime minister who declared himself in personal charge of this crisis, it fell to him to enlist the MoD or to make a firm decision on vaccination. That he did neither dents his constant boasts of competence: on foot and mouth he dithered as badly as John Major ever did. These are, however, minor charges on the PM's rap sheet. His greatest failure was one of leadership. He should have been able to do what Maff and Brown did not - to see the big picture. He should have asked why the policy of slaughter existed in the first place, rather than blindly following it. He would have been told the aim was to eradicate foot and mouth as quickly as possible so that Britain could soon regain its disease-free status. If he'd wondered why that mattered, he would have been told it was essential for Britain's meat export industry. "How much is that worth?" he might have asked, only to be told, on Maff's own figures, that the total amounted to 592m. He could then have compared that sum to the 64bn generated by British tourism, and worked out whether it was worth jeopardising that - by showing the world TV pictures of Britain in flames - for the sake of selling lamb, pork and beef abroad. In other words, a genuine act of leadership would have been to bin Maff's outdated files and think about the British economy that exists today. He could have stopped the slaughter, opting for limited vaccination instead - saving billions of pounds and millions of animals. He did not, because that would have risked antagonising the farming lobby - next in line in the great foot and mouth rollcall of shame. Their weepy protests for their slaughtered herds, even as they refused a vaccination policy that might have saved animal lives, exposed the farming lobby for what it is: defenders of an economic interest. It was their short-sighted, profit-seeking pursuit of the export trade that drove the insane slaughter policy. As the veterinary historian Abigail Woods puts it: "The economic interest of a small section of the farming community seems to have governed the country." The prosecution is not finished yet. The animal welfare movement was missing in action throughout the whole ordeal. Their only presence came in the form of RSPCA inspectors, cheerfully on hand during the mass culls. They did not raise their voices in protest; they did not attempt the blockades they once mounted to stop live exports of veal calves or the demos they stage outside laboratories involved in animal experimentation. They stayed silent, perhaps believing that such creatures were doomed through intensive farming anyway, and that a funeral pyre was no worse than an abattoir. Maybe, says Woods, "they would rather save a single fox than a couple of million cattle". Their record is appalling, along with everyone else connected with this sorry story. We need a serious, probing public inquiry to lay bare what really happened. For a kind of collective madness descended on these islands - and we were all infected by it.
|
3jonathanfreedland
| 2UK
|
The flames turning the night sky orange, the stench of burning flesh - no wonder the talk in the countryside is of apocalypse. "We are on the threshold of Armageddon," warns the National Farmers Union man in Devon, girding himself for another night of slaughter, another bonfire of the carcasses. It is, to be sure, a medieval image, those piles of animal corpses being put to the flame - the pictures in the papers looking more like tapestries than photographs. And the panic is real. Farmers, already reeling after BSE and falling food prices, fear this could be the final blow. The Samaritans are on standby. The rest of the nation stands back, heeding the warnings to keep its distance. To urban folk, this whole scene looks like one of those 1950s sci-fi tales - Quatermass or Day of the Triffids. Sealed-off farms, a deadly virus, government warnings to stay away: all that's needed now is for the army to move in. But townies have two other reactions to the foot and mouth epidemic sweeping Britain - reactions which could be as decisive for the farmers' fate as the virus itself. Neither will bring much comfort. The first is confusion. Amid all the talk of European export bans, cancelled rugby matches and delayed general elections, plenty of people are still stuck on rather more basic questions. Like: what the hell is it? And: how might it affect me? I've heard people shouting at the radio and TV, demanding answers to those questions. BSE they could understand: they knew cows went mad, visibly stumbling and slobbering in TV footage played over and over again, and that humans could contract a terrifying and lethal version of the disease. Foot and mouth sounds so much simpler than bovine spongiform encephalopathy but my guess is that most non-rural folk remain baffled as to what it is. From the tone of the media coverage, and the end-of-the-world warnings from farmers, most Britons probably reckon F&M is a killer disease which, once it touches a herd, rapidly wipes out the lot. As for humans, it's surely a death sentence to eat meat infected with the bug: your foot probably falls off and your mouth seizes up forever. Why else would government rules insist that infected animals be slaughtered instantly and the disease be eradicated so absolutely? It must be a merciless plague. Not quite. If human beings eat meat infected with F&M, they do not die; at most they might get the odd cold sore. As for animals, foot and mouth rarely kills them either. Some of the herd's sick or young are vulnerable, but for most a bout of F&M means little more than blisters around the mouth, on the teats and between the hooves, an occasional spot of lameness and a loss of appetite. The animal soon recovers and the whole thing lasts no more than two to three weeks. So why all the fuss? The clue is in that last symptom: loss of appetite. For a sheep with F&M stops gaining weight, an infected cow produces less milk. The animal does not suffer or die - it just becomes less productive, yielding a less juicy lamb chop or fewer pints of milk. In an industry that has become ultra-intensive - squeezing every last drop of value from a sheep, pig or cow - even this slight loss of productivity can make the difference between profit and loss. Put simply, foot and mouth is an economic disease. A less-intensive brand of farming might take the old 19th-century attitude to F &M: let it run. Back then, says agricultural historian Abigail Woods, who writes on the topic in today's Society section, "no one took any notice of it at all, no one batted an eye-lid." Today's consumers wouldn't notice the difference either. But farmers can't just let foot and mouth come in, do its worst and blow away - even if that would be the most rational response. Foreign markets won't tolerate infected meat even if we would: the farmers' export trade would collapse. The law demands an extreme response too. A long outdated insistence that British meat be absolutely disease-free has led to the slaughter-on-sight policy, even when it is the emergency measures, not the virus itself, which really threatens farmers' livelihoods. The cure is worse than the disease. Still, don't expect too much sympathy from the rest of us. For if this outbreak has triggered our incomprehension of modern farming, it has also exposed our indifference to its plight. Typical of the urban mood was Ken Livingstone's instant response, calling on the Countryside Alliance to cancel its planned march on London. With an unerring instinct for popular feeling, the mayor guessed at most Londoners' attitude to the farmers: keep out, and take your mucky boots and strange germs with you. The Alliance duly called the event off. It's not hard to explain this urban chilliness toward the countryside. BSE was a turning point, breaking forever the cosy Farmer Giles myth of yore: suddenly Britons saw farms as giant agri-businesses, animal factories with profit the only motive. Never mind that many farmers didn't realise they were turning their livestock into cannibals: the trust was broken. The countryside's war on the Labour government has not helped. Not because they don't have a good case: the depletion of rural bus services and post offices is real. What turns townies off is that country folk never marched on London about any of those concerns: it was only when Labour moved against foxhunting that the countryside got organised. If the Alliance had been formed to save village schools, rather than the right to kill foxes, perhaps they would have enjoyed wider sympathy. There's one more cause of the town's cold shoulder to the country and it's an irony. For it was Conservative governments - the farmers' party - who per suaded Britons that if an industry is uneconomic, then it must go, even if that destroys communities and their way of life. Pit villages made that plea in the 1980s but no one listened - least of all the farmers who kept voting Tory. Yet now they insist that Britain must subsidise their industry, even if we could import their product more cheaply from abroad. If that logic couldn't save the miners, why should it save them? The farmers will argue that food is a special case. Britons, they reckon, remember the war - where we had to feed ourselves to stay alive. But few hold to that logic anymore: that's why Thatcherism didn't mind savaging our steel industry, even though we might need that one day to arm ourselves. No, it's a globalised world now; Britons won't mind filling their shopping trolleys from abroad. They do so already. That sounds harsh and it is. It also lets us off the hook too easily. For if farmers have been driven to ever more intensive methods, it's partly to satisfy our demand for cheap food. As the novelist Jonathan Coe, whose What a Carve Up! skewered the food industry in the mid-90s, told me yesterday, "absolute consumer choice" comes at a terrible price - and it is the farmers now facing ruin who seem set to pay it. So Frederick Forsyth can hint darkly in the Daily Mail that the foot and mouth virus was introduced deliberately, as a Labour plot against the countryside. But most Britons know better. They know that if farmers are reaping a bitter harvest now, they - and we - sowed much of it ourselves.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Jonathan Freedland .
|
The flames turning the night sky orange, the stench of burning flesh - no wonder the talk in the countryside is of apocalypse. "We are on the threshold of Armageddon," warns the National Farmers Union man in Devon, girding himself for another night of slaughter, another bonfire of the carcasses. It is, to be sure, a medieval image, those piles of animal corpses being put to the flame - the pictures in the papers looking more like tapestries than photographs. And the panic is real. Farmers, already reeling after BSE and falling food prices, fear this could be the final blow. The Samaritans are on standby. The rest of the nation stands back, heeding the warnings to keep its distance. To urban folk, this whole scene looks like one of those 1950s sci-fi tales - Quatermass or Day of the Triffids. Sealed-off farms, a deadly virus, government warnings to stay away: all that's needed now is for the army to move in. But townies have two other reactions to the foot and mouth epidemic sweeping Britain - reactions which could be as decisive for the farmers' fate as the virus itself. Neither will bring much comfort. The first is confusion. Amid all the talk of European export bans, cancelled rugby matches and delayed general elections, plenty of people are still stuck on rather more basic questions. Like: what the hell is it? And: how might it affect me? I've heard people shouting at the radio and TV, demanding answers to those questions. BSE they could understand: they knew cows went mad, visibly stumbling and slobbering in TV footage played over and over again, and that humans could contract a terrifying and lethal version of the disease. Foot and mouth sounds so much simpler than bovine spongiform encephalopathy but my guess is that most non-rural folk remain baffled as to what it is. From the tone of the media coverage, and the end-of-the-world warnings from farmers, most Britons probably reckon F&M is a killer disease which, once it touches a herd, rapidly wipes out the lot. As for humans, it's surely a death sentence to eat meat infected with the bug: your foot probably falls off and your mouth seizes up forever. Why else would government rules insist that infected animals be slaughtered instantly and the disease be eradicated so absolutely? It must be a merciless plague. Not quite. If human beings eat meat infected with F&M, they do not die; at most they might get the odd cold sore. As for animals, foot and mouth rarely kills them either. Some of the herd's sick or young are vulnerable, but for most a bout of F&M means little more than blisters around the mouth, on the teats and between the hooves, an occasional spot of lameness and a loss of appetite. The animal soon recovers and the whole thing lasts no more than two to three weeks. So why all the fuss? The clue is in that last symptom: loss of appetite. For a sheep with F&M stops gaining weight, an infected cow produces less milk. The animal does not suffer or die - it just becomes less productive, yielding a less juicy lamb chop or fewer pints of milk. In an industry that has become ultra-intensive - squeezing every last drop of value from a sheep, pig or cow - even this slight loss of productivity can make the difference between profit and loss. Put simply, foot and mouth is an economic disease. A less-intensive brand of farming might take the old 19th-century attitude to F &M: let it run. Back then, says agricultural historian Abigail Woods, who writes on the topic in today's Society section, "no one took any notice of it at all, no one batted an eye-lid." Today's consumers wouldn't notice the difference either. But farmers can't just let foot and mouth come in, do its worst and blow away - even if that would be the most rational response. Foreign markets won't tolerate infected meat even if we would: the farmers' export trade would collapse. The law demands an extreme response too. A long outdated insistence that British meat be absolutely disease-free has led to the slaughter-on-sight policy, even when it is the emergency measures, not the virus itself, which really threatens farmers' livelihoods. The cure is worse than the disease. Still, don't expect too much sympathy from the rest of us. For if this outbreak has triggered our incomprehension of modern farming, it has also exposed our indifference to its plight. Typical of the urban mood was Ken Livingstone's instant response, calling on the Countryside Alliance to cancel its planned march on London. With an unerring instinct for popular feeling, the mayor guessed at most Londoners' attitude to the farmers: keep out, and take your mucky boots and strange germs with you. The Alliance duly called the event off. It's not hard to explain this urban chilliness toward the countryside. BSE was a turning point, breaking forever the cosy Farmer Giles myth of yore: suddenly Britons saw farms as giant agri-businesses, animal factories with profit the only motive. Never mind that many farmers didn't realise they were turning their livestock into cannibals: the trust was broken. The countryside's war on the Labour government has not helped. Not because they don't have a good case: the depletion of rural bus services and post offices is real. What turns townies off is that country folk never marched on London about any of those concerns: it was only when Labour moved against foxhunting that the countryside got organised. If the Alliance had been formed to save village schools, rather than the right to kill foxes, perhaps they would have enjoyed wider sympathy. There's one more cause of the town's cold shoulder to the country and it's an irony. For it was Conservative governments - the farmers' party - who per suaded Britons that if an industry is uneconomic, then it must go, even if that destroys communities and their way of life. Pit villages made that plea in the 1980s but no one listened - least of all the farmers who kept voting Tory. Yet now they insist that Britain must subsidise their industry, even if we could import their product more cheaply from abroad. If that logic couldn't save the miners, why should it save them? The farmers will argue that food is a special case. Britons, they reckon, remember the war - where we had to feed ourselves to stay alive. But few hold to that logic anymore: that's why Thatcherism didn't mind savaging our steel industry, even though we might need that one day to arm ourselves. No, it's a globalised world now; Britons won't mind filling their shopping trolleys from abroad. They do so already. That sounds harsh and it is. It also lets us off the hook too easily. For if farmers have been driven to ever more intensive methods, it's partly to satisfy our demand for cheap food. As the novelist Jonathan Coe, whose What a Carve Up! skewered the food industry in the mid-90s, told me yesterday, "absolute consumer choice" comes at a terrible price - and it is the farmers now facing ruin who seem set to pay it. So Frederick Forsyth can hint darkly in the Daily Mail that the foot and mouth virus was introduced deliberately, as a Labour plot against the countryside. But most Britons know better. They know that if farmers are reaping a bitter harvest now, they - and we - sowed much of it ourselves.
|
3jonathanfreedland
| 2UK
|
It is the question republicans have learned to fear. "All right then," says the smiling royalist, "let's say you go ahead and abolish the monarchy. What would you put in its place?" Variations of that question have proved lethal for reformers. In Britain the republican cause has been held back for years by two words: President Thatcher. Or, put another way, President Hattersley. Tune in to any of the now regular phone-ins and TV debates on the monarchy and you'll soon hear a defender of the status quo winning over his audience by conjuring up a dread prospect of the future. In Australia that trap proved fatal for the republican movement. Polls showed that more than 70% of Australians wanted to elect their own head of state. Yet the 1999 referendum proposing to remove the Queen as Oz's national figurehead failed because voters did not like the replacement on offer, a "politicians' president" chosen by the Canberra parliament. That result left British reformers with a challenge, forcing them to realise that it was not enough simply to rail against the present order: they would have to explain how any future change would work. The first move, as made clear both by David McKie and in today's editorial, is to address the crown prerogative. Many lawyers, scholars and activists now agree that "the crown" underpins and explains many if not most of the excesses and distortions of our current governmental set-up. But what would reform of such a nebulous, shadowy concept entail? What would abolition of the crown mean? At first glance, such a drastic move might seem just too vast - like whipping out the ground from underneath our feet. Everything would have to change - from our land law, which technically makes every freeholder the mere owner of an interest in the land of the monarch, to our courts, which currently present every case as The Crown or Regina vs. Joe Bloggs. In fact, it would not be that complicated. Legally, the notional entity of the crown could simply be replaced by "the state" or, where it's more honest, "the government" or even, perhaps in criminal court cases, by "the people." Each one of these would be abstract entities, admittedly, but they would at least be less opaque than the legal fiction that is "the crown". As Geoffrey Robertson QC explains it, the crown is merely "an artefact". To replace it with the people and their parliament is a simple manoeuvre. The more fundamental matter is the crown as a constitutional, rather than legal, entity: what would we do with the prerogative? This is actually two questions rolled into one. First, there are the residual royal powers, which can be exercised by the monarch herself: to appoint a prime minister and refuse a request for a dissolution of parliament. These look merely theoretical, until one imagines Britain caught in a Florida-style electoral deadlock. In the event of a hung parliament, who under our current system would choose whether to give the nod to Tony Blair or William Hague? Answer: the Queen. The fate for these two royal prerogatives is fairly straightforward. We could simply keep them in the hands of the newly democratic head of state - however that person was chosen (of which more later). Or we could make at least one of those powers redundant. The right to refuse a dissolution exists only because our parliamentary terms are currently not fixed. With set terms, of four or five years, there would be no question of early elections. Polling day would be known years in advance - with no need to give the power over dissolution to anyone. Such a reform would have the added benefit of bringing fairness to our electoral contests: at present, the prime minister's right to name polling day is tantamount to a running race in which one of the contestants gets to fire the starting gun. <B> Crown prerogative</B><BR> More complex is the crown prerogative itself. As David McKie writes on page 19, that notion is used to exercise all kinds of executive power - from making war to dispensing largesse and patronage. What would we do with these powers, currently exercised not by the Queen but by the prime minister? The answer is abolition. The flaw of the last constitutional settlement - in the 17th century - was that it did not abolish the absolute powers of the monarch, but merely tied them up in purple string and handed them, in effect, to the prime minister. The absolute powers themselves remained; only the person wielding them changed. So the solution now would not be to keep crown prerogative in the hands of the PM, with only a change of name. On the contrary, the reformers' case is that the prerogative itself should be taken apart. What that would mean in practice is diffusion. Some of today's crown powers would stay in the hands of the executive but others would be spread about. The power to make war and sign treaties might go to the UK parliament in Westminster. The power of patronage, to fill the benches of the second chamber, could move to the electorate, via direct election of new members. The vast battery of powers that makes our executive the mightiest in the western world could all be spread elsewhere: more to the parliaments in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff, more to mayors in London and to any other big city that wants them. The crown prerogative would simply be dismantled - its goodies spread around the country, no longer hoarded at the centre. The result would be a change in the very way Britain is governed. No longer the old monarchical model, in which power flows from the top down - but a more democratic shape, in which power is diffuse and flows from the bottom up. So much for the royal and crown prerogatives. With those powers either aboliished or transferred, what's left in the space marked head of state? Is there even a job left to fill? The palace doubt it. They believe that the vague, mysterious association of Crown and Queen is essential to her role as head of state. They insist that no head of state could ever function separate from the ancient edifice of prerogative. In other words, Britain could not conceivably have a head of state other than a monarch. But look closer. Here is how palace officials privately define the job. To them, a head of state must act as the focus of the nation, leading the nation in mourning or celebration - serving as the public expression of collective emotions. Cattily, some might doubt the royals' track record in this particular field. More seriously, they might wonder if this is a task only those of royal blood could perform. Second, say the Windsor circle, a head of state should recognise public achievement: visiting hospitals, handing out awards. True but, once again, is this a role that could only be performed by a single, genetically ordained family? Third, a national figurehead should contribute to the collective welfare - leading voluntary work or promoting charity. There's no doubt today's royals do that - but so do elected heads of state the world over. In fact, it is only the last aspect of the palace's job description that touches on a role perhaps the royals alone can perform: to act as a rock of continuity, an anchor during periods of intense change. It's true that royalty can claim a lineage and a past that others cannot. But even that is a mixed blessing: for the rock symbolises not just stability but paralysis, a society whose hierarchies and aristocracy remain in place for centuries - permanently excluding everyone else from ever reaching the nation's symbolic pinnacle. <B> The people's choice</B><BR> So, despite the palace's insistence to the contrary, a head of state does not always have to be chosen by birth. They can be chosen by people. How might Britain do it? Most republicans agree the question will not realistically, and probably ought not, arise until the present Queen dies. She has won wide admiration after a half-century of service and will doubtless close out her reign the same way. But what then? There are countless options. Perhaps the simplest would be to combine the role of head of state with that of head of government, so that when the nation chooses a prime minister at election time it would also pick the person to host foreign dignitaries and state banquets. That would be simple, but perhaps unsatisfactory - for we would lose out on the extra role of constitutional longstop a head of state can play. We could opt for direct election, just like the Irish. Enter the critics threatening the nightmare of Presidents Hattersley or Thatcher - though if that truly is a nightmare, the electorate is hardly likely to vote for it. Besides, one could easily write the rules to prevent any past politician seeking the job. When one looks at the success of Mary Robinson or Mary McAleese in Dublin, direct election looks quite appealing. For those who suspect a directly-elected president with a national mandate would be too strong a rival for the rest of our politicians - chiefly the prime minister - to tolerate, then indirect election is the obvious alternative. At present MPs, who we vote for, choose the Speaker - and that person could easily double as head of state, even taking on the weighty task of picking which leader should form a government from a hung parliament. Some would say that would give the Speaker too much power, especially if Britain were to adopt proportional representation. But that power already exists -resting in the hands of a hereditary monarch nobody chooses and nobody can remove. There are plenty of variations: including activist Anthony Barnett's notion that a "royal family" should be chosen by random lot, like jury service, once every three years. Reformers argue that Britons can do it however they like - just so long as, for the first time ever, they choose their own head of state. The benefits, they say, will be subtle, but real. For Britons will do more than choose the person who "interprets the nation to itself". By asserting themselves, rather than the crown, as the governing force in British life, they will become the owners of their own country - insisting that it is their land, not the crown's, that it is their government, not Her Majesty's, and that nothing is beyond their reach. Britons will be owners, not tenants, of their country; citizens, not subjects. We will at last be able to declare that there is only one sovereign in our land - and it is ourselves. <B>20 things only a monarch can do</B><B> 1</B>Own all unmarked mute swans on open water. <B> 2</B> Hold up other traffic on the railways while the royal train passes. <B> 3</B> Get the full and unabridged minutes of all Cabinet minutes - unlike Cabinet ministers who must make do with a summary. <B> 4</B> Receive reports of all Royal commissions ahead of those who commissioned them, on vellum. <B> 5</B> Declare holidays: an extra bank holiday in 2002 to mark the golden jubilee four- day celebration weekend. <B> 6</B> Appoint all magistrates in Liverpool, Manchester and Lancashire. The Queen is known as Duke of Lancashire when in the Duchy of Lancaster. <B> 7</B> Require the national flag to be flown on 16 royal birthdays anniversaries, from 8am until sunset. <B> 8</B> Appoint a privy council. All senior politicians become members, undergoing a ceremony in which they kneel on a bible, take the royal hand and walk backwards out of the room. The privy council meets where the monarch happens to be (Balmoral, during the fuel crisis). <B> 9</B> Get advice from QCs, free of charge. <B> 10</B> Accept more orders and decorations than anyone else: the present Queen has 85 decorations from 68 countries. <B> 11</B> Extend patronage: the present Queen is patron of 600 societies, organisations and events (816 over the reign). <B> 12</B> Command regiments: every regiment of the British army owes its loyalty to a member of the royal family. The present Queen commands 46. <B> 13</B> Receive a daily report of parliamentary proceedings from the vice chamberlain of the household: the report must reach the palace by dinner and is ready by no one else. The vice chamberlain, an MP, is held hostage during the state opening of parliament to ensure the monarch's safe return. <B> 14 </B> Issue special ivory carriage passes to members of the royal household and chosen ministers, allowing them to take a short cut through St James park. <B> 15 </B> Hold position of lord high admiral of the navy, which the present queen has held since 1964. (The Duke of Edinburgh is also admiral of the fleet in three navies: other admirals of the British navy are the King of Sweden and Don Juan of Borbon and Battenberg, the count of Barcelona). <B> 16</B> Command oaths of loyalty: sworn by all MPs, lords, three of the four armed services, the judiciary, ordained priests of the Church of England, newly naturalised citizens. <B> 17</B> Drive without a driving licence, because not covered by the Road Traffic Act. <B> 18</B> Take as treasure trove all coin, bullion, gold and silver found buried for which no owners can be traced. <B> 19</B> Award royal warrants to around 800 businesses, including seven champagne houses. <B> 20</B> Avoid the criminal law: the monarch is not subject to it or to everyday regulations governing things like how long royal staff work. <B>Julian Glover</B> <B>Related stories - news</B><BR> <BR> <B>Related stories - comment</B><BR><BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> <B>Related stories - background</B><BR><BR> <BR> <BR>
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Jonathan Freedland .
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It is the question republicans have learned to fear. "All right then," says the smiling royalist, "let's say you go ahead and abolish the monarchy. What would you put in its place?" Variations of that question have proved lethal for reformers. In Britain the republican cause has been held back for years by two words: President Thatcher. Or, put another way, President Hattersley. Tune in to any of the now regular phone-ins and TV debates on the monarchy and you'll soon hear a defender of the status quo winning over his audience by conjuring up a dread prospect of the future. In Australia that trap proved fatal for the republican movement. Polls showed that more than 70% of Australians wanted to elect their own head of state. Yet the 1999 referendum proposing to remove the Queen as Oz's national figurehead failed because voters did not like the replacement on offer, a "politicians' president" chosen by the Canberra parliament. That result left British reformers with a challenge, forcing them to realise that it was not enough simply to rail against the present order: they would have to explain how any future change would work. The first move, as made clear both by David McKie and in today's editorial, is to address the crown prerogative. Many lawyers, scholars and activists now agree that "the crown" underpins and explains many if not most of the excesses and distortions of our current governmental set-up. But what would reform of such a nebulous, shadowy concept entail? What would abolition of the crown mean? At first glance, such a drastic move might seem just too vast - like whipping out the ground from underneath our feet. Everything would have to change - from our land law, which technically makes every freeholder the mere owner of an interest in the land of the monarch, to our courts, which currently present every case as The Crown or Regina vs. Joe Bloggs. In fact, it would not be that complicated. Legally, the notional entity of the crown could simply be replaced by "the state" or, where it's more honest, "the government" or even, perhaps in criminal court cases, by "the people." Each one of these would be abstract entities, admittedly, but they would at least be less opaque than the legal fiction that is "the crown". As Geoffrey Robertson QC explains it, the crown is merely "an artefact". To replace it with the people and their parliament is a simple manoeuvre. The more fundamental matter is the crown as a constitutional, rather than legal, entity: what would we do with the prerogative? This is actually two questions rolled into one. First, there are the residual royal powers, which can be exercised by the monarch herself: to appoint a prime minister and refuse a request for a dissolution of parliament. These look merely theoretical, until one imagines Britain caught in a Florida-style electoral deadlock. In the event of a hung parliament, who under our current system would choose whether to give the nod to Tony Blair or William Hague? Answer: the Queen. The fate for these two royal prerogatives is fairly straightforward. We could simply keep them in the hands of the newly democratic head of state - however that person was chosen (of which more later). Or we could make at least one of those powers redundant. The right to refuse a dissolution exists only because our parliamentary terms are currently not fixed. With set terms, of four or five years, there would be no question of early elections. Polling day would be known years in advance - with no need to give the power over dissolution to anyone. Such a reform would have the added benefit of bringing fairness to our electoral contests: at present, the prime minister's right to name polling day is tantamount to a running race in which one of the contestants gets to fire the starting gun. <B> Crown prerogative</B><BR> More complex is the crown prerogative itself. As David McKie writes on page 19, that notion is used to exercise all kinds of executive power - from making war to dispensing largesse and patronage. What would we do with these powers, currently exercised not by the Queen but by the prime minister? The answer is abolition. The flaw of the last constitutional settlement - in the 17th century - was that it did not abolish the absolute powers of the monarch, but merely tied them up in purple string and handed them, in effect, to the prime minister. The absolute powers themselves remained; only the person wielding them changed. So the solution now would not be to keep crown prerogative in the hands of the PM, with only a change of name. On the contrary, the reformers' case is that the prerogative itself should be taken apart. What that would mean in practice is diffusion. Some of today's crown powers would stay in the hands of the executive but others would be spread about. The power to make war and sign treaties might go to the UK parliament in Westminster. The power of patronage, to fill the benches of the second chamber, could move to the electorate, via direct election of new members. The vast battery of powers that makes our executive the mightiest in the western world could all be spread elsewhere: more to the parliaments in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff, more to mayors in London and to any other big city that wants them. The crown prerogative would simply be dismantled - its goodies spread around the country, no longer hoarded at the centre. The result would be a change in the very way Britain is governed. No longer the old monarchical model, in which power flows from the top down - but a more democratic shape, in which power is diffuse and flows from the bottom up. So much for the royal and crown prerogatives. With those powers either aboliished or transferred, what's left in the space marked head of state? Is there even a job left to fill? The palace doubt it. They believe that the vague, mysterious association of Crown and Queen is essential to her role as head of state. They insist that no head of state could ever function separate from the ancient edifice of prerogative. In other words, Britain could not conceivably have a head of state other than a monarch. But look closer. Here is how palace officials privately define the job. To them, a head of state must act as the focus of the nation, leading the nation in mourning or celebration - serving as the public expression of collective emotions. Cattily, some might doubt the royals' track record in this particular field. More seriously, they might wonder if this is a task only those of royal blood could perform. Second, say the Windsor circle, a head of state should recognise public achievement: visiting hospitals, handing out awards. True but, once again, is this a role that could only be performed by a single, genetically ordained family? Third, a national figurehead should contribute to the collective welfare - leading voluntary work or promoting charity. There's no doubt today's royals do that - but so do elected heads of state the world over. In fact, it is only the last aspect of the palace's job description that touches on a role perhaps the royals alone can perform: to act as a rock of continuity, an anchor during periods of intense change. It's true that royalty can claim a lineage and a past that others cannot. But even that is a mixed blessing: for the rock symbolises not just stability but paralysis, a society whose hierarchies and aristocracy remain in place for centuries - permanently excluding everyone else from ever reaching the nation's symbolic pinnacle. <B> The people's choice</B><BR> So, despite the palace's insistence to the contrary, a head of state does not always have to be chosen by birth. They can be chosen by people. How might Britain do it? Most republicans agree the question will not realistically, and probably ought not, arise until the present Queen dies. She has won wide admiration after a half-century of service and will doubtless close out her reign the same way. But what then? There are countless options. Perhaps the simplest would be to combine the role of head of state with that of head of government, so that when the nation chooses a prime minister at election time it would also pick the person to host foreign dignitaries and state banquets. That would be simple, but perhaps unsatisfactory - for we would lose out on the extra role of constitutional longstop a head of state can play. We could opt for direct election, just like the Irish. Enter the critics threatening the nightmare of Presidents Hattersley or Thatcher - though if that truly is a nightmare, the electorate is hardly likely to vote for it. Besides, one could easily write the rules to prevent any past politician seeking the job. When one looks at the success of Mary Robinson or Mary McAleese in Dublin, direct election looks quite appealing. For those who suspect a directly-elected president with a national mandate would be too strong a rival for the rest of our politicians - chiefly the prime minister - to tolerate, then indirect election is the obvious alternative. At present MPs, who we vote for, choose the Speaker - and that person could easily double as head of state, even taking on the weighty task of picking which leader should form a government from a hung parliament. Some would say that would give the Speaker too much power, especially if Britain were to adopt proportional representation. But that power already exists -resting in the hands of a hereditary monarch nobody chooses and nobody can remove. There are plenty of variations: including activist Anthony Barnett's notion that a "royal family" should be chosen by random lot, like jury service, once every three years. Reformers argue that Britons can do it however they like - just so long as, for the first time ever, they choose their own head of state. The benefits, they say, will be subtle, but real. For Britons will do more than choose the person who "interprets the nation to itself". By asserting themselves, rather than the crown, as the governing force in British life, they will become the owners of their own country - insisting that it is their land, not the crown's, that it is their government, not Her Majesty's, and that nothing is beyond their reach. Britons will be owners, not tenants, of their country; citizens, not subjects. We will at last be able to declare that there is only one sovereign in our land - and it is ourselves. <B>20 things only a monarch can do</B><B> 1</B>Own all unmarked mute swans on open water. <B> 2</B> Hold up other traffic on the railways while the royal train passes. <B> 3</B> Get the full and unabridged minutes of all Cabinet minutes - unlike Cabinet ministers who must make do with a summary. <B> 4</B> Receive reports of all Royal commissions ahead of those who commissioned them, on vellum. <B> 5</B> Declare holidays: an extra bank holiday in 2002 to mark the golden jubilee four- day celebration weekend. <B> 6</B> Appoint all magistrates in Liverpool, Manchester and Lancashire. The Queen is known as Duke of Lancashire when in the Duchy of Lancaster. <B> 7</B> Require the national flag to be flown on 16 royal birthdays anniversaries, from 8am until sunset. <B> 8</B> Appoint a privy council. All senior politicians become members, undergoing a ceremony in which they kneel on a bible, take the royal hand and walk backwards out of the room. The privy council meets where the monarch happens to be (Balmoral, during the fuel crisis). <B> 9</B> Get advice from QCs, free of charge. <B> 10</B> Accept more orders and decorations than anyone else: the present Queen has 85 decorations from 68 countries. <B> 11</B> Extend patronage: the present Queen is patron of 600 societies, organisations and events (816 over the reign). <B> 12</B> Command regiments: every regiment of the British army owes its loyalty to a member of the royal family. The present Queen commands 46. <B> 13</B> Receive a daily report of parliamentary proceedings from the vice chamberlain of the household: the report must reach the palace by dinner and is ready by no one else. The vice chamberlain, an MP, is held hostage during the state opening of parliament to ensure the monarch's safe return. <B> 14 </B> Issue special ivory carriage passes to members of the royal household and chosen ministers, allowing them to take a short cut through St James park. <B> 15 </B> Hold position of lord high admiral of the navy, which the present queen has held since 1964. (The Duke of Edinburgh is also admiral of the fleet in three navies: other admirals of the British navy are the King of Sweden and Don Juan of Borbon and Battenberg, the count of Barcelona). <B> 16</B> Command oaths of loyalty: sworn by all MPs, lords, three of the four armed services, the judiciary, ordained priests of the Church of England, newly naturalised citizens. <B> 17</B> Drive without a driving licence, because not covered by the Road Traffic Act. <B> 18</B> Take as treasure trove all coin, bullion, gold and silver found buried for which no owners can be traced. <B> 19</B> Award royal warrants to around 800 businesses, including seven champagne houses. <B> 20</B> Avoid the criminal law: the monarch is not subject to it or to everyday regulations governing things like how long royal staff work. <B>Julian Glover</B> <B>Related stories - news</B><BR> <BR> <B>Related stories - comment</B><BR><BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> <B>Related stories - background</B><BR><BR> <BR> <BR>
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3jonathanfreedland
| 2UK
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We didn't see a kiss, nor the moment they were legally married - but we did at least catch a glimpse into the future. On Saturday we saw the court of Charles III. The wedding of the Prince of Wales to Camilla Parker Bowles was the most public gathering yet for a new establishment in waiting, the men and women who surround the man who would be king. From my perch on the roof of the Guard Room, inside the ramparts of Windsor Castle, I counted them in and counted them out. They were easy to spot because they fitted none of the other more formal categories. They were not governors-general of remote commonwealth nations, nor serene highnesses from faraway royal dynasties. They were not "great officers of state" - though the Master of the Horse was there, of course, along with the Lord Chamberlain and the Marquess of Cholmondeley. (This may be the 21st century but these people all still exist.) Nor were they party leaders, all of whom chose to Gordon Brown it and wear lounge suits rather than the morning dress adopted by almost every other man present. Ever since the chancellor eschewed white tie for his Mansion House speech in 1997, politicians seem to have developed an allergy to over-frilly get-up - perhaps fearing it will dent their democratic credentials. Not that this precaution did Tony Blair much good: he got booed as he arrived at St George's Chapel. No, the new courtiers were a category unto themselves. They were people whose name and fame had been earned rather than inherited and who would be recognisable to those who do not count the court circular among their bedtime reading. Leading them were the theatrical folk: Stephen Fry, Meera Syal, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Rowan Atkinson, Prunella Scales, Timothy West (who delivered a Wordsworth poem at the service), Joanna Lumley (who seems to have "The Lovely" attached to her name, rather in the manner of a royal title), Edward Fox, John Mortimer, Kenneth Branagh, Jools Holland, Richard E Grant, Trudi Styler and playwright Ronnie Harwood. TV celebrity Tara Palmer-Tomkinson was a crowd-pleasing addition, sashaying into the chapel as if it were a catwalk. As one commentator quipped drily, it was more Hello! than Debretts. Non-showbiz courtiers were there, too: loyal interviewer Jonathan Dimbleby, knighted green Sir Jonathon Porritt, schools scourge Chris Woodhead (in lounge suit). And, moving effortlessly between them all, the media grandees Lords Bragg and Rees-Mogg and Sir David Frost. What, one began to wonder, might connect this illustrious group? What common set of traits might come to define this future Carolinian court? It is clearly not the rigid, snobbish aristocracy of the late Queen Mother's Gosford Park set, nor the horse-obsessed tedium of the Queen's world. But nor is it the mass-appeal, Mail-reading sensibility of Diana - though, it cannot be denied, Phil Collins was in the church on Saturday. Instead, Charles's preference seems to be for upper crust with a twist. Thus he likes actors, as royals have before - but he includes one who is openly gay and two who are Asian, in the form of Fry, Syal and Bhaskar. He includes a grand old man of letters in his circle but his choice, John Mortimer, is an avowed socialist. He has a thriller writer close by, but while the Queen Mum had a weakness for Dick Francis, Charles opts for the more cerebral and Labour-supporting Robert Harris. Most typically, he counts as a friend a pillar of the broadcasting establishment - yet Jonathan Dimbleby is also president of the Soil Association. That seems to capture the defining feature of the Charles court. They are pukka and top drawer, but with a teeny-weeny, alternative streak. They are posh - but organic posh. The wedding itself fit that bill - still a royal event, but less formal than most. So the two families travelled around in white, hired minibuses - bearing the corporate logo of Windsorian, which might be a brand name for the day the royals are privatised - princes and princesses ferried about like football teams arriving for a cup final. In an inadvertently populist touch, Zara Phillips, daughter of Princess Anne, spotted herself on one of the giant TV monitors and pointed - just as the regular folk in the crowd had been doing all afternoon. Still, some traditions were maintained. The prince and his new duchess had invited representatives of their pet charities to share their special day. Except these footsoldiers for groups like the British Horse Loggers, the Poultry Club of Great Britain and the Specialist Cheesemakers' Association were not exactly invited to the wedding, though many of them were fully dressed for the occasion. Rather, their tickets entitled them to stand outside in an enclosure, fending off the April chill for three and a half hours as they waited for the newlyweds to emerge. Still, they didn't seem to mind. David Yendoll of the St Mary's Priory Trust had driven from Abergavenny: he thought it marvellous that people like him, "the great unwashed were given orders of service, so that we could follow and join in". Equally, for all the prince's insistence that he wants to be "defender of faiths" and leader of a multicultural Britain, the only religious representatives listed were Anglicans. The message seemed pretty clear: Charles may have the odd interesting friend, but he is still who he is. As always, this royal event will be seized on as a useful window into the kind of country Britain is becoming. What did we see on Saturday? A country that is less stuffy and formal: note William and Harry's daubing of "Prince and Duchess", a la Kevin and Tracey, on the couple's car windscreen. And a country that has made its peace with divorce. There was some loud booing when Charles and Camilla arrived for the legal ceremony, but that came from a few diehard Diana-ites. Most were forgiving, happy to allow a middle-aged couple a second chance. In the words of Anne Gillott from Winchester, "If William and Harry have adapted, who am I to judge?" But this spirit of tolerance should not be misunderstood. For much of it is indifference. The crowds in Windsor were thin, not much bigger than in the centre of any busy market town on a Saturday. When they tried to raise three cheers for the couple during the walkabout, they could only muster two. Radio 5 Live, which knows its audience well, cut short its wedding coverage to switch to Aintree in advance of the Grand National. There was a time when the BBC would never have dared such a thing, but Britain is a different country now. Twenty-five years ago, the closure of a big car plant could have brought down the government. Not many think Rover will do that now. A quarter century ago, Britons would not have reacted so strongly to the death of a pope. We're different now. Perhaps this is why the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury seemed so oddly detached from the proceedings on Saturday. Perhaps they realise these current trends do not augur happily for either of the institutions they lead. This weekend the new ethos served Charles well - it shrugged its shoulders and allowed him to do what he wants - but, one day, King Charles may come to lament the very same change.
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Jonathan Freedland .
|
We didn't see a kiss, nor the moment they were legally married - but we did at least catch a glimpse into the future. On Saturday we saw the court of Charles III. The wedding of the Prince of Wales to Camilla Parker Bowles was the most public gathering yet for a new establishment in waiting, the men and women who surround the man who would be king. From my perch on the roof of the Guard Room, inside the ramparts of Windsor Castle, I counted them in and counted them out. They were easy to spot because they fitted none of the other more formal categories. They were not governors-general of remote commonwealth nations, nor serene highnesses from faraway royal dynasties. They were not "great officers of state" - though the Master of the Horse was there, of course, along with the Lord Chamberlain and the Marquess of Cholmondeley. (This may be the 21st century but these people all still exist.) Nor were they party leaders, all of whom chose to Gordon Brown it and wear lounge suits rather than the morning dress adopted by almost every other man present. Ever since the chancellor eschewed white tie for his Mansion House speech in 1997, politicians seem to have developed an allergy to over-frilly get-up - perhaps fearing it will dent their democratic credentials. Not that this precaution did Tony Blair much good: he got booed as he arrived at St George's Chapel. No, the new courtiers were a category unto themselves. They were people whose name and fame had been earned rather than inherited and who would be recognisable to those who do not count the court circular among their bedtime reading. Leading them were the theatrical folk: Stephen Fry, Meera Syal, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Rowan Atkinson, Prunella Scales, Timothy West (who delivered a Wordsworth poem at the service), Joanna Lumley (who seems to have "The Lovely" attached to her name, rather in the manner of a royal title), Edward Fox, John Mortimer, Kenneth Branagh, Jools Holland, Richard E Grant, Trudi Styler and playwright Ronnie Harwood. TV celebrity Tara Palmer-Tomkinson was a crowd-pleasing addition, sashaying into the chapel as if it were a catwalk. As one commentator quipped drily, it was more Hello! than Debretts. Non-showbiz courtiers were there, too: loyal interviewer Jonathan Dimbleby, knighted green Sir Jonathon Porritt, schools scourge Chris Woodhead (in lounge suit). And, moving effortlessly between them all, the media grandees Lords Bragg and Rees-Mogg and Sir David Frost. What, one began to wonder, might connect this illustrious group? What common set of traits might come to define this future Carolinian court? It is clearly not the rigid, snobbish aristocracy of the late Queen Mother's Gosford Park set, nor the horse-obsessed tedium of the Queen's world. But nor is it the mass-appeal, Mail-reading sensibility of Diana - though, it cannot be denied, Phil Collins was in the church on Saturday. Instead, Charles's preference seems to be for upper crust with a twist. Thus he likes actors, as royals have before - but he includes one who is openly gay and two who are Asian, in the form of Fry, Syal and Bhaskar. He includes a grand old man of letters in his circle but his choice, John Mortimer, is an avowed socialist. He has a thriller writer close by, but while the Queen Mum had a weakness for Dick Francis, Charles opts for the more cerebral and Labour-supporting Robert Harris. Most typically, he counts as a friend a pillar of the broadcasting establishment - yet Jonathan Dimbleby is also president of the Soil Association. That seems to capture the defining feature of the Charles court. They are pukka and top drawer, but with a teeny-weeny, alternative streak. They are posh - but organic posh. The wedding itself fit that bill - still a royal event, but less formal than most. So the two families travelled around in white, hired minibuses - bearing the corporate logo of Windsorian, which might be a brand name for the day the royals are privatised - princes and princesses ferried about like football teams arriving for a cup final. In an inadvertently populist touch, Zara Phillips, daughter of Princess Anne, spotted herself on one of the giant TV monitors and pointed - just as the regular folk in the crowd had been doing all afternoon. Still, some traditions were maintained. The prince and his new duchess had invited representatives of their pet charities to share their special day. Except these footsoldiers for groups like the British Horse Loggers, the Poultry Club of Great Britain and the Specialist Cheesemakers' Association were not exactly invited to the wedding, though many of them were fully dressed for the occasion. Rather, their tickets entitled them to stand outside in an enclosure, fending off the April chill for three and a half hours as they waited for the newlyweds to emerge. Still, they didn't seem to mind. David Yendoll of the St Mary's Priory Trust had driven from Abergavenny: he thought it marvellous that people like him, "the great unwashed were given orders of service, so that we could follow and join in". Equally, for all the prince's insistence that he wants to be "defender of faiths" and leader of a multicultural Britain, the only religious representatives listed were Anglicans. The message seemed pretty clear: Charles may have the odd interesting friend, but he is still who he is. As always, this royal event will be seized on as a useful window into the kind of country Britain is becoming. What did we see on Saturday? A country that is less stuffy and formal: note William and Harry's daubing of "Prince and Duchess", a la Kevin and Tracey, on the couple's car windscreen. And a country that has made its peace with divorce. There was some loud booing when Charles and Camilla arrived for the legal ceremony, but that came from a few diehard Diana-ites. Most were forgiving, happy to allow a middle-aged couple a second chance. In the words of Anne Gillott from Winchester, "If William and Harry have adapted, who am I to judge?" But this spirit of tolerance should not be misunderstood. For much of it is indifference. The crowds in Windsor were thin, not much bigger than in the centre of any busy market town on a Saturday. When they tried to raise three cheers for the couple during the walkabout, they could only muster two. Radio 5 Live, which knows its audience well, cut short its wedding coverage to switch to Aintree in advance of the Grand National. There was a time when the BBC would never have dared such a thing, but Britain is a different country now. Twenty-five years ago, the closure of a big car plant could have brought down the government. Not many think Rover will do that now. A quarter century ago, Britons would not have reacted so strongly to the death of a pope. We're different now. Perhaps this is why the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury seemed so oddly detached from the proceedings on Saturday. Perhaps they realise these current trends do not augur happily for either of the institutions they lead. This weekend the new ethos served Charles well - it shrugged its shoulders and allowed him to do what he wants - but, one day, King Charles may come to lament the very same change.
|
11willhutton
| 2UK
|
We're losing the art of public interaction. The spaces - from a public park to a forum for public exchange - where social debate and contemplation can take place are eroding before our eyes. Two very disparate and under-reported initiatives were launched last week, both rooted in this concern - precursors perhaps of the beginning of civil society's fight back. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe) delivered its manifesto for better public spaces, saying that a combination of powerful private interests, aggressive litigiousness and timidity by public authorities were together undermining public space. Suffolk County Council's infamous decision to outlaw hanging baskets from some lampposts in Bury St Edmunds is the most graphic example of the general trend. Fear that the baskets might fall and hurt someone, sparking an expensive compensation claim, had forced the county council to act. Nor is it an idle fear. Manchester City Council's budget for compensation claims now exceeds its budget for repairing pavements - also, ironically, the source of many claims for compensation. All around the country, according to Cabe, boating lakes, markets, adventure playgrounds, and public parks are under growing threat because they are deemed too risky in the face of claims for compensation from some aggrieved injured litigant or that they are too expensive to protect from the ambitions of private developers - and there is too little protest about the wider cost to us of access being reduced or even phased out altogether. Yet there is a wealth of evidence that being able to stroll in a park and breathe good air prolongs life expectancy; that having somewhere to play reduces kids' obesity; that having wide pavements and well-lit bus stops reduces crime. It is worth paying to have park keepers, finding funds to pay compensation and imposing the planning controls to protect public space. Such things enhance our lives. By refusing to pay for our public sphere we collude in undermining it. The Royal Society of Arts is worried that our well-being is under equal pressure from another source. We are losing the capacity to engage in anything other than private conversation about private passions; even public debate is increasingly about our private loves, hates and emotions - and when public debate is about something public, say the European constitution, or even the decline in public space, it is conducted in a way designed not to illuminate or inform. There is certainly no dialogue; it is two sides duelling, holding their views with unshakeable and unchanging conviction, giving no quarter and spinning every fact with a vengeance, with the public cast as onlookers to a gladiatorial spectacle. Their role is to enjoy the sparks rather than learn or modify their opinions in the light of the evidence. The RSA's response is to launch a national series of coffee-house debates based on the coffee-house out of which it was born 250 years ago. It wants to recreate the capacity to be engaged in public affairs, and that means, believes Britain's most venerable think-tank, that we need to acquire again the art of thinking aloud about public issues in an environment where you are not pounced on for making a mistake, not toeing the party line or excoriated for saying something illogical. Creative conversation, when it happens, is intoxicating; interlocuters inspire and fire new thoughts in each other. Let us hope that we all know this sensation; but nobody would say good conversation characterises our current public realm. The Royal Society wants us to talk in today's coffee-houses - 500 Starbucks - and email them the results of our conversations. I welcome both initiatives. We are locked in a vicious circle, in which declining public space begets the very excessive individualism that feeds self-interested litigiousness and the bear-baiting, take-no-prisoners attitude towards public debate. What drives the compensation culture is the decline in people's sense of belonging to a wider public culture. This fuels a disproportionate sense of personal injury - along with the prospect of some easy money. Equally, media interviews where the interviewer sets out to entrap and draw blood do nothing to enlarge public understanding - but that is because the listener and viewer collude in seeing the Minister, MP or official in the same way as the media. That is, not as legitimate representatives of a public realm that can only be sustained in the last resort if we respect it; rather, as somebody we want to see discomfited or commit a gaffe. Public life has become a kind of soap opera in which issues are less important than the private foibles, wobbles and passions of the actors in the drama. Charles Kennedy's sweating or Michael Portillo's gay experiences are one part of this - the other is extraordinary over-exaggeration. There are 12 weeks to stop a European superstate; MMR vaccine causes autism; the Six Nations rugby tournament is bankrupt as a sports spectacle. Choose your issue and you know what I mean. Even as I write this I'm aware of the counter arguments; the public parks I know well seem in rude good health. And if some toffs are complaining about the vulgarity and prurience of the British media, it was ever thus. The greater truth is its vitality - and people have the wit to see through the hype. Public debate is always going to be edgy with debaters probing for any advantage they can; to imagine it should be conducted as some glorified seminar is to bay for the moon. And why shouldn't we be interested in the personal dimensions of our public figures? And yet I stick to my guns. There is a rise in the compensation culture and there is a degradation in how public argument is conducted. What connects them both is a diminishing sense of why what we hold in common is as important to our well-being as the freedom to pursue our self-interest and accent only the personal. And this disappearing collectivity is, for example, why the BBC is under assault; it is why, in a larger sense, we are so bad-tempered and ill at ease with ourselves. But the desire for better co-exists with the same trends. Thus Cabe and the RSA last week. Thus the polls that simultaneously show huge support for the BBC even while it is denigrated. Thus the periodic interest in the idea of new newspapers (the latest is Stephen Glover's the World) which are built on public interest and impartial news journalism. Such tensions are a feature of the age. The idea of 'the public' is too weak. It is only if we recognise that and fight back to restore its place that we have any hope of reasserting the values that are, literally, good for us all. I am on the side of those who want to fight back.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Will Hutton .
|
We're losing the art of public interaction. The spaces - from a public park to a forum for public exchange - where social debate and contemplation can take place are eroding before our eyes. Two very disparate and under-reported initiatives were launched last week, both rooted in this concern - precursors perhaps of the beginning of civil society's fight back. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe) delivered its manifesto for better public spaces, saying that a combination of powerful private interests, aggressive litigiousness and timidity by public authorities were together undermining public space. Suffolk County Council's infamous decision to outlaw hanging baskets from some lampposts in Bury St Edmunds is the most graphic example of the general trend. Fear that the baskets might fall and hurt someone, sparking an expensive compensation claim, had forced the county council to act. Nor is it an idle fear. Manchester City Council's budget for compensation claims now exceeds its budget for repairing pavements - also, ironically, the source of many claims for compensation. All around the country, according to Cabe, boating lakes, markets, adventure playgrounds, and public parks are under growing threat because they are deemed too risky in the face of claims for compensation from some aggrieved injured litigant or that they are too expensive to protect from the ambitions of private developers - and there is too little protest about the wider cost to us of access being reduced or even phased out altogether. Yet there is a wealth of evidence that being able to stroll in a park and breathe good air prolongs life expectancy; that having somewhere to play reduces kids' obesity; that having wide pavements and well-lit bus stops reduces crime. It is worth paying to have park keepers, finding funds to pay compensation and imposing the planning controls to protect public space. Such things enhance our lives. By refusing to pay for our public sphere we collude in undermining it. The Royal Society of Arts is worried that our well-being is under equal pressure from another source. We are losing the capacity to engage in anything other than private conversation about private passions; even public debate is increasingly about our private loves, hates and emotions - and when public debate is about something public, say the European constitution, or even the decline in public space, it is conducted in a way designed not to illuminate or inform. There is certainly no dialogue; it is two sides duelling, holding their views with unshakeable and unchanging conviction, giving no quarter and spinning every fact with a vengeance, with the public cast as onlookers to a gladiatorial spectacle. Their role is to enjoy the sparks rather than learn or modify their opinions in the light of the evidence. The RSA's response is to launch a national series of coffee-house debates based on the coffee-house out of which it was born 250 years ago. It wants to recreate the capacity to be engaged in public affairs, and that means, believes Britain's most venerable think-tank, that we need to acquire again the art of thinking aloud about public issues in an environment where you are not pounced on for making a mistake, not toeing the party line or excoriated for saying something illogical. Creative conversation, when it happens, is intoxicating; interlocuters inspire and fire new thoughts in each other. Let us hope that we all know this sensation; but nobody would say good conversation characterises our current public realm. The Royal Society wants us to talk in today's coffee-houses - 500 Starbucks - and email them the results of our conversations. I welcome both initiatives. We are locked in a vicious circle, in which declining public space begets the very excessive individualism that feeds self-interested litigiousness and the bear-baiting, take-no-prisoners attitude towards public debate. What drives the compensation culture is the decline in people's sense of belonging to a wider public culture. This fuels a disproportionate sense of personal injury - along with the prospect of some easy money. Equally, media interviews where the interviewer sets out to entrap and draw blood do nothing to enlarge public understanding - but that is because the listener and viewer collude in seeing the Minister, MP or official in the same way as the media. That is, not as legitimate representatives of a public realm that can only be sustained in the last resort if we respect it; rather, as somebody we want to see discomfited or commit a gaffe. Public life has become a kind of soap opera in which issues are less important than the private foibles, wobbles and passions of the actors in the drama. Charles Kennedy's sweating or Michael Portillo's gay experiences are one part of this - the other is extraordinary over-exaggeration. There are 12 weeks to stop a European superstate; MMR vaccine causes autism; the Six Nations rugby tournament is bankrupt as a sports spectacle. Choose your issue and you know what I mean. Even as I write this I'm aware of the counter arguments; the public parks I know well seem in rude good health. And if some toffs are complaining about the vulgarity and prurience of the British media, it was ever thus. The greater truth is its vitality - and people have the wit to see through the hype. Public debate is always going to be edgy with debaters probing for any advantage they can; to imagine it should be conducted as some glorified seminar is to bay for the moon. And why shouldn't we be interested in the personal dimensions of our public figures? And yet I stick to my guns. There is a rise in the compensation culture and there is a degradation in how public argument is conducted. What connects them both is a diminishing sense of why what we hold in common is as important to our well-being as the freedom to pursue our self-interest and accent only the personal. And this disappearing collectivity is, for example, why the BBC is under assault; it is why, in a larger sense, we are so bad-tempered and ill at ease with ourselves. But the desire for better co-exists with the same trends. Thus Cabe and the RSA last week. Thus the polls that simultaneously show huge support for the BBC even while it is denigrated. Thus the periodic interest in the idea of new newspapers (the latest is Stephen Glover's the World) which are built on public interest and impartial news journalism. Such tensions are a feature of the age. The idea of 'the public' is too weak. It is only if we recognise that and fight back to restore its place that we have any hope of reasserting the values that are, literally, good for us all. I am on the side of those who want to fight back.
|
11willhutton
| 2UK
|
Chelsea's new manager, Jos Mourinho, was signed last week for a reported 5 million a year, while Marks & Spencer's new chief executive, Stuart Rose, received a signing-on fee of 1.25m, and a base salary of 850,000 a year. Both were new records and if either man can bring the turnaround the two organisations seek, presumably they would seem cheap at twice the price. But are Mourinho and Rose accepting their new jobs just for the cash? Ten years ago, even a star football manager and a talented CEO were paid at half today's salaries. If you believe a new book by Sir Michael Marmot, one of Britain's leading experts on health and social behaviour, what is driving men such as Mourinho and Rose is not money but status*. Both are already very rich. What matters is what the cash signifies. By being rewarded so highly, Rose and Mourinho are confirmed as top dogs; the men with the highest status in relation to their peers. Cash is just the readiest way of keeping score, demonstrating that they are at the top of their respective hierarchies. Stuart Rose, by saying he needed to show he was hard to get rather than having any appetite for the cash, has con firmed Marmot's thesis. Status counts, as it always has. This shouldn't be a surprise. Alain de Botton has already mapped the human preoccupation with our relative standing in his bestseller, Status Anxiety. But Marmot has gone much further. He shows that all societies demonstrate the same truth. There is a discernible downward gradient from high-status individuals (and their partners) who live longer, with more satisfying, healthier and contented lives, even if performing allegedly stressful jobs, to those of fractionally lower status. So it goes on down the hierarchy of whatever status ladder counts in the particular society or subgroup. Oscar winners live four years longer than film stars not so honoured; permanent secretaries in the Civil Service are happier than those even in the immediate grades below them. What counts, suggests Marmot, is not just the gratification of being admired and respected by others. Social status provides two crucial props to good health and personal well-being. First, you can't be high status without being closely integrated into the social group of which you are part. There is a mountain of evidence that the denser the social networks of which you are a member, the less likely, for example, you are to fall ill. Social intercourse makes us happy and happiness is the best possible shield against illness. Second, the higher your status, the more control and autonomy you are likely to have over how you live your life and spend your working day. Autonomy spells satisfaction because it gives greater potential for realising your wants and choices. Again, there is powerful evidence that this control fends off the deep stress that triggers the adverse physical reaction to everything from viral infections to mental disorders. It is because these drivers are so ubiquitous that Marmot finds a social gradient in every human phenomenon he studies - from obesity to IQ. Thus his theory of a status syndrome. Nor does he have much sympathy with the conservative view or that of the new evolutionary Darwinian psychologists like Stephen Pinker - that the chain of causation runs from our inherited DNA to where we stand in the hierarchy, ie that essentially we are where we are because we were born to be differentially healthy and high-achieving. The social gradient is so ever-present across the universe of phenomenon in all societies, and the causal impact on health and well-being so irrefutable that it cannot be true that the over-riding driver of who and what we are is our gene pool. Genes may create dispositions; the status syndrome solidifies our lived experience. Marmot concludes that in a democratic age, the majority are increasingly going to demand a slice of the autonomy, social engagement and respect that those at the top of the social gradient experience - and that this struggle is going to succeed the political battles over equal citizenship rights, the welfare state and even income distribution that have been fought over for the last century. He has identified an important movement. The popularity of reality TV, which enfranchises the individual viewer and gives him or her a stake in status and celebrity, is surely part of this. So, in another part of the contemporary landscape, is the new willingness of trade union members to threaten strike action, not in the name of socialism as in the 1970s but rather to insist that employers take their issues seriously and respect their claims. Arguably, the same trend is what lies behind the growth of various fundamentalisms, whether religious, environmental or political. The appeal of the Alpha course asserting the verities of Christianity, the animal rights movement; the fathers' rights campaign and even UKIP and Euroscepticism are that they variously offer their adherents a route to asserting control, status and autonomy. All are driven by the status syndrome; all find social engagement and more control through what they do. It does not matter whether you approve or disapprove. What we are witnessing is a restless quest for status with a myriad of sub-groups offering their particular route up the social gradient, insisting that what they value is superior to common mores and standards, so offering the necessary status. The danger is obvious; Jos Mourinho and Stuart Rose, for example, may have assuaged their desire for status, but those who work for them may wonder destructively what their bosses' real motives are, apart from setting a new salary benchmark for the next round of star hirings. Similarly, there is a selfishness about single-issue political campaigners. In the US, Ralph Nader may be satisfying his desire for status in running for President, but he weakens the opposition to Bush. But we shouldn't underestimate the deep human need on display. Suicide bombers are less driven by the desperation of poverty than their profound sense of shame at their society's standing along with a quest for status that their culture and religion confer. The political challenge is huge. At home, it is to find a balance between the diversity of a richly pluralist civil society offering a multiplicity of routes to status and the necessary minimum that we must hold in common if society is to stick together. In foreign policy, it must be to recognise that a willingness to respect the integrity of positions other than the orthodox Western one is a critical component of success, especially against terrorism. On these questions, the British right, itself fragmented into status-seeking factions, is not at first base; the British left is only fractionally more advanced. These are new questions to which we need better answers - and we need them fast. * Status Syndrome, Bloomsbury 12.99
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Will Hutton .
|
Chelsea's new manager, Jos Mourinho, was signed last week for a reported 5 million a year, while Marks & Spencer's new chief executive, Stuart Rose, received a signing-on fee of 1.25m, and a base salary of 850,000 a year. Both were new records and if either man can bring the turnaround the two organisations seek, presumably they would seem cheap at twice the price. But are Mourinho and Rose accepting their new jobs just for the cash? Ten years ago, even a star football manager and a talented CEO were paid at half today's salaries. If you believe a new book by Sir Michael Marmot, one of Britain's leading experts on health and social behaviour, what is driving men such as Mourinho and Rose is not money but status*. Both are already very rich. What matters is what the cash signifies. By being rewarded so highly, Rose and Mourinho are confirmed as top dogs; the men with the highest status in relation to their peers. Cash is just the readiest way of keeping score, demonstrating that they are at the top of their respective hierarchies. Stuart Rose, by saying he needed to show he was hard to get rather than having any appetite for the cash, has con firmed Marmot's thesis. Status counts, as it always has. This shouldn't be a surprise. Alain de Botton has already mapped the human preoccupation with our relative standing in his bestseller, Status Anxiety. But Marmot has gone much further. He shows that all societies demonstrate the same truth. There is a discernible downward gradient from high-status individuals (and their partners) who live longer, with more satisfying, healthier and contented lives, even if performing allegedly stressful jobs, to those of fractionally lower status. So it goes on down the hierarchy of whatever status ladder counts in the particular society or subgroup. Oscar winners live four years longer than film stars not so honoured; permanent secretaries in the Civil Service are happier than those even in the immediate grades below them. What counts, suggests Marmot, is not just the gratification of being admired and respected by others. Social status provides two crucial props to good health and personal well-being. First, you can't be high status without being closely integrated into the social group of which you are part. There is a mountain of evidence that the denser the social networks of which you are a member, the less likely, for example, you are to fall ill. Social intercourse makes us happy and happiness is the best possible shield against illness. Second, the higher your status, the more control and autonomy you are likely to have over how you live your life and spend your working day. Autonomy spells satisfaction because it gives greater potential for realising your wants and choices. Again, there is powerful evidence that this control fends off the deep stress that triggers the adverse physical reaction to everything from viral infections to mental disorders. It is because these drivers are so ubiquitous that Marmot finds a social gradient in every human phenomenon he studies - from obesity to IQ. Thus his theory of a status syndrome. Nor does he have much sympathy with the conservative view or that of the new evolutionary Darwinian psychologists like Stephen Pinker - that the chain of causation runs from our inherited DNA to where we stand in the hierarchy, ie that essentially we are where we are because we were born to be differentially healthy and high-achieving. The social gradient is so ever-present across the universe of phenomenon in all societies, and the causal impact on health and well-being so irrefutable that it cannot be true that the over-riding driver of who and what we are is our gene pool. Genes may create dispositions; the status syndrome solidifies our lived experience. Marmot concludes that in a democratic age, the majority are increasingly going to demand a slice of the autonomy, social engagement and respect that those at the top of the social gradient experience - and that this struggle is going to succeed the political battles over equal citizenship rights, the welfare state and even income distribution that have been fought over for the last century. He has identified an important movement. The popularity of reality TV, which enfranchises the individual viewer and gives him or her a stake in status and celebrity, is surely part of this. So, in another part of the contemporary landscape, is the new willingness of trade union members to threaten strike action, not in the name of socialism as in the 1970s but rather to insist that employers take their issues seriously and respect their claims. Arguably, the same trend is what lies behind the growth of various fundamentalisms, whether religious, environmental or political. The appeal of the Alpha course asserting the verities of Christianity, the animal rights movement; the fathers' rights campaign and even UKIP and Euroscepticism are that they variously offer their adherents a route to asserting control, status and autonomy. All are driven by the status syndrome; all find social engagement and more control through what they do. It does not matter whether you approve or disapprove. What we are witnessing is a restless quest for status with a myriad of sub-groups offering their particular route up the social gradient, insisting that what they value is superior to common mores and standards, so offering the necessary status. The danger is obvious; Jos Mourinho and Stuart Rose, for example, may have assuaged their desire for status, but those who work for them may wonder destructively what their bosses' real motives are, apart from setting a new salary benchmark for the next round of star hirings. Similarly, there is a selfishness about single-issue political campaigners. In the US, Ralph Nader may be satisfying his desire for status in running for President, but he weakens the opposition to Bush. But we shouldn't underestimate the deep human need on display. Suicide bombers are less driven by the desperation of poverty than their profound sense of shame at their society's standing along with a quest for status that their culture and religion confer. The political challenge is huge. At home, it is to find a balance between the diversity of a richly pluralist civil society offering a multiplicity of routes to status and the necessary minimum that we must hold in common if society is to stick together. In foreign policy, it must be to recognise that a willingness to respect the integrity of positions other than the orthodox Western one is a critical component of success, especially against terrorism. On these questions, the British right, itself fragmented into status-seeking factions, is not at first base; the British left is only fractionally more advanced. These are new questions to which we need better answers - and we need them fast. * Status Syndrome, Bloomsbury 12.99
|
11willhutton
| 2UK
|
These are fearful times. The fall in the birth rate across the West is testimony to a growing pessimism about the future; the menaces that together seem to make the good life unattainable range from fear that science is running amok to terrorism and climate change. Live for today and don't have children is a rallying cry finding more adherents.The world is not a pleasant place and seems to be getting less pleasant fast. Above all else, we seem powerless to control and shape these forces; they exist as ominous influences that can no longer be contained.In this sense, the very idea of progress is now contested. No contemporary historians would trace British history, Macaulay-like, as an account of how democracy, the rule of law and the extension of British values have steadily increased their influence. We have no Sidney and Beatrice Webb dedicated to the possibility of social improvement. We have no Nye Bevan who can convince us that political action can shape the world.There is no Keynes to guide our economic thinking. There are no inventors or scientists so celebrated that when they die, London's streets would throng with mourners, as they did for Brunel and Stephenson in the nineteenth century. Instead, there is a rise in credulity accompanied by an insistence that we must not meddle with natural verities. Religious fundamentalism, in the Christian and Islamic worlds alike, insists that religious texts should be interpreted literally. Christian creationists, arguing that God and not natural selection created the world, find a market as ready for their views as their counterparts in Islam.There is a small industry attacking the very idea of scientific method; for it, there is no objective material reality and the search to discover, explain and master the natural world has reached the ethical and moral limits. From now on, warn writers such as Francis Fukuyama, science is taking us into territory where it sets up men as gods able to manipulate the very marrow of humanity.This veneration of nature and suspicion of human agency makes conservatives of Right and Left alike. Political activism, even when allegedly radical, is imbued with a conservative streak. What is held out as the desirable norm is some Elysian state of nature in which there are no GM crops, only sustainable energy use, science is caged and communities are self-sustaining, trading as little as possible with the outside world. Prince Charles and the Greens make common purpose.This seeps into how we feel about social experimentation generally. New ways of teaching, of parenting, of living with other races are frowned on. We must stick to natural rules. David Goodhart, a liberal intellectual, wins an astonishing number of column inches arguing that as we prefer to associate with our own, there is a necessary and inevitable trade-off between solidarity and diversity.When the Left criticises Blair and New Labour for their lack of radicalism and their caution, it rarely places the criticism in this wider context. A progressive party can't flourish in an environment where the currents feeding progressivism are in retreat. The character of politics has a symbiotic relationship with the society of which it is part. If the cultural, intellectual and social forces that underpin progressive politics are themselves challenged, even the most inspired political leadership will only change matters at the margin. It's a fair complaint that New Labour attempts that only fitfully, but let's put the complaint into context.Blair and Brown are more conscious of this missing component of the progressive project than most commentators concede and Brown, particularly, thinks deeply about how to resurrect some confidence in the idea of progress. Which is why his breakfast meeting last week with 30 leaders of Britain's scientific community was of more importance than just to British science. Brown, and Blair for that matter, not only see British scientists as a core part of the New Labour progressive coalition, they see a revival of science and recovery of its self-belief as a handmaiden for advancing the economy and the idea of progress.Brown committed to a 10-year build up of investment in Britain's science infrastructure which will be the centrepiece of this summer's comprehensive spending review. He wants the share of GDP devoted to scientific research to rise towards the top of the international league table. He wants more collaboration between universities and business; more scientists and more science taught in schools, reversing the alarming decline in scientific GCSE and A-levels over the last 15 years.Moreover, the Government is prepared to take risks to make researchers feel that Britain is science-friendly; it countenances stem-cell research, wants to agree wider trials with GM food and will have no truck with the anti-vivisection movement. More investment is being accompanied by a cultural commitment to science; here, the Government shows a leadership that eludes it over Europe and the euro or the case for higher taxation.Which is all to the good, but I fear it underestimates the scale of the task. In the nineteenth century and for a good part of the twentieth, science was underpinned by a widespread understanding that it underwrote progress and prosperity alike. The shrinking of Britain's manufacturing base means that the number of sizable science-based companies hardly extends beyond aerospace and pharmaceuticals. Today's prosperity is built on a credit-backed consumer boom and a service-sector economy that push forward independently of the state of science. In the US, some of the most dynamic parts of the country are the new 'ideopolises', where science-based universities spearhead the growth of new industries; apart from Cambridge, there are no British ideopolises, although Manchester has ambitions.But we need not just companies and parts of Britain which we can hold up as exemplars of the prosperity science can bring. We need a wider cultural acceptance that where science is currently taking us - understanding the building blocks on which life is constructed - is not terrifying but exhilarating.While scientific method does work to push back the frontiers of knowledge, it is also true that we need ever more robust mechanisms to discuss its implications and ensure that the benefits are universally shared and ethical risks universally guarded against.Science, paradoxically, has always flowered best when society has a strong public realm which allows it to have confidence that science ultimately can be made to serve us rather than be used against us - the fear of those who want to ban stem-cell research, cloning and GM foods. Today's public realm is shrivelled and under siege; it, too, needs to be shored up. To revive the idea of progress is to revive the public realm that allows us to shape the world, rather than be shaped by it. New Labour is undertaking a proper fight, but it needs to think much bigger if it wants to win it.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Will Hutton .
|
These are fearful times. The fall in the birth rate across the West is testimony to a growing pessimism about the future; the menaces that together seem to make the good life unattainable range from fear that science is running amok to terrorism and climate change. Live for today and don't have children is a rallying cry finding more adherents.The world is not a pleasant place and seems to be getting less pleasant fast. Above all else, we seem powerless to control and shape these forces; they exist as ominous influences that can no longer be contained.In this sense, the very idea of progress is now contested. No contemporary historians would trace British history, Macaulay-like, as an account of how democracy, the rule of law and the extension of British values have steadily increased their influence. We have no Sidney and Beatrice Webb dedicated to the possibility of social improvement. We have no Nye Bevan who can convince us that political action can shape the world.There is no Keynes to guide our economic thinking. There are no inventors or scientists so celebrated that when they die, London's streets would throng with mourners, as they did for Brunel and Stephenson in the nineteenth century. Instead, there is a rise in credulity accompanied by an insistence that we must not meddle with natural verities. Religious fundamentalism, in the Christian and Islamic worlds alike, insists that religious texts should be interpreted literally. Christian creationists, arguing that God and not natural selection created the world, find a market as ready for their views as their counterparts in Islam.There is a small industry attacking the very idea of scientific method; for it, there is no objective material reality and the search to discover, explain and master the natural world has reached the ethical and moral limits. From now on, warn writers such as Francis Fukuyama, science is taking us into territory where it sets up men as gods able to manipulate the very marrow of humanity.This veneration of nature and suspicion of human agency makes conservatives of Right and Left alike. Political activism, even when allegedly radical, is imbued with a conservative streak. What is held out as the desirable norm is some Elysian state of nature in which there are no GM crops, only sustainable energy use, science is caged and communities are self-sustaining, trading as little as possible with the outside world. Prince Charles and the Greens make common purpose.This seeps into how we feel about social experimentation generally. New ways of teaching, of parenting, of living with other races are frowned on. We must stick to natural rules. David Goodhart, a liberal intellectual, wins an astonishing number of column inches arguing that as we prefer to associate with our own, there is a necessary and inevitable trade-off between solidarity and diversity.When the Left criticises Blair and New Labour for their lack of radicalism and their caution, it rarely places the criticism in this wider context. A progressive party can't flourish in an environment where the currents feeding progressivism are in retreat. The character of politics has a symbiotic relationship with the society of which it is part. If the cultural, intellectual and social forces that underpin progressive politics are themselves challenged, even the most inspired political leadership will only change matters at the margin. It's a fair complaint that New Labour attempts that only fitfully, but let's put the complaint into context.Blair and Brown are more conscious of this missing component of the progressive project than most commentators concede and Brown, particularly, thinks deeply about how to resurrect some confidence in the idea of progress. Which is why his breakfast meeting last week with 30 leaders of Britain's scientific community was of more importance than just to British science. Brown, and Blair for that matter, not only see British scientists as a core part of the New Labour progressive coalition, they see a revival of science and recovery of its self-belief as a handmaiden for advancing the economy and the idea of progress.Brown committed to a 10-year build up of investment in Britain's science infrastructure which will be the centrepiece of this summer's comprehensive spending review. He wants the share of GDP devoted to scientific research to rise towards the top of the international league table. He wants more collaboration between universities and business; more scientists and more science taught in schools, reversing the alarming decline in scientific GCSE and A-levels over the last 15 years.Moreover, the Government is prepared to take risks to make researchers feel that Britain is science-friendly; it countenances stem-cell research, wants to agree wider trials with GM food and will have no truck with the anti-vivisection movement. More investment is being accompanied by a cultural commitment to science; here, the Government shows a leadership that eludes it over Europe and the euro or the case for higher taxation.Which is all to the good, but I fear it underestimates the scale of the task. In the nineteenth century and for a good part of the twentieth, science was underpinned by a widespread understanding that it underwrote progress and prosperity alike. The shrinking of Britain's manufacturing base means that the number of sizable science-based companies hardly extends beyond aerospace and pharmaceuticals. Today's prosperity is built on a credit-backed consumer boom and a service-sector economy that push forward independently of the state of science. In the US, some of the most dynamic parts of the country are the new 'ideopolises', where science-based universities spearhead the growth of new industries; apart from Cambridge, there are no British ideopolises, although Manchester has ambitions.But we need not just companies and parts of Britain which we can hold up as exemplars of the prosperity science can bring. We need a wider cultural acceptance that where science is currently taking us - understanding the building blocks on which life is constructed - is not terrifying but exhilarating.While scientific method does work to push back the frontiers of knowledge, it is also true that we need ever more robust mechanisms to discuss its implications and ensure that the benefits are universally shared and ethical risks universally guarded against.Science, paradoxically, has always flowered best when society has a strong public realm which allows it to have confidence that science ultimately can be made to serve us rather than be used against us - the fear of those who want to ban stem-cell research, cloning and GM foods. Today's public realm is shrivelled and under siege; it, too, needs to be shored up. To revive the idea of progress is to revive the public realm that allows us to shape the world, rather than be shaped by it. New Labour is undertaking a proper fight, but it needs to think much bigger if it wants to win it.
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11willhutton
| 2UK
|
Dewsbury, New Southgate, Small Heath, Stockwell and, on Friday, the most telling pictures of all - the two suspected bombers appearing on the terrace of their Peabody Estate flat in west London. It's been a catalogue of familiar terrace and semi-detached houses intermingled with housing estate flats that seem indistinguishable, whether in London, Birmingham or Yorkshire; a snapshot of Britain's not-so-glorious underbelly but a vivid visual reminder that the men who have murdered us, or tried to, were either born and bred in Britain or made their homes here.The ties that bind and the minimal shared assumptions that might fend off savage hatred have not operated; these are men so disaffected with Britishness that they have sought identity and meaning in the doctrines of jihad, martyrdom and the casting of their fellow citizens as valueless infidel who can be murdered without conscience. Nor are they alone. They represent a vital sub-culture that may be a minority but is growing and casts long shadows among the generality of British Muslims. In New Southgate we watched a young British Muslim outside the ninth floor flat of a suspected bomber express his sympathy with the ideas of martyrdom.It's a disconnect that is more general; when the reportedly rational leader of Birmingham's Central Mosque says that he does not trust the word of the police and government about the Islamic identity of the bombers, it is symbolic of what has happened. Britain, the writ of Britishness and what seems obvious to the rest of us leaves a critical mass of British Muslims cold; they refuse to believe what is palpably true. Whatever mix of responses you think are needed to lift the threat of the bombs - changing British foreign policy or sharper intelligence - part of the story will have to be persuading young British Muslims that Britishness is an idea worth a minimal degree of loyalty that inhibits mass murder. The question is whether it's up to such a task. Do the British even have a shared conception of what our identity is?This is a debate where the markers are already being put down by the ascendant right, and the undertones are ugly. Britain is in this vulnerable position, runs the argument, because it has been too liberal across the board - from allowing asylum seekers from Somalia and Eritrea to carelessness about non-English speaking imams spreading jihad in British mosques. On that bridgehead of shared concern, it's not hard to take the conservative argument further; Britain is too polyglot, access to its generous welfare state is too easy and there's been too much concern for tolerance, observance of human rights and concern for the underdog. And this speaks to a so far unspoken but just below the surface sentiment; Enoch Powell's warning that the streets would one day run with blood has been proved right. Britishness must be recast around conservative values and the same mistake not made again.This is all too combustible tinder, but one of the paradoxical saving graces of Britishness is that it is too vague an idea to be deployed in such a way. Whether Norman Davies documenting how Britain has been constructed from successive waves of immigration in The Isles, or historian Linda Colley describing how Britain was essentially an eighteenth century political artefact as the result of the union of England, Wales and Scotland in Britons, both unite to show how the idea of Britain is not a faith like the idea of, say, France, or America - or nationalistic like the idea of China or Russia.It's a political jurisdiction that has common practical mores while allowing our emotional identity to be rooted in one of the tribes from which the country has been constituted over time - English, Welsh, Scottish, Jews - and for immigrants, India, Nigeria or Barbados.Even if we want to make Britishness more assertive and conservative or even to harden it into a citizenship test, it won't wash. One of the reasons Euroscepticism is so difficult to counter in Britain is that beyond the shared political symbols of British sovereignty there's not much more that's common to the story - which is why sovereignty counts so much.You can tell a story of Britain that is about Gray's Elegy, the James I Bible, D-Day and Elgar; or you can tell a story of Britain about the Levellers, Methodists, Monty Python and Willam Wallace. The idea encompasses multiple traditions, stories, tribes and eccentricities; belonging means little more than speaking the language, recognising the complexities and achievements while acknowledging the minimal rules that flow from the political arrangements. The tolerance is in the DNA.The problem for Pakistanis, Eritreans and Somalians is that the tribe to which they emotionally belong within the British accommodation does not command anything like the same loyalty as being British English, British Indian or even British Jamaican. Being British and English, or British and Indian works; being British Pakistani or Eritrean does not. They come from broken-backed countries that have no proud history, culture or identity - Pakistan, for example, is only 58 years old: the identity that makes more proud sense is Islam. And in one jump young British Muslim Somalians, Eritreans and Pakistanis are suddenly in the vortex of a culture and religion profoundly wounded by globalisation, Western foreign policy and its own failure to match the rise of Christendom - with all its capacity to transmute a doctrine of peace into a doctrine of sexism, murder and anti-semitism.Nobody can be sure how it will end, but trying to concoct a new urgent conservative British faith as part of a concerted effort to persuade young British Muslims of the value of their adopted country will not be part of any solution - however much some may wish it. Britishness does not admit of such manipulation, which is why millions of British are so loyal to the idea even while not being overtly loud about it. What will happen, I suspect, is that the British will carry on with their understated Britishness while keeping the invitation open - even to jihadist-inclined British Muslims whose parents came from Eritrea, Somalia and Pakistan - to join the club because in the end, however sorely tempted we are, the invitation can't be withdrawn.It's not how British identity is emotionally constituted. And enough British Muslims will find the same value in the co-existing identities to resist the temptations of jihad, and to marginalize the wannabe murderers in their midst. Indeed, it may be in Britain that radical Islam meets its match; and where Islam starts to convert to modernity. Long odds, maybe - but not impossible.
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Will Hutton .
|
Dewsbury, New Southgate, Small Heath, Stockwell and, on Friday, the most telling pictures of all - the two suspected bombers appearing on the terrace of their Peabody Estate flat in west London. It's been a catalogue of familiar terrace and semi-detached houses intermingled with housing estate flats that seem indistinguishable, whether in London, Birmingham or Yorkshire; a snapshot of Britain's not-so-glorious underbelly but a vivid visual reminder that the men who have murdered us, or tried to, were either born and bred in Britain or made their homes here.The ties that bind and the minimal shared assumptions that might fend off savage hatred have not operated; these are men so disaffected with Britishness that they have sought identity and meaning in the doctrines of jihad, martyrdom and the casting of their fellow citizens as valueless infidel who can be murdered without conscience. Nor are they alone. They represent a vital sub-culture that may be a minority but is growing and casts long shadows among the generality of British Muslims. In New Southgate we watched a young British Muslim outside the ninth floor flat of a suspected bomber express his sympathy with the ideas of martyrdom.It's a disconnect that is more general; when the reportedly rational leader of Birmingham's Central Mosque says that he does not trust the word of the police and government about the Islamic identity of the bombers, it is symbolic of what has happened. Britain, the writ of Britishness and what seems obvious to the rest of us leaves a critical mass of British Muslims cold; they refuse to believe what is palpably true. Whatever mix of responses you think are needed to lift the threat of the bombs - changing British foreign policy or sharper intelligence - part of the story will have to be persuading young British Muslims that Britishness is an idea worth a minimal degree of loyalty that inhibits mass murder. The question is whether it's up to such a task. Do the British even have a shared conception of what our identity is?This is a debate where the markers are already being put down by the ascendant right, and the undertones are ugly. Britain is in this vulnerable position, runs the argument, because it has been too liberal across the board - from allowing asylum seekers from Somalia and Eritrea to carelessness about non-English speaking imams spreading jihad in British mosques. On that bridgehead of shared concern, it's not hard to take the conservative argument further; Britain is too polyglot, access to its generous welfare state is too easy and there's been too much concern for tolerance, observance of human rights and concern for the underdog. And this speaks to a so far unspoken but just below the surface sentiment; Enoch Powell's warning that the streets would one day run with blood has been proved right. Britishness must be recast around conservative values and the same mistake not made again.This is all too combustible tinder, but one of the paradoxical saving graces of Britishness is that it is too vague an idea to be deployed in such a way. Whether Norman Davies documenting how Britain has been constructed from successive waves of immigration in The Isles, or historian Linda Colley describing how Britain was essentially an eighteenth century political artefact as the result of the union of England, Wales and Scotland in Britons, both unite to show how the idea of Britain is not a faith like the idea of, say, France, or America - or nationalistic like the idea of China or Russia.It's a political jurisdiction that has common practical mores while allowing our emotional identity to be rooted in one of the tribes from which the country has been constituted over time - English, Welsh, Scottish, Jews - and for immigrants, India, Nigeria or Barbados.Even if we want to make Britishness more assertive and conservative or even to harden it into a citizenship test, it won't wash. One of the reasons Euroscepticism is so difficult to counter in Britain is that beyond the shared political symbols of British sovereignty there's not much more that's common to the story - which is why sovereignty counts so much.You can tell a story of Britain that is about Gray's Elegy, the James I Bible, D-Day and Elgar; or you can tell a story of Britain about the Levellers, Methodists, Monty Python and Willam Wallace. The idea encompasses multiple traditions, stories, tribes and eccentricities; belonging means little more than speaking the language, recognising the complexities and achievements while acknowledging the minimal rules that flow from the political arrangements. The tolerance is in the DNA.The problem for Pakistanis, Eritreans and Somalians is that the tribe to which they emotionally belong within the British accommodation does not command anything like the same loyalty as being British English, British Indian or even British Jamaican. Being British and English, or British and Indian works; being British Pakistani or Eritrean does not. They come from broken-backed countries that have no proud history, culture or identity - Pakistan, for example, is only 58 years old: the identity that makes more proud sense is Islam. And in one jump young British Muslim Somalians, Eritreans and Pakistanis are suddenly in the vortex of a culture and religion profoundly wounded by globalisation, Western foreign policy and its own failure to match the rise of Christendom - with all its capacity to transmute a doctrine of peace into a doctrine of sexism, murder and anti-semitism.Nobody can be sure how it will end, but trying to concoct a new urgent conservative British faith as part of a concerted effort to persuade young British Muslims of the value of their adopted country will not be part of any solution - however much some may wish it. Britishness does not admit of such manipulation, which is why millions of British are so loyal to the idea even while not being overtly loud about it. What will happen, I suspect, is that the British will carry on with their understated Britishness while keeping the invitation open - even to jihadist-inclined British Muslims whose parents came from Eritrea, Somalia and Pakistan - to join the club because in the end, however sorely tempted we are, the invitation can't be withdrawn.It's not how British identity is emotionally constituted. And enough British Muslims will find the same value in the co-existing identities to resist the temptations of jihad, and to marginalize the wannabe murderers in their midst. Indeed, it may be in Britain that radical Islam meets its match; and where Islam starts to convert to modernity. Long odds, maybe - but not impossible.
|
11willhutton
| 2UK
|
Spain has been as obsessed as we would have been - and as Denmark, Holland and Norway recently were. The security is suffocating; the speculation about the bride's dress endless; the interest overwhelming. Yesterday Crown Prince Felipe, scion of the Bourbons and heir to the Spanish throne, drove through the grid-locked streets of Madrid with his new ex-TV presenter wife in an open-topped but bullet proofed Rolls Royce. Glamorous young royals from Europe's 10 monarchies added to the fiesta. Royalty, banned by Franco for 40 years, could hardly be more secure. If the guests felt they were on a royal wedding treadmill, they were careful not to show it; European monarchy has never had such sustained good PR, and European royals who once expected to go the way of the Russian Romanovs are blinking at their revival - and capitalising on every opportunity to drive home their new popularity. Ten days ago Denmark's Crown Prince Frederick tied the knot with a Tasmanian lawyer, Mary Donaldson, whom the Danish media have turned into a Danish Princess Diana. Her dress, a dazzling combination of modernity and the medieval (according to Hello! magazine), made great pictures - but then so did the galaxy of gowns, diamonds and rubies at the wedding and parties beforehand. In a celebrity crazed culture, nobody does it better than European royalty Europe's young royals are emerging as media superstars. Holland's Prince William-Alexander's marriage to Maxima Zorreguita a couple of year's back was another national extravaganza where Europe's monarchies again gathered to luxuriate in their newfound popularity. Sweden, Belgium, Norway and Greece all boast charismatic young princes and princesses as well. Nor is the House of Windsor indifferent to what is happening. All Europe's royal families, for example, were represented at the Queen's Jubilee, and no European royal marriage is complete without a British representative; if the Queen enjoys an approval rating of 70 per cent, that is nothing beside her European cousins (she is directly related to most of them) whose approval ratings stand between 80 and 90 per cent. The Queen understands better than her fiercely euro-sceptic consort - and Britain's euro-sceptic press - that Princes William and Harry will do well to associate themselves with rising pro-royalty sentiment in Europe. European republicanism is waning, an eccentric creed out of tune with the popular mood. At one level, European royalty is doing no more than surfing the cult of celebrity; Posh and Becks may get a lot of coverage in Madrid, but Felipe and Letizia are the real thing - and a lot less transient. They are a soap that will run and run, and worth a great deal of media investment. But there is a curious paradox about royalty in an era of democracy; it and its legitimacy only exist because the public allow them to - and if the public is ready to allow monarchy a revered place in the scheme of things, then democratic culture becomes a means of legitimising this least democratic institution of them all. Nobody is more acutely aware of this paradox than European royalty; it seemed obvious after the war that the cull of monarchs that had happened under fascism and communism would continue. Democracies wouldn't murder their monarchial heads of state, but the consensus was that they would certainly do away with these representatives of aristocratic privilege who had won their status through birth rather than achievement or electoral mandate. The only escape from extinction was for royalty to transform itself into an impartial representative of all the nation - an aim the Queen embraced in her famous speech in South Africa in 1947. There was still the problem that this representation would be performed by somebody born to it rather than elected, but what monarchy could offer was lifelong continuity and a personal embodiment of the national public interest. The Queen has managed to pull off the feat she set herself nearly 60 years ago; but so in their different ways have the other European monarchies. Belgium's King Albert and Holland's Queen Beatrix have a direct constitutional role brokering governing coalitions; Sweden's King Carl Gustav and Denmark's Queen Margrethe have both spoken out against anti-immigrant nationalism, Carl Gustav insisting that monarchy can be 'an impartial and unifying symbol'; and Spain's King Juan Carlos famously undercut Spain's post-Franco military revolt and guaranteed parliamentary democracy. Europe's monarchs have made the transition from quintessential expressions of privilege to expressions of the public interest. But that alone would not have been enough to secure their new favour. Two other deep currents are helping monarchy. The first is European integration. The further development of the European Union (even in Britain where polls report public recognition that we will one day be members of the euro) is understood to be a necessity, but is not greatly loved. European processes may be rational and even democratic, but Queen Beatrix represents the House of Orange that founded the Dutch Republic and King Juan Carlos the Bourbons who have been Spain's monarchs for nearly as long. They are embedded in national cultures in a way that Brussels institutions can never be. As currencies are lost, national parliaments weakened and armies cut back, monarchs remain symbols of national unity. The young European royals wisely do not complain about the European constitution; it is their ally rather than a threat. And there is a more ominous trend. We are so accustomed to the presumption that democracy works that we have become blinded to the re-emergence of pre-democratic values along with pre-democratic distribution of wealth. The European royals disporting themselves in Madrid this weekend may adopt a public posture of promoting the public interest, but they are the inheritors of staggering private wealth and privilege solely by virtue of their birth - and to which European society no longer objects. Indeed European royalty helps legitimise the new inequality by being so ready to marry ordinary professionals - Letizia Ortiz was a TV presenter, Mary Donaldson a lawyer and Maxima Zorreguieta an economist - and lift them into the celebrity network. Weddings of Crown Princes to commoners have become a bit like Oscar celebrations, spectacles which are for the people's benefit, but which by the bye legitimise fabulous inequality of both wealth and opportunity. But here is the rub. Whatever your reactions, this is an uniquely European phenomenon understandable only in European terms. European royalty stands and falls together. It was at risk collectively in the first half of the last century; it is on the rise collectively in the first half of this. It is inescapably part of the European landscape. Conservatives like to portray Britain as closer to the US than Europe, part of a dynamic 'Anglo-sphere'. They misdescribe reality. Britain and its monarchy are as European as a jewelled crown, an open-topped Rolls-Royce and popular joy at a royal marriage.
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Will Hutton .
|
Spain has been as obsessed as we would have been - and as Denmark, Holland and Norway recently were. The security is suffocating; the speculation about the bride's dress endless; the interest overwhelming. Yesterday Crown Prince Felipe, scion of the Bourbons and heir to the Spanish throne, drove through the grid-locked streets of Madrid with his new ex-TV presenter wife in an open-topped but bullet proofed Rolls Royce. Glamorous young royals from Europe's 10 monarchies added to the fiesta. Royalty, banned by Franco for 40 years, could hardly be more secure. If the guests felt they were on a royal wedding treadmill, they were careful not to show it; European monarchy has never had such sustained good PR, and European royals who once expected to go the way of the Russian Romanovs are blinking at their revival - and capitalising on every opportunity to drive home their new popularity. Ten days ago Denmark's Crown Prince Frederick tied the knot with a Tasmanian lawyer, Mary Donaldson, whom the Danish media have turned into a Danish Princess Diana. Her dress, a dazzling combination of modernity and the medieval (according to Hello! magazine), made great pictures - but then so did the galaxy of gowns, diamonds and rubies at the wedding and parties beforehand. In a celebrity crazed culture, nobody does it better than European royalty Europe's young royals are emerging as media superstars. Holland's Prince William-Alexander's marriage to Maxima Zorreguita a couple of year's back was another national extravaganza where Europe's monarchies again gathered to luxuriate in their newfound popularity. Sweden, Belgium, Norway and Greece all boast charismatic young princes and princesses as well. Nor is the House of Windsor indifferent to what is happening. All Europe's royal families, for example, were represented at the Queen's Jubilee, and no European royal marriage is complete without a British representative; if the Queen enjoys an approval rating of 70 per cent, that is nothing beside her European cousins (she is directly related to most of them) whose approval ratings stand between 80 and 90 per cent. The Queen understands better than her fiercely euro-sceptic consort - and Britain's euro-sceptic press - that Princes William and Harry will do well to associate themselves with rising pro-royalty sentiment in Europe. European republicanism is waning, an eccentric creed out of tune with the popular mood. At one level, European royalty is doing no more than surfing the cult of celebrity; Posh and Becks may get a lot of coverage in Madrid, but Felipe and Letizia are the real thing - and a lot less transient. They are a soap that will run and run, and worth a great deal of media investment. But there is a curious paradox about royalty in an era of democracy; it and its legitimacy only exist because the public allow them to - and if the public is ready to allow monarchy a revered place in the scheme of things, then democratic culture becomes a means of legitimising this least democratic institution of them all. Nobody is more acutely aware of this paradox than European royalty; it seemed obvious after the war that the cull of monarchs that had happened under fascism and communism would continue. Democracies wouldn't murder their monarchial heads of state, but the consensus was that they would certainly do away with these representatives of aristocratic privilege who had won their status through birth rather than achievement or electoral mandate. The only escape from extinction was for royalty to transform itself into an impartial representative of all the nation - an aim the Queen embraced in her famous speech in South Africa in 1947. There was still the problem that this representation would be performed by somebody born to it rather than elected, but what monarchy could offer was lifelong continuity and a personal embodiment of the national public interest. The Queen has managed to pull off the feat she set herself nearly 60 years ago; but so in their different ways have the other European monarchies. Belgium's King Albert and Holland's Queen Beatrix have a direct constitutional role brokering governing coalitions; Sweden's King Carl Gustav and Denmark's Queen Margrethe have both spoken out against anti-immigrant nationalism, Carl Gustav insisting that monarchy can be 'an impartial and unifying symbol'; and Spain's King Juan Carlos famously undercut Spain's post-Franco military revolt and guaranteed parliamentary democracy. Europe's monarchs have made the transition from quintessential expressions of privilege to expressions of the public interest. But that alone would not have been enough to secure their new favour. Two other deep currents are helping monarchy. The first is European integration. The further development of the European Union (even in Britain where polls report public recognition that we will one day be members of the euro) is understood to be a necessity, but is not greatly loved. European processes may be rational and even democratic, but Queen Beatrix represents the House of Orange that founded the Dutch Republic and King Juan Carlos the Bourbons who have been Spain's monarchs for nearly as long. They are embedded in national cultures in a way that Brussels institutions can never be. As currencies are lost, national parliaments weakened and armies cut back, monarchs remain symbols of national unity. The young European royals wisely do not complain about the European constitution; it is their ally rather than a threat. And there is a more ominous trend. We are so accustomed to the presumption that democracy works that we have become blinded to the re-emergence of pre-democratic values along with pre-democratic distribution of wealth. The European royals disporting themselves in Madrid this weekend may adopt a public posture of promoting the public interest, but they are the inheritors of staggering private wealth and privilege solely by virtue of their birth - and to which European society no longer objects. Indeed European royalty helps legitimise the new inequality by being so ready to marry ordinary professionals - Letizia Ortiz was a TV presenter, Mary Donaldson a lawyer and Maxima Zorreguieta an economist - and lift them into the celebrity network. Weddings of Crown Princes to commoners have become a bit like Oscar celebrations, spectacles which are for the people's benefit, but which by the bye legitimise fabulous inequality of both wealth and opportunity. But here is the rub. Whatever your reactions, this is an uniquely European phenomenon understandable only in European terms. European royalty stands and falls together. It was at risk collectively in the first half of the last century; it is on the rise collectively in the first half of this. It is inescapably part of the European landscape. Conservatives like to portray Britain as closer to the US than Europe, part of a dynamic 'Anglo-sphere'. They misdescribe reality. Britain and its monarchy are as European as a jewelled crown, an open-topped Rolls-Royce and popular joy at a royal marriage.
|
8pollytoynbee
| 2UK
|
In some quarters a faintly blank look of surprise greets news of the Guardian's republican stand. Why bother? Aren't there more pressing matters? Are there no poor children, disaster schools, desperate estates, over-crowded prisons?As the Queen trots down the Mall today in her gilded coach, the speech in her golden reticule will no doubt touch upon all these things. It may be mildly comic when the world's richest woman intones her government's concern over the plight of her less fortunate subjects. But so what? Is it really worth investing in the huge turmoil of trying to remove the monarchy when so much else presses? Yes, it is well worth it. She must be Elizabeth the Last. The tyranny of the monarchy lies less in its temporal than its spiritual power: it tyrannises the imagination. Its spirit permeates political thinking, poisons the appetite for reform and deep dyes the blood of Britain with fantasies of who and what we are. Unconquered, never, never slaves, we are all subject to Britannia the monarch. As our glorious heritage parades again today through London to open parliament, Household Cavalry glinting in the sun, all this empty pageantry of wigs and ermine, britches and sticks promises a better yesterday. It breathes the glory of Good Queen Bess and Bluff King Hal, the Empress of India still ruling a rosy pink globe, our island story on display. Do the marching bands bring a tear to the eye? This is what we do so well! These bare ruined choirs signify nothing, I used to think - picturesque, harmless, good for tourism. But the trappings are not trivial. They trap us in an infantile fairyland of imaginary heritage. Bogus history fuels present national delusion. Look no further than here for the reason why this country breeds small-minded bigotry, Eurosceptic xenophobia, union flag-painted brutes rampaging at foreign football matches. Why is this country so profoundly conservative, government pollsters ask? Somewhere the answer lies wrapped in the ermine. It is why this country is a recalcitrant bad neighbour in Europe, why it struts and swaggers brazenly despite an economy, a productivity and a social fabric so profoundly inferior to theirs. The monarchy explains why this country fell behind the rest of Europe after the war, never modernised, never leapt ahead as Germany rose from the ashes. Instead victory enshrined the bad old ways, without change or introspection. The spirit of unconquered monarchy ossified a pre-war class hatred that stopped modern industrial cooperation for the first 30 post-war years. Complacent trust in tradition let others get ahead while we declined. Modernisation was not in our bones in those key years. The rest of Europe started again, those minor countries with monarchies beginning modern post-war contracts between people and crown. Here, nothing changed. A one-term 1945 Labour government left landmarks such as the National Health Service, but no fundamental break with the past. Now Britain's 21st century politics are still held back by empty ideas of tradition. Europe - whatever its future construction and membership - is our only destiny and yet British politicians are unable to play a full part, to engage or even to speak the truth about it to a people besotted with the magic word "sovereignty". Stymied in Europe by nothing but our own bizarre Ruritanian obsessions, things can't go on like this. Year by year it is crippling us. That word sovereignty has to be wrestled to the ground, exposed, redefined and laid to rest with a people that feels it has lost touch with power. It is their sense of powerlessness that makes them misunderstand Europe and panic at "losing" what they have too little of already. Many regard the monarchy as just the glacé cherry atop the worm-eaten constitution. Labour has been burrowing away at its foundations, removing props and the whole edifice is tottering. No doubt more props can be found for particular glitches - the West Lothian question, the English parliament question, the House of Lords - but no amount of sticking plaster will patch together those fundamental and well justified fears that power is slipping from the people. Globalisation and worse - the failure of global governance to solve global crises in climate change or trade deals - has inflamed this sense of helplessness. Local government is a vacant lot, Westminster is a one-party state punctuated only by raucous prime minister's questions that shame rational debate. The democratic deficit creates a dangerous cynicism about all politics. Ironically, the more people disengage from politics, the harder it becomes to persuade them that the constitution matters. Even at the height of debate about a Scottish parliament, very few Scots' pulses raced: Mori found barely 10% put it near the top of their list of concerns. Though if threatened now with losing its parliament, the Scots would rebel, Brave Heart rise from his grave. Powerlessness breeds apathy, but real power excites. So a new constitution for Britain may not burn on all lips in the bus queues. It is a "chattering classes" question for now - "Guardian stuff" nature's conservatives will say. But once offered a fairer distribution of power, people will seize it. For the next manifesto Labour should promise a great national constitutional convention out of which to forge something better than this. Put everything into the melting pot, all sources of power, toss in the monarchy, Europe, the regions and above all proportional representation: public interest will ignite. Commission a fine preamble to the first British constitution and begin again. Already Labour's manifesto will promise a new House of Lords and a referendum on PR. Both these raise basic questions. Both require wide and loud debate, opening everything wide. The people are there already, if asked. A Rowntree/ICM poll in October found 59% wanting PR for Westminster, even more for local government. First-past-the-post has been well discredited in the US. In Britain at the last election the only views that mattered were 168,000 voters in key marginals - 0.5% of those who voted. The rest might just as well never bother - and many didn't. Many disdain the strictly limited party choice on offer. They dislike having candidates foisted on them. They mistrust the vast power in the hands of a prime minister only a minority has voted for. That dangerous disaffection will erupt more often, as over the fuel protests. People who feel denied a voice will become more febrile when they think a government not altogether legitimate - as no doubt George W Bush will discover. Voting systems need to be aired as part of a whole new constitutional settlement. This is not an abstract issue. Britain now urgently needs an electorate confident enough in its own power to choose to trade some of it with Europe, to multiply its long-term global power. Ironically, the slipping legitimacy of the British system has given us a prime minister with more absolute power than any since the war, yet unable to deliver on his two great projects - Europe and PR. Our essentially two-party system offers no way to build broad based cross-party consent for difficult fundamental change. Lonely as a medieval monarch surrounded by sycophants, British prime ministers become neurotic, prone to cowardice punctuated by bursts of irrational policy-making: the constitution that brought us the poll tax now brings us privatisation of the London tube. Fine, but leave the Queen out of it, says the palace. However the monarchy is at the very heart of all this. It is not the ornamental cherry but the rotten core of Britain's decrepit democracy. A good constitution does not guarantee a good country - America's fine words are not matched by good governance. But without a new constitution Britain will be unable to shed the baggage of the ages that hold us back and keep us still the barbarian outpost of Europe. <B>Related stories - news</B><BR> <BR> <B>Related stories - comment</B><BR><BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> <B>Related stories - background</B><BR>
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Polly Toynbee .
|
In some quarters a faintly blank look of surprise greets news of the Guardian's republican stand. Why bother? Aren't there more pressing matters? Are there no poor children, disaster schools, desperate estates, over-crowded prisons?As the Queen trots down the Mall today in her gilded coach, the speech in her golden reticule will no doubt touch upon all these things. It may be mildly comic when the world's richest woman intones her government's concern over the plight of her less fortunate subjects. But so what? Is it really worth investing in the huge turmoil of trying to remove the monarchy when so much else presses? Yes, it is well worth it. She must be Elizabeth the Last. The tyranny of the monarchy lies less in its temporal than its spiritual power: it tyrannises the imagination. Its spirit permeates political thinking, poisons the appetite for reform and deep dyes the blood of Britain with fantasies of who and what we are. Unconquered, never, never slaves, we are all subject to Britannia the monarch. As our glorious heritage parades again today through London to open parliament, Household Cavalry glinting in the sun, all this empty pageantry of wigs and ermine, britches and sticks promises a better yesterday. It breathes the glory of Good Queen Bess and Bluff King Hal, the Empress of India still ruling a rosy pink globe, our island story on display. Do the marching bands bring a tear to the eye? This is what we do so well! These bare ruined choirs signify nothing, I used to think - picturesque, harmless, good for tourism. But the trappings are not trivial. They trap us in an infantile fairyland of imaginary heritage. Bogus history fuels present national delusion. Look no further than here for the reason why this country breeds small-minded bigotry, Eurosceptic xenophobia, union flag-painted brutes rampaging at foreign football matches. Why is this country so profoundly conservative, government pollsters ask? Somewhere the answer lies wrapped in the ermine. It is why this country is a recalcitrant bad neighbour in Europe, why it struts and swaggers brazenly despite an economy, a productivity and a social fabric so profoundly inferior to theirs. The monarchy explains why this country fell behind the rest of Europe after the war, never modernised, never leapt ahead as Germany rose from the ashes. Instead victory enshrined the bad old ways, without change or introspection. The spirit of unconquered monarchy ossified a pre-war class hatred that stopped modern industrial cooperation for the first 30 post-war years. Complacent trust in tradition let others get ahead while we declined. Modernisation was not in our bones in those key years. The rest of Europe started again, those minor countries with monarchies beginning modern post-war contracts between people and crown. Here, nothing changed. A one-term 1945 Labour government left landmarks such as the National Health Service, but no fundamental break with the past. Now Britain's 21st century politics are still held back by empty ideas of tradition. Europe - whatever its future construction and membership - is our only destiny and yet British politicians are unable to play a full part, to engage or even to speak the truth about it to a people besotted with the magic word "sovereignty". Stymied in Europe by nothing but our own bizarre Ruritanian obsessions, things can't go on like this. Year by year it is crippling us. That word sovereignty has to be wrestled to the ground, exposed, redefined and laid to rest with a people that feels it has lost touch with power. It is their sense of powerlessness that makes them misunderstand Europe and panic at "losing" what they have too little of already. Many regard the monarchy as just the glacé cherry atop the worm-eaten constitution. Labour has been burrowing away at its foundations, removing props and the whole edifice is tottering. No doubt more props can be found for particular glitches - the West Lothian question, the English parliament question, the House of Lords - but no amount of sticking plaster will patch together those fundamental and well justified fears that power is slipping from the people. Globalisation and worse - the failure of global governance to solve global crises in climate change or trade deals - has inflamed this sense of helplessness. Local government is a vacant lot, Westminster is a one-party state punctuated only by raucous prime minister's questions that shame rational debate. The democratic deficit creates a dangerous cynicism about all politics. Ironically, the more people disengage from politics, the harder it becomes to persuade them that the constitution matters. Even at the height of debate about a Scottish parliament, very few Scots' pulses raced: Mori found barely 10% put it near the top of their list of concerns. Though if threatened now with losing its parliament, the Scots would rebel, Brave Heart rise from his grave. Powerlessness breeds apathy, but real power excites. So a new constitution for Britain may not burn on all lips in the bus queues. It is a "chattering classes" question for now - "Guardian stuff" nature's conservatives will say. But once offered a fairer distribution of power, people will seize it. For the next manifesto Labour should promise a great national constitutional convention out of which to forge something better than this. Put everything into the melting pot, all sources of power, toss in the monarchy, Europe, the regions and above all proportional representation: public interest will ignite. Commission a fine preamble to the first British constitution and begin again. Already Labour's manifesto will promise a new House of Lords and a referendum on PR. Both these raise basic questions. Both require wide and loud debate, opening everything wide. The people are there already, if asked. A Rowntree/ICM poll in October found 59% wanting PR for Westminster, even more for local government. First-past-the-post has been well discredited in the US. In Britain at the last election the only views that mattered were 168,000 voters in key marginals - 0.5% of those who voted. The rest might just as well never bother - and many didn't. Many disdain the strictly limited party choice on offer. They dislike having candidates foisted on them. They mistrust the vast power in the hands of a prime minister only a minority has voted for. That dangerous disaffection will erupt more often, as over the fuel protests. People who feel denied a voice will become more febrile when they think a government not altogether legitimate - as no doubt George W Bush will discover. Voting systems need to be aired as part of a whole new constitutional settlement. This is not an abstract issue. Britain now urgently needs an electorate confident enough in its own power to choose to trade some of it with Europe, to multiply its long-term global power. Ironically, the slipping legitimacy of the British system has given us a prime minister with more absolute power than any since the war, yet unable to deliver on his two great projects - Europe and PR. Our essentially two-party system offers no way to build broad based cross-party consent for difficult fundamental change. Lonely as a medieval monarch surrounded by sycophants, British prime ministers become neurotic, prone to cowardice punctuated by bursts of irrational policy-making: the constitution that brought us the poll tax now brings us privatisation of the London tube. Fine, but leave the Queen out of it, says the palace. However the monarchy is at the very heart of all this. It is not the ornamental cherry but the rotten core of Britain's decrepit democracy. A good constitution does not guarantee a good country - America's fine words are not matched by good governance. But without a new constitution Britain will be unable to shed the baggage of the ages that hold us back and keep us still the barbarian outpost of Europe. <B>Related stories - news</B><BR> <BR> <B>Related stories - comment</B><BR><BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> <B>Related stories - background</B><BR>
|
8pollytoynbee
| 2UK
|
In the early morning rush-hour yesterday not one other soul stepped off the train at Greenwich North: this architectural wonder of a new tube station was empty. Under a wide, windswept sky the dome's great peninsula on the Thames lies deserted. Richard Rogers's iridescent jellyfish hovers there as dazzling as ever with its jutting yellow masts, a famous London landmark now. Forget its hollow contents - at night with the lights playing on the roof, it was as romantic and magical a sight as any in the capital. From the air foreigners arriving lean over and point to it in delighted recognition. But there are now only two weeks left before the government sells it off at a knock down price to the first company willing to take it off its hands fast. The dome is synonymous with disaster. Misfortune, miscalculation, mediocrity and mistake marked its miserable life so far. What government wouldn't want to be rid of it before an election? Even now, further revelation of the Mandelson/Hinduja connection rips another hole in the dome's reputation: the raising of 1m for the abysmal faith zone returns to haunt the place. The National Audit Office looms, scrutinising everything that was done and not done as lottery millions poured in month after month last year. Robert Bourne's Legacy bid itself is tainted by a fat donation given by him to Labour party funds and a big birthday party thrown for Peter Mandelson. The place is a haunted political graveyard. No wonder they are eager to privatise it quick. But that would be the last and worst mistake of all. After Nomura pulled out of its plan to keep the dome as a public theme park, Robert Bourne and his Legacy consortium seemed to be all that was left. So they got "preferred bidder" status, allowing them to continue negotiating without competition. Their bid is for a "hi-tech business park", which means filling the dome with modern offices. Their spokesman speaks of "major IT companies, professional services, lawyers, accountants and academic institutions" who have expressed an interest in moving in. Some of them will have technology on display for members of the public interested in viewing their products. Otherwise it will be closed, a private space for ever. Once sold off, there will never again be a chance to keep this beautiful building on the one of the most dramatic London sites as a public leisure, exhibition and entertainment centre. It has - at great cost - the best transport links, including the river. The leisure industry, say the economists, is the future. London has no other space like it, desperately short of good concert venues compared with every other European capital. The dismal dinge of Wembley Arena, Earls Court or Olympia can't begin to compete with either the glamour or ease of access of the dome. Pop and mega-classical concertgoers, along with sports fans, have always had to suffer miserable journeys and horrible conditions. Here, already paid for by us, is a place with every comfort and facility. Don't let them sell it off. PY Gerbeau, until last week the dome's ebullient chief executive, thinks it can be saved. He had to stay silent until his contract ended, but by then Legacy had its peculiar "preferred bidder" status: his case may never be put. He has a major financial institution backing him, he has done the sums - and he knows the costings well. The government is full of praise for the way he stemmed the haemorrhage of money from the dome in the final months. But will they listen - or will they hasten to be rid of it to Legacy? PY plans to run it as a visitor attraction in the day with the present contents enhanced: in the evenings it will be a concert and sports venue. He will build a hotel and conference centre and use the land around the dome as a village of themed restaurants and attractions - no housing or offices. He claims he will get 3m visitors a year and make a profit after two years. He will even offer the government more money than Legacy's timid 50m up front and 100m later. But he needs the attractions inside - especially the dazzling body zone sculpture (one of the few things of beauty). However, along with other key zones, the body will be demolished in two weeks. Will the government stay its hand and consider the PY bid? The government is now legally bound not to even speak with other bidders. It says it must consider whether Legacy is the best value. But how is that judged without considering alternatives, and above all the public interest? The public has punted up the cash and must have an interest in keeping this great national asset for their own pleasure: 150m is peanuts compared with the near 1bn already spent, when the dome could be secured as a public amenity for ever. The key to all this is property value. Hotly though they deny it, there is a canny suspicion that the Legacy bid will end up as a property deal. The invaluable land around the dome will be developed, the "hi-tech" park within may never quite materialise, never quite find all these tenants it promises. Unused, the dome would dilapidate until someone someday makes a fortune out of the land it stands on. Like the non-development of Battersea power station up-river, glittering promises from developers are not always all they seem. But even if Legacy does all it says, it still shuts down a public place. Gerbeau's scheme also buys the site, but at least he keeps it as a public space (sale conditions should insist on that in perpetuity). Better still, PY would be quite happy to rent the dome for a fixed number of years which keeps open the option of returning it to public ownership at some future date - if ever an Olympic or World Cup bid required it. The land around is so valuable some could be sold off to create a trust fund for the dome's future. There are much more imaginative ways of saving the dome than selling it off in a hurry to Legacy. By now that will also be the worst political option, the one most likely to dog the government at the election: added to the breath of sleaze will be a grotesque mishandling of a priceless public asset. Politicians always lag behind the public mood, out of fashion, fighting old battles instead of facing future challenges. This government's 90s mindset still wrestles with clause 4 versus privatisation - dead ducks both. Money is poured into Railtrack in exchange for nothing at all, as if afraid that buying back shares in it is socialism incarnate. They are still trying to sell off the tube and air traffic control against passionate public opposition. Now they want to sell off one of the finest heritage sites in London, just as the Tories very nearly sold off half the National Gallery - saved only by Sainsburys. Mrs Thatcher left behind no monuments but despite its accursed first year, Tony Blair might live to be proud of this one yet.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Polly Toynbee .
|
In the early morning rush-hour yesterday not one other soul stepped off the train at Greenwich North: this architectural wonder of a new tube station was empty. Under a wide, windswept sky the dome's great peninsula on the Thames lies deserted. Richard Rogers's iridescent jellyfish hovers there as dazzling as ever with its jutting yellow masts, a famous London landmark now. Forget its hollow contents - at night with the lights playing on the roof, it was as romantic and magical a sight as any in the capital. From the air foreigners arriving lean over and point to it in delighted recognition. But there are now only two weeks left before the government sells it off at a knock down price to the first company willing to take it off its hands fast. The dome is synonymous with disaster. Misfortune, miscalculation, mediocrity and mistake marked its miserable life so far. What government wouldn't want to be rid of it before an election? Even now, further revelation of the Mandelson/Hinduja connection rips another hole in the dome's reputation: the raising of 1m for the abysmal faith zone returns to haunt the place. The National Audit Office looms, scrutinising everything that was done and not done as lottery millions poured in month after month last year. Robert Bourne's Legacy bid itself is tainted by a fat donation given by him to Labour party funds and a big birthday party thrown for Peter Mandelson. The place is a haunted political graveyard. No wonder they are eager to privatise it quick. But that would be the last and worst mistake of all. After Nomura pulled out of its plan to keep the dome as a public theme park, Robert Bourne and his Legacy consortium seemed to be all that was left. So they got "preferred bidder" status, allowing them to continue negotiating without competition. Their bid is for a "hi-tech business park", which means filling the dome with modern offices. Their spokesman speaks of "major IT companies, professional services, lawyers, accountants and academic institutions" who have expressed an interest in moving in. Some of them will have technology on display for members of the public interested in viewing their products. Otherwise it will be closed, a private space for ever. Once sold off, there will never again be a chance to keep this beautiful building on the one of the most dramatic London sites as a public leisure, exhibition and entertainment centre. It has - at great cost - the best transport links, including the river. The leisure industry, say the economists, is the future. London has no other space like it, desperately short of good concert venues compared with every other European capital. The dismal dinge of Wembley Arena, Earls Court or Olympia can't begin to compete with either the glamour or ease of access of the dome. Pop and mega-classical concertgoers, along with sports fans, have always had to suffer miserable journeys and horrible conditions. Here, already paid for by us, is a place with every comfort and facility. Don't let them sell it off. PY Gerbeau, until last week the dome's ebullient chief executive, thinks it can be saved. He had to stay silent until his contract ended, but by then Legacy had its peculiar "preferred bidder" status: his case may never be put. He has a major financial institution backing him, he has done the sums - and he knows the costings well. The government is full of praise for the way he stemmed the haemorrhage of money from the dome in the final months. But will they listen - or will they hasten to be rid of it to Legacy? PY plans to run it as a visitor attraction in the day with the present contents enhanced: in the evenings it will be a concert and sports venue. He will build a hotel and conference centre and use the land around the dome as a village of themed restaurants and attractions - no housing or offices. He claims he will get 3m visitors a year and make a profit after two years. He will even offer the government more money than Legacy's timid 50m up front and 100m later. But he needs the attractions inside - especially the dazzling body zone sculpture (one of the few things of beauty). However, along with other key zones, the body will be demolished in two weeks. Will the government stay its hand and consider the PY bid? The government is now legally bound not to even speak with other bidders. It says it must consider whether Legacy is the best value. But how is that judged without considering alternatives, and above all the public interest? The public has punted up the cash and must have an interest in keeping this great national asset for their own pleasure: 150m is peanuts compared with the near 1bn already spent, when the dome could be secured as a public amenity for ever. The key to all this is property value. Hotly though they deny it, there is a canny suspicion that the Legacy bid will end up as a property deal. The invaluable land around the dome will be developed, the "hi-tech" park within may never quite materialise, never quite find all these tenants it promises. Unused, the dome would dilapidate until someone someday makes a fortune out of the land it stands on. Like the non-development of Battersea power station up-river, glittering promises from developers are not always all they seem. But even if Legacy does all it says, it still shuts down a public place. Gerbeau's scheme also buys the site, but at least he keeps it as a public space (sale conditions should insist on that in perpetuity). Better still, PY would be quite happy to rent the dome for a fixed number of years which keeps open the option of returning it to public ownership at some future date - if ever an Olympic or World Cup bid required it. The land around is so valuable some could be sold off to create a trust fund for the dome's future. There are much more imaginative ways of saving the dome than selling it off in a hurry to Legacy. By now that will also be the worst political option, the one most likely to dog the government at the election: added to the breath of sleaze will be a grotesque mishandling of a priceless public asset. Politicians always lag behind the public mood, out of fashion, fighting old battles instead of facing future challenges. This government's 90s mindset still wrestles with clause 4 versus privatisation - dead ducks both. Money is poured into Railtrack in exchange for nothing at all, as if afraid that buying back shares in it is socialism incarnate. They are still trying to sell off the tube and air traffic control against passionate public opposition. Now they want to sell off one of the finest heritage sites in London, just as the Tories very nearly sold off half the National Gallery - saved only by Sainsburys. Mrs Thatcher left behind no monuments but despite its accursed first year, Tony Blair might live to be proud of this one yet.
|
8pollytoynbee
| 2UK
|
Who started this "them and us" between town and country? The mis-named Countryside Alliance when they marched on London last year and later brayed outside the Labour party conference in Bournemouth.Yesterday the prime minister went to Devon and blew their cover. They are not "the countryside". They are a bunch of Tory hunters and farmers who no more represent most country dwellers than red-braced commodity brokers in City champagne bars represent townies.Blair has the facts on his side and he delivered a barrage of them yesterday: the countryside is doing pretty well. There is a farming crisis, there is real rural poverty (though proportionately less) but life for most people in the country is better than in towns. They are healthier, happier, safer, better educated and richer. Not surprisingly townies tell pollsters they wish they lived there too. The traditional left likes to stress the two nations of the north/south divide while the right tries to capitalise on a rural/urban split, both playing to their own electoral heartlands. William Hague was stoking up that old anti-townie sentiment in his speech to the NFU this week: "The rural way of life is under threat from urban values, Islington pressure groups and a metropolitan elite who know nothing about the countryside."Tony Blair is attempting to dismantle the banality of these national semi-myths: the north is also rich, the south also poor, town and country share most common concerns. In Devon yesterday he rightly sought to disentangle the tiny farming industry from most of rural life. Agriculture is only 1% of GDP and only employs 2% of the workforce in England. Even in rural areas it only employs 4% of the workforce. Like everyone else, most people work in services or in small businesses. There is no "rural crisis". But yes, there is indeed a farming crisis and this is the worst agricultural recession since the 30s. What should be done? "Income can go down as well as up and is not guaranteed," says the very small print at the bottom of all financial service ads. Most of us live with that possibility because it is part of the human condition to know that disaster can strike.But farmers seem to consider themselves outside the cut and thrust of the normal market processes they so heartily endorse when they go into the polling booths to vote Tory. In real terms farmers' incomes rose by 100% between 1990 and 1995. But now they have dropped by 60% since then. There's every reason to feel especially sorry for the 20% who are tenant farmers with nothing to sell up, but most farmers own valuable land, the price of which has soared recently.Yet even farmers sitting on a fortune think they should be bailed out. Why? Walk into the bankruptcy court any day of the week and case after case will bring tears to your eyes at the sight of so many decent people wiped out by bad luck or bad judgment. Two out of three new business start-ups fail. Farmers are not the only hard-pressed businessmen to commit suicide. Should the state step in and bail them all out? Images of the harsh treatment meted out to the miners colour all our current attitudes towards compensating lame-duck industries. Mrs Thatcher said we couldn't and shouldn't pay people to dig out coal no one wanted, so now it's hard to see why farmers should be paid to breed unsaleable cattle, pigs and lambs. Global markets change and in over-producing meat, farmers misjudged their markets. It happens. We can feel very sorry for them, though their political attitudes don't always make it easy. Letting the Countryside Alliance be their advocate is about as helpful to their cause as Arthur Scargill was to the miners'. Cleverer leadership would have had the farmers' tractors rolling down Whitehall long ago to protest at the high pound which is the gravest single cause of their distress. Other industries get some benefit from cheaper imported raw materials, but for farmers who import nothing the high cost of exporting is pure calamity. The NFU has always been pro-euro, but they haven't rolled out their tanks to demand early entry.Where are the green Barbours on platforms up and down the land demanding we join and that everything is done to lower interest rates, bring down the value of the pound and make euro entry possible? (Now we have missed entry on day one, the only way to lower interest rates without inflation is to raise taxation instead. Are they for it?) Instead the NFU conference applauded William Hague's strange pleas for more EU subsidy and didn't query his admission that "the strong pound has hit all livestock farming with unprecedented ferocity". The farming lobby is powerful and emotive because it taps an atavistic national fantasy that everyone's roots or their retirement destination is the countryside of Hovis dreams. It was brave of Blair to face the farmers down with some home truths: adapt or die is his hard message. Labour has handed out 435m extra in direct aid to farmers, but from now on there will only be more for those things that are socially useful. Ten million - not enough - is to subsidise the cost of converting to organic or semi-organic methods. (Absurdly we import 70% of our organic produce as we don't grow enough here: there are long waiting lists of farmers wanting to convert.)Other funds will help turn farmers into countryside stewards: we may not need sheep to eat, but we need them as lawn mowers on barely profitable hill farms, to preserve those much loved patchwork landscapes with dry-stone walls. There are grants for developing new industrial crops to generate energy, make plastics and grow hemp for manufacturing. But all these are small funds for small schemes. In the end the market is let rip. Except, of course, for the continuing disgrace of the CAP, whose snail's pace reform still hands out a monstrous 3bn farming subsidy mainly to those who need it least: 80% goes to 20% of the farmers, many of them the richest. The future, the government suggests, lies in tourism, to which some farmers reply arrogantly that they don't want to be park-keepers. But for some it's that or nothing: 90% of the people live in towns and they want access to the country. They are the market and farmers had better learn to smile at them instead of blocking footpaths and setting dogs on them. They may be townie sentimentalists but they want fewer pesticides polluting the soil and more live birds. (The RSPB has more members than all the political parties put together - and they are, incidentally, outraged that Blair's one pointless sop to the farmers this week was an unexpected pledge not to introduce a proposed pesticide tax to make farmers cut down on their use.) The Countryside Alliance's opposition to the right to roam was just another example of their disastrous leadership on rural matters: if they want to survive they are going to have to learn to love ramblers, picnickers and even people from Islington. No more of this "them and us" romance.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Polly Toynbee .
|
Who started this "them and us" between town and country? The mis-named Countryside Alliance when they marched on London last year and later brayed outside the Labour party conference in Bournemouth.Yesterday the prime minister went to Devon and blew their cover. They are not "the countryside". They are a bunch of Tory hunters and farmers who no more represent most country dwellers than red-braced commodity brokers in City champagne bars represent townies.Blair has the facts on his side and he delivered a barrage of them yesterday: the countryside is doing pretty well. There is a farming crisis, there is real rural poverty (though proportionately less) but life for most people in the country is better than in towns. They are healthier, happier, safer, better educated and richer. Not surprisingly townies tell pollsters they wish they lived there too. The traditional left likes to stress the two nations of the north/south divide while the right tries to capitalise on a rural/urban split, both playing to their own electoral heartlands. William Hague was stoking up that old anti-townie sentiment in his speech to the NFU this week: "The rural way of life is under threat from urban values, Islington pressure groups and a metropolitan elite who know nothing about the countryside."Tony Blair is attempting to dismantle the banality of these national semi-myths: the north is also rich, the south also poor, town and country share most common concerns. In Devon yesterday he rightly sought to disentangle the tiny farming industry from most of rural life. Agriculture is only 1% of GDP and only employs 2% of the workforce in England. Even in rural areas it only employs 4% of the workforce. Like everyone else, most people work in services or in small businesses. There is no "rural crisis". But yes, there is indeed a farming crisis and this is the worst agricultural recession since the 30s. What should be done? "Income can go down as well as up and is not guaranteed," says the very small print at the bottom of all financial service ads. Most of us live with that possibility because it is part of the human condition to know that disaster can strike.But farmers seem to consider themselves outside the cut and thrust of the normal market processes they so heartily endorse when they go into the polling booths to vote Tory. In real terms farmers' incomes rose by 100% between 1990 and 1995. But now they have dropped by 60% since then. There's every reason to feel especially sorry for the 20% who are tenant farmers with nothing to sell up, but most farmers own valuable land, the price of which has soared recently.Yet even farmers sitting on a fortune think they should be bailed out. Why? Walk into the bankruptcy court any day of the week and case after case will bring tears to your eyes at the sight of so many decent people wiped out by bad luck or bad judgment. Two out of three new business start-ups fail. Farmers are not the only hard-pressed businessmen to commit suicide. Should the state step in and bail them all out? Images of the harsh treatment meted out to the miners colour all our current attitudes towards compensating lame-duck industries. Mrs Thatcher said we couldn't and shouldn't pay people to dig out coal no one wanted, so now it's hard to see why farmers should be paid to breed unsaleable cattle, pigs and lambs. Global markets change and in over-producing meat, farmers misjudged their markets. It happens. We can feel very sorry for them, though their political attitudes don't always make it easy. Letting the Countryside Alliance be their advocate is about as helpful to their cause as Arthur Scargill was to the miners'. Cleverer leadership would have had the farmers' tractors rolling down Whitehall long ago to protest at the high pound which is the gravest single cause of their distress. Other industries get some benefit from cheaper imported raw materials, but for farmers who import nothing the high cost of exporting is pure calamity. The NFU has always been pro-euro, but they haven't rolled out their tanks to demand early entry.Where are the green Barbours on platforms up and down the land demanding we join and that everything is done to lower interest rates, bring down the value of the pound and make euro entry possible? (Now we have missed entry on day one, the only way to lower interest rates without inflation is to raise taxation instead. Are they for it?) Instead the NFU conference applauded William Hague's strange pleas for more EU subsidy and didn't query his admission that "the strong pound has hit all livestock farming with unprecedented ferocity". The farming lobby is powerful and emotive because it taps an atavistic national fantasy that everyone's roots or their retirement destination is the countryside of Hovis dreams. It was brave of Blair to face the farmers down with some home truths: adapt or die is his hard message. Labour has handed out 435m extra in direct aid to farmers, but from now on there will only be more for those things that are socially useful. Ten million - not enough - is to subsidise the cost of converting to organic or semi-organic methods. (Absurdly we import 70% of our organic produce as we don't grow enough here: there are long waiting lists of farmers wanting to convert.)Other funds will help turn farmers into countryside stewards: we may not need sheep to eat, but we need them as lawn mowers on barely profitable hill farms, to preserve those much loved patchwork landscapes with dry-stone walls. There are grants for developing new industrial crops to generate energy, make plastics and grow hemp for manufacturing. But all these are small funds for small schemes. In the end the market is let rip. Except, of course, for the continuing disgrace of the CAP, whose snail's pace reform still hands out a monstrous 3bn farming subsidy mainly to those who need it least: 80% goes to 20% of the farmers, many of them the richest. The future, the government suggests, lies in tourism, to which some farmers reply arrogantly that they don't want to be park-keepers. But for some it's that or nothing: 90% of the people live in towns and they want access to the country. They are the market and farmers had better learn to smile at them instead of blocking footpaths and setting dogs on them. They may be townie sentimentalists but they want fewer pesticides polluting the soil and more live birds. (The RSPB has more members than all the political parties put together - and they are, incidentally, outraged that Blair's one pointless sop to the farmers this week was an unexpected pledge not to introduce a proposed pesticide tax to make farmers cut down on their use.) The Countryside Alliance's opposition to the right to roam was just another example of their disastrous leadership on rural matters: if they want to survive they are going to have to learn to love ramblers, picnickers and even people from Islington. No more of this "them and us" romance.
|
8pollytoynbee
| 2UK
|
Round one - victory! The government has done the right thing and the dome gets another chance. Other bidders - now suddenly many more - can come forward and suggest something better than a disgraceful fire-sale at a knock-down price to property developers. It would have been the final scandal of the dome's history. The panic that seized the government at the end of last year is over. There is time to stop and think, time to consider every option - "as long as it takes," says Lord Falconer - no artificial deadlines. But will it be saved as a public space? Now the dome is closed, the spate of bad news that hung over it like a thick smog has lifted. Panic was the danger - the same panic that seized governments before. The Festival of Britain of 1951, besieged by many of the same headlines calling it a monstrous waste of public money, was razed to the ground the day it closed to save further public embarrassment. The incoming Conservative government smashed the Skylon to pieces and bulldozed the Dome of Discovery, both icons that would now be loved and revered landmarks. They couldn't move fast enough to pull down the Crystal Palace after the Great Exhibition of 1851 and remove it to a distant suburb where it later burned to the ground. The moment a great public exhibition closes is the moment when it is least fashionable and least valued. Its value plummets so low people can't even see the value of the land around it. By the time the final deal is done, we will look back on the idea of selling this majestic site for a fraction of its true worth with utter incredulity. Talking to top London property dealers yesterday, they said there had been a phenomenal conspiracy of silence among the five big property companies who stood by and looked on as Legacy seemed about to be given it almost as a gift. "We could not believe it," said one leading estate agent. Why the silence? Well, it was government business and no one wanted to make trouble, with future contracts in mind. But consider this, said one. Canary Wharf is just 40 seconds' travel time from the dome peninsula. Last November the Canary Wharf Group plc acquired a new 6.3-acre tract of land for development in North Canary Wharf called Shed 35. It cost them 53m. That is the same sum Legacy was proposing to put down on 63 similar acres, with just another 75m to follow later. "The site value has soared in the past 20 months since bids were first invited. Now there is a tube and infrastructure, it's a different game." He reckons a full and fair global competition will bring in a sizeable fortune for the site - and still leave plenty of room for publicly owned space. Now for round two. This spectacular peninsula is the most beautiful piece of undeveloped urban landscape in the capital, surrounded by the Thames on three sides, under a great wide sky with breathtaking views in all directions. Reached by boat and by one of London's most architecturally exciting new tube stations, this is a dream public space, a park, a treasure. Once sold off and built over, it will be gone for ever, unreclaimable for the public. Richard Rogers, architect of this mighty white structure, is one of those who has been fighting hard behind the scenes to keep it as a publicly owned place for ever. If the Skylon, the Dome of Discovery and the Crystal Palace still stood, how extraordinary it would seem now ever to sell them off. If some of the dome land is now sold well, the dome and its park can remain a public place, with no need to sell it, though it might be rented. The day will come - probably soon - when some Olympic or other sporting or cultural event will need the dome in a capital bereft of wonderful sites. The failure of Wembley Stadium plans is just another example of how badly Britain does great national monuments. But now we have a chance to get this right. The last great dome crisis forced the Millennium Commission angrily to fork out a final 47m last October. But this sum was never actually drawn down. In its last three months, according to one millennium commissioner, increased numbers of visitors meant the dome broke even and never used those final funds that caused such volcanic public fury. The money is there, already given to the dome, and it should be used to help ensure the dome remains a public space. But the real endowment comes from the land around it, sold to create a trust for it in perpetuity. Richard Rogers has an ambitious vision for the place and is likely to join better developers to propose a scheme for the North Greenwich peninsula that would be a model for the kind of regeneration his Urban Task Force advocates. It would include at least 40% affordable housing for the local community: he has been talking with Peabody and Rowntree about social housing possibilities. It would be a high density cityscape with shops and offices as well as homes, looking on to a leisure park around the dome that would be a national attraction for sports and concerts - run by PY or the BBC/Tussauds group, or any other entertainment consortium. He talks of things built in Barcelona and Amsterdam, and London's terrible past mistakes. Last time I wrote about the dome, a fair number of emails from around the country complained bitterly at any more public time, money or attention being thrown at this London site. They have a point. It would have been better had the dome been built elsewhere. But there it is now in Greenwich, a national treasure on a site of natural beauty. Huge sums have been wasted, but that is no reason to waste the only good that can come from it. Rogers points across the water to Canary Wharf, the great emblem of the Thatcher era - all offices, stylish restaurants and expensive houses, a pure property developers' hygienic, anodyne heaven straight from the brochure. It is an eerie place - no children, schools or old people, no workers, beggars, misfits, everything crisp and pricey for its cloned battalions of young professionals, with none of the eccentric, random oddity that breathes real city life. Now imagine across the water a Labour era development in complete social contrast, a regeneration project as a model for other city schemes. The question is: does this mark new thinking by Labour? In the early days, how avidly they sought to show they were as friendly to private developers as any conservative government. The tube is the next big question, as bargaining continues ferociously behind the scenes. Gordon Brown, jaw set, says the risk of major construction programmes must all be borne by private companies, despite passionate public opinion in favour of keeping it publicly owned. He ploughs on with the sale of air traffic control too, against the public will. But somewhere in the heart of government, the dome decision may herald the start of a welcome change of attitude for the second term.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Polly Toynbee .
|
Round one - victory! The government has done the right thing and the dome gets another chance. Other bidders - now suddenly many more - can come forward and suggest something better than a disgraceful fire-sale at a knock-down price to property developers. It would have been the final scandal of the dome's history. The panic that seized the government at the end of last year is over. There is time to stop and think, time to consider every option - "as long as it takes," says Lord Falconer - no artificial deadlines. But will it be saved as a public space? Now the dome is closed, the spate of bad news that hung over it like a thick smog has lifted. Panic was the danger - the same panic that seized governments before. The Festival of Britain of 1951, besieged by many of the same headlines calling it a monstrous waste of public money, was razed to the ground the day it closed to save further public embarrassment. The incoming Conservative government smashed the Skylon to pieces and bulldozed the Dome of Discovery, both icons that would now be loved and revered landmarks. They couldn't move fast enough to pull down the Crystal Palace after the Great Exhibition of 1851 and remove it to a distant suburb where it later burned to the ground. The moment a great public exhibition closes is the moment when it is least fashionable and least valued. Its value plummets so low people can't even see the value of the land around it. By the time the final deal is done, we will look back on the idea of selling this majestic site for a fraction of its true worth with utter incredulity. Talking to top London property dealers yesterday, they said there had been a phenomenal conspiracy of silence among the five big property companies who stood by and looked on as Legacy seemed about to be given it almost as a gift. "We could not believe it," said one leading estate agent. Why the silence? Well, it was government business and no one wanted to make trouble, with future contracts in mind. But consider this, said one. Canary Wharf is just 40 seconds' travel time from the dome peninsula. Last November the Canary Wharf Group plc acquired a new 6.3-acre tract of land for development in North Canary Wharf called Shed 35. It cost them 53m. That is the same sum Legacy was proposing to put down on 63 similar acres, with just another 75m to follow later. "The site value has soared in the past 20 months since bids were first invited. Now there is a tube and infrastructure, it's a different game." He reckons a full and fair global competition will bring in a sizeable fortune for the site - and still leave plenty of room for publicly owned space. Now for round two. This spectacular peninsula is the most beautiful piece of undeveloped urban landscape in the capital, surrounded by the Thames on three sides, under a great wide sky with breathtaking views in all directions. Reached by boat and by one of London's most architecturally exciting new tube stations, this is a dream public space, a park, a treasure. Once sold off and built over, it will be gone for ever, unreclaimable for the public. Richard Rogers, architect of this mighty white structure, is one of those who has been fighting hard behind the scenes to keep it as a publicly owned place for ever. If the Skylon, the Dome of Discovery and the Crystal Palace still stood, how extraordinary it would seem now ever to sell them off. If some of the dome land is now sold well, the dome and its park can remain a public place, with no need to sell it, though it might be rented. The day will come - probably soon - when some Olympic or other sporting or cultural event will need the dome in a capital bereft of wonderful sites. The failure of Wembley Stadium plans is just another example of how badly Britain does great national monuments. But now we have a chance to get this right. The last great dome crisis forced the Millennium Commission angrily to fork out a final 47m last October. But this sum was never actually drawn down. In its last three months, according to one millennium commissioner, increased numbers of visitors meant the dome broke even and never used those final funds that caused such volcanic public fury. The money is there, already given to the dome, and it should be used to help ensure the dome remains a public space. But the real endowment comes from the land around it, sold to create a trust for it in perpetuity. Richard Rogers has an ambitious vision for the place and is likely to join better developers to propose a scheme for the North Greenwich peninsula that would be a model for the kind of regeneration his Urban Task Force advocates. It would include at least 40% affordable housing for the local community: he has been talking with Peabody and Rowntree about social housing possibilities. It would be a high density cityscape with shops and offices as well as homes, looking on to a leisure park around the dome that would be a national attraction for sports and concerts - run by PY or the BBC/Tussauds group, or any other entertainment consortium. He talks of things built in Barcelona and Amsterdam, and London's terrible past mistakes. Last time I wrote about the dome, a fair number of emails from around the country complained bitterly at any more public time, money or attention being thrown at this London site. They have a point. It would have been better had the dome been built elsewhere. But there it is now in Greenwich, a national treasure on a site of natural beauty. Huge sums have been wasted, but that is no reason to waste the only good that can come from it. Rogers points across the water to Canary Wharf, the great emblem of the Thatcher era - all offices, stylish restaurants and expensive houses, a pure property developers' hygienic, anodyne heaven straight from the brochure. It is an eerie place - no children, schools or old people, no workers, beggars, misfits, everything crisp and pricey for its cloned battalions of young professionals, with none of the eccentric, random oddity that breathes real city life. Now imagine across the water a Labour era development in complete social contrast, a regeneration project as a model for other city schemes. The question is: does this mark new thinking by Labour? In the early days, how avidly they sought to show they were as friendly to private developers as any conservative government. The tube is the next big question, as bargaining continues ferociously behind the scenes. Gordon Brown, jaw set, says the risk of major construction programmes must all be borne by private companies, despite passionate public opinion in favour of keeping it publicly owned. He ploughs on with the sale of air traffic control too, against the public will. But somewhere in the heart of government, the dome decision may herald the start of a welcome change of attitude for the second term.
|
8pollytoynbee
| 2UK
|
The most remarkable aspect of William Hague's ill-judged outburst against the Macpherson report was his complete obliteration of what happened to Stephen Lawrence, what happened to the Lawrence family in their struggle for justice and finally what happened to the police who failed so abysmally to prosecute the killers. (Nothing). Hague has wiped out all three shameful events and replaced them with the charge that the Labour-instigated Macpherson report is instead the chief culprit. Macpherson, claims Hague, undermined police morale and law and order on the streets: accused of institutional racism, police fled the service, new recruits were hard to attract. The government admits Macpherson dealt a severe shock to the police. The truth hurt, but it was necessary and accepted by senior police officers. Police numbers, they say, are no longer declining. However Macpherson has entered Tory demonology as another liberal cause of crime. Undeterred, the government yesterday moved to implement one of Macpherson's most important recommendations. A new genuinely Independent Police Complaints Commission will be in place by 2003. As campaigned for vigorously by Liberty and Inquest (and the Guardian), over the last 20 years, the police will no longer investigate themselves in serious cases. This is what Macpherson said: "Since PCA inquiries, certainly in major cases, are conducted with or through other police forces, the perception is that such investigations of police by police may not be seen to result in independent and fair scrutiny and that justice is not seen to be done". Now at last it will be. No doubt the Tories will see this as yet another unwarranted assault upon the good name of the police, so it is worth recording some of the most serious recent cases. Since 1990 there have been 548 deaths in police custody. Liberty and Inquest know of no police officer who has ever been prosecuted let alone jailed in relation to any of these events. All of them were investigated by the police themselves. These cases have taken years of dilatory investigation, ending with no police officers in court. Often officers slip off to early retirement on full pensions, signing themselves out with "stress" or "disability" before disciplinary action can be taken. Macpherson reported that at least five officers would have faced disciplinary charges, "but such charges could not be pursued because the officers had retired". He recommended new terms of employment to allow disciplinary proceedings to be brought after retirement, something that still waits to be done. The many shocking cases that prompted this reform include that of Shiji Lapite. He was stopped by police for "acting suspiciously" and subsequently died from asphyxia as a result of a neckhold. The inquest jury was told that while caught in a fatal neckhold, one officer bit Lapite in the chest and another twice kicked him in the head as hard as he could. Lapite suffered 36 separate injuries, his voice box fractured during strangulation. Yet despite an inquest's verdict of "unlawful killing" there was no prosecution of any of the officers. The man's family took the case up to judicial review, where both the PCA and the crown prosecutor admitted their decision in the case had been "flawed". After that an inquiry into the CPS's handling of police cases ordered all serious police cases to be sent to a central unit - yet still no prosecutions have ever followed. The files of Liberty and Inquest are packed with such cases: some become famous such as Harry Stanley - the man shot dead for carrying a table leg in a bag - others just add to the statistics of those dead in prison or in police cells, often restrained by six or eight officers, often killed by lethal neckholds - but no one ever to blame. The reason they become famous cases is because they drag on forever, with no just or satisfactory resolution, leaving families in a constant state of public protest. Dealing day in and day out with the mad, bad and violent inevitably causes some police officers to fly out of control. All police forces will have some dangerous officers or just some very frightened ones. What matters most is how bad cases are handled - transparently, fairly and fast. It matters for the reputation of the police, as well as for the victims. The idea that letting daylight into the police, as Macpherson did, somehow undermines them, lowers their morale or lessens their authority is the exact opposite of the truth. The better they deal with their own miscreants, the more they will be trusted and the more support they will get back from the communities they police. Often complainants just want an explanation and an apology - too rarely given. Dealing well with complaints (there is a huge disparity between best and worst police forces), will presumably be dismissed by Hague as more of that "paper-work" that keeps bobbies off the beat. But "paper-work" is often what keeps bobbies on the beat. Managerial efficiency includes keeping a stern eye on absenteeism. The Met have cut their sickness rates from an average of 14 days per officer a year in 1996-7 down to only nine days a year last year. That saving is equivalent to an extra 500 officers on the beat. As the election approaches, Labour is worrying about how to get across the fact that crime has fallen, not risen as people always imagine. Polls show people think their own neighbourhood is safer than it was, but they still think crime "out there" is rising. Hardly surprising since everything they see and read tells them it must be so, local and national press as ever full of crime horrors, Crime Watch pumping it out every week, crime drama making violence seem to lurk everywhere. So far Labour has tried to seize popular support with strings of new laws, more crackdowns, more quick fixes. Child curfews and the like have little measurable effect on crime, but it all helps inflame fear of crime, now rebounding on Labour. Jack Straw and Tony Blair have used law and order as a cheap vote-getter every bit as cynically as the Tories. It is the issue, after all, that created and defined New Labour. That killer leaked prime ministerial memo said it all: "The government needs something tough with immediate bite which sends a message through the system. Maybe, the driving licence penalty for young offenders. But this should be done soon and I personally should be associated with it." Those five short sharp law-and-order and fraud measures in the pre-election Queen's speech show Labour just as eager to use and abuse fear of crime for its own political ends. But at least yesterday, in introducing a genuinely independent police complaints procedure, here is Labour doing the right thing for the right reason, even if it does give William Hague another chance to accuse them of weakening police morale.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Polly Toynbee .
|
The most remarkable aspect of William Hague's ill-judged outburst against the Macpherson report was his complete obliteration of what happened to Stephen Lawrence, what happened to the Lawrence family in their struggle for justice and finally what happened to the police who failed so abysmally to prosecute the killers. (Nothing). Hague has wiped out all three shameful events and replaced them with the charge that the Labour-instigated Macpherson report is instead the chief culprit. Macpherson, claims Hague, undermined police morale and law and order on the streets: accused of institutional racism, police fled the service, new recruits were hard to attract. The government admits Macpherson dealt a severe shock to the police. The truth hurt, but it was necessary and accepted by senior police officers. Police numbers, they say, are no longer declining. However Macpherson has entered Tory demonology as another liberal cause of crime. Undeterred, the government yesterday moved to implement one of Macpherson's most important recommendations. A new genuinely Independent Police Complaints Commission will be in place by 2003. As campaigned for vigorously by Liberty and Inquest (and the Guardian), over the last 20 years, the police will no longer investigate themselves in serious cases. This is what Macpherson said: "Since PCA inquiries, certainly in major cases, are conducted with or through other police forces, the perception is that such investigations of police by police may not be seen to result in independent and fair scrutiny and that justice is not seen to be done". Now at last it will be. No doubt the Tories will see this as yet another unwarranted assault upon the good name of the police, so it is worth recording some of the most serious recent cases. Since 1990 there have been 548 deaths in police custody. Liberty and Inquest know of no police officer who has ever been prosecuted let alone jailed in relation to any of these events. All of them were investigated by the police themselves. These cases have taken years of dilatory investigation, ending with no police officers in court. Often officers slip off to early retirement on full pensions, signing themselves out with "stress" or "disability" before disciplinary action can be taken. Macpherson reported that at least five officers would have faced disciplinary charges, "but such charges could not be pursued because the officers had retired". He recommended new terms of employment to allow disciplinary proceedings to be brought after retirement, something that still waits to be done. The many shocking cases that prompted this reform include that of Shiji Lapite. He was stopped by police for "acting suspiciously" and subsequently died from asphyxia as a result of a neckhold. The inquest jury was told that while caught in a fatal neckhold, one officer bit Lapite in the chest and another twice kicked him in the head as hard as he could. Lapite suffered 36 separate injuries, his voice box fractured during strangulation. Yet despite an inquest's verdict of "unlawful killing" there was no prosecution of any of the officers. The man's family took the case up to judicial review, where both the PCA and the crown prosecutor admitted their decision in the case had been "flawed". After that an inquiry into the CPS's handling of police cases ordered all serious police cases to be sent to a central unit - yet still no prosecutions have ever followed. The files of Liberty and Inquest are packed with such cases: some become famous such as Harry Stanley - the man shot dead for carrying a table leg in a bag - others just add to the statistics of those dead in prison or in police cells, often restrained by six or eight officers, often killed by lethal neckholds - but no one ever to blame. The reason they become famous cases is because they drag on forever, with no just or satisfactory resolution, leaving families in a constant state of public protest. Dealing day in and day out with the mad, bad and violent inevitably causes some police officers to fly out of control. All police forces will have some dangerous officers or just some very frightened ones. What matters most is how bad cases are handled - transparently, fairly and fast. It matters for the reputation of the police, as well as for the victims. The idea that letting daylight into the police, as Macpherson did, somehow undermines them, lowers their morale or lessens their authority is the exact opposite of the truth. The better they deal with their own miscreants, the more they will be trusted and the more support they will get back from the communities they police. Often complainants just want an explanation and an apology - too rarely given. Dealing well with complaints (there is a huge disparity between best and worst police forces), will presumably be dismissed by Hague as more of that "paper-work" that keeps bobbies off the beat. But "paper-work" is often what keeps bobbies on the beat. Managerial efficiency includes keeping a stern eye on absenteeism. The Met have cut their sickness rates from an average of 14 days per officer a year in 1996-7 down to only nine days a year last year. That saving is equivalent to an extra 500 officers on the beat. As the election approaches, Labour is worrying about how to get across the fact that crime has fallen, not risen as people always imagine. Polls show people think their own neighbourhood is safer than it was, but they still think crime "out there" is rising. Hardly surprising since everything they see and read tells them it must be so, local and national press as ever full of crime horrors, Crime Watch pumping it out every week, crime drama making violence seem to lurk everywhere. So far Labour has tried to seize popular support with strings of new laws, more crackdowns, more quick fixes. Child curfews and the like have little measurable effect on crime, but it all helps inflame fear of crime, now rebounding on Labour. Jack Straw and Tony Blair have used law and order as a cheap vote-getter every bit as cynically as the Tories. It is the issue, after all, that created and defined New Labour. That killer leaked prime ministerial memo said it all: "The government needs something tough with immediate bite which sends a message through the system. Maybe, the driving licence penalty for young offenders. But this should be done soon and I personally should be associated with it." Those five short sharp law-and-order and fraud measures in the pre-election Queen's speech show Labour just as eager to use and abuse fear of crime for its own political ends. But at least yesterday, in introducing a genuinely independent police complaints procedure, here is Labour doing the right thing for the right reason, even if it does give William Hague another chance to accuse them of weakening police morale.
|
6nickcohen
| 2UK
|
The healthy reaction to the death of a great-grandmother of 100 or so from her family is one of resignation, even quiet relief. She's had a good innings - her three-score years and 10 and then another score and 10. No one wants her to die, but it is entirely human not to be disabled by grief at her passing when her survival would have brought only decline and suffering. If you have similar feelings after the death of the Queen Mother - a woman 99.9 per cent of the country cannot count as a relative or friend - I advise you to keep them to yourself. Her stay in hospital last week revealed to those who work in the 'newzak' business that professional mourners are primed to howl with anguish and to howl down anyone who can't counterfeit pain. A gruesome media underworld starts to rumble whenever there's a royal health scare. BBC executives check if the afflicted is on the 'A-list' consisting of the Queen Mother, Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William, or the 'B-list' of Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, Edward Wessex and an unfortunate Duke of Edinburgh, who was relegated by the corporation last year - presumably for scoring too many own goals. Death in the premier league guarantees that scheduled programmes are replaced with funereal music before days of commemorative documentaries and moist news reports begin. B-list royals get second-rate tributes. All broadcasters and newspapers, meanwhile, receive holding obituaries, stories and even leading articles from the Press Association news agency. Last week's flood of anticipatory copy included a suggested editorial for dunderheaded journalists unable to compose one themselves. ('The nation will mourn with gratitude the life of and service of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, "Queen Mum" to millions throughout the world.') We learned from a separate piece you may read one day in your morning or evening paper or hear parroted on Radio 4 that as her body lies in state at Westminster Hall, 'vast crowds are expected to queue to file past the coffin. It will be placed high on a purple-draped catafalque on the same spot where King George VI lay in state in February 1952, and will be guarded round-the-clock by a contingent of Gentleman at Arms and Yeomen of the Guard. The ancient hall is an incomparable setting for the public's tribute to the royal lady they have loved and respected_' and so on at a length which might make the most ardent monarchist tear off his culottes. The assumption that the nation will mourn runs through all the mainstream media's pre-cooked packages. And if a handful of perverse dissenters don't wail, they will be after them just as they were after anyone who failed to exhibit the required trauma after the death of Diana Spencer. The shape of things of come could be glimpsed in the News of the World last year when it shrieked at Camelot executives for 'hatching a tasteless plot to protect their Saturday draw if the Queen Mum should die that day'. Their decision to go ahead with the lottery draw and announce the results in the small hours when the grieving bulletins were over for the night was the 'the ultimate in bad taste'. If the nation was grieving, everyone would be too distracted to buy a lottery ticket and Camelot could take the week off. Its emergency planning to please the punters shows that Camelot at least knows that national mourning is not what it was. The great vulgarity of monarchy is its transformation of private life into propaganda. Births, weddings and funerals are used to build customer loyalty to 'The Firm'. Throughout the disasters of the 1990s, courtiers and royalist commentators consoled themselves with the thought that the death of the Queen Mother would pull indifferent or hostile subjects back into line behind her less than perfect family. Extravagant designs for her funeral have been knocking around Whitehall and the media for years in a classified document entitled 'Operation Lion'. Its authors envisage nine days of mourning culminating in the biggest state funeral since Winston Churchill's in 1965. The monarchy would define the nation again and dominate its emotions. Anthony Holden, the critical royal biographer, wonders whether Buckingham Palace still has the nerve to implement 'Operation Lion'. 'People will be making comparisons all the time with the numbers Diana's funeral attracted,' he told me. 'Suppose the majority paying their respect are elderly and there's scarcely a young face in sight. Suppose viewers revolt about television being disrupted for nine days. It could be embarrassing.' Indeed it could. Politicians and advertisers are being forced to realise that millions of disillusioned consumers are blanking out their messages. The court and the courtier press should have learned by now that the old levers no longer work. The evidence for boredom with royal marketing has been accumulating for years. The great exception everyone quotes is the death of the ex-Princess of Wales. I wouldn't deny it provoked mass inanity which compelled anyone who believed in the rationality of public life to grab the nearest whisky bottle. But the scale of 'the grief' during those freaky days was exaggerated at the time and has been mythologised since. The day before her funeral the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police said he would need almost all his 27,000 officers to control an expected crowd of six million. Two million turned up. A year later on the anniversary of the Paris smash, tribute programmes got abysmal ratings and the failure of public hug fests to attract anything resembling a crowd, or even a huddle, forced the BBC to decide 'most seem to have decided to do their mourning in private'. This was too lame, even for the BBC. Its managers drew a realistic conclusion. They decided not enough viewers wanted to see the pageant for the Queen Mother's one-hundredth birthday and became the object one of the Daily Mail 's hate campaigns. ITV took over, and the BBC grovelled and admitted it was wrong. The week's brutal viewing figures showed the error was on ITV's side. Its Queen Mother special was a lamentable twenty-fifth in the ratings, behind Charlie's Garden Army and a repeat of It'll Be Alright on the Night (VIII) . We reported last week that senior courtiers feared that next year's Golden Jubilee celebrations for Elizabeth II may be met by 'a wave of apathy' which could damage the monarchy, so they know something is wrong. What they don't appear to understand is why they're being swamped. A small part of the explanation lies in distaste for the airbrushing of monarchy. Everything I've heard about the television obituaries, and everything I've seen in the Press Association files, suggests that the old line will be recycled that Queen Mother is above politics; have the skill 'to be wholly non-political in the present reign', as the Telegraph said last week. They must know this is drivel and she has the standard prejudices of an aristocrat of her generation. Woodrow Wyatt recorded in his diary of March 1986 the Queen Mother telling him that when the royal family are alone together they 'often drink a toast at the end of dinner to Mrs Thatcher. She adores Mrs Thatcher.' She also adored P.W. Botha when he was President of South Africa, and thought the media and black Commonwealth was being beastly about the apartheid regime he managed. She was opposed to women priests, had suspicions of the French, a paradoxical hatred of the Germans and 'reservations' about Jews. When she was Queen, she and George VI broke every constitutional propriety in their eagerness to support Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler and oppose Winston Churchill. So great was their complicity that the Public Records Office refuses to release the papers covering the royal fondness for appeasing the Right in the Thirties until after the Queen Mother's death. They would cause 'substantial distress', apparently. Perhaps they would, but in the long term greater and deserved distress is caused to the Windsors' reputation by the sycophancy and evasions of their supporters and the bullying of the millions who see no reason to share their stage-managed pain.
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Nick Cohen .
|
The healthy reaction to the death of a great-grandmother of 100 or so from her family is one of resignation, even quiet relief. She's had a good innings - her three-score years and 10 and then another score and 10. No one wants her to die, but it is entirely human not to be disabled by grief at her passing when her survival would have brought only decline and suffering. If you have similar feelings after the death of the Queen Mother - a woman 99.9 per cent of the country cannot count as a relative or friend - I advise you to keep them to yourself. Her stay in hospital last week revealed to those who work in the 'newzak' business that professional mourners are primed to howl with anguish and to howl down anyone who can't counterfeit pain. A gruesome media underworld starts to rumble whenever there's a royal health scare. BBC executives check if the afflicted is on the 'A-list' consisting of the Queen Mother, Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William, or the 'B-list' of Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, Edward Wessex and an unfortunate Duke of Edinburgh, who was relegated by the corporation last year - presumably for scoring too many own goals. Death in the premier league guarantees that scheduled programmes are replaced with funereal music before days of commemorative documentaries and moist news reports begin. B-list royals get second-rate tributes. All broadcasters and newspapers, meanwhile, receive holding obituaries, stories and even leading articles from the Press Association news agency. Last week's flood of anticipatory copy included a suggested editorial for dunderheaded journalists unable to compose one themselves. ('The nation will mourn with gratitude the life of and service of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, "Queen Mum" to millions throughout the world.') We learned from a separate piece you may read one day in your morning or evening paper or hear parroted on Radio 4 that as her body lies in state at Westminster Hall, 'vast crowds are expected to queue to file past the coffin. It will be placed high on a purple-draped catafalque on the same spot where King George VI lay in state in February 1952, and will be guarded round-the-clock by a contingent of Gentleman at Arms and Yeomen of the Guard. The ancient hall is an incomparable setting for the public's tribute to the royal lady they have loved and respected_' and so on at a length which might make the most ardent monarchist tear off his culottes. The assumption that the nation will mourn runs through all the mainstream media's pre-cooked packages. And if a handful of perverse dissenters don't wail, they will be after them just as they were after anyone who failed to exhibit the required trauma after the death of Diana Spencer. The shape of things of come could be glimpsed in the News of the World last year when it shrieked at Camelot executives for 'hatching a tasteless plot to protect their Saturday draw if the Queen Mum should die that day'. Their decision to go ahead with the lottery draw and announce the results in the small hours when the grieving bulletins were over for the night was the 'the ultimate in bad taste'. If the nation was grieving, everyone would be too distracted to buy a lottery ticket and Camelot could take the week off. Its emergency planning to please the punters shows that Camelot at least knows that national mourning is not what it was. The great vulgarity of monarchy is its transformation of private life into propaganda. Births, weddings and funerals are used to build customer loyalty to 'The Firm'. Throughout the disasters of the 1990s, courtiers and royalist commentators consoled themselves with the thought that the death of the Queen Mother would pull indifferent or hostile subjects back into line behind her less than perfect family. Extravagant designs for her funeral have been knocking around Whitehall and the media for years in a classified document entitled 'Operation Lion'. Its authors envisage nine days of mourning culminating in the biggest state funeral since Winston Churchill's in 1965. The monarchy would define the nation again and dominate its emotions. Anthony Holden, the critical royal biographer, wonders whether Buckingham Palace still has the nerve to implement 'Operation Lion'. 'People will be making comparisons all the time with the numbers Diana's funeral attracted,' he told me. 'Suppose the majority paying their respect are elderly and there's scarcely a young face in sight. Suppose viewers revolt about television being disrupted for nine days. It could be embarrassing.' Indeed it could. Politicians and advertisers are being forced to realise that millions of disillusioned consumers are blanking out their messages. The court and the courtier press should have learned by now that the old levers no longer work. The evidence for boredom with royal marketing has been accumulating for years. The great exception everyone quotes is the death of the ex-Princess of Wales. I wouldn't deny it provoked mass inanity which compelled anyone who believed in the rationality of public life to grab the nearest whisky bottle. But the scale of 'the grief' during those freaky days was exaggerated at the time and has been mythologised since. The day before her funeral the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police said he would need almost all his 27,000 officers to control an expected crowd of six million. Two million turned up. A year later on the anniversary of the Paris smash, tribute programmes got abysmal ratings and the failure of public hug fests to attract anything resembling a crowd, or even a huddle, forced the BBC to decide 'most seem to have decided to do their mourning in private'. This was too lame, even for the BBC. Its managers drew a realistic conclusion. They decided not enough viewers wanted to see the pageant for the Queen Mother's one-hundredth birthday and became the object one of the Daily Mail 's hate campaigns. ITV took over, and the BBC grovelled and admitted it was wrong. The week's brutal viewing figures showed the error was on ITV's side. Its Queen Mother special was a lamentable twenty-fifth in the ratings, behind Charlie's Garden Army and a repeat of It'll Be Alright on the Night (VIII) . We reported last week that senior courtiers feared that next year's Golden Jubilee celebrations for Elizabeth II may be met by 'a wave of apathy' which could damage the monarchy, so they know something is wrong. What they don't appear to understand is why they're being swamped. A small part of the explanation lies in distaste for the airbrushing of monarchy. Everything I've heard about the television obituaries, and everything I've seen in the Press Association files, suggests that the old line will be recycled that Queen Mother is above politics; have the skill 'to be wholly non-political in the present reign', as the Telegraph said last week. They must know this is drivel and she has the standard prejudices of an aristocrat of her generation. Woodrow Wyatt recorded in his diary of March 1986 the Queen Mother telling him that when the royal family are alone together they 'often drink a toast at the end of dinner to Mrs Thatcher. She adores Mrs Thatcher.' She also adored P.W. Botha when he was President of South Africa, and thought the media and black Commonwealth was being beastly about the apartheid regime he managed. She was opposed to women priests, had suspicions of the French, a paradoxical hatred of the Germans and 'reservations' about Jews. When she was Queen, she and George VI broke every constitutional propriety in their eagerness to support Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler and oppose Winston Churchill. So great was their complicity that the Public Records Office refuses to release the papers covering the royal fondness for appeasing the Right in the Thirties until after the Queen Mother's death. They would cause 'substantial distress', apparently. Perhaps they would, but in the long term greater and deserved distress is caused to the Windsors' reputation by the sycophancy and evasions of their supporters and the bullying of the millions who see no reason to share their stage-managed pain.
|
6nickcohen
| 2UK
|
As with so much else in Britain, whether or not you believe evil exists depends on your class. Readers of the popular papers have few difficulties accepting that terrible crimes from the murder of James Bulger to the serial killings of Harold Shipman can be explained by evil. But even bishops who read the broadsheets - or the 'unpopular papers' as Kelvin MacKenzie, a former editor of the Sun, once unkindly suggested we should be called - become fidgety in evil's presence. George W. Bush lost what slender chance he had of winning over middle-class liberal opinion when he denounced the 'Axis of Evil'. Politicians who use the word are seeking to 'demonise' enemies by turning them into monsters, argue those who don't think that the leaders of North Korea and Iraq were capable of becoming monstrous without help from others. Tabloid editors are as calculating. They need a constant supply of monsters to keep the paying public in a profitable state of outraged terror. There's a lot to be said for conventional liberal wisdom. It has been almost comic to watch the effort put into turning Maxine Carr into the next Myra Hindley. She seemed perfect for the part: good-looking in certain lights; dead-eyed; and, apparently, motivated by an unnatural desire to assist her cruel lover in whatever he wanted to do. The shameful spectacle of the Home Secretary rushing to rig the law to prevent Carr's early release from prison last week was the fruit of a lot of hard work by my colleagues. In the end, however, Carr will fail the horror-movie screen test. She didn't help Ian Huntley. She was one of his victims in her own small way: a regular recipient of his beatings. Prison officers, who don't tend to be among nature's bleeding hearts, describe her as a simpleton who is 'as daft as a brush' rather than a sinister manipulator. The Carr case seems to justify fastidious prejudices about the mob and the mob's newspapers. All the unwarranted attention she has received has done is ensure that she will need years of police protection from an ignorant public which has been maddened by a reckless media. But the public isn't always as ignorant as the hounding of Carr implies. If its concept of evil didn't exist, it would have to be invented to cover the gap in all great crimes between understandable causes and inexplicable consequences. Take the Bulger murder which dominated the crime debate in the 1990s and helped make Tony Blair Labour leader. All kinds of reasons were advanced to explain why Jon Venables and Robert Thompson slaughtered a toddler. They came from poor homes, their fathers had walked out on them, they had watched Child's Play II, and may have been inspired by the gruesome film. But honest journalists and detectives admitted at the end of the trial that none of the theories they advanced began to explain the cruelty of the killing. From what I hear from people who have talked to the social workers who looked after them in custody, Thompson and Venables can't explain why they did what they did either. There is a gap between cause and effect, and if you don't use the concept of evil to bridge it, you'll have to find another word with the same meaning. The gap in the case of Thompson and Venables becomes a yawning chasm in the case of Harold Shipman. Because he never confessed, no one can adequately explain how the doctor became a mass murderer. The best journalists can do is say that he was driven to succeed by an ambitious mother who cosseted and petted him. Vera Shipman died suddenly when he was 17, and the shock of her death is meant to have pushed him into depression, drug-taking and, finally, murder. It's a rational theory but its proponents accept that it doesn't begin to account for Shipman's actions. The families of the patients he killed didn't on the whole share the crass jubilation of David Blunkett and the Sun at news of his suicide. They felt that he had remained in control to the end, and dictated the terms of his own death as he had dictated the terms of the deaths of so many others. Many complained that they had been denied the chance of discovering why their relatives had been murdered. It's no disrespect to them to suggest that if Shipman had come clean, they probably wouldn't have heard an explanation which made sense. The German-American intellectual Hannah Arendt gave the best reason why not when she invented the phrase 'the banality of evil'. (Her use of the word 'evil', by the way, can be excused by the fact that she was writing in 1961, an unsophisticated time when we hadn't learned that it was sinful to be judgmental.) The occasion for her outburst was the trial of Otto Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. He had organised the deportation of millions to Nazi death camps. Arendt looked at him and was shocked to discover that 'the man in the glass booth was not even sinister ... The deeds were monstrous, but the doer was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous.' The worst she could say about him was that he had 'a curious, quite authentic inability to think ... When confronted with situations for which routine procedures did not exist, he was helpless, and his clich-ridden language produced on the stand, as it had evidently done in his official life, a kind of macabre comedy.' Eichmann was just a good bureaucrat who obeyed orders. When he was in power, he committed unimaginable crimes; when he was on trial he was a shrivelled and ridiculous figure who didn't have the language to explain what he had done to himself, let alone to others. Evil is banal. Time and again with mass murderers, people expect to see a demon who can inspire awe as well as fear, only to find that they are dealing with a babbling fool. I remember the stir among the journalists in Dunblane when the police announced that they would release copies of letters Thomas Hamilton had posted just before he walked into Dunblane Primary School and massacred 16 children and their teacher. We were sure that they would give us an explanation; a reason which would make sense of the senseless. The letters turned out to be complaints against the Scouts, who had expelled him 20 years before for minor mistakes during a camping trip to the Highlands. There had been no public disgrace, nothing that could provoke murderous resentment in an ordinary man. Local organisers had simply decided that Hamilton wasn't up to being a Scout leader because boys under his care had gone back to their parents cold and wet after he had made them dig snow holes. Hamilton must have thought that when people read the letters they would understand why he had to commit an atrocity and then kill himself; that comprehension would lead to a posthumous pardon. The effect was the precise opposite: readers were mystified and contemptuous. All that for this? Huntley, Shipman and Hamilton were petty offenders compared to the great criminals of our times. But the pattern remains the same. The shock which followed the arrest of Saddam Hussein was the shock of being confronted with banality. Here was a leader who had sent armies roaming across the Middle East, who had produced the death of a million in foreign wars and hundreds of thousands in domestic oppression, who had enforced a cult of the personality it was fatal to dissent from, who had forced four million people into exile, who had been indulged by the West, the Soviet Union and the Arab world and who was, at the end of a lifetime of terror, just a dirty old man cowering in a hole. Like the families of Shipman's victims, Saddam's subjects will want an explanation. They're unlikely to get one from their former tormentor. Adel Abdul-Mehdi, a Shia politician, confronted the tyrant after his capture. What about the 300,000 corpses found in mass graves since the end of the war, he asked? Like Hamilton, Saddam assumed that even the relatives of the dead would have to concede that there were good grounds for the executions. 'Ask their families,' he replied. 'They were thieves and they ran away from the battlefields with Iran and the battlefields of Kuwait.' Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, watched the exchange and noted that Saddam was 'not remorseful at all. It was clear he was a complete narcissist who was incapable of showing remorse or sympathy to other human beings.' And that, I think, is about as near as you can get to defining evil. It is pure selfishness and pure thoughtlessness. Once a Shipman or a Saddam has been overthrown, the only point worth dwelling on is how on earth the rest of us let them get away with murder for so long.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Nick Cohen .
|
As with so much else in Britain, whether or not you believe evil exists depends on your class. Readers of the popular papers have few difficulties accepting that terrible crimes from the murder of James Bulger to the serial killings of Harold Shipman can be explained by evil. But even bishops who read the broadsheets - or the 'unpopular papers' as Kelvin MacKenzie, a former editor of the Sun, once unkindly suggested we should be called - become fidgety in evil's presence. George W. Bush lost what slender chance he had of winning over middle-class liberal opinion when he denounced the 'Axis of Evil'. Politicians who use the word are seeking to 'demonise' enemies by turning them into monsters, argue those who don't think that the leaders of North Korea and Iraq were capable of becoming monstrous without help from others. Tabloid editors are as calculating. They need a constant supply of monsters to keep the paying public in a profitable state of outraged terror. There's a lot to be said for conventional liberal wisdom. It has been almost comic to watch the effort put into turning Maxine Carr into the next Myra Hindley. She seemed perfect for the part: good-looking in certain lights; dead-eyed; and, apparently, motivated by an unnatural desire to assist her cruel lover in whatever he wanted to do. The shameful spectacle of the Home Secretary rushing to rig the law to prevent Carr's early release from prison last week was the fruit of a lot of hard work by my colleagues. In the end, however, Carr will fail the horror-movie screen test. She didn't help Ian Huntley. She was one of his victims in her own small way: a regular recipient of his beatings. Prison officers, who don't tend to be among nature's bleeding hearts, describe her as a simpleton who is 'as daft as a brush' rather than a sinister manipulator. The Carr case seems to justify fastidious prejudices about the mob and the mob's newspapers. All the unwarranted attention she has received has done is ensure that she will need years of police protection from an ignorant public which has been maddened by a reckless media. But the public isn't always as ignorant as the hounding of Carr implies. If its concept of evil didn't exist, it would have to be invented to cover the gap in all great crimes between understandable causes and inexplicable consequences. Take the Bulger murder which dominated the crime debate in the 1990s and helped make Tony Blair Labour leader. All kinds of reasons were advanced to explain why Jon Venables and Robert Thompson slaughtered a toddler. They came from poor homes, their fathers had walked out on them, they had watched Child's Play II, and may have been inspired by the gruesome film. But honest journalists and detectives admitted at the end of the trial that none of the theories they advanced began to explain the cruelty of the killing. From what I hear from people who have talked to the social workers who looked after them in custody, Thompson and Venables can't explain why they did what they did either. There is a gap between cause and effect, and if you don't use the concept of evil to bridge it, you'll have to find another word with the same meaning. The gap in the case of Thompson and Venables becomes a yawning chasm in the case of Harold Shipman. Because he never confessed, no one can adequately explain how the doctor became a mass murderer. The best journalists can do is say that he was driven to succeed by an ambitious mother who cosseted and petted him. Vera Shipman died suddenly when he was 17, and the shock of her death is meant to have pushed him into depression, drug-taking and, finally, murder. It's a rational theory but its proponents accept that it doesn't begin to account for Shipman's actions. The families of the patients he killed didn't on the whole share the crass jubilation of David Blunkett and the Sun at news of his suicide. They felt that he had remained in control to the end, and dictated the terms of his own death as he had dictated the terms of the deaths of so many others. Many complained that they had been denied the chance of discovering why their relatives had been murdered. It's no disrespect to them to suggest that if Shipman had come clean, they probably wouldn't have heard an explanation which made sense. The German-American intellectual Hannah Arendt gave the best reason why not when she invented the phrase 'the banality of evil'. (Her use of the word 'evil', by the way, can be excused by the fact that she was writing in 1961, an unsophisticated time when we hadn't learned that it was sinful to be judgmental.) The occasion for her outburst was the trial of Otto Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. He had organised the deportation of millions to Nazi death camps. Arendt looked at him and was shocked to discover that 'the man in the glass booth was not even sinister ... The deeds were monstrous, but the doer was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous.' The worst she could say about him was that he had 'a curious, quite authentic inability to think ... When confronted with situations for which routine procedures did not exist, he was helpless, and his clich-ridden language produced on the stand, as it had evidently done in his official life, a kind of macabre comedy.' Eichmann was just a good bureaucrat who obeyed orders. When he was in power, he committed unimaginable crimes; when he was on trial he was a shrivelled and ridiculous figure who didn't have the language to explain what he had done to himself, let alone to others. Evil is banal. Time and again with mass murderers, people expect to see a demon who can inspire awe as well as fear, only to find that they are dealing with a babbling fool. I remember the stir among the journalists in Dunblane when the police announced that they would release copies of letters Thomas Hamilton had posted just before he walked into Dunblane Primary School and massacred 16 children and their teacher. We were sure that they would give us an explanation; a reason which would make sense of the senseless. The letters turned out to be complaints against the Scouts, who had expelled him 20 years before for minor mistakes during a camping trip to the Highlands. There had been no public disgrace, nothing that could provoke murderous resentment in an ordinary man. Local organisers had simply decided that Hamilton wasn't up to being a Scout leader because boys under his care had gone back to their parents cold and wet after he had made them dig snow holes. Hamilton must have thought that when people read the letters they would understand why he had to commit an atrocity and then kill himself; that comprehension would lead to a posthumous pardon. The effect was the precise opposite: readers were mystified and contemptuous. All that for this? Huntley, Shipman and Hamilton were petty offenders compared to the great criminals of our times. But the pattern remains the same. The shock which followed the arrest of Saddam Hussein was the shock of being confronted with banality. Here was a leader who had sent armies roaming across the Middle East, who had produced the death of a million in foreign wars and hundreds of thousands in domestic oppression, who had enforced a cult of the personality it was fatal to dissent from, who had forced four million people into exile, who had been indulged by the West, the Soviet Union and the Arab world and who was, at the end of a lifetime of terror, just a dirty old man cowering in a hole. Like the families of Shipman's victims, Saddam's subjects will want an explanation. They're unlikely to get one from their former tormentor. Adel Abdul-Mehdi, a Shia politician, confronted the tyrant after his capture. What about the 300,000 corpses found in mass graves since the end of the war, he asked? Like Hamilton, Saddam assumed that even the relatives of the dead would have to concede that there were good grounds for the executions. 'Ask their families,' he replied. 'They were thieves and they ran away from the battlefields with Iran and the battlefields of Kuwait.' Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, watched the exchange and noted that Saddam was 'not remorseful at all. It was clear he was a complete narcissist who was incapable of showing remorse or sympathy to other human beings.' And that, I think, is about as near as you can get to defining evil. It is pure selfishness and pure thoughtlessness. Once a Shipman or a Saddam has been overthrown, the only point worth dwelling on is how on earth the rest of us let them get away with murder for so long.
|
6nickcohen
| 2UK
|
The healthy reaction to the death of a great-grandmother of 100 or so from her family is one of resignation, even quiet relief. She's had a good innings - her three-score years and 10 and then another score and 10. No one wants her to die, but it is entirely human not to be disabled by grief at her passing when her survival would have brought only decline and suffering. If you have similar feelings after the death of the Queen Mother - a woman 99.9 per cent of the country cannot count as a relative or friend - I advise you to keep them to yourself. Her stay in hospital last week revealed to those who work in the 'newzak' business that professional mourners are primed to howl with anguish and to howl down anyone who can't counterfeit pain.A gruesome media underworld starts to rumble whenever there's a royal health scare. BBC executives check if the afflicted is on the 'A-list' consisting of the Queen Mother, Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William, or the 'B-list' of Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, Edward Wessex and an unfortunate Duke of Edinburgh, who was relegated by the corporation last year - presumably for scoring too many own goals. Death in the premier league guarantees that scheduled programmes are replaced with funereal music before days of commemorative documentaries and moist news reports begin. B-list royals get second-rate tributes.All broadcasters and newspapers, meanwhile, receive holding obituaries, stories and even leading articles from the Press Association news-agency. Last week's flood of anticipatory copy included a suggested editorial for dunderheaded journalists unable to compose one themselves. ('The nation will mourn with gratitude the life of and service of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, "Queen Mum" to millions throughout the world.')We learned from a separate piece you may read one day in your morning or evening paper or hear parroted on Radio 4 that as her body lies in state at Westminster Hall, 'vast crowds are expected to queue to file past the coffin. It will be placed high on a purple-draped catafalque on the same spot where King George VI lay in state in February 1952, and will be guarded round-the-clock by a contingent of Gentleman at Arms and Yeomen of the Guard. The ancient hall is an incomparable setting for the public's tribute to the royal lady they have loved and respected...' and so on at a length which might make the most ardent monarchist tear off his culottes.The assumption that the nation will mourn runs through all the mainstream media's pre-cooked packages. And if a handful of perverse dissenters don't wail, they will be after them just as they were after anyone who failed to exhibit the required trauma after the death of Diana Spencer.The shape of things of come could be glimpsed in the News of the World last year when it shrieked at Camelot executives for 'hatching a tasteless plot to protect their Saturday draw if the Queen Mum should die that day'. Their decision to go ahead with the lottery draw and announce the results in the small hours when the grieving bulletins were over for the night was the 'the ultimate in bad taste'.If the nation was grieving, everyone would be too distracted to buy a lottery ticket and Camelot could take the week off. Its emergency planning to please the punters shows that Camelot at least knows that national mourning is not what it was.The great vulgarity of monarchy is its transformation of private life into propaganda. Births, weddings and funerals are used to build customer loyalty to 'The Firm'. Throughout the disasters of the 1990s, courtiers and royalist commentators consoled themselves with the thought that the death of the Queen Mother would pull indifferent or hostile subjects back into line behind her less than perfect family. Extravagant designs for her funeral have been knocking around Whitehall and the media for years in a classified document entitled 'Operation Lion'. Its authors envisage nine days of mourning culminating in the biggest state funeral since Winston Churchill's in 1965. The monarchy would define the nation again and dominate its emotions.Anthony Holden, the critical royal biographer, wonders whether Buckingham Palace still has the nerve to implement 'Operation Lion'. 'People will be making comparisons all the time with the numbers Diana's funeral attracted,' he told me. 'Suppose the majority paying their respect are elderly and there's scarcely a young face in sight. Suppose viewers revolt about television being disrupted for nine days. It could be embarrassing.'Indeed it could. Politicians and advertisers are being forced to realise that millions of disillusioned consumers are blanking out their messages. The court and the courtier press should have learned by now that the old levers no longer work. The evidence for boredom with royal marketing has been accumulating for years.The great exception everyone quotes is the death of the ex-Princess of Wales. I wouldn't deny it provoked mass inanity which compelled anyone who believed in the rationality of public life to grab the nearest whisky bottle. But the scale of 'the grief' during those freaky days was exaggerated at the time and has been mythologised since.The day before her funeral the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police said he would need almost all his 27,000 officers to control an expected crowd of six million. Two million turned up. A year later on the anniversary of the Paris smash, tribute programmes got abysmal ratings and the failure of public hug fests to attract anything resembling a crowd, or even a huddle, forced the BBC to decide 'most seem to have decided to do their mourning in private'.This was too lame, even for the BBC. Its managers drew a realistic conclusion. They decided not enough viewers wanted to see the pageant for the Queen Mother's one-hundredth birthday and became the object one of the Daily Mail's signature hate campaigns.ITV took over and the BBC grovelled and admitted it was wrong. The week's brutal viewing figures showed the error was on ITV's side. Its Queen Mother special was a lamentable twenty-fifth in the ratings, behind Charlie's Garden Army and a repeat of It'll Be Alright on the Night (VIII).We reported last week that senior courtiers feared that next year's Golden Jubilee celebrations for Elizabeth II may be met by 'a wave of apathy' which could damage the monarchy, so they know something is wrong. What they don't appear to understand is why they're being swamped.A small part of the explanation lies in distaste for the airbrushing of monarchy. Everything I've heard about the television obituaries, and everything I've seen in the Press Association files, suggests that the old line will be recycled that Queen Mother is above politics; have the skill 'to be wholly non-political in the present reign', as the Telegraph said last week.They must know this is drivel and she has the standard prejudices of an aristocrat of her generation. Woodrow Wyatt recorded in his diary of March 1986 the Queen Mother telling him that when the royal family are alone together they 'often drink a toast at the end of dinner to Mrs Thatcher. She adores Mrs Thatcher'.She also adored P.W. Botha when he was President of South Africa and thought the media and black Commonwealth was being beastly about the apartheid regime he managed. She was opposed to women priests, had suspicions of the French, a paradoxical hatred of the Germans and 'reservations' about Jews.When she was Queen, she and George VI broke every constitutional propriety in their eagerness to support Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler and oppose Winston Churchill. So great was their complicity that the Public Records Office refuses to release the papers covering the royal fondness for appeasing the Right in the 1930s until after the Queen Mother's death. They would cause 'substantial distress', apparently.Perhaps they would, but in the long term greater and deserved distress is caused to the Windsors' reputation by the sycophancy and evasions of their supporters and the bullying of the millions who see no reason to share their stage-managed pain.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Nick Cohen .
|
The healthy reaction to the death of a great-grandmother of 100 or so from her family is one of resignation, even quiet relief. She's had a good innings - her three-score years and 10 and then another score and 10. No one wants her to die, but it is entirely human not to be disabled by grief at her passing when her survival would have brought only decline and suffering. If you have similar feelings after the death of the Queen Mother - a woman 99.9 per cent of the country cannot count as a relative or friend - I advise you to keep them to yourself. Her stay in hospital last week revealed to those who work in the 'newzak' business that professional mourners are primed to howl with anguish and to howl down anyone who can't counterfeit pain.A gruesome media underworld starts to rumble whenever there's a royal health scare. BBC executives check if the afflicted is on the 'A-list' consisting of the Queen Mother, Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William, or the 'B-list' of Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, Edward Wessex and an unfortunate Duke of Edinburgh, who was relegated by the corporation last year - presumably for scoring too many own goals. Death in the premier league guarantees that scheduled programmes are replaced with funereal music before days of commemorative documentaries and moist news reports begin. B-list royals get second-rate tributes.All broadcasters and newspapers, meanwhile, receive holding obituaries, stories and even leading articles from the Press Association news-agency. Last week's flood of anticipatory copy included a suggested editorial for dunderheaded journalists unable to compose one themselves. ('The nation will mourn with gratitude the life of and service of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, "Queen Mum" to millions throughout the world.')We learned from a separate piece you may read one day in your morning or evening paper or hear parroted on Radio 4 that as her body lies in state at Westminster Hall, 'vast crowds are expected to queue to file past the coffin. It will be placed high on a purple-draped catafalque on the same spot where King George VI lay in state in February 1952, and will be guarded round-the-clock by a contingent of Gentleman at Arms and Yeomen of the Guard. The ancient hall is an incomparable setting for the public's tribute to the royal lady they have loved and respected...' and so on at a length which might make the most ardent monarchist tear off his culottes.The assumption that the nation will mourn runs through all the mainstream media's pre-cooked packages. And if a handful of perverse dissenters don't wail, they will be after them just as they were after anyone who failed to exhibit the required trauma after the death of Diana Spencer.The shape of things of come could be glimpsed in the News of the World last year when it shrieked at Camelot executives for 'hatching a tasteless plot to protect their Saturday draw if the Queen Mum should die that day'. Their decision to go ahead with the lottery draw and announce the results in the small hours when the grieving bulletins were over for the night was the 'the ultimate in bad taste'.If the nation was grieving, everyone would be too distracted to buy a lottery ticket and Camelot could take the week off. Its emergency planning to please the punters shows that Camelot at least knows that national mourning is not what it was.The great vulgarity of monarchy is its transformation of private life into propaganda. Births, weddings and funerals are used to build customer loyalty to 'The Firm'. Throughout the disasters of the 1990s, courtiers and royalist commentators consoled themselves with the thought that the death of the Queen Mother would pull indifferent or hostile subjects back into line behind her less than perfect family. Extravagant designs for her funeral have been knocking around Whitehall and the media for years in a classified document entitled 'Operation Lion'. Its authors envisage nine days of mourning culminating in the biggest state funeral since Winston Churchill's in 1965. The monarchy would define the nation again and dominate its emotions.Anthony Holden, the critical royal biographer, wonders whether Buckingham Palace still has the nerve to implement 'Operation Lion'. 'People will be making comparisons all the time with the numbers Diana's funeral attracted,' he told me. 'Suppose the majority paying their respect are elderly and there's scarcely a young face in sight. Suppose viewers revolt about television being disrupted for nine days. It could be embarrassing.'Indeed it could. Politicians and advertisers are being forced to realise that millions of disillusioned consumers are blanking out their messages. The court and the courtier press should have learned by now that the old levers no longer work. The evidence for boredom with royal marketing has been accumulating for years.The great exception everyone quotes is the death of the ex-Princess of Wales. I wouldn't deny it provoked mass inanity which compelled anyone who believed in the rationality of public life to grab the nearest whisky bottle. But the scale of 'the grief' during those freaky days was exaggerated at the time and has been mythologised since.The day before her funeral the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police said he would need almost all his 27,000 officers to control an expected crowd of six million. Two million turned up. A year later on the anniversary of the Paris smash, tribute programmes got abysmal ratings and the failure of public hug fests to attract anything resembling a crowd, or even a huddle, forced the BBC to decide 'most seem to have decided to do their mourning in private'.This was too lame, even for the BBC. Its managers drew a realistic conclusion. They decided not enough viewers wanted to see the pageant for the Queen Mother's one-hundredth birthday and became the object one of the Daily Mail's signature hate campaigns.ITV took over and the BBC grovelled and admitted it was wrong. The week's brutal viewing figures showed the error was on ITV's side. Its Queen Mother special was a lamentable twenty-fifth in the ratings, behind Charlie's Garden Army and a repeat of It'll Be Alright on the Night (VIII).We reported last week that senior courtiers feared that next year's Golden Jubilee celebrations for Elizabeth II may be met by 'a wave of apathy' which could damage the monarchy, so they know something is wrong. What they don't appear to understand is why they're being swamped.A small part of the explanation lies in distaste for the airbrushing of monarchy. Everything I've heard about the television obituaries, and everything I've seen in the Press Association files, suggests that the old line will be recycled that Queen Mother is above politics; have the skill 'to be wholly non-political in the present reign', as the Telegraph said last week.They must know this is drivel and she has the standard prejudices of an aristocrat of her generation. Woodrow Wyatt recorded in his diary of March 1986 the Queen Mother telling him that when the royal family are alone together they 'often drink a toast at the end of dinner to Mrs Thatcher. She adores Mrs Thatcher'.She also adored P.W. Botha when he was President of South Africa and thought the media and black Commonwealth was being beastly about the apartheid regime he managed. She was opposed to women priests, had suspicions of the French, a paradoxical hatred of the Germans and 'reservations' about Jews.When she was Queen, she and George VI broke every constitutional propriety in their eagerness to support Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler and oppose Winston Churchill. So great was their complicity that the Public Records Office refuses to release the papers covering the royal fondness for appeasing the Right in the 1930s until after the Queen Mother's death. They would cause 'substantial distress', apparently.Perhaps they would, but in the long term greater and deserved distress is caused to the Windsors' reputation by the sycophancy and evasions of their supporters and the bullying of the millions who see no reason to share their stage-managed pain.
|
6nickcohen
| 2UK
|
b>The following correction was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday July 17 2005</b><br><br>The comment piece below was wrong to say that the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was 'delighted' at the attack on the World Trade Centre, describing it as 'a great work of art'. In fact, Stockhausen made a statement to the effect that he believed the devil was still an active force in the world and condemned the attack as 'Lucifer's greatest work of art'. Apologies.<br><br><hr size="1"><br>The instinctive response of a significant portion of the rich world's intelligentsia to the murder of innocents on 11 September was anything but robust. A few, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, were delighted. The destruction of the World Trade Centre was 'the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos,' declared the composer whose tin ear failed to catch the screams.Others saw it as a blow for justice rather than art. They persuaded themselves that al-Qaeda was made up of anti-imperialist insurgents who were avenging the wrongs of the poor. 'The great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty, so what is 20,000 dead in New York?' asked Dario Fo. Rosie Boycott seemed to agree. 'The West should take the blame for pushing people in Third World countries to the end of their tether,' she wrote.In these bleak days, it's worth remembering what was said after September 2001. A backward glance shows that before the war against the Taliban and long before the war against Saddam Hussein, there were many who had determined that 'we had it coming'. They had to convince themselves that Islamism was a Western creation: a comprehensible reaction to the International Monetary Fund or hanging chads in Florida or whatever else was agitating them, rather than an autonomous psychopathic force with reasons of its own. In the years since, this manic masochism has spread like bindweed and strangled leftish and much conservative thought.All kinds of hypocrisy remained unchallenged. In my world of liberal London, social success at the dinner table belonged to the man who could simultaneously maintain that we've got it coming but that nothing was going to come; that indiscriminate murder would be Tony Blair's fault but there wouldn't be indiscriminate murder because 'the threat' was a phantom menace invented by Blair to scare the cowed electorate into supporting him.I'd say the 'power of nightmares' side of that oxymoronic argument is too bloodied to be worth discussing this weekend and it's better to stick with the wider delusion.On Thursday, before the police had made one arrest, before one terrorist group had claimed responsibility, before one body had been carried from the wreckage, let alone been identified and allowed to rest in peace, cocksure voices filled with righteousness were proclaiming that the real murderers weren't the real murderers but the Prime Minister. I'm not thinking of George Galloway and the other saluters of Saddam, but of upright men and women who sat down to write letters to respectable newspapers within minutes of hearing the news.'Hang your head in shame, Mr Blair. Better still, resign - and whoever takes over immediately withdraw all our forces from Iraq and Afghanistan,' wrote the Rev Mike Ketley, who is a vicar, for God's sake, but has no qualms about leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban and al-Qaeda or Iraq to the Baath party and al-Qaeda. 'Let's stop this murder and put on trial those criminals who are within our jurisdiction,' began Patrick Daly of south London in an apparently promising letter to the Independent. But, inevitably, he didn't mean the bombers. 'Let's start with the British government.'And so it went on. At no point did they grasp that Islamism was a reactionary movement as great as fascism, which had claimed millions of mainly Muslim lives in the Sudan, Iran, Algeria and Afghanistan and is claiming thousands in Iraq. As with fascism, it takes a resolute dunderheadedness to put all the responsibility on democratic governments for its existence.I feel the appeal, believe me. You are exasperated with the manifold faults of Tony Blair and George W Bush. Fighting your government is what you know how to do and what you want to do, and when you are confronted with totalitarian forces which are far worse than your government, the easy solution is to blame your government for them.But it's a parochial line of reasoning to suppose that all bad, or all good, comes from the West - and a racist one to boot. The unavoidable consequence is that you must refuse to support democrats, liberals, feminists and socialists in the Arab world and Iran who are the victims of Islamism in its Sunni and Shia guises because you are too compromised to condemn their persecutors.Islamism stops being an ideology intent on building an empire from Andalusia to Indonesia, destroying democracy and subjugating women and becomes, by the magic of parochial reasoning, a protest movement on a par with Make Poverty History or the TUC.Again, I understand the appeal. Whether you are brown or white, Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist, it is uncomfortable to face the fact that there is a messianic cult of death which, like European fascism and communism before it, will send you to your grave whatever you do. But I'm afraid that's what the record shows.The only plausible excuse for 11 September was that it was a protest against America's support for Israel. Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden's statements revealed that he was obsessed with the American troops defending Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein and had barely said a word about Palestine.After the Bali bombings, the conventional wisdom was that the Australians had been blown to pieces as a punishment for their government's support for Bush. No one thought for a moment about the Australian forces which stopped Indonesian militias rampaging through East Timor, a small country Indonesia had invaded in 1975 with the backing of the US. Yet when bin Laden spoke, he said it was Australia's anti-imperialist intervention to free a largely Catholic population from a largely Muslim occupying power which had bugged him.East Timor was a great cause of the left until the Australians made it an embarrassment. So, too, was the suffering of the victims of Saddam, until the tyrant made the mistake of invading Kuwait and becoming America's enemy. In the past two years in Iraq, UN and Red Cross workers have been massacred, trade unionists assassinated, school children and aid workers kidnapped and decapitated and countless people who happened to be on the wrong bus or on the wrong street at the wrong time paid for their mistake with their lives.What can the survivors do? Not a lot according to a Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He told bin Laden that the northern Kurds may be Sunni but 'Islam's voice has died out among them' and they'd been infiltrated by Jews. The southern Shia were 'a sect of treachery' while any Arab, Kurd, Shia or Sunni who believed in a democratic Iraq was a heretic.Our options are as limited When Abu Bakr Bashir was arrested for the Bali bombings, he was asked how the families of the dead could avoid the fate of their relatives. 'Please convert to Islam,' he replied. But as the past 40 years have shown, Islamism is mainly concerned with killing and oppressing Muslims.In his intervention before last year's American presidential election, bin Laden praised Robert Fisk of the Independent whose journalism he admired. 'I consider him to be neutral,' he said, so I suppose we could all resolve not to take the tube unless we can sit next to Mr Fisk. But as the killings are indiscriminate, I can't see how that would help and, in any case, who wants to be stuck on a train with an Independent reporter?There are many tasks in the coming days. Staying calm, helping the police and protecting Muslim communities from neo-Nazi attack are high among them. But the greatest is to resolve to see the world for what it is and remove the twin vices of wilful myopia and bad faith which have disfigured too much liberal thought for too long.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Nick Cohen .
|
b>The following correction was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday July 17 2005</b><br><br>The comment piece below was wrong to say that the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was 'delighted' at the attack on the World Trade Centre, describing it as 'a great work of art'. In fact, Stockhausen made a statement to the effect that he believed the devil was still an active force in the world and condemned the attack as 'Lucifer's greatest work of art'. Apologies.<br><br><hr size="1"><br>The instinctive response of a significant portion of the rich world's intelligentsia to the murder of innocents on 11 September was anything but robust. A few, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, were delighted. The destruction of the World Trade Centre was 'the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos,' declared the composer whose tin ear failed to catch the screams.Others saw it as a blow for justice rather than art. They persuaded themselves that al-Qaeda was made up of anti-imperialist insurgents who were avenging the wrongs of the poor. 'The great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty, so what is 20,000 dead in New York?' asked Dario Fo. Rosie Boycott seemed to agree. 'The West should take the blame for pushing people in Third World countries to the end of their tether,' she wrote.In these bleak days, it's worth remembering what was said after September 2001. A backward glance shows that before the war against the Taliban and long before the war against Saddam Hussein, there were many who had determined that 'we had it coming'. They had to convince themselves that Islamism was a Western creation: a comprehensible reaction to the International Monetary Fund or hanging chads in Florida or whatever else was agitating them, rather than an autonomous psychopathic force with reasons of its own. In the years since, this manic masochism has spread like bindweed and strangled leftish and much conservative thought.All kinds of hypocrisy remained unchallenged. In my world of liberal London, social success at the dinner table belonged to the man who could simultaneously maintain that we've got it coming but that nothing was going to come; that indiscriminate murder would be Tony Blair's fault but there wouldn't be indiscriminate murder because 'the threat' was a phantom menace invented by Blair to scare the cowed electorate into supporting him.I'd say the 'power of nightmares' side of that oxymoronic argument is too bloodied to be worth discussing this weekend and it's better to stick with the wider delusion.On Thursday, before the police had made one arrest, before one terrorist group had claimed responsibility, before one body had been carried from the wreckage, let alone been identified and allowed to rest in peace, cocksure voices filled with righteousness were proclaiming that the real murderers weren't the real murderers but the Prime Minister. I'm not thinking of George Galloway and the other saluters of Saddam, but of upright men and women who sat down to write letters to respectable newspapers within minutes of hearing the news.'Hang your head in shame, Mr Blair. Better still, resign - and whoever takes over immediately withdraw all our forces from Iraq and Afghanistan,' wrote the Rev Mike Ketley, who is a vicar, for God's sake, but has no qualms about leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban and al-Qaeda or Iraq to the Baath party and al-Qaeda. 'Let's stop this murder and put on trial those criminals who are within our jurisdiction,' began Patrick Daly of south London in an apparently promising letter to the Independent. But, inevitably, he didn't mean the bombers. 'Let's start with the British government.'And so it went on. At no point did they grasp that Islamism was a reactionary movement as great as fascism, which had claimed millions of mainly Muslim lives in the Sudan, Iran, Algeria and Afghanistan and is claiming thousands in Iraq. As with fascism, it takes a resolute dunderheadedness to put all the responsibility on democratic governments for its existence.I feel the appeal, believe me. You are exasperated with the manifold faults of Tony Blair and George W Bush. Fighting your government is what you know how to do and what you want to do, and when you are confronted with totalitarian forces which are far worse than your government, the easy solution is to blame your government for them.But it's a parochial line of reasoning to suppose that all bad, or all good, comes from the West - and a racist one to boot. The unavoidable consequence is that you must refuse to support democrats, liberals, feminists and socialists in the Arab world and Iran who are the victims of Islamism in its Sunni and Shia guises because you are too compromised to condemn their persecutors.Islamism stops being an ideology intent on building an empire from Andalusia to Indonesia, destroying democracy and subjugating women and becomes, by the magic of parochial reasoning, a protest movement on a par with Make Poverty History or the TUC.Again, I understand the appeal. Whether you are brown or white, Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist, it is uncomfortable to face the fact that there is a messianic cult of death which, like European fascism and communism before it, will send you to your grave whatever you do. But I'm afraid that's what the record shows.The only plausible excuse for 11 September was that it was a protest against America's support for Israel. Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden's statements revealed that he was obsessed with the American troops defending Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein and had barely said a word about Palestine.After the Bali bombings, the conventional wisdom was that the Australians had been blown to pieces as a punishment for their government's support for Bush. No one thought for a moment about the Australian forces which stopped Indonesian militias rampaging through East Timor, a small country Indonesia had invaded in 1975 with the backing of the US. Yet when bin Laden spoke, he said it was Australia's anti-imperialist intervention to free a largely Catholic population from a largely Muslim occupying power which had bugged him.East Timor was a great cause of the left until the Australians made it an embarrassment. So, too, was the suffering of the victims of Saddam, until the tyrant made the mistake of invading Kuwait and becoming America's enemy. In the past two years in Iraq, UN and Red Cross workers have been massacred, trade unionists assassinated, school children and aid workers kidnapped and decapitated and countless people who happened to be on the wrong bus or on the wrong street at the wrong time paid for their mistake with their lives.What can the survivors do? Not a lot according to a Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He told bin Laden that the northern Kurds may be Sunni but 'Islam's voice has died out among them' and they'd been infiltrated by Jews. The southern Shia were 'a sect of treachery' while any Arab, Kurd, Shia or Sunni who believed in a democratic Iraq was a heretic.Our options are as limited When Abu Bakr Bashir was arrested for the Bali bombings, he was asked how the families of the dead could avoid the fate of their relatives. 'Please convert to Islam,' he replied. But as the past 40 years have shown, Islamism is mainly concerned with killing and oppressing Muslims.In his intervention before last year's American presidential election, bin Laden praised Robert Fisk of the Independent whose journalism he admired. 'I consider him to be neutral,' he said, so I suppose we could all resolve not to take the tube unless we can sit next to Mr Fisk. But as the killings are indiscriminate, I can't see how that would help and, in any case, who wants to be stuck on a train with an Independent reporter?There are many tasks in the coming days. Staying calm, helping the police and protecting Muslim communities from neo-Nazi attack are high among them. But the greatest is to resolve to see the world for what it is and remove the twin vices of wilful myopia and bad faith which have disfigured too much liberal thought for too long.
|
6nickcohen
| 2UK
|
What should be done with Maff?" cried Ian Willmore, media coordinator for Friends of the Earth. '"What should be done with Maff? Maff should be shot in the head, dumped in a trench, fried to a cinder, sprinkled with quicklime and buried with a stake through its heart, that's what should be done with Maff ...and you can quote me on that if you want."In normal circumstances quotation would be all but pointless. Willmore would be a voice from the green fringe, which could be dismissed by those whose opinions matter with the killer condemnatory sentence: 'No one takes him seriously.' Not this time, I think. The foot and mouth epidemic has had the cheering effect of shifting the fringe to the mainstream. I've never found New Labour politicians and advisers as furious or as willing to talk to Leftie hacks. Undoubtedly the anger has been caused in part by the postponement of elections. But it is elevated by a less partisan contempt for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and a determination that it should share the fate of millions of beasts. 'We've learned the hard way that the department which gave us BSE is the last organisation you want on your side in a crisis,' said one. The official line is that the fall in the daily count of new cases shows that the slaughter programme is 'beginning to bite'. No one wants to contradict guarded optimism in public. In private, however, many worry about spread rather than numbers. There may be fewer outbreaks but they are popping up all over the country - in Shropshire, Cornwall, and the Peak District. This does not look like an emergency which has been contained. Above all, the strength of the disease in Cumbria terrifies officials. "I don't know if we can stop it sweeping across to the Humber, however many animals we slaughter,' said one member of the Downing Street crisis team. 'We may have to think about vaccination again."Opposition to vaccination is the ruling passion of the National Farmers' Union and Maff (the NFU's political wing). If their dogma is overturned both will be humiliated and Maff may die of shame and be replaced by a Ministry for Rural Affairs. Sticking to slaughter until the last cow dies in the last ditch suits their interests, but administrative convenience may not be enough to save Maff when New Labour's confrontation with the Ministry has been so disillusioning. The party came to power as modernisers. In agriculture, as in so much else, 'modernity' meant more of the same. A party adviser described Maff as a dumping ground for civil servants. The wages were lower, the chances of moving on to a better job in Whitehall non-existent. A posting to Maff was the bureaucratic equivalent of a Politburo order to take up duties at a Mongolian power station or - to mix continents, and quite possibly metaphors as well - to check in for an indefinite stay at the Hotel California. "It was a secretive, depressed place,' he said, 'very suspicious of change, very defensive. New Ministers and new permanent secretaries can't stop the treacle layer of senior civil servants trapping new ideas." Jack Cunningham, the first Labour Agriculture Minister, at least tried to change the privileges granted to the NFU by the Tories. He also noticed that while his office was a 10 feet square coop without a desk, senior civil servants were housed in some splendour. Cunningham made a fuss and the stories about 'Junket Jack', which were to help finish his career, duly appeared. The Civil Service can be vicious when crossed. 'Expect articles about how Nick Brown failed to heed the sound advice of righteous officials to surface within days,' my new friend predicted. Back-covering briefers will have to work hard. The suicidally honest Michael Meacher blurted out last week that there will be an inquiry when the mess is finally cleared up and was reprimanded for telling the truth. When it comes, as it will, the investigators must ask: why a Maff inspector missed the initial outbreak? Why animal movements were allowed for four days after foot and mouth was discovered? When did Maff officials warn Ministers that trouble was coming? Why were misleading figures on detection and slaughter rates fed to Downing Street? How rigorous was Maff in cracking down on the 'black sheep' smuggling market of subsidy-fiddling farmers? And why was the conclusion that the Army and epidemiologists should be called in at once, which had been reached by the inquiries into the 1967-68 outbreak, ignored? The last question has provoked many accusations in the past few days. But exiles from Maff argue that it should be rephrased. 'Someone should look at all the contingency plans from '68 to the present day,' said one, 'and try to spot the differences. My hunch is that there won't be any.' Maff has been stuck with a slaughter policy since the 1920s when it overrode the protests of small farmers, who saw no need for animals with a minor illness to be massacred, in the interests of big farmers, who wanted to eliminate a disease which reduced auction prices. My colleague Anthony Browne was referred to a study from the 1950s by the Maff press office when he asked if slaughter was the best policy. It was as if all the modern advances in vaccination had never happened. Macedonia and Albania vaccinated successfully to stop the spread of the disease in 1996. But it has not been considered here for fear it would jeopardise a livestock export market worth a paltry 570 million. Dissent has its risks. The Elm Farm Research Centre, a Berkshire agricultural charity, had to promise vets anonymity when it asked them to discuss the merits of vaccination. Public exposure would threaten their careers. The slaughtermen in the NFU, meanwhile, are presented as the sole representatives of farmers (just as the Countryside Alliance is presented as sole representative of the countryside) though only 53,000 of the 180,000 farmers in England and Wales are members. Farmers' organisations who favour vaccination are shut out. Mike Hart of the Small and Family Farmers Alliance told me how he and other small farming groups had tried to get past Maff and into see Blair to argue against mass slaughter. They gave up after 'hitting the proverbial brick wall'. What we are witnessing is the sanctification of a dubious slaughter policy with little concern for the public interest. Stephen Tindale, who was Meacher's political adviser at the Department of the Environment until earlier this year, is not surprised. He remembered the Government receiving pathetic complaints from farm workers afflicted with depression, lassitude and chronic muscular pains - the effects, they maintained of organo-phosphate sheep dips. Maff officials dismissed their claims. No one knew if the sheep dip was the culprit, they said, but the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh was on the case. The Institute duly reported that a link between exposure to sheep dip and 'chronic peripheral neuropathy' [damage to the nervous system] was 'suggested' by its research. Whitehall's Committee on Toxicity preferred to bin the report and uphold the reputation of the agri-chemical industry. They may have been right to do so, I'm not qualified to judge. I do know that a majority of supposedly sovereign consumers do not want GM foods, but public opinion did not stop Maff and Lord Sainsbury bowing to the wishes of the GM conglomerates regardless. Witnesses at Maff meetings described the insouciance of officials as they discussed the slow elimination of organic farming by GM crop contamination. As with sheep dips and organic food, so with foot and mouth. Many have criticised postponing elections and wrecking the tourist industry for the sake of livestock exports, and counted the price in pounds and votes. Fewer have looked at what I can only call the spiritual consequences. For hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, rambling is an escape from regimentation. They have lost the right to roam. They are being told that the slaughter of Herdwick sheep will transform the open fells of the Lake District into a scrubland no one who has loved Wordsworth or followed a Wainwright guide will recognise - and that the Peak District could follow. The absence of a public outcry about restrictions on freedom of movement is a sign of deference which is on a par with the ability of Virgin Train directors to appear in public without bodyguards. A more assertive citizenry would wonder why it is that Albania and Macedonia can vaccinate their way out of foot and mouth when we can't. <B>Email update</B><BR><BR><BR><B>More on the election and foot and mouth</B><BR><B>What's going on?</B><BR><BR> <BR> <BR> <BR><BR><BR><B>The front line: meet those affected by the crisis</B><BR> <BR> <BR><BR>
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Nick Cohen .
|
What should be done with Maff?" cried Ian Willmore, media coordinator for Friends of the Earth. '"What should be done with Maff? Maff should be shot in the head, dumped in a trench, fried to a cinder, sprinkled with quicklime and buried with a stake through its heart, that's what should be done with Maff ...and you can quote me on that if you want."In normal circumstances quotation would be all but pointless. Willmore would be a voice from the green fringe, which could be dismissed by those whose opinions matter with the killer condemnatory sentence: 'No one takes him seriously.' Not this time, I think. The foot and mouth epidemic has had the cheering effect of shifting the fringe to the mainstream. I've never found New Labour politicians and advisers as furious or as willing to talk to Leftie hacks. Undoubtedly the anger has been caused in part by the postponement of elections. But it is elevated by a less partisan contempt for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and a determination that it should share the fate of millions of beasts. 'We've learned the hard way that the department which gave us BSE is the last organisation you want on your side in a crisis,' said one. The official line is that the fall in the daily count of new cases shows that the slaughter programme is 'beginning to bite'. No one wants to contradict guarded optimism in public. In private, however, many worry about spread rather than numbers. There may be fewer outbreaks but they are popping up all over the country - in Shropshire, Cornwall, and the Peak District. This does not look like an emergency which has been contained. Above all, the strength of the disease in Cumbria terrifies officials. "I don't know if we can stop it sweeping across to the Humber, however many animals we slaughter,' said one member of the Downing Street crisis team. 'We may have to think about vaccination again."Opposition to vaccination is the ruling passion of the National Farmers' Union and Maff (the NFU's political wing). If their dogma is overturned both will be humiliated and Maff may die of shame and be replaced by a Ministry for Rural Affairs. Sticking to slaughter until the last cow dies in the last ditch suits their interests, but administrative convenience may not be enough to save Maff when New Labour's confrontation with the Ministry has been so disillusioning. The party came to power as modernisers. In agriculture, as in so much else, 'modernity' meant more of the same. A party adviser described Maff as a dumping ground for civil servants. The wages were lower, the chances of moving on to a better job in Whitehall non-existent. A posting to Maff was the bureaucratic equivalent of a Politburo order to take up duties at a Mongolian power station or - to mix continents, and quite possibly metaphors as well - to check in for an indefinite stay at the Hotel California. "It was a secretive, depressed place,' he said, 'very suspicious of change, very defensive. New Ministers and new permanent secretaries can't stop the treacle layer of senior civil servants trapping new ideas." Jack Cunningham, the first Labour Agriculture Minister, at least tried to change the privileges granted to the NFU by the Tories. He also noticed that while his office was a 10 feet square coop without a desk, senior civil servants were housed in some splendour. Cunningham made a fuss and the stories about 'Junket Jack', which were to help finish his career, duly appeared. The Civil Service can be vicious when crossed. 'Expect articles about how Nick Brown failed to heed the sound advice of righteous officials to surface within days,' my new friend predicted. Back-covering briefers will have to work hard. The suicidally honest Michael Meacher blurted out last week that there will be an inquiry when the mess is finally cleared up and was reprimanded for telling the truth. When it comes, as it will, the investigators must ask: why a Maff inspector missed the initial outbreak? Why animal movements were allowed for four days after foot and mouth was discovered? When did Maff officials warn Ministers that trouble was coming? Why were misleading figures on detection and slaughter rates fed to Downing Street? How rigorous was Maff in cracking down on the 'black sheep' smuggling market of subsidy-fiddling farmers? And why was the conclusion that the Army and epidemiologists should be called in at once, which had been reached by the inquiries into the 1967-68 outbreak, ignored? The last question has provoked many accusations in the past few days. But exiles from Maff argue that it should be rephrased. 'Someone should look at all the contingency plans from '68 to the present day,' said one, 'and try to spot the differences. My hunch is that there won't be any.' Maff has been stuck with a slaughter policy since the 1920s when it overrode the protests of small farmers, who saw no need for animals with a minor illness to be massacred, in the interests of big farmers, who wanted to eliminate a disease which reduced auction prices. My colleague Anthony Browne was referred to a study from the 1950s by the Maff press office when he asked if slaughter was the best policy. It was as if all the modern advances in vaccination had never happened. Macedonia and Albania vaccinated successfully to stop the spread of the disease in 1996. But it has not been considered here for fear it would jeopardise a livestock export market worth a paltry 570 million. Dissent has its risks. The Elm Farm Research Centre, a Berkshire agricultural charity, had to promise vets anonymity when it asked them to discuss the merits of vaccination. Public exposure would threaten their careers. The slaughtermen in the NFU, meanwhile, are presented as the sole representatives of farmers (just as the Countryside Alliance is presented as sole representative of the countryside) though only 53,000 of the 180,000 farmers in England and Wales are members. Farmers' organisations who favour vaccination are shut out. Mike Hart of the Small and Family Farmers Alliance told me how he and other small farming groups had tried to get past Maff and into see Blair to argue against mass slaughter. They gave up after 'hitting the proverbial brick wall'. What we are witnessing is the sanctification of a dubious slaughter policy with little concern for the public interest. Stephen Tindale, who was Meacher's political adviser at the Department of the Environment until earlier this year, is not surprised. He remembered the Government receiving pathetic complaints from farm workers afflicted with depression, lassitude and chronic muscular pains - the effects, they maintained of organo-phosphate sheep dips. Maff officials dismissed their claims. No one knew if the sheep dip was the culprit, they said, but the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh was on the case. The Institute duly reported that a link between exposure to sheep dip and 'chronic peripheral neuropathy' [damage to the nervous system] was 'suggested' by its research. Whitehall's Committee on Toxicity preferred to bin the report and uphold the reputation of the agri-chemical industry. They may have been right to do so, I'm not qualified to judge. I do know that a majority of supposedly sovereign consumers do not want GM foods, but public opinion did not stop Maff and Lord Sainsbury bowing to the wishes of the GM conglomerates regardless. Witnesses at Maff meetings described the insouciance of officials as they discussed the slow elimination of organic farming by GM crop contamination. As with sheep dips and organic food, so with foot and mouth. Many have criticised postponing elections and wrecking the tourist industry for the sake of livestock exports, and counted the price in pounds and votes. Fewer have looked at what I can only call the spiritual consequences. For hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, rambling is an escape from regimentation. They have lost the right to roam. They are being told that the slaughter of Herdwick sheep will transform the open fells of the Lake District into a scrubland no one who has loved Wordsworth or followed a Wainwright guide will recognise - and that the Peak District could follow. The absence of a public outcry about restrictions on freedom of movement is a sign of deference which is on a par with the ability of Virgin Train directors to appear in public without bodyguards. A more assertive citizenry would wonder why it is that Albania and Macedonia can vaccinate their way out of foot and mouth when we can't. <B>Email update</B><BR><BR><BR><B>More on the election and foot and mouth</B><BR><B>What's going on?</B><BR><BR> <BR> <BR> <BR><BR><BR><B>The front line: meet those affected by the crisis</B><BR> <BR> <BR><BR>
|
6nickcohen
| 2UK
|
At the height of the fuel crisis, Margaret Beckett denounced that part of conservative Britain which tolerated elections only when they brought victories to the Right. 'There is a group of people in this country who passionately believe... that there is something terribly, terribly wrong about having a Labour government,' she said. 'Labour ought never to be in power and if we are we ought to fail.' She was ridiculed as a barking conspiracy theorist by those who forgot the plots of MI5, retired colonels and Napoleonic tycoons against the Wilson administrations, but not by those who have been keeping an eye on the Countryside Alliance. The Alliance's fight to save hunting is no longer being waged with vaguely rational arguments. Enter its collective mind and you are in a war of national liberation against an alien and depraved dictatorship. If you think I'm exaggerating, ask how Sam Butler, the Alliance's chairman, could bellow without a blush to a demonstration outside the Labour Party Conference: 'Our forefathers didn't fight Hitler to have this lot take away our liberties.' One of Butler's forefathers was 'Rab' Butler. He didn't fight Hitler, he appeased him throughout the Thirties and then aided Lord Halifax's manoeuvres to force Churchill to come to terms with the Nazi in 1940. His grandson cannot spot the difference between a Government which is reluctantly allowing a free vote on hunting in response to overwhelming public and backbench pressure, and a totalitarian invader. Because Parliament will sooner or later ban hunting with dogs, the MPs who support the new Hitler must be presented as human filth; unnatural and unEnglish politicians who have forfeited the right to legislate. The magazine Earth Dog, Running Dog, for example, which carries the Countryside Alliance's logo, said of Ben Bradshaw, the gay Labour MP for Exeter: 'Fortunately most people are still totally revolted by such lifestyles. Let us not forget the money the health service is forced to spend on the treatment of Aids - the gay plague.<I>Do we really deserve to have such people rule us and tell us what to do ?'</I> Bradshaw's black colleague, Oona King, meanwhile was 'typical of her species'. She was told to 'direct her talents to advising her scrounging supporters on how to claim more handouts [the editorialist means the London poor King represents, not farmers]. <I>She has no right to interfere in my life or anybody else's, apart from the deadbeats who helped send her to Parliament.'</I> Butler has told his troops that the Government's record was one of 'terrorists released, rioters allowed to roam the streets wreaking havoc and destruction, whilst the authorities look on'. The Alliance 'has made it clear to Parliament and public alike that we have been resolute in our determination to conduct our protests within the law.<I> However, should Parliament act perversely on the issue of personal freedom, then it will only have itself to blame for what may follow.'</I> (My italics throughout). As you can see, the anti-hunting campaign isn't only about hunting. The Alliance is a porte-manteau stuffed with every rage against women, gays, blacks, the poor, the Good Friday Agreement ... a damnable modern world turned upside down. Butler's prediction that hunters will take the law into their own hands if the deviants in Parliament 'act perversely' is already being realised. The provisional wing of the Countryside Alliance is the Rural Action Group. It affects an air of conspiratorial secrecy, while neglecting to take elementary precautions to protect its emails. The most recent warns of the need to 'keep quiet' about its plans for tractor and Land Rover owners to blockade Parliament Square (on 23 October, traffic wardens should note). If this sounds like an imitation of the tactics of the flying fuel pickets, then the resemblance may be more than coincidental. You do not have to go all the way with Beckett's notion that the oil refinery protests were a plot to be struck by the overlap between the demonstrators, the Countryside Alliance and the Conservative Party. Protesters' cars at the Stanlow oil refinery bore Alliance stickers. Where Tony Blair was confronted with demonstrators in Hull they carried banners crying 'No Hunting, No Petrol'. Liberal commentators responded by dissecting the hypocrisy of supportive Conservative politicians and newspapers who usually demand punitive sanctions against greedy strikers 'holding the country ransom'. But in truth their double-standard charge cut both ways. If Lefties believe urban workers are entitled to take action to protect their livelihoods, how can they criticise farmers suffering in the wors agricultural depression since the Thirties for following suit? Honest critics would be forced to hold their tongues if the Alliance and its fellow travellers represented the countryside. Predictably, they do nothing of the sort. Sam Butler isn't a persecuted yeoman, but a millionaire estate agent who has made his fortune by selling Cotswold property to the commuters and second-home owners who price the local peasantry out of the market. Britain's biggest builders - Robert McAlpine, Sunley Holdings, Persimmon Homes - are among his backers. So too is the Duke of Devonshire who wants to bring open-cast mining to his Derbyshire estate. These are 'countrymen' who are 'for field sports, not fields', as the International Fund for Animal Welfare neatly put it. They are also the Tory party on horseback. The Alliance offices are filled with ex-Conservative officials and MPs who lost their jobs in the 1997 massacre. Conservative councillors joined the refinery picket lines. My guess is that the Government's attempts to strike a deal with fuel blockaders before their deadline runs out in 28 days will be futile. Their Tory wing may find it hard to see the political mileage in compromise. The losers from the hijacking of rural grievance by the estate agents and developers are poor farmers. The best hope for an agricultural industry being crucified by a high pound is early entry to the European monetary union. The Alliance will no more support scrapping the pound than gay marriage or a windfall tax on the oil cartel. Hunters themselves have respectable arguments against the faux humanitarianism of prohibiting hunting with dogs but not with guns. They might ask that if the language of socialism is the language of priorities, what seriously radical Labour Party would waste a moment on fox hunting after 18 years in opposition? They could, and indeed have, concluded that their opponents are more concerned with persecuting hunters than saving foxes. For all that, the reasons to tolerate hunting have been destroyed by the hunting lobby. Any civilised person who has gaped at its bigotry can only shrug and mutter: all persecution is fine by me. <B>And the biggest criminal is ... the governor, apparently</B>As our politicians are meant to be eager to save us from crime, you might have thought that a prison governor who managed to turn criminals into law-abiding citizens would be fêted. Yet Eoin McLellan-Murray, the governor of Blantyre House, was loathed. He ran a prison with the lowest number of positive drug tests of any jail in Britain. It didn't help him. Just 8 per cent of his inmates reoffended on release. The achievement served only to goad his enemies. In April they organised a raid by 80 officers dressed as if they were a Swat team breaking up a terrorist cell. McLellan-Murray was suspended and his jail was ransacked. His offence was to run a liberal prison which prepared inmates for release by letting them work for Kent employers and charities. Given the jail's success, reasons had to be found for destroying its regime. Martin Narey, the Director General of the Prison Service, told the Commons Home Affairs Committee in May that he had confidential intelligence of villainy in the jail which he couldn't discuss for fear of prejudicing criminal investigations. Kent Police said there were no criminal investigations. His officers had uncovered stolen goods and escape equipment as they tore through the cells, Narey continued. He did not tell MPs that 'stolen' bank cards were the legally held property of working prisoners and the escape equipment was the tools of a prisoner who was repairing a Mencap charity shop. This week the Home Affairs Committee will call Narey back to explain himself. Understandably, he has asked to give his evidence in secret. I hope the MPs will turn him down and ask why they were spun dark tales of criminal conspiracy and contraband which cannot be substantiated. They should also inquire about the fate of the governor. Since the biggest raid in the recent history of the Prison Service failed to find anything McLellan-Murray need be ashamed of, he has been subjected to months of interrogation by Home Office hardliners desperate to find a justification for zero tolerance reduced to absurdity. Last week, they gave us their best shot. Harry Fletcher, the spokesman for the probation officers union, reports McLellan-Murray will face disciplinary charges of failing to account for the purchase of a gas cylinder worth 110, two electric sockets priced at 8.56 and a 500 donation to the mentally ill from the prison's charitable funds. He is not being accused of pocketing the money. It is merely that he or one of his subordinates didn't fill out the right forms when they dealt with the paperwork. For these terrible sins, one of the finest public servants in the Home Office will see his career wrecked while Narey's flourishes. 'Scandal' is an overused word by hacks, but in this instance no other will do.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Nick Cohen .
|
At the height of the fuel crisis, Margaret Beckett denounced that part of conservative Britain which tolerated elections only when they brought victories to the Right. 'There is a group of people in this country who passionately believe... that there is something terribly, terribly wrong about having a Labour government,' she said. 'Labour ought never to be in power and if we are we ought to fail.' She was ridiculed as a barking conspiracy theorist by those who forgot the plots of MI5, retired colonels and Napoleonic tycoons against the Wilson administrations, but not by those who have been keeping an eye on the Countryside Alliance. The Alliance's fight to save hunting is no longer being waged with vaguely rational arguments. Enter its collective mind and you are in a war of national liberation against an alien and depraved dictatorship. If you think I'm exaggerating, ask how Sam Butler, the Alliance's chairman, could bellow without a blush to a demonstration outside the Labour Party Conference: 'Our forefathers didn't fight Hitler to have this lot take away our liberties.' One of Butler's forefathers was 'Rab' Butler. He didn't fight Hitler, he appeased him throughout the Thirties and then aided Lord Halifax's manoeuvres to force Churchill to come to terms with the Nazi in 1940. His grandson cannot spot the difference between a Government which is reluctantly allowing a free vote on hunting in response to overwhelming public and backbench pressure, and a totalitarian invader. Because Parliament will sooner or later ban hunting with dogs, the MPs who support the new Hitler must be presented as human filth; unnatural and unEnglish politicians who have forfeited the right to legislate. The magazine Earth Dog, Running Dog, for example, which carries the Countryside Alliance's logo, said of Ben Bradshaw, the gay Labour MP for Exeter: 'Fortunately most people are still totally revolted by such lifestyles. Let us not forget the money the health service is forced to spend on the treatment of Aids - the gay plague.<I>Do we really deserve to have such people rule us and tell us what to do ?'</I> Bradshaw's black colleague, Oona King, meanwhile was 'typical of her species'. She was told to 'direct her talents to advising her scrounging supporters on how to claim more handouts [the editorialist means the London poor King represents, not farmers]. <I>She has no right to interfere in my life or anybody else's, apart from the deadbeats who helped send her to Parliament.'</I> Butler has told his troops that the Government's record was one of 'terrorists released, rioters allowed to roam the streets wreaking havoc and destruction, whilst the authorities look on'. The Alliance 'has made it clear to Parliament and public alike that we have been resolute in our determination to conduct our protests within the law.<I> However, should Parliament act perversely on the issue of personal freedom, then it will only have itself to blame for what may follow.'</I> (My italics throughout). As you can see, the anti-hunting campaign isn't only about hunting. The Alliance is a porte-manteau stuffed with every rage against women, gays, blacks, the poor, the Good Friday Agreement ... a damnable modern world turned upside down. Butler's prediction that hunters will take the law into their own hands if the deviants in Parliament 'act perversely' is already being realised. The provisional wing of the Countryside Alliance is the Rural Action Group. It affects an air of conspiratorial secrecy, while neglecting to take elementary precautions to protect its emails. The most recent warns of the need to 'keep quiet' about its plans for tractor and Land Rover owners to blockade Parliament Square (on 23 October, traffic wardens should note). If this sounds like an imitation of the tactics of the flying fuel pickets, then the resemblance may be more than coincidental. You do not have to go all the way with Beckett's notion that the oil refinery protests were a plot to be struck by the overlap between the demonstrators, the Countryside Alliance and the Conservative Party. Protesters' cars at the Stanlow oil refinery bore Alliance stickers. Where Tony Blair was confronted with demonstrators in Hull they carried banners crying 'No Hunting, No Petrol'. Liberal commentators responded by dissecting the hypocrisy of supportive Conservative politicians and newspapers who usually demand punitive sanctions against greedy strikers 'holding the country ransom'. But in truth their double-standard charge cut both ways. If Lefties believe urban workers are entitled to take action to protect their livelihoods, how can they criticise farmers suffering in the wors agricultural depression since the Thirties for following suit? Honest critics would be forced to hold their tongues if the Alliance and its fellow travellers represented the countryside. Predictably, they do nothing of the sort. Sam Butler isn't a persecuted yeoman, but a millionaire estate agent who has made his fortune by selling Cotswold property to the commuters and second-home owners who price the local peasantry out of the market. Britain's biggest builders - Robert McAlpine, Sunley Holdings, Persimmon Homes - are among his backers. So too is the Duke of Devonshire who wants to bring open-cast mining to his Derbyshire estate. These are 'countrymen' who are 'for field sports, not fields', as the International Fund for Animal Welfare neatly put it. They are also the Tory party on horseback. The Alliance offices are filled with ex-Conservative officials and MPs who lost their jobs in the 1997 massacre. Conservative councillors joined the refinery picket lines. My guess is that the Government's attempts to strike a deal with fuel blockaders before their deadline runs out in 28 days will be futile. Their Tory wing may find it hard to see the political mileage in compromise. The losers from the hijacking of rural grievance by the estate agents and developers are poor farmers. The best hope for an agricultural industry being crucified by a high pound is early entry to the European monetary union. The Alliance will no more support scrapping the pound than gay marriage or a windfall tax on the oil cartel. Hunters themselves have respectable arguments against the faux humanitarianism of prohibiting hunting with dogs but not with guns. They might ask that if the language of socialism is the language of priorities, what seriously radical Labour Party would waste a moment on fox hunting after 18 years in opposition? They could, and indeed have, concluded that their opponents are more concerned with persecuting hunters than saving foxes. For all that, the reasons to tolerate hunting have been destroyed by the hunting lobby. Any civilised person who has gaped at its bigotry can only shrug and mutter: all persecution is fine by me. <B>And the biggest criminal is ... the governor, apparently</B>As our politicians are meant to be eager to save us from crime, you might have thought that a prison governor who managed to turn criminals into law-abiding citizens would be fêted. Yet Eoin McLellan-Murray, the governor of Blantyre House, was loathed. He ran a prison with the lowest number of positive drug tests of any jail in Britain. It didn't help him. Just 8 per cent of his inmates reoffended on release. The achievement served only to goad his enemies. In April they organised a raid by 80 officers dressed as if they were a Swat team breaking up a terrorist cell. McLellan-Murray was suspended and his jail was ransacked. His offence was to run a liberal prison which prepared inmates for release by letting them work for Kent employers and charities. Given the jail's success, reasons had to be found for destroying its regime. Martin Narey, the Director General of the Prison Service, told the Commons Home Affairs Committee in May that he had confidential intelligence of villainy in the jail which he couldn't discuss for fear of prejudicing criminal investigations. Kent Police said there were no criminal investigations. His officers had uncovered stolen goods and escape equipment as they tore through the cells, Narey continued. He did not tell MPs that 'stolen' bank cards were the legally held property of working prisoners and the escape equipment was the tools of a prisoner who was repairing a Mencap charity shop. This week the Home Affairs Committee will call Narey back to explain himself. Understandably, he has asked to give his evidence in secret. I hope the MPs will turn him down and ask why they were spun dark tales of criminal conspiracy and contraband which cannot be substantiated. They should also inquire about the fate of the governor. Since the biggest raid in the recent history of the Prison Service failed to find anything McLellan-Murray need be ashamed of, he has been subjected to months of interrogation by Home Office hardliners desperate to find a justification for zero tolerance reduced to absurdity. Last week, they gave us their best shot. Harry Fletcher, the spokesman for the probation officers union, reports McLellan-Murray will face disciplinary charges of failing to account for the purchase of a gas cylinder worth 110, two electric sockets priced at 8.56 and a 500 donation to the mentally ill from the prison's charitable funds. He is not being accused of pocketing the money. It is merely that he or one of his subordinates didn't fill out the right forms when they dealt with the paperwork. For these terrible sins, one of the finest public servants in the Home Office will see his career wrecked while Narey's flourishes. 'Scandal' is an overused word by hacks, but in this instance no other will do.
|
6nickcohen
| 2UK
|
In one of their few decision which could be described as being made on the grounds of good taste, the organisers of the Millennium Dome rejected a plan to exhibit 'Piss Flowers' by Helen Chadwick, a series of bronze moulds taken from cavities left after she had risked hypothermia for her art by peeing in the snow during a tour of Canada. It was felt to be more seemly to replace her holes with an enormous Perspex case filled with tens of thousands of leaf-cutter ants. The insects symbolised 'communal, instinctive minds, working together, carrying bright flecks of leaf along paths designed to resemble the tracks of a silicon chip'. The chips were powering the dotcom companies whose success was thrilling speculators the world over. Whether the substitution of the ants was much of an improvement was difficult to judge. In their native South America, leaf-cutters are better known for their appetites than their symbolic representation of the internet. About a million march in unstoppable columns which strip trees in the rain forest and munch their way through the crops of destitute peasants with ruthless speed. They are parasitic and mindless agents of destruction. Speaking of which, the case of Philip Anschutz, the founder and chairman of Qwest Communications, has resurfaced. His American telecoms company had been a wonder of the dotcom bubble. In 1999, Anschutz sold share options worth $1.5 billion (960,000 million). He picked a good time to bail out of his company. By 2002, Qwest had lost 90 per cent of its value after it admitted inflating profits. Last week he agreed to pay a $4.4m fine to settle allegations that he had accepted gifts of shares from investment banks which hoped he would send business their way. Despite his record, New Labour considers him a fit and proper person to take over the Dome, its own bubble by the Thames. Every night I pray that the Dome story will never go away, and it looks as if my prayers are being answered.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Nick Cohen .
|
In one of their few decision which could be described as being made on the grounds of good taste, the organisers of the Millennium Dome rejected a plan to exhibit 'Piss Flowers' by Helen Chadwick, a series of bronze moulds taken from cavities left after she had risked hypothermia for her art by peeing in the snow during a tour of Canada. It was felt to be more seemly to replace her holes with an enormous Perspex case filled with tens of thousands of leaf-cutter ants. The insects symbolised 'communal, instinctive minds, working together, carrying bright flecks of leaf along paths designed to resemble the tracks of a silicon chip'. The chips were powering the dotcom companies whose success was thrilling speculators the world over. Whether the substitution of the ants was much of an improvement was difficult to judge. In their native South America, leaf-cutters are better known for their appetites than their symbolic representation of the internet. About a million march in unstoppable columns which strip trees in the rain forest and munch their way through the crops of destitute peasants with ruthless speed. They are parasitic and mindless agents of destruction. Speaking of which, the case of Philip Anschutz, the founder and chairman of Qwest Communications, has resurfaced. His American telecoms company had been a wonder of the dotcom bubble. In 1999, Anschutz sold share options worth $1.5 billion (960,000 million). He picked a good time to bail out of his company. By 2002, Qwest had lost 90 per cent of its value after it admitted inflating profits. Last week he agreed to pay a $4.4m fine to settle allegations that he had accepted gifts of shares from investment banks which hoped he would send business their way. Despite his record, New Labour considers him a fit and proper person to take over the Dome, its own bubble by the Thames. Every night I pray that the Dome story will never go away, and it looks as if my prayers are being answered.
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5maryriddell
| 2UK
|
The monarchy begins 2004 on a reformist note. Florence, one of Princess Anne's English bull terriers, is to go into therapy after biting a maid. The Princess Royal, who will accompany her alter ego to discipline classes, has recognised that Florence may be sniffing at the fate meted out to the Romanovs and Bourbons. Death Row beckons. But for her status, the royal dog would already be as moribund as the Beagle space probe. Instead, she played a starring role in the end-of-year royal 'scandal,' which began with Pharos, the Queen's oldest corgi, being mauled to death at Sandringham. The culprit was initially named as one of Anne's other dogs, Dotty, whose previous attack on two small boys cycling in Windsor Great Park resulted in a modest 500 fine. This time, an inquiry, which reminded one servant of a 'murder investigation', came up with evidence that a different miscreant had ignored the Orwellian sixth commandment that no animal shall kill another. Exhaustive internal questioning of the kind not undertaken when George Smith, a valet to the Prince of Wales, claimed he had been raped in his master's household, revealed the corgi-cruncher to be Florence. The lucky verdict that the Princess Royal had two nasty dogs instead of one psychopath was shaken shortly afterwards when Florence savaged (or 'nipped', in Palace-speak) the knee of a housemaid called Ruby, who reportedly begged that the dog be spared. To wonder why this saga should have shuffled the Bam earthquake, the Parmalat dbacle and the seaweed detox diet off newspaper front pages is to miss the point. Anyone wishing to understand the modern monarchy should study how it treats its pets. On the whole, rulers have always preferred dogs to subjects. The papillons loved by Marie Antoinette, the sacred Pekingese of the Chinese emperors and the spaniel discovered, by her executioner, in the skirts of the dead Mary, Queen of Scots, all underpin that taste. But even Victoria's habit of running her court along the lines of Rolf Harris's Animal Hospital cannot match the dog mania of her successors. The Buckingham Palace corgi makes Caligula's horse look under-promoted. No visiting head of state or triumphant rugby player can enter Her Majesty's staterooms without being ankle deep in a writhing scrimmage of dogs which never defer to dignitaries. Elizabeth's biographer, Sarah Bradford, describes how one nervous bishop, baffled by the lunchtime feeding ritual, took a dog biscuit from a footman's salver and ate it. As Bradford notes, corgis are an inseparable part of the Queen's image. The same goes for lesser royals and their pets. Where else can they find companions who never fawn or curtsy and whose filthy tempers mesh so neatly with their own? There is a point where this idiosyncrasy, or fetish, gets sinister. In another of the late-year furores, Professor Colin Blakemore, head of the Medical Research Council, was denied the knighthood accorded to his predecessors. The rejection is believed to be due to pressure from the Prince of Wales, who apparently had Blakemore banned from an official reception. Charles would not, he said, shake the hand of a vivisectionist. That refusal, if true, validates the loathsome criminals who threatened Blakemore's children, vandalised his home and posted him a letter bomb because he approved of using animals in experiments to save human life. Anti-science meddling by an heir to the throne who presumably favours cats above sick children casts doubt on his wider judgment. Equally, the Princess Royal's loyalty to her horrible dogs sheds light on the contradiction between the charity patron who accomplished 293 engagements last year and the nit-picking employer who, according to the Mirror 's palace mole, called a diary clerk 'a fucking incompetent twat'. Clinging to dogs who savage little boys and housemaids' knees seems to settle the question. The royal family has carte blanche to rip off the nation, but not to tear its flesh from its bones. The princess's bull terriers should therefore be put down forthwith. This, I know, is not a universally held view. The Windsor paradox is that a dynasty which treats its subjects loftily and its servants shoddily has a brilliant grasp of petshop populism. The monarchy, whose love of dangerous dogs makes it indistinguishable from thugs terrorising inner-city estates, is also plugged into a broader cult of animal worship. Last week's news that chimpanzees in Uganda and Tanzania have recently killed eight children and torn the limbs off others provoked little outrage. The chimps' apologist, a conservation biologist, ascribed this dietary quirk to changes in their natural habitat. 'They are just trying to get by,' he explained. In the British courts, a Mr and Mrs Musselwhite are suing Safeway, claiming that their dachshund, Muffin, suffered a slipped disc after jumping to retrieve an unsolicited supermarket flyer from the letterbox. In the semis of England, as in its palaces, pets matter. Fears that the atomised society might prompt Britain's seven million dog owners to opt for lower-maintenance animals, such as leaf-cutter ants, have proved unfounded. Launching a range of luxury pet accessories just before Christmas, Warner Brothers announced that people who delay having children are 'spending the money on their dogs and cats instead'. Hence the demand for 900 satin dog coats studded with Swarovski crystals and diamond-encrusted platinum collars, costing 12,000. This waste of money is as obscene as the dog mess befouling British pavements. It is also part of a dottiness, incomprehensible to responsible dog owners, that preserves Princess Anne and her obnoxious pets from being more widely labelled as menaces. Florence's 'think first' therapy may work, but last week's poor results from the Probation Service's 73 million pilot for human aggressors do not bode well. If only the Windsors' taste for change and rehabilitation extended beyond the kennels, the country might really be better off. As the New Year begins, the Fabian Society is seeking to build on the recommendations of its monarchy commission. In a modest step, there are plans for a private members' Bill, introduced in the Lords with cross-party support, for abolishing male primogeniture, removing the religious bar on the heir marrying a Catholic and repeal of the Royal Marriages Act, under which the monarch must approve all unions. Cabinet papers released last week revealed that Lord Kilmuir, the then Lord Chancellor, wished to abolish the Act in 1955, on the grounds that it was 'out of harmony with modern conditions'. The Windsors, and the Government, are not yet for budging. Sex and butler scandals have done the royals no obvious harm, while the dog furore has enhanced the image of a bereaved queen. Even Anne may earn some kudos from Rotweiler vigilantes. Another, more widespread, current of opinion thinks the real scandal of the Windsor's winter holiday is that of an aimless, self-indulgent, over-rewarded clan, cooped up with their dysfunctional dogs in a publicly subsidised, privately owned palace, tax-exempt and used once a year. To us, the prospect of Princess Anne and her dog attending a canine offenders institution is a symbol of hope for the coming year. Whether or not the Windsors realise it, the monarchy also faces the choice confronting Florence. Reform or die.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Mary Riddell .
|
The monarchy begins 2004 on a reformist note. Florence, one of Princess Anne's English bull terriers, is to go into therapy after biting a maid. The Princess Royal, who will accompany her alter ego to discipline classes, has recognised that Florence may be sniffing at the fate meted out to the Romanovs and Bourbons. Death Row beckons. But for her status, the royal dog would already be as moribund as the Beagle space probe. Instead, she played a starring role in the end-of-year royal 'scandal,' which began with Pharos, the Queen's oldest corgi, being mauled to death at Sandringham. The culprit was initially named as one of Anne's other dogs, Dotty, whose previous attack on two small boys cycling in Windsor Great Park resulted in a modest 500 fine. This time, an inquiry, which reminded one servant of a 'murder investigation', came up with evidence that a different miscreant had ignored the Orwellian sixth commandment that no animal shall kill another. Exhaustive internal questioning of the kind not undertaken when George Smith, a valet to the Prince of Wales, claimed he had been raped in his master's household, revealed the corgi-cruncher to be Florence. The lucky verdict that the Princess Royal had two nasty dogs instead of one psychopath was shaken shortly afterwards when Florence savaged (or 'nipped', in Palace-speak) the knee of a housemaid called Ruby, who reportedly begged that the dog be spared. To wonder why this saga should have shuffled the Bam earthquake, the Parmalat dbacle and the seaweed detox diet off newspaper front pages is to miss the point. Anyone wishing to understand the modern monarchy should study how it treats its pets. On the whole, rulers have always preferred dogs to subjects. The papillons loved by Marie Antoinette, the sacred Pekingese of the Chinese emperors and the spaniel discovered, by her executioner, in the skirts of the dead Mary, Queen of Scots, all underpin that taste. But even Victoria's habit of running her court along the lines of Rolf Harris's Animal Hospital cannot match the dog mania of her successors. The Buckingham Palace corgi makes Caligula's horse look under-promoted. No visiting head of state or triumphant rugby player can enter Her Majesty's staterooms without being ankle deep in a writhing scrimmage of dogs which never defer to dignitaries. Elizabeth's biographer, Sarah Bradford, describes how one nervous bishop, baffled by the lunchtime feeding ritual, took a dog biscuit from a footman's salver and ate it. As Bradford notes, corgis are an inseparable part of the Queen's image. The same goes for lesser royals and their pets. Where else can they find companions who never fawn or curtsy and whose filthy tempers mesh so neatly with their own? There is a point where this idiosyncrasy, or fetish, gets sinister. In another of the late-year furores, Professor Colin Blakemore, head of the Medical Research Council, was denied the knighthood accorded to his predecessors. The rejection is believed to be due to pressure from the Prince of Wales, who apparently had Blakemore banned from an official reception. Charles would not, he said, shake the hand of a vivisectionist. That refusal, if true, validates the loathsome criminals who threatened Blakemore's children, vandalised his home and posted him a letter bomb because he approved of using animals in experiments to save human life. Anti-science meddling by an heir to the throne who presumably favours cats above sick children casts doubt on his wider judgment. Equally, the Princess Royal's loyalty to her horrible dogs sheds light on the contradiction between the charity patron who accomplished 293 engagements last year and the nit-picking employer who, according to the Mirror 's palace mole, called a diary clerk 'a fucking incompetent twat'. Clinging to dogs who savage little boys and housemaids' knees seems to settle the question. The royal family has carte blanche to rip off the nation, but not to tear its flesh from its bones. The princess's bull terriers should therefore be put down forthwith. This, I know, is not a universally held view. The Windsor paradox is that a dynasty which treats its subjects loftily and its servants shoddily has a brilliant grasp of petshop populism. The monarchy, whose love of dangerous dogs makes it indistinguishable from thugs terrorising inner-city estates, is also plugged into a broader cult of animal worship. Last week's news that chimpanzees in Uganda and Tanzania have recently killed eight children and torn the limbs off others provoked little outrage. The chimps' apologist, a conservation biologist, ascribed this dietary quirk to changes in their natural habitat. 'They are just trying to get by,' he explained. In the British courts, a Mr and Mrs Musselwhite are suing Safeway, claiming that their dachshund, Muffin, suffered a slipped disc after jumping to retrieve an unsolicited supermarket flyer from the letterbox. In the semis of England, as in its palaces, pets matter. Fears that the atomised society might prompt Britain's seven million dog owners to opt for lower-maintenance animals, such as leaf-cutter ants, have proved unfounded. Launching a range of luxury pet accessories just before Christmas, Warner Brothers announced that people who delay having children are 'spending the money on their dogs and cats instead'. Hence the demand for 900 satin dog coats studded with Swarovski crystals and diamond-encrusted platinum collars, costing 12,000. This waste of money is as obscene as the dog mess befouling British pavements. It is also part of a dottiness, incomprehensible to responsible dog owners, that preserves Princess Anne and her obnoxious pets from being more widely labelled as menaces. Florence's 'think first' therapy may work, but last week's poor results from the Probation Service's 73 million pilot for human aggressors do not bode well. If only the Windsors' taste for change and rehabilitation extended beyond the kennels, the country might really be better off. As the New Year begins, the Fabian Society is seeking to build on the recommendations of its monarchy commission. In a modest step, there are plans for a private members' Bill, introduced in the Lords with cross-party support, for abolishing male primogeniture, removing the religious bar on the heir marrying a Catholic and repeal of the Royal Marriages Act, under which the monarch must approve all unions. Cabinet papers released last week revealed that Lord Kilmuir, the then Lord Chancellor, wished to abolish the Act in 1955, on the grounds that it was 'out of harmony with modern conditions'. The Windsors, and the Government, are not yet for budging. Sex and butler scandals have done the royals no obvious harm, while the dog furore has enhanced the image of a bereaved queen. Even Anne may earn some kudos from Rotweiler vigilantes. Another, more widespread, current of opinion thinks the real scandal of the Windsor's winter holiday is that of an aimless, self-indulgent, over-rewarded clan, cooped up with their dysfunctional dogs in a publicly subsidised, privately owned palace, tax-exempt and used once a year. To us, the prospect of Princess Anne and her dog attending a canine offenders institution is a symbol of hope for the coming year. Whether or not the Windsors realise it, the monarchy also faces the choice confronting Florence. Reform or die.
|
5maryriddell
| 2UK
|
Like many bridegrooms, Prince Charles spent the run-up to his wedding in male company, saying things he might regret the next day. But, far from being a stag party, this was the sober annual ritual in which the prince and his two sons break their winter holiday in Klosters to take questions from the media. Through welded teeth, Charles offered his squeak of anger at his interlocutors and, in particular, the BBC's royal correspondent, Nicholas Witchell. 'Bloody people,' he said. 'I can't bear that man. I mean, he is so awful. He really is.' The media took a largely dim view. There was much commentary about the gaffes of a spoilt and petulant prince, and Mr Witchell reported the affair as gravely as if the heir to the throne had commissioned a Swiss stripogram, or proposed parcelling his mother and her corgis off on a one-way ticket to the Sunshine Rest Home for the Elderly, Skegness. Most viewers watching the prince's outburst would have taken a less astringent view, for several reasons. Mr Witchell, apparently known as the 'Poison Carrot' at work because of the acerbic nature of his postbag, does not hold national treasure status. The prince, with his arms round his sons, cut a lonely but protective figure. There was a demotic element to his rant against the high-flown BBC, just after William had apparently confided his own wedding plans, or lack of them, to the Sun. And besides, it was all oddly hilarious. But not to Charles, who could not, in the end, endure a saccharine encounter with representatives of media that, in his opinion, have reported his forthcoming marriage in a manner vile beyond belief. 'He loathes us,' says James Whitaker, a veteran of Klosters and the royal ratpack. 'He regards us all as scum. Although he's been able to bottle it up well, we got the true Charles in that moment.' Who, though, is the real Charles? Last week, he made headlines by losing his temper on the ski slopes. This week, he makes history when he and Camilla Parker Bowles, the divorced and 'non-negotiable' mistress whom he has loved for most of his life, marry on Friday at the sort of unpretentious register office that also does dog licences. The Guildhall, Windsor, was chosen only because obtaining a licence for Windsor Castle would have allowed ordinary couples to marry there. But its prosaic setting is a perfect illustration of the contradictions that define the Prince of Wales. He is an austere eater who breakfasts off wheatgerm, lunches off dry bread and dines like the Emperor Nero, sometimes with a Spice Girl in attendance (he likes Geri Halliwell because she is 'so non-PC'). Charles is the social improver who grumbled, on hearing that a black secretary wanted promotion: 'What is wrong with everybody these days? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities?' He is the spartan who cannot travel without seven bedrooms for his vast retinue of staff, the narrow thinker who wants to be a Platonic philosopher king. He is, in his view, constantly misunderstood, and it makes him furious. Long before Klosters, rage defined the Prince of Wales. Irascibility is hard-wired in his Hanoverian genes (or ingrained by his formal upbringing) and he is said to have inherited the 'gnashes' of his grandfather, George VI. The king used to kick furniture so hard that his hosts hid their antiques when he came to stay, replacing them with a prewar Ikea equivalent. When I visited his grandson at Highgrove, I watched him do it too. 'I have had to battle and battle and battle against a complete wall of opposition,' he said, and his oxblood loafer pulsed a drumbeat of frustration against the velvet sofa. Sarah Bradford, the Queen's biographer, quotes a former servant's claims that Charles, in the stress of his failing marriage to Diana, wrenched a handbasin from a wall and wrote terse notes to staff: 'This sponge is dry. Please see that it is watered immediately.' On matters pertaining to areas outside his bathroom, he corresponds with ministers, urging them to bend policies on his key interests, such as farming, non-carbuncular architecture or science, to his wishes. Why should the Prince of Wales, a man with modest duties, an endless cash cow in the Duchy of Cornwall and an understanding partner, be so enraged, so pessimistic, so importunate? Why would he be so sad? In part, because he has been fawned on too much by those who love him least. And, in part, because he is right in thinking that he has had a rough deal. At his worst, he is extravagant, intemperate and too receptive to bad advice. At his best, he is concerned, dutiful and engaging - traits largely invisible, especially as filtered through media that veer between presenting him as a joke figure, or, alternatively, as a callous solipsist who ruined the brief life of his virgin bride. To counter, or ignore, such portrayals would take a man of guile and toughness. The prince possesses neither attribute, and, with the exception of his best image-maker, Mark Bolland, has proved incapable even of buying in the only weapons beyond the reach of status or money. Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor was marginalised from the start. As the fountains in Trafalgar Square ran blue to herald the birth of a male heir, his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, was playing squash with his mother's private secretary. The next day, in November 1948, Winston Churchill commended to the Commons a serene monarchy and 'a little prince, now born into this world of storm and strife'. The first part of the analysis was awry, the second accurate. But the prince is a victim not of geopolitical or even national turmoil. The first of his two nemeses was a family that required him to behave like an infant courtier and sent him to Gordonstoun, the tough Scottish boarding school he detested, to iron out his 'weakness'. His second downfall was a modern media, whose prurience was never going to accommodate a prince who naively thought it was still all right, in the tradition of royal males, to have both a mistress and a wife. His first marriage was disastrous, his job condemns him to wait forever in the wings, and the press seeks, often shamelessly, to destroy him and install his older son in a post that Charles has trained for all his life and would do more reliably. It would be tempting to feel sorry for the Prince of Wales, were he not so saturated in self-pity. But the fourth post-holder since the Prince Regent has not settled for victim status either. Instead, he has carved out a role, notably in setting up the Prince's Trust, that has helped thousands of disadvantaged young people. His genuine interest in, and understanding of, deprivation is not an example of noblesse oblige or social spin. For all his privilege, Charles, the outsider, knows how exclusion feels. In other areas, the prince has been less successful. He has failed to curb his extravagance and been slow to investigate stories of bad behaviour within his household (including allegations of a male rape and the selling of unwanted gifts). But his real missed chance has been to neglect the necessity for reform. He has been too keen to intervene in politics, which are none of his business, and too hesitant - or more probably unwilling - to press the Queen and Prime Minister for an agenda for a modern, accountable and pared-down monarchy. The changes, at the start, could be incremental ones, such as repealing the Act of Settlement, which debars those outside the Protestant faith from reigning, and ending primogeniture. Charles is not, however, a natural moderniser. A self-styled 'historian', he regards the past as a refuge from a present that he cannot comprehend and a future he mistrusts. His suits and kilts - even his Klosters ski-suit - have a museum cut, and his idea of Britain resides in an ancient dream. A re-bottler of genies, the prince looks out of his palace windows and surveys a world that is forever Middlemarch, only now with fewer foxhounds. Charles could have been little more than a man grown prematurely ancient in a Britain where, on his chronometer, time stands still. The events of this week will change all that. By the greatest of ironies, a prince metaphorically wedded to the past will crush tradition in his second marriage. For a divorced heir to the throne to marry a middle-aged mother of two, herself divorced, in a simple civil ceremony boycotted by his mother would, until recently, have been unthinkable. For his bride, a jolly Gloucestershire matron with a voice that could trigger a Klosters avalanche, to become the next queen would once have seemed even weirder. But that, in law, if not in intent, is Camilla's destiny. This wedding fulfils the dreams that a large part of the British population harbours, through sentimentalism or generosity, for its royals. Unlike the posh ceremonies with glass coaches and fairytale brides in too much silk, the conjoining of the Daily Star's 'two old gits' offers the most elusive quality in royal partnerships. At last, Britain has a genuine royal romance. It has, in Charles, an heir to the throne who has finally contrived, if by accident, to put himself in touch with how real people live. It has, in Camilla, a woman who would be a perfectly serviceable queen, if the nation decides that it needs such a figurehead. There is something here to engage most citizens, from diehard royalists to 'those bloody people' focusing long lenses on the slopes of Klosters. A king-in-waiting is marrying on Friday. Curse the monarchy, by all means, but wish him well. <B>Prince Charles</B><BR><B>DoB:</B> 14 November, 1948<BR> <B>Education:</B> Hill House school, West London; Cheam School, Berkshire; Gordonstoun; Timbertop, Australia; Trinity College, Cambridge; Aberystwyth University<BR> <B>Status:</B> Single father-of-two<BR> <B>Job:</B> None; heir to throne
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Mary Riddell .
|
Like many bridegrooms, Prince Charles spent the run-up to his wedding in male company, saying things he might regret the next day. But, far from being a stag party, this was the sober annual ritual in which the prince and his two sons break their winter holiday in Klosters to take questions from the media. Through welded teeth, Charles offered his squeak of anger at his interlocutors and, in particular, the BBC's royal correspondent, Nicholas Witchell. 'Bloody people,' he said. 'I can't bear that man. I mean, he is so awful. He really is.' The media took a largely dim view. There was much commentary about the gaffes of a spoilt and petulant prince, and Mr Witchell reported the affair as gravely as if the heir to the throne had commissioned a Swiss stripogram, or proposed parcelling his mother and her corgis off on a one-way ticket to the Sunshine Rest Home for the Elderly, Skegness. Most viewers watching the prince's outburst would have taken a less astringent view, for several reasons. Mr Witchell, apparently known as the 'Poison Carrot' at work because of the acerbic nature of his postbag, does not hold national treasure status. The prince, with his arms round his sons, cut a lonely but protective figure. There was a demotic element to his rant against the high-flown BBC, just after William had apparently confided his own wedding plans, or lack of them, to the Sun. And besides, it was all oddly hilarious. But not to Charles, who could not, in the end, endure a saccharine encounter with representatives of media that, in his opinion, have reported his forthcoming marriage in a manner vile beyond belief. 'He loathes us,' says James Whitaker, a veteran of Klosters and the royal ratpack. 'He regards us all as scum. Although he's been able to bottle it up well, we got the true Charles in that moment.' Who, though, is the real Charles? Last week, he made headlines by losing his temper on the ski slopes. This week, he makes history when he and Camilla Parker Bowles, the divorced and 'non-negotiable' mistress whom he has loved for most of his life, marry on Friday at the sort of unpretentious register office that also does dog licences. The Guildhall, Windsor, was chosen only because obtaining a licence for Windsor Castle would have allowed ordinary couples to marry there. But its prosaic setting is a perfect illustration of the contradictions that define the Prince of Wales. He is an austere eater who breakfasts off wheatgerm, lunches off dry bread and dines like the Emperor Nero, sometimes with a Spice Girl in attendance (he likes Geri Halliwell because she is 'so non-PC'). Charles is the social improver who grumbled, on hearing that a black secretary wanted promotion: 'What is wrong with everybody these days? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities?' He is the spartan who cannot travel without seven bedrooms for his vast retinue of staff, the narrow thinker who wants to be a Platonic philosopher king. He is, in his view, constantly misunderstood, and it makes him furious. Long before Klosters, rage defined the Prince of Wales. Irascibility is hard-wired in his Hanoverian genes (or ingrained by his formal upbringing) and he is said to have inherited the 'gnashes' of his grandfather, George VI. The king used to kick furniture so hard that his hosts hid their antiques when he came to stay, replacing them with a prewar Ikea equivalent. When I visited his grandson at Highgrove, I watched him do it too. 'I have had to battle and battle and battle against a complete wall of opposition,' he said, and his oxblood loafer pulsed a drumbeat of frustration against the velvet sofa. Sarah Bradford, the Queen's biographer, quotes a former servant's claims that Charles, in the stress of his failing marriage to Diana, wrenched a handbasin from a wall and wrote terse notes to staff: 'This sponge is dry. Please see that it is watered immediately.' On matters pertaining to areas outside his bathroom, he corresponds with ministers, urging them to bend policies on his key interests, such as farming, non-carbuncular architecture or science, to his wishes. Why should the Prince of Wales, a man with modest duties, an endless cash cow in the Duchy of Cornwall and an understanding partner, be so enraged, so pessimistic, so importunate? Why would he be so sad? In part, because he has been fawned on too much by those who love him least. And, in part, because he is right in thinking that he has had a rough deal. At his worst, he is extravagant, intemperate and too receptive to bad advice. At his best, he is concerned, dutiful and engaging - traits largely invisible, especially as filtered through media that veer between presenting him as a joke figure, or, alternatively, as a callous solipsist who ruined the brief life of his virgin bride. To counter, or ignore, such portrayals would take a man of guile and toughness. The prince possesses neither attribute, and, with the exception of his best image-maker, Mark Bolland, has proved incapable even of buying in the only weapons beyond the reach of status or money. Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor was marginalised from the start. As the fountains in Trafalgar Square ran blue to herald the birth of a male heir, his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, was playing squash with his mother's private secretary. The next day, in November 1948, Winston Churchill commended to the Commons a serene monarchy and 'a little prince, now born into this world of storm and strife'. The first part of the analysis was awry, the second accurate. But the prince is a victim not of geopolitical or even national turmoil. The first of his two nemeses was a family that required him to behave like an infant courtier and sent him to Gordonstoun, the tough Scottish boarding school he detested, to iron out his 'weakness'. His second downfall was a modern media, whose prurience was never going to accommodate a prince who naively thought it was still all right, in the tradition of royal males, to have both a mistress and a wife. His first marriage was disastrous, his job condemns him to wait forever in the wings, and the press seeks, often shamelessly, to destroy him and install his older son in a post that Charles has trained for all his life and would do more reliably. It would be tempting to feel sorry for the Prince of Wales, were he not so saturated in self-pity. But the fourth post-holder since the Prince Regent has not settled for victim status either. Instead, he has carved out a role, notably in setting up the Prince's Trust, that has helped thousands of disadvantaged young people. His genuine interest in, and understanding of, deprivation is not an example of noblesse oblige or social spin. For all his privilege, Charles, the outsider, knows how exclusion feels. In other areas, the prince has been less successful. He has failed to curb his extravagance and been slow to investigate stories of bad behaviour within his household (including allegations of a male rape and the selling of unwanted gifts). But his real missed chance has been to neglect the necessity for reform. He has been too keen to intervene in politics, which are none of his business, and too hesitant - or more probably unwilling - to press the Queen and Prime Minister for an agenda for a modern, accountable and pared-down monarchy. The changes, at the start, could be incremental ones, such as repealing the Act of Settlement, which debars those outside the Protestant faith from reigning, and ending primogeniture. Charles is not, however, a natural moderniser. A self-styled 'historian', he regards the past as a refuge from a present that he cannot comprehend and a future he mistrusts. His suits and kilts - even his Klosters ski-suit - have a museum cut, and his idea of Britain resides in an ancient dream. A re-bottler of genies, the prince looks out of his palace windows and surveys a world that is forever Middlemarch, only now with fewer foxhounds. Charles could have been little more than a man grown prematurely ancient in a Britain where, on his chronometer, time stands still. The events of this week will change all that. By the greatest of ironies, a prince metaphorically wedded to the past will crush tradition in his second marriage. For a divorced heir to the throne to marry a middle-aged mother of two, herself divorced, in a simple civil ceremony boycotted by his mother would, until recently, have been unthinkable. For his bride, a jolly Gloucestershire matron with a voice that could trigger a Klosters avalanche, to become the next queen would once have seemed even weirder. But that, in law, if not in intent, is Camilla's destiny. This wedding fulfils the dreams that a large part of the British population harbours, through sentimentalism or generosity, for its royals. Unlike the posh ceremonies with glass coaches and fairytale brides in too much silk, the conjoining of the Daily Star's 'two old gits' offers the most elusive quality in royal partnerships. At last, Britain has a genuine royal romance. It has, in Charles, an heir to the throne who has finally contrived, if by accident, to put himself in touch with how real people live. It has, in Camilla, a woman who would be a perfectly serviceable queen, if the nation decides that it needs such a figurehead. There is something here to engage most citizens, from diehard royalists to 'those bloody people' focusing long lenses on the slopes of Klosters. A king-in-waiting is marrying on Friday. Curse the monarchy, by all means, but wish him well. <B>Prince Charles</B><BR><B>DoB:</B> 14 November, 1948<BR> <B>Education:</B> Hill House school, West London; Cheam School, Berkshire; Gordonstoun; Timbertop, Australia; Trinity College, Cambridge; Aberystwyth University<BR> <B>Status:</B> Single father-of-two<BR> <B>Job:</B> None; heir to throne
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5maryriddell
| 2UK
|
Walter Bagehot's edict that daylight should never shine on the magic of royalty is back in vogue. Not that much lustre attaches to an institution now darkened by a scandal of which we should not know. Officially, we have been told only that one subject of the rumour is Michael Fawcett, former toothpaste-squeezer to the Prince of Wales, and that the other is the prince himself. Maybe, by today, the full details of the mystery that dare not speak its name will have seeped from foreign newspapers into the British press. Disclosure was inevitable from the moment Mr Justice Tugendhat, a judge less in favour than some colleagues of Bagehotian news blackouts, ruled that Mr Fawcett could be named as the obtainer of a draconian gagging order. Soon afterwards, Clarence House acknowledged Charles's involvement, issuing a vehement denial, though of what it could not say. The prince's men were gambling that this factual short-circuitry might appeal to people who long for a prelapsarian age of royalty and for butlers who, like Jeeves, shimmer about with trays of beverages rather than serving up necro-gossip from beyond Diana's grave. The courtiers were almost right. The rumours do not sound compelling. Their source, another ex-toiler for the prince, is supposedly an alcoholic and a fantasist. Even readers who object to Charles using the media as a megaphone for his barmier causes recoil at how royal life has become Big Brother for the ermine set. Like any citizen, Charles is entitled to defend himself against being traduced. The usual means were at his disposal, and at Mr Fawcett's. They could have let the story run and denounced it as poisonous fabrication. If that was not enough, a libel jury would have settled the matter. The first recourse might have sufficed, since the public does not enjoy crucifying the royals half as much as newspapers suppose. Nor are people stupid. They know that monarchs, from Aethelred the Redeless to Henry VIII, have behaved in ways that make today's royal family look like the Townswomen's Guild. Last week's Channel 4 documentary on the Queen's uncle, the Duke of Kent, portrayed him as a hard-drinking, drug-using bisexual once chased by the police as he and his lover, Nol Coward, clattered down a London street in stilettoes. The Clarence House gossip, modest in comparison, is tabloid ectoplasm, swelled and shaped partly by the bungling of a household already suspected of furtiveness. Considering how much practice they have had, the Windsors are hopeless at defusing scandal. Some months ago, entirely separate allegations of the cover-up of a homosexual rape by another palace servant and the sale of official gifts prompted Charles to launch an inquiry, conducted by his private secretary, Sir Michael Peat. Though cleared of financial impropriety, 'Fawcett the Fence' had to go. He left with generous severance pay, retained his 450,000 grace-and-favour home and earns a reported 100,000 a year for freelance services to Charles. Mr Fawcett is again central to a furore, this time billed as the one that could break the monarchy. If that forecast is right, and it seems unlikely, then a British republic will spring not from grotesque rumour but from its heavy-handed suppression. Royalty's evolving relationship with the law has often centred on canine matters. Queen Victoria sued to stop a publisher selling etchings of her dogs, and Princess Anne was fined for failing to prevent hers from biting a passer-by. On a less corgified note, Queen Anne refused royal assent to a 1707 Bill settling the militia in Scotland. Three centuries on, the trials of two royal butlers collapsed after it emerged that the Queen, constitutionally the fount of justice, had known of Paul Burrell's stash of Diana's possessions but had not thought to mention it earlier. The resulting questions are so far unaddressed by the Law Lords. Although it seems probable that Her Majesty is competent to appear as a witness in a criminal case, the question of whether she is compellable is less sure. The Director of Public Prosecutions said last week that he could 'give no authoritative answer'. Mr Fawcett was spared such legal vagueness. On learning that the Mail on Sunday was about to publish its bombshell, he speedily obtained from Mr Justice McKinnon an injunction that is hardly ever granted. How delighted the makers of Thalidomide, or the late Robert Maxwell, might have been if offered similar prior restraint. To smash the precept that newspapers should publish and be damned would usher in the censorship of the police state. Yet when the Guardian proposed to name Mr Fawcett simply as the obtainer of this super-ban, Mr Justice Henriques handed out another gagging order over his mobile phone while stuck in traffic. The inescapable presumption of wig-doffing to royalty, unfortunate in the week when the Lord Chief Justice warned that the judiciary's sacred independence is under threat, has not even done Charles a favour. First, he wants suppression, then pre-emptive denial. What, the courts may wonder, is his game? I doubt, having met him, that he really knows. To see him as dissolute or disreputable would be ludicrous. In many ways a rather tragic man, he affects despair that his worthwhile social policy work is overshadowed by carping. He cannot, or perhaps dare not, understand why he is so undermined. The media tacitly decided, long ago, that Charles-baiting was the last legitimate national bloodsport. His faithlessness to the beloved Diana made him a target for high-minded moralisers of the popular media. That unfairness was made worse by the fact that the prince is unsuited, by behaviour and by temperament, to living under a tabloid fatwa. His combination of petulance and autocracy may have prompted the latest, panicked reaction. Had he been wise, he would have faced down this rumour at the start. He could have gained public sympathy by pointing out how powerless even the privileged can be when newspapers discard human values and gossip is the wisdom of the age. But even if the story were true, so what? Monarchists love the royals despite their venal ways, and republicans can think of worse failings than unprintable but legal indiscretions. The Prince of Wales has shown, once again, that he simply does not get the dangers facing him, or understand the nation he hopes to lead. Britons are accommodating. They tolerate a kleptocratic monarchy that has never understood what treasures belong to it and which are ours. People have accepted, or revered in Diana's case, a princess who thinks she is Mother Teresa in Versace, an heir to the throne who thinks he is a Tampax and a mistress who thinks, maybe, she could one day be a queen. The House of Windsor is almost scandal-proof. No flaky gossip-broker will directly bring it down. But the paying public does demand some openness. It does not want the fingerprints of a future head of state on the pillars of the constitution. If the Windsors, or their minions, give the impression that the law is at their personal disposal, Charles really might be staring at oblivion. <BR>
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Mary Riddell .
|
Walter Bagehot's edict that daylight should never shine on the magic of royalty is back in vogue. Not that much lustre attaches to an institution now darkened by a scandal of which we should not know. Officially, we have been told only that one subject of the rumour is Michael Fawcett, former toothpaste-squeezer to the Prince of Wales, and that the other is the prince himself. Maybe, by today, the full details of the mystery that dare not speak its name will have seeped from foreign newspapers into the British press. Disclosure was inevitable from the moment Mr Justice Tugendhat, a judge less in favour than some colleagues of Bagehotian news blackouts, ruled that Mr Fawcett could be named as the obtainer of a draconian gagging order. Soon afterwards, Clarence House acknowledged Charles's involvement, issuing a vehement denial, though of what it could not say. The prince's men were gambling that this factual short-circuitry might appeal to people who long for a prelapsarian age of royalty and for butlers who, like Jeeves, shimmer about with trays of beverages rather than serving up necro-gossip from beyond Diana's grave. The courtiers were almost right. The rumours do not sound compelling. Their source, another ex-toiler for the prince, is supposedly an alcoholic and a fantasist. Even readers who object to Charles using the media as a megaphone for his barmier causes recoil at how royal life has become Big Brother for the ermine set. Like any citizen, Charles is entitled to defend himself against being traduced. The usual means were at his disposal, and at Mr Fawcett's. They could have let the story run and denounced it as poisonous fabrication. If that was not enough, a libel jury would have settled the matter. The first recourse might have sufficed, since the public does not enjoy crucifying the royals half as much as newspapers suppose. Nor are people stupid. They know that monarchs, from Aethelred the Redeless to Henry VIII, have behaved in ways that make today's royal family look like the Townswomen's Guild. Last week's Channel 4 documentary on the Queen's uncle, the Duke of Kent, portrayed him as a hard-drinking, drug-using bisexual once chased by the police as he and his lover, Nol Coward, clattered down a London street in stilettoes. The Clarence House gossip, modest in comparison, is tabloid ectoplasm, swelled and shaped partly by the bungling of a household already suspected of furtiveness. Considering how much practice they have had, the Windsors are hopeless at defusing scandal. Some months ago, entirely separate allegations of the cover-up of a homosexual rape by another palace servant and the sale of official gifts prompted Charles to launch an inquiry, conducted by his private secretary, Sir Michael Peat. Though cleared of financial impropriety, 'Fawcett the Fence' had to go. He left with generous severance pay, retained his 450,000 grace-and-favour home and earns a reported 100,000 a year for freelance services to Charles. Mr Fawcett is again central to a furore, this time billed as the one that could break the monarchy. If that forecast is right, and it seems unlikely, then a British republic will spring not from grotesque rumour but from its heavy-handed suppression. Royalty's evolving relationship with the law has often centred on canine matters. Queen Victoria sued to stop a publisher selling etchings of her dogs, and Princess Anne was fined for failing to prevent hers from biting a passer-by. On a less corgified note, Queen Anne refused royal assent to a 1707 Bill settling the militia in Scotland. Three centuries on, the trials of two royal butlers collapsed after it emerged that the Queen, constitutionally the fount of justice, had known of Paul Burrell's stash of Diana's possessions but had not thought to mention it earlier. The resulting questions are so far unaddressed by the Law Lords. Although it seems probable that Her Majesty is competent to appear as a witness in a criminal case, the question of whether she is compellable is less sure. The Director of Public Prosecutions said last week that he could 'give no authoritative answer'. Mr Fawcett was spared such legal vagueness. On learning that the Mail on Sunday was about to publish its bombshell, he speedily obtained from Mr Justice McKinnon an injunction that is hardly ever granted. How delighted the makers of Thalidomide, or the late Robert Maxwell, might have been if offered similar prior restraint. To smash the precept that newspapers should publish and be damned would usher in the censorship of the police state. Yet when the Guardian proposed to name Mr Fawcett simply as the obtainer of this super-ban, Mr Justice Henriques handed out another gagging order over his mobile phone while stuck in traffic. The inescapable presumption of wig-doffing to royalty, unfortunate in the week when the Lord Chief Justice warned that the judiciary's sacred independence is under threat, has not even done Charles a favour. First, he wants suppression, then pre-emptive denial. What, the courts may wonder, is his game? I doubt, having met him, that he really knows. To see him as dissolute or disreputable would be ludicrous. In many ways a rather tragic man, he affects despair that his worthwhile social policy work is overshadowed by carping. He cannot, or perhaps dare not, understand why he is so undermined. The media tacitly decided, long ago, that Charles-baiting was the last legitimate national bloodsport. His faithlessness to the beloved Diana made him a target for high-minded moralisers of the popular media. That unfairness was made worse by the fact that the prince is unsuited, by behaviour and by temperament, to living under a tabloid fatwa. His combination of petulance and autocracy may have prompted the latest, panicked reaction. Had he been wise, he would have faced down this rumour at the start. He could have gained public sympathy by pointing out how powerless even the privileged can be when newspapers discard human values and gossip is the wisdom of the age. But even if the story were true, so what? Monarchists love the royals despite their venal ways, and republicans can think of worse failings than unprintable but legal indiscretions. The Prince of Wales has shown, once again, that he simply does not get the dangers facing him, or understand the nation he hopes to lead. Britons are accommodating. They tolerate a kleptocratic monarchy that has never understood what treasures belong to it and which are ours. People have accepted, or revered in Diana's case, a princess who thinks she is Mother Teresa in Versace, an heir to the throne who thinks he is a Tampax and a mistress who thinks, maybe, she could one day be a queen. The House of Windsor is almost scandal-proof. No flaky gossip-broker will directly bring it down. But the paying public does demand some openness. It does not want the fingerprints of a future head of state on the pillars of the constitution. If the Windsors, or their minions, give the impression that the law is at their personal disposal, Charles really might be staring at oblivion. <BR>
|
5maryriddell
| 2UK
|
Thursday. A man moves through a tube station. His CCTV image suggests a handbag-snatcher, but this thief's alleged haul of choice is human lives. A bombing mission has ended in failure or, as politically correct teachers are now being urged to say, deferred success. The attackers are planning to come back. The capital's biggest manhunt is on. Police seeking four would-be assassins shoot dead a man running for a train. Suddenly, shoppers, children and commuters are actors in a Tom Clancy fantasy that has usurped the lives of a city and its inhabitants. It is hard to pin a single mood on seven million people, so the media have two labels: fear or defiance. Neither sounds right to me. Tube passengers who smelled smoke and heard a detonator crack were as panic-stricken as anyone staring at their potential death would be. Parents whose children were on an end-of-term outing felt anxious. Office workers facing another long walk home flicked between reports of the attempted bombings and the Test match. At the National Theatre, a slightly depleted audience watched Henry IV Part Two and heard Prince John berating the rebels of Yorkshire for fomenting religious war 'under the counterfeited zeal of God'. It sounded like a rerun of the television news. Though Thursday's attacks on London do not suggest a war, the warped panache of copycat assailants striking exactly 14 days after the bombings that killed 56 marks a macabre shift. Once may be an aberration; twice is a campaign that crushes soothing myths. Even after 7 July, terrorists were credited with a modest wishlist. A city brought to a halt, a slump in trade, pervasive worry. All these sacrificial offerings might slake a predator's desires. But the attackers were never going to be sated by long delays on the Metropolitan Line or a bad sales day at BhS. Nor did they hope to see the fear of innocents corrode into an echo of their own mistrust, xenophobia and hate. Instead, they wanted blood and sorrow in greater quantities than anyone had dreamed. No wonder carrying on as normal sounds more hollow, given the unfolding horrors in London and now Egypt. Normality, the buzzword of politicians who live abnormal lives, is really a pseudonym for necessity. People take the Tube because they have to, not because they think the negligible but rising risk that they might never emerge alive must be sublimated to national morale. And so we set off, bolstered by hope or superstition. Avoiding the rear upper deck of buses, the bombers' seats, is usual now. It is a game we play, like children never stepping on the cracks between paving stones, for fear of being eaten by a lion. Meanwhile, the authorities are not carrying on at all as normal. Chief constables want powers to hold suspects for three months without charge. Shooting to kill may have been officers' only option last Thursday, but, suddenly, today's south London and yesterday's south Armagh seem not so very far apart. Of police chiefs' 11 new demands, many are sensible. Using the internet to plan terrorism should be illegal, setting up a specialist border security agency is a good idea, and admitting phone-tap evidence in court is long overdue. Holding suspects for three months without charge is another matter. That penalty, the equivalent of a six-month jail sentence, would be swiftly overturned by the European Court of Human Rights. The current limit of 14 days has been in force only since 2000, when its inclusion in the Terrorism Act suggested it was the maximum time the court would wear. Civil liberties are not the only reason to be wary. Recent eulogies to Ted Heath did not dwell on his disastrous decision to allow internment without trial in Northern Ireland, despite a warning from the army that it would bolster support for the IRA. Though there is no community to idolise a Muslim variant of Bobby Sands, there is plenty of discontent to coalesce round manufactured martyrs. How great is the threat? The second bombings destroyed any idea that the murderers of 7 July were, like horsemen of the apocalypse, a one-off quartet. Other assumptions are being demolished fast. Perhaps shadowy monsters from Islamabad are brainwashing our young men, as politicians would like to think, but it is time to explore whether Britons are the proactive ones, shopping the world for mentors who can alchemise their loathing into bombs. It is time, too, to drop the pretence of easy solutions. Expecting moderate leaders and imams to solve the problem alone may not be much more plausible than thinking Harold Shipman could have been dissuaded from murdering old ladies by a homily from the Archbishop of Canterbury. In a climate of denial and futile hopes, people have had enough of being told whether they should be afraid or stoical. They want a way forward that will spare them the necessity of being either. First, what not to do. Campaigning, as the Sun did, to ban Tariq Ramadan is barmy, since progressive Muslim scholars are exactly what Britain needs. Arguing, as ministers do, that Iraq has nothing to do with our vulnerability is absurd. If the coalition had secured Afghanistan and pursued known terrorists rather than launching a sideshow in Iraq, then many nations would be safer today. Instead, the war nurtured old assailants and bred new ones. But the time for what-ifs is long gone. The lesson for a nation mourning 52 people slaughtered by bombers is to remember that Iraq's civilian death toll stands at almost 25,000. If terrorism unleashes human empathy, use it against the bloodshed in Baghdad as well as London. The presence of British troops may antagonise jihadis, but until there is evidence that their withdrawal would not provoke a bloodbath, we must stay. How can we protect ourselves? Reform an intelligence service so out of touch it might be staffed by Martians. Abolish the state's links with faith. Neither Christians nor Muslims can any longer afford the segregation imposed by an established church and 7,000 religious schools. Of the instant measures, none is magical. Extra security and resources for policing might help. So will the Home Office's calm responses, as opposed to the more excitable tendencies of Downing Street. Citizens, as always, will turn the unthinkable into a low-level irritant, not because they are the stormtroops of resistance but because there is no other way to live. But carrying on as normal does not just imply swaying into work on crowded buses, or bringing parties of children into mainline stations for summer outings to museums. It does not only mean getting back to reading Dan Brown on the tube, rather than counting bomb-sized rucksacks. Being normal means being free. And that, in turn, involves ensuring that the laws and principles which enshrine liberty are not overturned in the months to come. Freedom, unless it gets squandered in the name of fear or defiance, will endure long after this fragile, rootless hate campaign has burned itself to ashes.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Mary Riddell .
|
Thursday. A man moves through a tube station. His CCTV image suggests a handbag-snatcher, but this thief's alleged haul of choice is human lives. A bombing mission has ended in failure or, as politically correct teachers are now being urged to say, deferred success. The attackers are planning to come back. The capital's biggest manhunt is on. Police seeking four would-be assassins shoot dead a man running for a train. Suddenly, shoppers, children and commuters are actors in a Tom Clancy fantasy that has usurped the lives of a city and its inhabitants. It is hard to pin a single mood on seven million people, so the media have two labels: fear or defiance. Neither sounds right to me. Tube passengers who smelled smoke and heard a detonator crack were as panic-stricken as anyone staring at their potential death would be. Parents whose children were on an end-of-term outing felt anxious. Office workers facing another long walk home flicked between reports of the attempted bombings and the Test match. At the National Theatre, a slightly depleted audience watched Henry IV Part Two and heard Prince John berating the rebels of Yorkshire for fomenting religious war 'under the counterfeited zeal of God'. It sounded like a rerun of the television news. Though Thursday's attacks on London do not suggest a war, the warped panache of copycat assailants striking exactly 14 days after the bombings that killed 56 marks a macabre shift. Once may be an aberration; twice is a campaign that crushes soothing myths. Even after 7 July, terrorists were credited with a modest wishlist. A city brought to a halt, a slump in trade, pervasive worry. All these sacrificial offerings might slake a predator's desires. But the attackers were never going to be sated by long delays on the Metropolitan Line or a bad sales day at BhS. Nor did they hope to see the fear of innocents corrode into an echo of their own mistrust, xenophobia and hate. Instead, they wanted blood and sorrow in greater quantities than anyone had dreamed. No wonder carrying on as normal sounds more hollow, given the unfolding horrors in London and now Egypt. Normality, the buzzword of politicians who live abnormal lives, is really a pseudonym for necessity. People take the Tube because they have to, not because they think the negligible but rising risk that they might never emerge alive must be sublimated to national morale. And so we set off, bolstered by hope or superstition. Avoiding the rear upper deck of buses, the bombers' seats, is usual now. It is a game we play, like children never stepping on the cracks between paving stones, for fear of being eaten by a lion. Meanwhile, the authorities are not carrying on at all as normal. Chief constables want powers to hold suspects for three months without charge. Shooting to kill may have been officers' only option last Thursday, but, suddenly, today's south London and yesterday's south Armagh seem not so very far apart. Of police chiefs' 11 new demands, many are sensible. Using the internet to plan terrorism should be illegal, setting up a specialist border security agency is a good idea, and admitting phone-tap evidence in court is long overdue. Holding suspects for three months without charge is another matter. That penalty, the equivalent of a six-month jail sentence, would be swiftly overturned by the European Court of Human Rights. The current limit of 14 days has been in force only since 2000, when its inclusion in the Terrorism Act suggested it was the maximum time the court would wear. Civil liberties are not the only reason to be wary. Recent eulogies to Ted Heath did not dwell on his disastrous decision to allow internment without trial in Northern Ireland, despite a warning from the army that it would bolster support for the IRA. Though there is no community to idolise a Muslim variant of Bobby Sands, there is plenty of discontent to coalesce round manufactured martyrs. How great is the threat? The second bombings destroyed any idea that the murderers of 7 July were, like horsemen of the apocalypse, a one-off quartet. Other assumptions are being demolished fast. Perhaps shadowy monsters from Islamabad are brainwashing our young men, as politicians would like to think, but it is time to explore whether Britons are the proactive ones, shopping the world for mentors who can alchemise their loathing into bombs. It is time, too, to drop the pretence of easy solutions. Expecting moderate leaders and imams to solve the problem alone may not be much more plausible than thinking Harold Shipman could have been dissuaded from murdering old ladies by a homily from the Archbishop of Canterbury. In a climate of denial and futile hopes, people have had enough of being told whether they should be afraid or stoical. They want a way forward that will spare them the necessity of being either. First, what not to do. Campaigning, as the Sun did, to ban Tariq Ramadan is barmy, since progressive Muslim scholars are exactly what Britain needs. Arguing, as ministers do, that Iraq has nothing to do with our vulnerability is absurd. If the coalition had secured Afghanistan and pursued known terrorists rather than launching a sideshow in Iraq, then many nations would be safer today. Instead, the war nurtured old assailants and bred new ones. But the time for what-ifs is long gone. The lesson for a nation mourning 52 people slaughtered by bombers is to remember that Iraq's civilian death toll stands at almost 25,000. If terrorism unleashes human empathy, use it against the bloodshed in Baghdad as well as London. The presence of British troops may antagonise jihadis, but until there is evidence that their withdrawal would not provoke a bloodbath, we must stay. How can we protect ourselves? Reform an intelligence service so out of touch it might be staffed by Martians. Abolish the state's links with faith. Neither Christians nor Muslims can any longer afford the segregation imposed by an established church and 7,000 religious schools. Of the instant measures, none is magical. Extra security and resources for policing might help. So will the Home Office's calm responses, as opposed to the more excitable tendencies of Downing Street. Citizens, as always, will turn the unthinkable into a low-level irritant, not because they are the stormtroops of resistance but because there is no other way to live. But carrying on as normal does not just imply swaying into work on crowded buses, or bringing parties of children into mainline stations for summer outings to museums. It does not only mean getting back to reading Dan Brown on the tube, rather than counting bomb-sized rucksacks. Being normal means being free. And that, in turn, involves ensuring that the laws and principles which enshrine liberty are not overturned in the months to come. Freedom, unless it gets squandered in the name of fear or defiance, will endure long after this fragile, rootless hate campaign has burned itself to ashes.
|
5maryriddell
| 2UK
|
The Daily Star's initial verdict on Charles and Camilla was too downbeat. 'Boring Old Gits to Wed' does not do justice to a legal maelstrom featuring a register office boycott by the Queen, who has allegedly also shelved plans for a banquet. Instead, the sporran polishers of the royal household will be rustling up bite-sized pork pies and warm Lambrusco. Some monarchists blame this 'shambles' on Tony Blair. In their view, his poor advice on wedding protocol betokens a contempt for royalty almost tantamount to back-door abolition. The Queen might certainly have expected a Prime Minister entitled to declare wars in her name to check, in return, whether a licence for Windsor Castle would entitle any old Kev and Bev to plight their troth beneath the Holbeins en route to Legoland. Otherwise, the executive cannot be accused of negligence. Far from it. On whether the wedding will be lawful, the government has shown the same attention to detail that it applied to the war on Iraq. Both verdicts followed the celebrity chef school of jurisprudence, under which a brace of versions that someone prepared earlier is reheated with new finishing touches. On the war, two old UN security council resolutions - 678 and 687- were conflated with a new one - 1,441 - to make the legal case. For the wedding, the Marriage Acts of 1836 and 1949, both appearing to preclude royal civil weddings, were laced with the Human Rights Act 1998, which affirms that adults may marry as they wish. The difference is that Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, has publicly given his view that the marriage would be legal after others, including a former Tory attorney general, said it might not. By contrast, the government still refuses to publish the current attorney's full advice on Iraq, despite mounting pressure. But the point, beyond that discrepancy, is not whether the attack was legal (which it was not) or whether the marriage is lawful (a more mixed verdict). The issue is that the legal status of a bloody war has, over the past week, had less media coverage than the legitimacy of a marriage between middle-aged co-habitees. This imbalance does not support the idea of an irrelevant or dying monarchy. Some royalists think Charles can never now be king; republicans say a clan so reviled by its fans must be tumbrel-fodder. But the Windsors are admirably performing one function of heads of state: that of defining who we are. It is not a good picture, of Britain or of a family that makes Shameless look patrician. Charles's household, bedevilled by royal butler trials, employment tribunals and rape allegations, is presided over by a future king allegedly accused by his ex-wife of wanting to bump her off. But the bystanders don't sound too pleasant, either. Father Paul Williamson of Feltham, Middlesex, who thinks it 'heresy and apostasy' to ordain women priests, intends to be at the ceremony and object out loud if his formal bids to halt proceedings are ignored. Other hecklers may turn up, egged on by frothing constitutionalists and commentators enjoying some down-and-dirty royal baiting. The Queen, in a reasonable decision, won't be there. That is not to justify her handling of this mess. A monarch happy to sign a football and visit a drive-thru McDonald's should have welcomed the mix-up under which licensing Windsor Castle would have opened it to other people's weddings. Why not? The Windsors, who fleece visitors for inspecting treasures that belong to the nation, should not suddenly behave as if the paying public are scummy peasants likely to carve their initials in the perpendicular Gothic or stick their gum on the van Dycks. In opting instead for a register office open to any befrocked pseudo-terrorist who wants to kiss Prince William, the royals might as well have issued gilt-edged invitations exactly to hoi polloi they wanted to exclude. They have also, inadvertently, created the sort of royal family Britain purports to want. A bickering chavocracy that marries in register offices should suit advocates of a bicycling monarchy. But suddenly, a finger buffet, with all that subtext of pastel Crimplene and gift-wrapped toasters, strikes the media as too naff for words. Why no glass coaches and spit-roast Highgrove stag? Where is the self-respect of a country that may not be able to run a food standards agency but which defers to no one on choreographing a fairytale royal wedding? At the heart of the Windsors' survival is a snobbery that permeates society. The current fuss has also conferred on them a new and powerful role. The real function of this monarchy is to be the lightning conductor for national loathing. Britain, in common with much of Europe, combusts too much hatred seeking a permissible outlet. In an age of fear, citizens are formally encouraged by government to accept people who represent otherness, such as immigrants and asylum seekers. But those messages come laced with insidious hints of warning. From the terrorist suspect who cannot be charged to the exploited foreign worker and the disturbed child hauled before the courts, the country is full of targets for a poisonous, if furtive, dislike. So how cathartic to have the royals, a conduit for collective cruelty and the only legitimate locus for upfront detestation. Obviously, this bloodsport is media-driven. Many Britons have no view on Charles's petulance or Camilla's cellulite and wish the royal story would go away, or at least switch from the personal to the institutional. For the Windsors' sake, and ours, the government should act fast. As Lord Lester and others recommend, it should pass a brief bill formally sanctioning the legality of the marriage and so heading off inevitable challenges. Then Tony Blair should point out to Charles that the wedding got its initial figleaf of legality only because of a human rights act the prince once denounced as 'a threat to sane, civilised and ordered existence'. That legislation rules that royals must be treated like any ordinary citizen. In recognition, the prince should, like any ordinary citizen, pay his taxes, live within his means and be banned from sponging shamelessly off the state. Short term, this democracy is stuck with the Windsors. The hereditary principle may be indefensible but, even at the current low point, only 23 per cent of respondents to a YouGov poll want the monarchy to die with the Queen. Until there is enough public enthusiasm for an elected head of state, reform and some kindness are better than a baying mob, in which sneering republicans stand shoulder to shoulder with hardcore evangelicals and Diana loyalists who think Camilla a Medusa in hunting pink. Spite risks damaging Britain far more than our venal royals, who are never much dented by periodic fits of dislike. On the contrary, unpopularity may work to the advantage of an institution still capable of inspiring national unity, albeit of the ugliest kind. When, eventually, the monarchy perishes, its death certificate will cite as cause not public rage but the indifference of a grown-up country.
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Mary Riddell .
|
The Daily Star's initial verdict on Charles and Camilla was too downbeat. 'Boring Old Gits to Wed' does not do justice to a legal maelstrom featuring a register office boycott by the Queen, who has allegedly also shelved plans for a banquet. Instead, the sporran polishers of the royal household will be rustling up bite-sized pork pies and warm Lambrusco. Some monarchists blame this 'shambles' on Tony Blair. In their view, his poor advice on wedding protocol betokens a contempt for royalty almost tantamount to back-door abolition. The Queen might certainly have expected a Prime Minister entitled to declare wars in her name to check, in return, whether a licence for Windsor Castle would entitle any old Kev and Bev to plight their troth beneath the Holbeins en route to Legoland. Otherwise, the executive cannot be accused of negligence. Far from it. On whether the wedding will be lawful, the government has shown the same attention to detail that it applied to the war on Iraq. Both verdicts followed the celebrity chef school of jurisprudence, under which a brace of versions that someone prepared earlier is reheated with new finishing touches. On the war, two old UN security council resolutions - 678 and 687- were conflated with a new one - 1,441 - to make the legal case. For the wedding, the Marriage Acts of 1836 and 1949, both appearing to preclude royal civil weddings, were laced with the Human Rights Act 1998, which affirms that adults may marry as they wish. The difference is that Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, has publicly given his view that the marriage would be legal after others, including a former Tory attorney general, said it might not. By contrast, the government still refuses to publish the current attorney's full advice on Iraq, despite mounting pressure. But the point, beyond that discrepancy, is not whether the attack was legal (which it was not) or whether the marriage is lawful (a more mixed verdict). The issue is that the legal status of a bloody war has, over the past week, had less media coverage than the legitimacy of a marriage between middle-aged co-habitees. This imbalance does not support the idea of an irrelevant or dying monarchy. Some royalists think Charles can never now be king; republicans say a clan so reviled by its fans must be tumbrel-fodder. But the Windsors are admirably performing one function of heads of state: that of defining who we are. It is not a good picture, of Britain or of a family that makes Shameless look patrician. Charles's household, bedevilled by royal butler trials, employment tribunals and rape allegations, is presided over by a future king allegedly accused by his ex-wife of wanting to bump her off. But the bystanders don't sound too pleasant, either. Father Paul Williamson of Feltham, Middlesex, who thinks it 'heresy and apostasy' to ordain women priests, intends to be at the ceremony and object out loud if his formal bids to halt proceedings are ignored. Other hecklers may turn up, egged on by frothing constitutionalists and commentators enjoying some down-and-dirty royal baiting. The Queen, in a reasonable decision, won't be there. That is not to justify her handling of this mess. A monarch happy to sign a football and visit a drive-thru McDonald's should have welcomed the mix-up under which licensing Windsor Castle would have opened it to other people's weddings. Why not? The Windsors, who fleece visitors for inspecting treasures that belong to the nation, should not suddenly behave as if the paying public are scummy peasants likely to carve their initials in the perpendicular Gothic or stick their gum on the van Dycks. In opting instead for a register office open to any befrocked pseudo-terrorist who wants to kiss Prince William, the royals might as well have issued gilt-edged invitations exactly to hoi polloi they wanted to exclude. They have also, inadvertently, created the sort of royal family Britain purports to want. A bickering chavocracy that marries in register offices should suit advocates of a bicycling monarchy. But suddenly, a finger buffet, with all that subtext of pastel Crimplene and gift-wrapped toasters, strikes the media as too naff for words. Why no glass coaches and spit-roast Highgrove stag? Where is the self-respect of a country that may not be able to run a food standards agency but which defers to no one on choreographing a fairytale royal wedding? At the heart of the Windsors' survival is a snobbery that permeates society. The current fuss has also conferred on them a new and powerful role. The real function of this monarchy is to be the lightning conductor for national loathing. Britain, in common with much of Europe, combusts too much hatred seeking a permissible outlet. In an age of fear, citizens are formally encouraged by government to accept people who represent otherness, such as immigrants and asylum seekers. But those messages come laced with insidious hints of warning. From the terrorist suspect who cannot be charged to the exploited foreign worker and the disturbed child hauled before the courts, the country is full of targets for a poisonous, if furtive, dislike. So how cathartic to have the royals, a conduit for collective cruelty and the only legitimate locus for upfront detestation. Obviously, this bloodsport is media-driven. Many Britons have no view on Charles's petulance or Camilla's cellulite and wish the royal story would go away, or at least switch from the personal to the institutional. For the Windsors' sake, and ours, the government should act fast. As Lord Lester and others recommend, it should pass a brief bill formally sanctioning the legality of the marriage and so heading off inevitable challenges. Then Tony Blair should point out to Charles that the wedding got its initial figleaf of legality only because of a human rights act the prince once denounced as 'a threat to sane, civilised and ordered existence'. That legislation rules that royals must be treated like any ordinary citizen. In recognition, the prince should, like any ordinary citizen, pay his taxes, live within his means and be banned from sponging shamelessly off the state. Short term, this democracy is stuck with the Windsors. The hereditary principle may be indefensible but, even at the current low point, only 23 per cent of respondents to a YouGov poll want the monarchy to die with the Queen. Until there is enough public enthusiasm for an elected head of state, reform and some kindness are better than a baying mob, in which sneering republicans stand shoulder to shoulder with hardcore evangelicals and Diana loyalists who think Camilla a Medusa in hunting pink. Spite risks damaging Britain far more than our venal royals, who are never much dented by periodic fits of dislike. On the contrary, unpopularity may work to the advantage of an institution still capable of inspiring national unity, albeit of the ugliest kind. When, eventually, the monarchy perishes, its death certificate will cite as cause not public rage but the indifference of a grown-up country.
|
5maryriddell
| 2UK
|
Highgrove is never going to look like the set of Shameless. Even so, the backdrop for Prince Harry's television interview was curious. Rather than picking some classless patch of organic curly kale or a ditch similar to the one in which the soldier-prince planned to spend his 21st birthday, the palace impresarios chose the estate's stableyard.In this equine Champney's, hunters deprived of their day job by the Blair government tossed coiffed heads over loosebox doors. You would not have been surprised to see a curricle full of Miss Bennets trundle across the burnished flagstones.It worked. Officer Cadet Darcy, with his supporting cast of point-to-pointers and poor black children from Lesotho, proved Harry's most successful image so far. But it would be unkind to mock someone who loves his parents, his step-mum, his brother, his girlfriend and his country, and who manages to introduce the word 'arse' so frequently into a formal conversation. If only his interviewers were so bold.Along with hiring and firing Prime Ministers and dissolving parliament, making people grovel is one of the residual powers of royalty. Normally robust questioners failed to follow up some interesting remarks and normally robust listeners failed to query the omission. Thus, the Today programme inquisitor did not explore Harry's line on why African children are so special ('Give them a tennis ball and they think it's Christmas') or seize on his hint that British children are less sweet.What tribe, exactly, was he thinking of? The undereducated, Asbo-breaching loser who ends up on remand in Feltham Young Offenders' Institution, devising six ways to kill himself with a bedsheet, or the polo-playing chavocrat who wears Nazi gear to a party and gets into a drunken brawl outside a nightclub?Still, Harry sounded OK and, besides, he was never the problem. The difficulty is the role for which he was born. The Daily Telegraph tested the theory that the office always justifies the occupant with its defence of the prince, at 21, becoming an automatic Counsellor of State, allowed jointly to preside over meetings of the Privy Council in the Queen's absence. The paper is partly right, though not for the reasons it supposes.Britain is daft enough to compel its Prime Minister and cabinet to take a 16-line oath of allegiance (often with fingers crossed) in order to sit on the committee that Henry VIII used to bypass parliament. So tough luck if the duty overseer has two lowish-grade A-levels and no obvious interest in matters constitutional, beyond how a dedicated smoker is to yomp round a Sandhurst assault course with a rucksack full of bricks.But even if Prince Harry were a complete ass', the paper says: 'He would be perfectly qualified, by his blood alone, to serve as a counsellor.' On the contrary, the link between rhesus positive and destiny is being stretched beyond its limits. A few months ago, the royals were doomed. The Camilla years had dawned and the media painted the Prince of Wales's new bride as Marie Antoinette in jodhpurs. According to one poll, fewer than a quarter of citizens approved of the union, and support for Charles as king sunk as low as 25 per cent.As with all royal upheavals, nothing much happened. Butler trials, dead princesses and household scandals only briefly disturb the grudging acceptance Britons accord the royals. Last week, as the Windsors got off what Harry would not call their backsides and began their autumn duties, it seemed like business as normal.Charles told Songs of Praise viewers how much he liked serenading Caithness seals with Scottish ballads. William became the patron of his mother's old charity, Centrepoint. The Duke of Edinburgh had a nasty moment when it was wrongly reported that his name was to be dropped from the famous award for young people, on the grounds that ethnic minorities and poor youngsters are oddly uninspired by a posh octogenarian role model still spry enough to be rude to Johnny Foreigner.Other things are changing. Post-divorce, post-scandal and post-death, the monarchy has lost even the propulsion of its own bad publicity. Though the Buckingham Palace flag flew at half-mast after the London bombings and an ageing Queen issued her condolences, there was no real sense of a head of state tapped into the mind of a nation that had grieved so extravagantly for her dead mother and daughter-in-law.Conflict does odd things to monarchies. The British model, the one European great-power version to survive 1914-18, emerged as the icon of Ramsay MacDonald, not the last Labour Prime Minister to protect the established order and enjoy its perks. The Second World War enabled the royals to look the East End in the face and set the stage for Diana's affinity with eel-pie Britain.If there is any niche for monarchy in an age of terror, it is not yet apparent. Scorned for his interest in Islam, Charles has combined his familiar dirge against modernity with flagrant raids on the nation's bank balance. Not long ago, it emerged that the £336,000 annual Highgrove rent paid by the prince to the Duchy of Cornwall, which belongs to us, went straight back into his bank account.Behind their drawbridges, the Windsors look lonely. The 100 other aristocratic families who lived like them in 1939 are selling gooseberry jam to tourists. The old pillars - the established church and the Tory party - have crumbled. The European monarchies of Belgium, Sweden and Denmark have thrived by working for the public interest and marrying into typing pools, while ours remains a museum piece to privilege.Worse, it symbolises and ratifies a hierarchy of class and status. Last week, a UN report singled out the UK and the US for their growing gap between rich and poor. If you are in the bottom 10 per cent of earners, your weekly wage will have gone up by an average £28 since Labour came to power, compared with £119 for the top 10 per cent. Social mobility, on many measures, has declined.ITV's 49 Up programme, charting the lives of seven-year-olds now nearing 50, was a chronicle of predetermined fates. Last week's right-wing fury that the (relatively paltry) £3 billion invested in SureStart had not instantly conjured baby Einsteins from sink estates illustrates the deep resistance to even trying to dismantle a class structure that sets ceilings, strangles hope and curtails lives.At its pinnacle is the royal family. Republicanism, like stem-cell cures, may still be far away, but any Prime Minister who wants greater equality can no longer shirk reform. Ending primogeniture and discrimination against non-Protestants, and making the Windsors financially accountable, should not be controversial issues.Tony Blair still seeks his legacy, so why not this? Forging a modern monarchy would delight Labour supporters, discomfit the Tories, become the foundation stone of a fairer society and even please a royal clan that knows what happens to dinosaurs in crowns. But first, he should watch Harry's birthday broadcasts. A prince is growing up. So why can't we?
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Mary Riddell .
|
Highgrove is never going to look like the set of Shameless. Even so, the backdrop for Prince Harry's television interview was curious. Rather than picking some classless patch of organic curly kale or a ditch similar to the one in which the soldier-prince planned to spend his 21st birthday, the palace impresarios chose the estate's stableyard.In this equine Champney's, hunters deprived of their day job by the Blair government tossed coiffed heads over loosebox doors. You would not have been surprised to see a curricle full of Miss Bennets trundle across the burnished flagstones.It worked. Officer Cadet Darcy, with his supporting cast of point-to-pointers and poor black children from Lesotho, proved Harry's most successful image so far. But it would be unkind to mock someone who loves his parents, his step-mum, his brother, his girlfriend and his country, and who manages to introduce the word 'arse' so frequently into a formal conversation. If only his interviewers were so bold.Along with hiring and firing Prime Ministers and dissolving parliament, making people grovel is one of the residual powers of royalty. Normally robust questioners failed to follow up some interesting remarks and normally robust listeners failed to query the omission. Thus, the Today programme inquisitor did not explore Harry's line on why African children are so special ('Give them a tennis ball and they think it's Christmas') or seize on his hint that British children are less sweet.What tribe, exactly, was he thinking of? The undereducated, Asbo-breaching loser who ends up on remand in Feltham Young Offenders' Institution, devising six ways to kill himself with a bedsheet, or the polo-playing chavocrat who wears Nazi gear to a party and gets into a drunken brawl outside a nightclub?Still, Harry sounded OK and, besides, he was never the problem. The difficulty is the role for which he was born. The Daily Telegraph tested the theory that the office always justifies the occupant with its defence of the prince, at 21, becoming an automatic Counsellor of State, allowed jointly to preside over meetings of the Privy Council in the Queen's absence. The paper is partly right, though not for the reasons it supposes.Britain is daft enough to compel its Prime Minister and cabinet to take a 16-line oath of allegiance (often with fingers crossed) in order to sit on the committee that Henry VIII used to bypass parliament. So tough luck if the duty overseer has two lowish-grade A-levels and no obvious interest in matters constitutional, beyond how a dedicated smoker is to yomp round a Sandhurst assault course with a rucksack full of bricks.But even if Prince Harry were a complete ass', the paper says: 'He would be perfectly qualified, by his blood alone, to serve as a counsellor.' On the contrary, the link between rhesus positive and destiny is being stretched beyond its limits. A few months ago, the royals were doomed. The Camilla years had dawned and the media painted the Prince of Wales's new bride as Marie Antoinette in jodhpurs. According to one poll, fewer than a quarter of citizens approved of the union, and support for Charles as king sunk as low as 25 per cent.As with all royal upheavals, nothing much happened. Butler trials, dead princesses and household scandals only briefly disturb the grudging acceptance Britons accord the royals. Last week, as the Windsors got off what Harry would not call their backsides and began their autumn duties, it seemed like business as normal.Charles told Songs of Praise viewers how much he liked serenading Caithness seals with Scottish ballads. William became the patron of his mother's old charity, Centrepoint. The Duke of Edinburgh had a nasty moment when it was wrongly reported that his name was to be dropped from the famous award for young people, on the grounds that ethnic minorities and poor youngsters are oddly uninspired by a posh octogenarian role model still spry enough to be rude to Johnny Foreigner.Other things are changing. Post-divorce, post-scandal and post-death, the monarchy has lost even the propulsion of its own bad publicity. Though the Buckingham Palace flag flew at half-mast after the London bombings and an ageing Queen issued her condolences, there was no real sense of a head of state tapped into the mind of a nation that had grieved so extravagantly for her dead mother and daughter-in-law.Conflict does odd things to monarchies. The British model, the one European great-power version to survive 1914-18, emerged as the icon of Ramsay MacDonald, not the last Labour Prime Minister to protect the established order and enjoy its perks. The Second World War enabled the royals to look the East End in the face and set the stage for Diana's affinity with eel-pie Britain.If there is any niche for monarchy in an age of terror, it is not yet apparent. Scorned for his interest in Islam, Charles has combined his familiar dirge against modernity with flagrant raids on the nation's bank balance. Not long ago, it emerged that the £336,000 annual Highgrove rent paid by the prince to the Duchy of Cornwall, which belongs to us, went straight back into his bank account.Behind their drawbridges, the Windsors look lonely. The 100 other aristocratic families who lived like them in 1939 are selling gooseberry jam to tourists. The old pillars - the established church and the Tory party - have crumbled. The European monarchies of Belgium, Sweden and Denmark have thrived by working for the public interest and marrying into typing pools, while ours remains a museum piece to privilege.Worse, it symbolises and ratifies a hierarchy of class and status. Last week, a UN report singled out the UK and the US for their growing gap between rich and poor. If you are in the bottom 10 per cent of earners, your weekly wage will have gone up by an average £28 since Labour came to power, compared with £119 for the top 10 per cent. Social mobility, on many measures, has declined.ITV's 49 Up programme, charting the lives of seven-year-olds now nearing 50, was a chronicle of predetermined fates. Last week's right-wing fury that the (relatively paltry) £3 billion invested in SureStart had not instantly conjured baby Einsteins from sink estates illustrates the deep resistance to even trying to dismantle a class structure that sets ceilings, strangles hope and curtails lives.At its pinnacle is the royal family. Republicanism, like stem-cell cures, may still be far away, but any Prime Minister who wants greater equality can no longer shirk reform. Ending primogeniture and discrimination against non-Protestants, and making the Windsors financially accountable, should not be controversial issues.Tony Blair still seeks his legacy, so why not this? Forging a modern monarchy would delight Labour supporters, discomfit the Tories, become the foundation stone of a fairer society and even please a royal clan that knows what happens to dinosaurs in crowns. But first, he should watch Harry's birthday broadcasts. A prince is growing up. So why can't we?
|
5maryriddell
| 2UK
|
B> The following correction appeared in the Observer's For the Record column, Sunday May 23 2004</B><BR><BR>'A bit rich, but no class' (Comment, below) said 'they shirk the philanthropy of their American counterparts, from Rockefeller and Carnegie onwards', Andrew Carnegie was actually a Scotsman, born in Dunfermline, Fife.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Mary Riddell .
|
B> The following correction appeared in the Observer's For the Record column, Sunday May 23 2004</B><BR><BR>'A bit rich, but no class' (Comment, below) said 'they shirk the philanthropy of their American counterparts, from Rockefeller and Carnegie onwards', Andrew Carnegie was actually a Scotsman, born in Dunfermline, Fife.
|
5maryriddell
| 2UK
|
As if it had not done enough apologising, the BBC has issued another mea culpa. Stars of the Beechgrove Potting Shed, a Radio Scotland phone-in gardening programme, had to say sorry after advising listeners how to propagate Amsterdam's favourite strain of cannabis. The presenters had thought the caller was talking about cabbages. It seems unlikely that the Dalkeith Dahlia Society would have been offended by this mix-up. Over on ITV, the bad language of John Lydon provoked only 100 complaints from among 10 million viewers. That figure suggests Britain is less shockable than America, where the national television watchdog denounced as 'crass and deplorable' Janet Jackson's decision to flash a breast during the Super Bowl. Although MTV viewers overcame their horror sufficiently to make the episode the most searched-for event in internet history, 9/11 included, the British can fairly claim to be less prudish. The only curious thing is why anyone assumed that Mr Lydon's utterance of the words 'fucking cunts' would cause widespread offence. Equally robust language can be heard in Whitehall, where Sir Richard Mottram, formerly Stephen Byers's Permanent Secretary, was once reported to have regaled a colleague with a trail of expletives, concluding: 'I'm fucked. You're fucked. It's been the biggest cock-up ever, and we're all completely fucked.' Those of nervous disposition can only be grateful that Sir Richard was not involved in WMD damage limitation, or, for that matter, in eating raw fish eyes on primetime television. As for Mr Lydon, his real use to moralists was to fuel the broader charge that I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! has coarsened the national discourse and hastened social decay. This argument follows a familiar timeline, beginning with Chaucer, moving on to Lady Chatterley's Lover and progressing to Jim Davidson and Pot Noodle ('the slag of snacks') via Roy Jenkins ('the father of the permissive society'). With the exception of unpleasant advertising campaigns, none of the above offers any evidence that the parameters of vulgarity are being pushed wider all the time. The opposite is true. I'm a Celebrity is the new variant seaside postcard, complete with improbably breasted women and, the departed Lydon apart, weedy men. As George Orwell wrote, Donald McGill's cards were intended as a 'skit on pornography' rather than the real thing. In the same way, Jordan and friends, emblems of British smut, signify repression rather than sexual licence. Those further horrified by the programme's sub-Attenborough respect for wildlife should also feel pleased. At least the contestants were eating the local fauna, rather than mating with it. Viewers finding reality television shocking should stay away from Edward Albee's new play, The Goat or Who is Sylvia? In the oddest, and most disturbing, production on the London stage, Jonathan Pryce plays a starry and happily married architect who, on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, falls in love with a bearded quadruped. Albee chose his mechanism for taboo-busting carefully. Though bestiality is hardly an alternative to the Tupperware party, it's at least more defensible than cannibalism, or paedophilia. The recent Sexual Offences Bill took only a modestly dim view, pronouncing that 'sexual activity with animals is generally recognised to be profoundly disturbed behaviour' and introducing a maximum two-year sentence. While it is true that the average citizen would rather be cast away on a desert island with Lord Brocket than even contemplate such revolting conduct, apologists for what is more politely called zoophilia attempt to rationalise their preference. Consent is not an issue, they argue. Nor is it impossible that a compliant herbivore would rather be wined and dined by a nicely mannered architect than finish up as goat stew. With the notable exception of Jeffrey Dahmer, crimes against humans are not linked to bestiality. The practice, commonplace among Greek Gods, is also popular with bored American rural workers. According to the Kinsey Report, around 50 per cent have cruised for livestock, as opposed to 8 per cent of the general male population. Such figures, though hardly plausible, have prompted trend-spotters to declare bestiality almost as mainstream as Blind Date. Albee's point is different. His goat is a metaphor for all illicit dreams, desires and compulsions that strain the liberal understanding, and his purpose is to explore the limits of tolerable behaviour. We are all, in the message of his bloody conclusion, self-appointed moralists prone to tip over into intolerance when old certainties collapse. The Broadway critics were not all kind. Some of his audience, adopting the John Lydon strategy, walked out, repelled both by the goat and a secondary hint of gay incest. Though London reviewers rave about the play, the Almeida theatre auditorium empties silently at the end. Albee has rediscovered something increasingly absent from modern Western societies. It is the ability to appal. That realisation is, in itself, a shock to those primed to believe we live in perpetual outrage. If al-Qaeda is quiet, or Geoff Hoon-baiting palls, we can always be petrified by the state of Jennie Bond's hair. When the chief UN inspector hints that the nuclear-arms bazaar is beyond control, and politicians blow holes in the rule of law, there is something consoling about a grandfatherly Sex Pistol mouthing playground swearwords through snaggle teeth. Revolt and anarchy are fine, as long as they involve no problem that cannot be solved by Ant and Dec. Anaesthetised to horror, we have become afraid to confront any of society's demons, or our own. Are we prejudiced? Obviously not, though somehow, as a report on the death of a black schizophrenic, David Bennett, will illustrate this week, the NHS may be racist to its heart. Lacking in compassion? Clearly not, despite this newspaper's report on the exponential rise in women prisoners, with the consequent tragedies of motherless children and suicides. Intolerant? Multiculturalism rules, yet somehow 19 Chinese nationals drowned cockle-gathering on a Lancashire beach, in the same week that fear of eastern European 'gypsies' eclipsed Britain's need for incoming workers and its duty to offer them welcome and the means to go to work and come home alive. Homophobic? The suggestion is insulting, but the fact that the 2001 census has exposed a swath of Yorkshire, from Redcar to Hartlepool, as a gay-free zone suggests some glitch, of integration or disclosure. Even if the fault lay only in the coy phrasing of the question, Massachusetts sounds bolder. Its Supreme Court, in insisting that the state legislature must grant full marriage rights to gay couples, last week edged a conservative nation towards constitutional crisis. Britain, less polarised, steers a middle course between tolerance and oppression, without ever quite knowing where to draw the line. In that confusion, the debate on whether society grows crueller and cruder centres on trivia. FCUK posters and Gucci adverts with the double G logo clipped from a model's pubic hair are nasty, not corrupting. Those who add John Lydon, and reality television in general, to the list of influences corroding society are merely endorsing the perfection of their own values. Edward Albee would regard such certainty as perilous. His lesson is that prejudice can make fanatics of us all.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Mary Riddell .
|
As if it had not done enough apologising, the BBC has issued another mea culpa. Stars of the Beechgrove Potting Shed, a Radio Scotland phone-in gardening programme, had to say sorry after advising listeners how to propagate Amsterdam's favourite strain of cannabis. The presenters had thought the caller was talking about cabbages. It seems unlikely that the Dalkeith Dahlia Society would have been offended by this mix-up. Over on ITV, the bad language of John Lydon provoked only 100 complaints from among 10 million viewers. That figure suggests Britain is less shockable than America, where the national television watchdog denounced as 'crass and deplorable' Janet Jackson's decision to flash a breast during the Super Bowl. Although MTV viewers overcame their horror sufficiently to make the episode the most searched-for event in internet history, 9/11 included, the British can fairly claim to be less prudish. The only curious thing is why anyone assumed that Mr Lydon's utterance of the words 'fucking cunts' would cause widespread offence. Equally robust language can be heard in Whitehall, where Sir Richard Mottram, formerly Stephen Byers's Permanent Secretary, was once reported to have regaled a colleague with a trail of expletives, concluding: 'I'm fucked. You're fucked. It's been the biggest cock-up ever, and we're all completely fucked.' Those of nervous disposition can only be grateful that Sir Richard was not involved in WMD damage limitation, or, for that matter, in eating raw fish eyes on primetime television. As for Mr Lydon, his real use to moralists was to fuel the broader charge that I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! has coarsened the national discourse and hastened social decay. This argument follows a familiar timeline, beginning with Chaucer, moving on to Lady Chatterley's Lover and progressing to Jim Davidson and Pot Noodle ('the slag of snacks') via Roy Jenkins ('the father of the permissive society'). With the exception of unpleasant advertising campaigns, none of the above offers any evidence that the parameters of vulgarity are being pushed wider all the time. The opposite is true. I'm a Celebrity is the new variant seaside postcard, complete with improbably breasted women and, the departed Lydon apart, weedy men. As George Orwell wrote, Donald McGill's cards were intended as a 'skit on pornography' rather than the real thing. In the same way, Jordan and friends, emblems of British smut, signify repression rather than sexual licence. Those further horrified by the programme's sub-Attenborough respect for wildlife should also feel pleased. At least the contestants were eating the local fauna, rather than mating with it. Viewers finding reality television shocking should stay away from Edward Albee's new play, The Goat or Who is Sylvia? In the oddest, and most disturbing, production on the London stage, Jonathan Pryce plays a starry and happily married architect who, on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, falls in love with a bearded quadruped. Albee chose his mechanism for taboo-busting carefully. Though bestiality is hardly an alternative to the Tupperware party, it's at least more defensible than cannibalism, or paedophilia. The recent Sexual Offences Bill took only a modestly dim view, pronouncing that 'sexual activity with animals is generally recognised to be profoundly disturbed behaviour' and introducing a maximum two-year sentence. While it is true that the average citizen would rather be cast away on a desert island with Lord Brocket than even contemplate such revolting conduct, apologists for what is more politely called zoophilia attempt to rationalise their preference. Consent is not an issue, they argue. Nor is it impossible that a compliant herbivore would rather be wined and dined by a nicely mannered architect than finish up as goat stew. With the notable exception of Jeffrey Dahmer, crimes against humans are not linked to bestiality. The practice, commonplace among Greek Gods, is also popular with bored American rural workers. According to the Kinsey Report, around 50 per cent have cruised for livestock, as opposed to 8 per cent of the general male population. Such figures, though hardly plausible, have prompted trend-spotters to declare bestiality almost as mainstream as Blind Date. Albee's point is different. His goat is a metaphor for all illicit dreams, desires and compulsions that strain the liberal understanding, and his purpose is to explore the limits of tolerable behaviour. We are all, in the message of his bloody conclusion, self-appointed moralists prone to tip over into intolerance when old certainties collapse. The Broadway critics were not all kind. Some of his audience, adopting the John Lydon strategy, walked out, repelled both by the goat and a secondary hint of gay incest. Though London reviewers rave about the play, the Almeida theatre auditorium empties silently at the end. Albee has rediscovered something increasingly absent from modern Western societies. It is the ability to appal. That realisation is, in itself, a shock to those primed to believe we live in perpetual outrage. If al-Qaeda is quiet, or Geoff Hoon-baiting palls, we can always be petrified by the state of Jennie Bond's hair. When the chief UN inspector hints that the nuclear-arms bazaar is beyond control, and politicians blow holes in the rule of law, there is something consoling about a grandfatherly Sex Pistol mouthing playground swearwords through snaggle teeth. Revolt and anarchy are fine, as long as they involve no problem that cannot be solved by Ant and Dec. Anaesthetised to horror, we have become afraid to confront any of society's demons, or our own. Are we prejudiced? Obviously not, though somehow, as a report on the death of a black schizophrenic, David Bennett, will illustrate this week, the NHS may be racist to its heart. Lacking in compassion? Clearly not, despite this newspaper's report on the exponential rise in women prisoners, with the consequent tragedies of motherless children and suicides. Intolerant? Multiculturalism rules, yet somehow 19 Chinese nationals drowned cockle-gathering on a Lancashire beach, in the same week that fear of eastern European 'gypsies' eclipsed Britain's need for incoming workers and its duty to offer them welcome and the means to go to work and come home alive. Homophobic? The suggestion is insulting, but the fact that the 2001 census has exposed a swath of Yorkshire, from Redcar to Hartlepool, as a gay-free zone suggests some glitch, of integration or disclosure. Even if the fault lay only in the coy phrasing of the question, Massachusetts sounds bolder. Its Supreme Court, in insisting that the state legislature must grant full marriage rights to gay couples, last week edged a conservative nation towards constitutional crisis. Britain, less polarised, steers a middle course between tolerance and oppression, without ever quite knowing where to draw the line. In that confusion, the debate on whether society grows crueller and cruder centres on trivia. FCUK posters and Gucci adverts with the double G logo clipped from a model's pubic hair are nasty, not corrupting. Those who add John Lydon, and reality television in general, to the list of influences corroding society are merely endorsing the perfection of their own values. Edward Albee would regard such certainty as perilous. His lesson is that prejudice can make fanatics of us all.
|
5maryriddell
| 2UK
|
The symbol of this Christmas is the noose. Hang my son, says Ian Huntley's mother. Hang Saddam, says almost everyone. The gallows is not an option for Maxine Carr, who is due out of jail next May. The relatively minor nature of her sin, a crime of lies and silence, has not prevented Maxine-haters placing her in a continuum of female she-devils stretching from Medea to Myra. As the great Judaeo-Christian feast approaches, the polarity between good and evil is stark. In modern replays of the Book of Genesis, conducted in settings as diverse as the Old Bailey, a spider hole near Tikrit and your local Odeon, light does not often vanquish darkness. For happy endings, try Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy at the National Theatre or Tolkien's Return of the King. In real life, evil prevails. Despite George W. Bush's masterclasses on the subject, there is no particular hierarchy of monsterdom. Michael Jackson, facing child sex-abuse charges, may get a politer welcome on his planned visit to the UK than the one extended to the God-fearing President of the United States. Nor is there an obvious logic to the way we treat untouchables. Saddam's capture inspired a desire for vengeance, certainly, but also an uneasy pity. The dead eyes and prophet's beard drove commentators to plunder the Old and New Testaments as thoroughly as Bush's speechwriters in an effort to discover what their unexpected sympathy represented. The non-religious answer is what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. Tyrants and murderers are defined not only by evidence of their actions - in Saddam's case, the toll of Kurdish citizens gassed and of skulls scratched up from mass graves - but by a cruelty of the imagination. Myths of how maniacal despots behave sit uneasily with Saddam's domestic inventory: one can of 7 Up, a bottle of Lacoste Pour Homme cologne, minted toothpicks, Maxwell House coffee and a picture inscribed 'God Bless Our Home'. The humdrum detail that jars the observer out of unadulterated hatred also operated in the case of Ian Huntley. His conviction for the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman was a restrained affair, free of mobs storming the courtroom precinct or screaming 'Kill Him', in an echo of Tyburn. There was little sign of the bloodlust that followed the Moors Murders and the sentencing of James Bulger's killers. Yet few murders have transfixed Britain, and the world, like those of Holly and Jessica. Their deaths fed a fear corroding society. If two little girls in smalltown England could be lured to their deaths by a trusted neighbour, then no son or daughter is safe. But more than one child is slaughtered every week by a parent and no one notices. Skewed notions of risk are driven by rare crimes and normally articulated in mob venom. One reason for a more subdued response might be the dignity of the Chapman and the Wells families, who forbore to demand vengeance. In addition, people do not know, and perhaps never will, exactly how the children died. But those facts do not explain why Huntley has escaped bestial status. I asked a hairdresser friend who has been canvassing her clients. 'It's because he looks so normal,' they told her. Presentability served Huntley well. His convincing manner persuaded underage girls to have sex with him and prosecutors to ignore their cries of rape. The post-trial furore has been directed at police error in logging past complaints against him, but this is not primarily a scandal of bad filing. The lack of heed paid to his record reflects a society that extended more credence and legal rights to plausible men than to abused girls. Even now, if a case is to succeed, prosecutors prefer their victims dead. The authorities and the public want child molesters to look like proper perverts, in the mould of a snaggle-toothed Roy Whiting, Sarah Payne's murderer, who appeared in the Sun last week under the headline 'Grinning Creature'. Resembling Jack Nicholson in the latter stages of The Shining saves confusion. Irrespective of bureaucratic bungling by police, Whiting was never school caretaker material. He is separate, a monstrous other who, unlike Huntley or Saddam, holds no Caliban's mirror up to the virtuous world. Pious people, along with neglectful officials and prurient newspapers, need not worry about the thin dividing line between the demon and the normal citizen. Since the Soham trial lacked a monster from central casting, Maxine Carr gets the role. A fellow prisoner has thrown boiling water at her, and the media hold her guilty of murder by proxy. On the night of the killings, Carr was at a party. The outing might, her critics claim, have pushed a jealous Huntley over the brink. 'Kiss of death' screamed the headline over a picture of her embracing a fellow reveller. That snapshot in a Grimsby disco placed Carr in a pantheon of female monsters, ranging from the Harpies and the Sirens of Greek legend to Rose West. In myth and in distorted reality, women, deadlier than the male, occupy a spectrum between psychopathy and culpability for engineering family breakdown and producing delinquent children. Carr, branded the 'new Myra' and the catalysing agent of evil, was actually a liar whose mistake was to shack up with a murderer. In being duped by Huntley's charm, she resembled the police, the school staff, the community and the two trusting girls he murdered. She behaved as others might, and for that reminder of our fallibility, more than her mendacity, she can never be forgiven. In a universe where religious language and political discourse collide, Carr is banished forever from the civilised world to reside with the ranks of the dark forces. Their quarters are becoming more cramped than Saddam's bunker. The expanding army of darkness encompasses murderers and their gullible girlfriends, along with leaders of Iran and North Korea, the shapeless prosecutors of terror and the suspects interned without charge at Guantanamo and Belmarsh. Arbitrary polarities of good and evil, patented by politicians, mesh with a vengefulness in public thinking. The capital punishment debate stirs again. Huntley should be executed, according to the string-'em-up lobby whose ambitions will never be heeded by any mainstream political party. Hanging Saddam, however, is deemed perfectly acceptable in Downing Street and the impeccably liberal leader columns of the Independent. Merciful democrats cannot have it both ways. Certainly, Saddam should be tried in Iraq, but for Britain to rubber-stamp a death sentence would be disgraceful buck-passing by an occupying power which must now stand by its principles. Either we support what David Blunkett calls 'judicial murder' or we recognise that the first test of a humane society is the way it treats the most hideous. Saddam, like Huntley, should spend his life in prison. There they can suffer for their crimes while offering an enduring reminder to those who once armed a tyrant and failed to stop a potential murderer. Denouncing evil is easy. How much harder to recognise that monsters, with their French cologne and high street clothes, not only share our tastes. Good societies must also shoulder some fragment of their guilt.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Mary Riddell .
|
The symbol of this Christmas is the noose. Hang my son, says Ian Huntley's mother. Hang Saddam, says almost everyone. The gallows is not an option for Maxine Carr, who is due out of jail next May. The relatively minor nature of her sin, a crime of lies and silence, has not prevented Maxine-haters placing her in a continuum of female she-devils stretching from Medea to Myra. As the great Judaeo-Christian feast approaches, the polarity between good and evil is stark. In modern replays of the Book of Genesis, conducted in settings as diverse as the Old Bailey, a spider hole near Tikrit and your local Odeon, light does not often vanquish darkness. For happy endings, try Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy at the National Theatre or Tolkien's Return of the King. In real life, evil prevails. Despite George W. Bush's masterclasses on the subject, there is no particular hierarchy of monsterdom. Michael Jackson, facing child sex-abuse charges, may get a politer welcome on his planned visit to the UK than the one extended to the God-fearing President of the United States. Nor is there an obvious logic to the way we treat untouchables. Saddam's capture inspired a desire for vengeance, certainly, but also an uneasy pity. The dead eyes and prophet's beard drove commentators to plunder the Old and New Testaments as thoroughly as Bush's speechwriters in an effort to discover what their unexpected sympathy represented. The non-religious answer is what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. Tyrants and murderers are defined not only by evidence of their actions - in Saddam's case, the toll of Kurdish citizens gassed and of skulls scratched up from mass graves - but by a cruelty of the imagination. Myths of how maniacal despots behave sit uneasily with Saddam's domestic inventory: one can of 7 Up, a bottle of Lacoste Pour Homme cologne, minted toothpicks, Maxwell House coffee and a picture inscribed 'God Bless Our Home'. The humdrum detail that jars the observer out of unadulterated hatred also operated in the case of Ian Huntley. His conviction for the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman was a restrained affair, free of mobs storming the courtroom precinct or screaming 'Kill Him', in an echo of Tyburn. There was little sign of the bloodlust that followed the Moors Murders and the sentencing of James Bulger's killers. Yet few murders have transfixed Britain, and the world, like those of Holly and Jessica. Their deaths fed a fear corroding society. If two little girls in smalltown England could be lured to their deaths by a trusted neighbour, then no son or daughter is safe. But more than one child is slaughtered every week by a parent and no one notices. Skewed notions of risk are driven by rare crimes and normally articulated in mob venom. One reason for a more subdued response might be the dignity of the Chapman and the Wells families, who forbore to demand vengeance. In addition, people do not know, and perhaps never will, exactly how the children died. But those facts do not explain why Huntley has escaped bestial status. I asked a hairdresser friend who has been canvassing her clients. 'It's because he looks so normal,' they told her. Presentability served Huntley well. His convincing manner persuaded underage girls to have sex with him and prosecutors to ignore their cries of rape. The post-trial furore has been directed at police error in logging past complaints against him, but this is not primarily a scandal of bad filing. The lack of heed paid to his record reflects a society that extended more credence and legal rights to plausible men than to abused girls. Even now, if a case is to succeed, prosecutors prefer their victims dead. The authorities and the public want child molesters to look like proper perverts, in the mould of a snaggle-toothed Roy Whiting, Sarah Payne's murderer, who appeared in the Sun last week under the headline 'Grinning Creature'. Resembling Jack Nicholson in the latter stages of The Shining saves confusion. Irrespective of bureaucratic bungling by police, Whiting was never school caretaker material. He is separate, a monstrous other who, unlike Huntley or Saddam, holds no Caliban's mirror up to the virtuous world. Pious people, along with neglectful officials and prurient newspapers, need not worry about the thin dividing line between the demon and the normal citizen. Since the Soham trial lacked a monster from central casting, Maxine Carr gets the role. A fellow prisoner has thrown boiling water at her, and the media hold her guilty of murder by proxy. On the night of the killings, Carr was at a party. The outing might, her critics claim, have pushed a jealous Huntley over the brink. 'Kiss of death' screamed the headline over a picture of her embracing a fellow reveller. That snapshot in a Grimsby disco placed Carr in a pantheon of female monsters, ranging from the Harpies and the Sirens of Greek legend to Rose West. In myth and in distorted reality, women, deadlier than the male, occupy a spectrum between psychopathy and culpability for engineering family breakdown and producing delinquent children. Carr, branded the 'new Myra' and the catalysing agent of evil, was actually a liar whose mistake was to shack up with a murderer. In being duped by Huntley's charm, she resembled the police, the school staff, the community and the two trusting girls he murdered. She behaved as others might, and for that reminder of our fallibility, more than her mendacity, she can never be forgiven. In a universe where religious language and political discourse collide, Carr is banished forever from the civilised world to reside with the ranks of the dark forces. Their quarters are becoming more cramped than Saddam's bunker. The expanding army of darkness encompasses murderers and their gullible girlfriends, along with leaders of Iran and North Korea, the shapeless prosecutors of terror and the suspects interned without charge at Guantanamo and Belmarsh. Arbitrary polarities of good and evil, patented by politicians, mesh with a vengefulness in public thinking. The capital punishment debate stirs again. Huntley should be executed, according to the string-'em-up lobby whose ambitions will never be heeded by any mainstream political party. Hanging Saddam, however, is deemed perfectly acceptable in Downing Street and the impeccably liberal leader columns of the Independent. Merciful democrats cannot have it both ways. Certainly, Saddam should be tried in Iraq, but for Britain to rubber-stamp a death sentence would be disgraceful buck-passing by an occupying power which must now stand by its principles. Either we support what David Blunkett calls 'judicial murder' or we recognise that the first test of a humane society is the way it treats the most hideous. Saddam, like Huntley, should spend his life in prison. There they can suffer for their crimes while offering an enduring reminder to those who once armed a tyrant and failed to stop a potential murderer. Denouncing evil is easy. How much harder to recognise that monsters, with their French cologne and high street clothes, not only share our tastes. Good societies must also shoulder some fragment of their guilt.
|
5maryriddell
| 2UK
|
Today, and for many mornings to come, Linda Walker will be waking up in Styal prison, in Cheshire. There are better places to spend a Sunday. Six women killed themselves there in the space of a year and 41 tried to hang themselves over the last Mother's Day weekend. Mrs Walker, 48, is a teacher and head of year at a school for children with behavioural problems. She has a partner who is a college lecturer, twin sons of 17, a daughter and an elderly father for whom she cooks. Last week, she was jailed for six months after carrying out the sort of fantasy to which some liberals furtively confess. She showed the yobs what fear feels like. In Mrs Walker's account, her house had been under siege. Bicycles were stolen, fish disappeared from the garden pond and wing mirrors were smashed. An abusive caller said her son was a 'poof' and asked: 'Does he want a good bumming?' On 14 August last year, Mrs Walker snapped when a container of liquid was poured over a family car After haranguing a group of teenagers, she returned home to arm herself with a Walther CP88 gas-powered air pistol, which she had kept in her underwear drawer since a previous burglary, and an air rifle. Pausing only to phone the police to tell them that she was 'going to shoot the f****** vandals', she fired six times at the ground near an 18-year-old youth. Exit Mrs Walker, her career almost certainly in ruins, complaining that the law supported 'yobbos and not victims'. The court heard later that she had acted in a moment of madness to defend her family. Anyone could write the script from this point onwards. As mainly right-wing newspapers clamoured for her freedom, Michael Howard made her the official martyr of his campaign to 'put fear into the heart of yobs'. So far, so predictable, except that the Walker case, far from confirming entrenched opinions, confounds many of them. For a start, conservatives are correct to challenge her sentence. Prison is for those whose crimes are so grave or who are such a danger to the public that no other option is possible. Mrs Walker fulfils neither criterion, and, like thousands of other British women, she should not be there. Harsh sentencing does not, though, excuse her behaviour or explain it. I have just been burgled and my neighbour had her basement stripped bare three days ago. Neither of us felt impelled to add a Terminator-style armoury to our underwear drawers. In her defence, Mrs Walker was reacting against something more insidious. Kierkegaard called anxiety 'the dizziness of freedom', but nothing makes people feel more unfree than being constantly under threat. And so Mrs Walker, a respectable teacher, staged a conversion almost as startling as if Miss Jean Brodie had become a Clockwork Orange droog. Greater Manchester, where Mrs Walker lives, does not resemble Kubrick's urban nightmare. Indeed, the showcase for the government's anti-yob strategy should be getting safer by the day. No other police force has been so eager to hand out antisocial behaviour orders, making the patch the Home Office's model of good practice. In a six-month period last year, 155 people were Asboed, compared with 27 in Merseyside. Mrs Walker's story, and her son's claim that she had vainly asked the police 15 times for help, offers only an isolated example that all is not well in Asboland. But then the government, despite the focus on expanding its crackdown, hasn't been very scientific either. We know that a third of orders are breached and that two-thirds of those sentenced for failing to comply are sent to jail. There are worrying reports of children who are mentally ill or frail being criminalised. But six years and 4,000 orders after the policy's inception, there is not a single longitudinal study to show whether the orders stop bad behaviour or, as many experts on youth crime believe, make it worse. That question matters more than pre-election chatter allows. The jailing of Linda Walker may be unjust, but it is much less alarming, in the story of badland Britain, than the spate of child offenders currently appearing at the Old Bailey. Last month alone, three schoolboys stood trial for murder there. One in 10 12-year-old boys and a quarter of 16- years-old boys have gone out armed in the last year. Fear is for bigots and for politicians more adept at conjuring despair than dreams. Michael Howard talks up terror. The Archbishop of Canterbury knocks it down. Liberals, appalled by being asked to beware the gypsy, the asylum seeker, the immigrant and the kid outside the chip shop, think dread a disreputable emotion. But suddenly I am afraid. My fear began when Hakeem Johnson, aged 13, walked into my local takeaway and stabbed a young manager to death because he would not serve him a 1 pizza after a special offer had ended. I am not personally frightened of Johnson's friends, whom I probably brush past often in the Holloway Road, but I am scared by the statistic that three-quarters of boys excluded from school, as he was, have used a weapon. I am disturbed that a teaching union has reported a surge in classroom violence, and the government must be anxious, too, because the Schools Minister last week announced a knife amnesty to tackle the 'hugely disturbing' culture of weapons. But most of all, I am alarmed that, despite the overall fall in crime, a new mood of casual cruelty is fermenting in cities where the problems, and solutions, are mostly arcane and intractable. Atrocious families and deprivation are nothing novel and the government has done some good things to tackle both; 100,000 children lifted out of poverty last year is not enough, but it is slow progress. So why the knives and the gangs of teenagers practising the elastic-hipped swagger of the pretend assassin? Why the wave of rapes and murders combining adult savagery and the capricious pointlessness of childish rage? I do not know and nor does the government. But I think, and so do charities working in the field, that a society driving wedges between adult authority and alienated youngsters can only ignite the problem of children who evolve so fast from victims to aggressors. That is not to suggest that the mean streets of Greater Manchester and elsewhere can be sanitised by a combination of table tennis and a willingness by law-abiding citizens to have their lives made miserable in the interest of community relations. But neither is it right to beat the drum of punishment and exclusion while saying so little about positive intervention. Linda Walker's jailing was not only extreme. It also helped reinforce the narrative, only patchily accurate, about a middle class terrorised by yobs. Politicians like that story. It strikes a chord with anyone who has had their windows smashed or their geography class made hell. It offers slick solutions to the genuinely persecuted. And it stops anyone asking whether today's tearaways are being officially groomed for tomorrow's knife gangs.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Mary Riddell .
|
Today, and for many mornings to come, Linda Walker will be waking up in Styal prison, in Cheshire. There are better places to spend a Sunday. Six women killed themselves there in the space of a year and 41 tried to hang themselves over the last Mother's Day weekend. Mrs Walker, 48, is a teacher and head of year at a school for children with behavioural problems. She has a partner who is a college lecturer, twin sons of 17, a daughter and an elderly father for whom she cooks. Last week, she was jailed for six months after carrying out the sort of fantasy to which some liberals furtively confess. She showed the yobs what fear feels like. In Mrs Walker's account, her house had been under siege. Bicycles were stolen, fish disappeared from the garden pond and wing mirrors were smashed. An abusive caller said her son was a 'poof' and asked: 'Does he want a good bumming?' On 14 August last year, Mrs Walker snapped when a container of liquid was poured over a family car After haranguing a group of teenagers, she returned home to arm herself with a Walther CP88 gas-powered air pistol, which she had kept in her underwear drawer since a previous burglary, and an air rifle. Pausing only to phone the police to tell them that she was 'going to shoot the f****** vandals', she fired six times at the ground near an 18-year-old youth. Exit Mrs Walker, her career almost certainly in ruins, complaining that the law supported 'yobbos and not victims'. The court heard later that she had acted in a moment of madness to defend her family. Anyone could write the script from this point onwards. As mainly right-wing newspapers clamoured for her freedom, Michael Howard made her the official martyr of his campaign to 'put fear into the heart of yobs'. So far, so predictable, except that the Walker case, far from confirming entrenched opinions, confounds many of them. For a start, conservatives are correct to challenge her sentence. Prison is for those whose crimes are so grave or who are such a danger to the public that no other option is possible. Mrs Walker fulfils neither criterion, and, like thousands of other British women, she should not be there. Harsh sentencing does not, though, excuse her behaviour or explain it. I have just been burgled and my neighbour had her basement stripped bare three days ago. Neither of us felt impelled to add a Terminator-style armoury to our underwear drawers. In her defence, Mrs Walker was reacting against something more insidious. Kierkegaard called anxiety 'the dizziness of freedom', but nothing makes people feel more unfree than being constantly under threat. And so Mrs Walker, a respectable teacher, staged a conversion almost as startling as if Miss Jean Brodie had become a Clockwork Orange droog. Greater Manchester, where Mrs Walker lives, does not resemble Kubrick's urban nightmare. Indeed, the showcase for the government's anti-yob strategy should be getting safer by the day. No other police force has been so eager to hand out antisocial behaviour orders, making the patch the Home Office's model of good practice. In a six-month period last year, 155 people were Asboed, compared with 27 in Merseyside. Mrs Walker's story, and her son's claim that she had vainly asked the police 15 times for help, offers only an isolated example that all is not well in Asboland. But then the government, despite the focus on expanding its crackdown, hasn't been very scientific either. We know that a third of orders are breached and that two-thirds of those sentenced for failing to comply are sent to jail. There are worrying reports of children who are mentally ill or frail being criminalised. But six years and 4,000 orders after the policy's inception, there is not a single longitudinal study to show whether the orders stop bad behaviour or, as many experts on youth crime believe, make it worse. That question matters more than pre-election chatter allows. The jailing of Linda Walker may be unjust, but it is much less alarming, in the story of badland Britain, than the spate of child offenders currently appearing at the Old Bailey. Last month alone, three schoolboys stood trial for murder there. One in 10 12-year-old boys and a quarter of 16- years-old boys have gone out armed in the last year. Fear is for bigots and for politicians more adept at conjuring despair than dreams. Michael Howard talks up terror. The Archbishop of Canterbury knocks it down. Liberals, appalled by being asked to beware the gypsy, the asylum seeker, the immigrant and the kid outside the chip shop, think dread a disreputable emotion. But suddenly I am afraid. My fear began when Hakeem Johnson, aged 13, walked into my local takeaway and stabbed a young manager to death because he would not serve him a 1 pizza after a special offer had ended. I am not personally frightened of Johnson's friends, whom I probably brush past often in the Holloway Road, but I am scared by the statistic that three-quarters of boys excluded from school, as he was, have used a weapon. I am disturbed that a teaching union has reported a surge in classroom violence, and the government must be anxious, too, because the Schools Minister last week announced a knife amnesty to tackle the 'hugely disturbing' culture of weapons. But most of all, I am alarmed that, despite the overall fall in crime, a new mood of casual cruelty is fermenting in cities where the problems, and solutions, are mostly arcane and intractable. Atrocious families and deprivation are nothing novel and the government has done some good things to tackle both; 100,000 children lifted out of poverty last year is not enough, but it is slow progress. So why the knives and the gangs of teenagers practising the elastic-hipped swagger of the pretend assassin? Why the wave of rapes and murders combining adult savagery and the capricious pointlessness of childish rage? I do not know and nor does the government. But I think, and so do charities working in the field, that a society driving wedges between adult authority and alienated youngsters can only ignite the problem of children who evolve so fast from victims to aggressors. That is not to suggest that the mean streets of Greater Manchester and elsewhere can be sanitised by a combination of table tennis and a willingness by law-abiding citizens to have their lives made miserable in the interest of community relations. But neither is it right to beat the drum of punishment and exclusion while saying so little about positive intervention. Linda Walker's jailing was not only extreme. It also helped reinforce the narrative, only patchily accurate, about a middle class terrorised by yobs. Politicians like that story. It strikes a chord with anyone who has had their windows smashed or their geography class made hell. It offers slick solutions to the genuinely persecuted. And it stops anyone asking whether today's tearaways are being officially groomed for tomorrow's knife gangs.
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7peterpreston
| 2UK
|
Nobody, of course, can go back to the beginning. That is an Irish legend lost among the bogs and mists of futility. But, as the chimera called "peace" slips and slides again, it is at least worth going back to the beginning of these Troubles (more modern than ancient). What did the British government think then? We know, because the 30-year rule opens the closed cabinet doors of 1969. Home secretary James Callaghan told his colleagues that: "There is a good deal of corroboration for the view that the Catholics have acted in self-defence, and little evidence to support the view of the Northern Irish government that the IRA are mainly responsible." Big Jim's officials reported widespread unionist gerrymandering, favouritism and seedy control over local authority housing. "There are legitimate grievances and it is entirely legitimate that they should be ventilated by demonstration." Callaghan himself told the new Northern Irish prime minister that "he must not rely on British military support in maintaining repressive policies". Harold Wilson's private secretary reported bleakly that "our main trouble is from the Protestants". Defence secretary Healey blamed the RUC for the "indiscriminate use of firearms, tear gas etc" and the head of the British army described a police force "which is behind the times, poorly led and administered, with a sadly inefficient special branch." In sum, as it seemed to the men and women gathered around the long table in Downing Street, this was a no-win game which the unionists, the triumphalists of the Orange Order, had started by their mindless choice of sectarian repression over liberal democracy. And now, yet again, the poor old mainland Brits were being summoned to sort things out in blood, sweat and tears. You don't need to agree in detail with those ministers and witnesses of 30 years ago to see the point. Agreement about anything in Northern Ireland's past is probably an unattainable golal. But the cabinet minutes do paint a grisly picture of frustration and helpessness. They tell us, as troubled times returned, where an impotent government far away laid the (mostly private, teeth-grinding) blame. British imperialism? Wilson's team, even then, wished Belfast could be deemed independent and told to push off. For once, too, the recent past has relevance to the present. It reminds us, as the IRA hangs on to its guns and another "process" of reconciliation threatens to go belly up - perhaps for many years - that it takes two to make a peace. It reminds us that nothing can really begin afresh without continuing compromise, exercised day after day until it becomes normality. A few weeks ago one truce ended. Eta, the zealots of Basque nationalism, returned to blowing up cars in crowded streets and killing people. And some thing else returned to Spain, the squares of Madrid and Pamplona. Crowds a million-strong walked arm in arm, expressing their disgust, horror and defiance. The Spanish people made their voices heard and, in so doing, immediately isolated the tiny straggle of terrorists. It won't end their campaign, to be sure: but it does create a political context which puts the greatest pressure on them. The people, massed, have that power. I wonder, though, where the people of Northern Ireland have gone through these few glum weeks of slithering failure. I wonder (extrapolating) what the rest of the people of Britain think, if they care. For it is the people who have gone missing again, ruled themselves out of this eqation. They were there once, with their candlelit vigils and their funeral marches as the killings echoed on. Many gallant individuals began movements then and still persevere. But where is the great shout of anger? Where are streets filled end to end with crowds who put peace first? Where is the pressure, the blessed pressure, for change? Gerry Adams was talking the other day about "the undefeated army" of the IRA. It wasn't a popular line, one promptly rubbished by all the usual suspects. But it is also a clinically accurate description. The IRA was not defeated, any more than the British army and the RUC were defeated. Neither side was winning or losing: the struggle was just going on, for decade after decade, without point or possible outcome. If it is now renewed, as it may well eventually be, the years ahead will only be filled with more pointless violence. The IRA cannot win; but nor - as those who confront them admit under their breath - can the security forces. There is no easy fix of internment. There is no possibility of totally isolating the terrorists where a sectarian divide still yawns. No solution: just more of the same. You might as well say the Russian army has settled the Chechen problem by flattening Grozny. Dream on! So where are the people in their own hour of need? There is no doubt how they feel or what they want, passively. They continue, for the most part, to vote along traditional lines. They haven't transplanted the old heart of Northern Irish politics. They have accepted the reluctances of the Aremy Council with resignation and more depressingly, done little to disrupt activist distrust of the unionist Council which now, apparently, will circumscribe David Trimble's room for manoeuvre still more chokingly. They have, in sum, left hope to others they decline to influence directly. Too harsh? Certainly in individual terms (see the tortured exhaustion of Seamus Mallon) but a collective judgment remains more problematical. If both Councils now feel the wind of outrage at their backs, then anything yet remains possible. But if there is no such manifest fury, then that in itself will deliver an awful truth. Exit Mo, enter Mandy; exit, one day, Tony, enter who-can-say? The heirs of Wilson and Callaghan over the water will keep toiling on, biting their lips, hiding their real feelings because words out of place invoke inevitable furies. But peace, real peace, has to be craved for on the ground, sought as the highest prize. Peace isn't about symbols - a few machine guns or tons of Semtex given up in a hollow show of "disarmament" in Kosovo mode. New guns can always be bought, new obstacles found among the fudged clauses of diplomacy. Peace is determination to live together come what may. Peace isn't a minefield of ifs and buts - and sitting back while the vested interests carry on conniving. Peace has to be worked for. A million Spaniards realise that. They walk for a purpose. It is a bleak thing to say, but there will be no lasting peace for Ireland until more millions throng the streets of Belfast and Dublin (and yes, Manchester and Birmingham too). This, 30 years on with nothing to show, is our challenge and our responsibility. And one day we shall have to acknowledge that by taking the prize for ourselves.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Peter Preston .
|
Nobody, of course, can go back to the beginning. That is an Irish legend lost among the bogs and mists of futility. But, as the chimera called "peace" slips and slides again, it is at least worth going back to the beginning of these Troubles (more modern than ancient). What did the British government think then? We know, because the 30-year rule opens the closed cabinet doors of 1969. Home secretary James Callaghan told his colleagues that: "There is a good deal of corroboration for the view that the Catholics have acted in self-defence, and little evidence to support the view of the Northern Irish government that the IRA are mainly responsible." Big Jim's officials reported widespread unionist gerrymandering, favouritism and seedy control over local authority housing. "There are legitimate grievances and it is entirely legitimate that they should be ventilated by demonstration." Callaghan himself told the new Northern Irish prime minister that "he must not rely on British military support in maintaining repressive policies". Harold Wilson's private secretary reported bleakly that "our main trouble is from the Protestants". Defence secretary Healey blamed the RUC for the "indiscriminate use of firearms, tear gas etc" and the head of the British army described a police force "which is behind the times, poorly led and administered, with a sadly inefficient special branch." In sum, as it seemed to the men and women gathered around the long table in Downing Street, this was a no-win game which the unionists, the triumphalists of the Orange Order, had started by their mindless choice of sectarian repression over liberal democracy. And now, yet again, the poor old mainland Brits were being summoned to sort things out in blood, sweat and tears. You don't need to agree in detail with those ministers and witnesses of 30 years ago to see the point. Agreement about anything in Northern Ireland's past is probably an unattainable golal. But the cabinet minutes do paint a grisly picture of frustration and helpessness. They tell us, as troubled times returned, where an impotent government far away laid the (mostly private, teeth-grinding) blame. British imperialism? Wilson's team, even then, wished Belfast could be deemed independent and told to push off. For once, too, the recent past has relevance to the present. It reminds us, as the IRA hangs on to its guns and another "process" of reconciliation threatens to go belly up - perhaps for many years - that it takes two to make a peace. It reminds us that nothing can really begin afresh without continuing compromise, exercised day after day until it becomes normality. A few weeks ago one truce ended. Eta, the zealots of Basque nationalism, returned to blowing up cars in crowded streets and killing people. And some thing else returned to Spain, the squares of Madrid and Pamplona. Crowds a million-strong walked arm in arm, expressing their disgust, horror and defiance. The Spanish people made their voices heard and, in so doing, immediately isolated the tiny straggle of terrorists. It won't end their campaign, to be sure: but it does create a political context which puts the greatest pressure on them. The people, massed, have that power. I wonder, though, where the people of Northern Ireland have gone through these few glum weeks of slithering failure. I wonder (extrapolating) what the rest of the people of Britain think, if they care. For it is the people who have gone missing again, ruled themselves out of this eqation. They were there once, with their candlelit vigils and their funeral marches as the killings echoed on. Many gallant individuals began movements then and still persevere. But where is the great shout of anger? Where are streets filled end to end with crowds who put peace first? Where is the pressure, the blessed pressure, for change? Gerry Adams was talking the other day about "the undefeated army" of the IRA. It wasn't a popular line, one promptly rubbished by all the usual suspects. But it is also a clinically accurate description. The IRA was not defeated, any more than the British army and the RUC were defeated. Neither side was winning or losing: the struggle was just going on, for decade after decade, without point or possible outcome. If it is now renewed, as it may well eventually be, the years ahead will only be filled with more pointless violence. The IRA cannot win; but nor - as those who confront them admit under their breath - can the security forces. There is no easy fix of internment. There is no possibility of totally isolating the terrorists where a sectarian divide still yawns. No solution: just more of the same. You might as well say the Russian army has settled the Chechen problem by flattening Grozny. Dream on! So where are the people in their own hour of need? There is no doubt how they feel or what they want, passively. They continue, for the most part, to vote along traditional lines. They haven't transplanted the old heart of Northern Irish politics. They have accepted the reluctances of the Aremy Council with resignation and more depressingly, done little to disrupt activist distrust of the unionist Council which now, apparently, will circumscribe David Trimble's room for manoeuvre still more chokingly. They have, in sum, left hope to others they decline to influence directly. Too harsh? Certainly in individual terms (see the tortured exhaustion of Seamus Mallon) but a collective judgment remains more problematical. If both Councils now feel the wind of outrage at their backs, then anything yet remains possible. But if there is no such manifest fury, then that in itself will deliver an awful truth. Exit Mo, enter Mandy; exit, one day, Tony, enter who-can-say? The heirs of Wilson and Callaghan over the water will keep toiling on, biting their lips, hiding their real feelings because words out of place invoke inevitable furies. But peace, real peace, has to be craved for on the ground, sought as the highest prize. Peace isn't about symbols - a few machine guns or tons of Semtex given up in a hollow show of "disarmament" in Kosovo mode. New guns can always be bought, new obstacles found among the fudged clauses of diplomacy. Peace is determination to live together come what may. Peace isn't a minefield of ifs and buts - and sitting back while the vested interests carry on conniving. Peace has to be worked for. A million Spaniards realise that. They walk for a purpose. It is a bleak thing to say, but there will be no lasting peace for Ireland until more millions throng the streets of Belfast and Dublin (and yes, Manchester and Birmingham too). This, 30 years on with nothing to show, is our challenge and our responsibility. And one day we shall have to acknowledge that by taking the prize for ourselves.
|
7peterpreston
| 2UK
|
Your starter for 10, Herr von Ribbentrop...How, one fine day, will the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (UK division) come to dust? How will our royals reach the end of their line? It's a perennial question for historians, politicians, spooks. The trouble is that the answer keeps changing. After 1936 - the closest shave so far - you'd have said that Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson could do the job double-handed. There was the British establishment, flat on its back. There (an enterprising Guardian investigation now reveals) was the FBI, sure that Wallis Simpson had become a Nazi spy, prone to whisper sweet somethings in Von Ribbentrop's ear. Treachery and sex, primed to explode. Could any republican have asked for more? Yet, even then, even in that extremity, it didn't happen. Baldwin greased the slipway, Churchill wafted the dubious duo off to the Bahamas. J Edgar Hoover declined to leak his suspicions to the press. Had Hoover, as usual, got his plots in a twist? Probably, Mrs bin Simpson. The main thing about the duke and duchess wasn't their duplicity, but their invincible stupidity. They went off to Germany together to study "low-cost housing". They had tea with Hitler in Berchtesgaden. They joked with Goering about the map in his library which somehow didn't include Austria. "Ho, ho," said the field-marshal, jowls shaking with mirth, "I needed a new map, and since Austria will soon join Germany - voluntarily of course - it seemed more economical to anticipate the event." And the duchess, in her own memoirs, wrote all of this rancid stuff down. Never underestimate the dogged strength of royal stability pacts. They paper over every imbecility. They distract and move on. They give the institution of monarchy a resilience which stretches far beyond rationality. No, the Windsors will not easily go this way. But, since all dynasties depart at some time, the question remains: how will they go? Here the winds of changing opinion blow. There will not, as constitutional reformers such as Charter 88 once fondly believed, come a decisive moment when a government of the left decides to cleanse our body politic of its flummeries. The case for cleaning away the dung of deference is as strong as it ever was; but the force is not with it. You can publish pamphlets till kingdom come - but, in practice, the kingdom won't be moved. Nor, frankly, will personality disorders of the kind which surrounded the death of Diana bring the monarchy down. We've seen what happens in the wake of such PR disasters: a new team of spin doctors is recruited, a new PR pitch smoothly developed. There's no natural close to such a recycling process. Pay the right man the right money and you can survive indefinitely. In fact, it now emerges, the true threat to continuance lies elsewhere - in the vociferous advice of those who claim to be the royal family's greatest friends and defenders. Take, for instance, the Daily Mail, puffed with triumphalism after the Queen Mother's funeral and a golden party of a jubilee - and cheerfully duffing up this paper for trying to rain on such parades. Well, fair enough ... but then the Mail leads the charge against Princess Pushy and her 69-a-week Kensington Palace apartment. Pushy and Bushy, a new pair of royals on the make to revile. It's a scandal. MPs begin sounding off, the pressure grows. This isn't a Guardian campaign, though. It's a Mail campaign. The damage, however, could hardly be greater. Love and affection for HM, as commodiously chronicled at the start of June, turns swiftly to carping about the greed and arrogance of her family. She who was strong after 50 years is made to seem weak again. But what is the charge here, what's the offence? Of family looking after family, of more fortunate and moneyed Windsors taking care of the weaker brothers and sisters? It seems a slightly bizarre crusade from the ultimate newspaper of self-help and family values. The thesis, expounded a few days ago when the keeper of the privy purse - formerly of KPMG and not, praise heaven, Arthur Andersen - published his household accounts, is that you can keep the palace show on the road if you deliver good accounting value. Wine bills down from 135,000 to 97,000 year on year. (Out with the fine Bordeaux, in with South African merlot.) Helicopters down from 2m to 1.9m. Crockery and cutlery down from 16,000 to 11,000 - but stationery up from 14,000 to 22,000. And so on, in close detail. What you lose on the fire insurance premiums you try to make up on flowers, photocopying and second-class postage. Now, if they could only stop washing the sheets so often! The headline calculation from this exercise - the figure that puts the squeeze on Pushy's 69 - is that keeping our royals in the manner accustomed costs every Joe Citizen 58p a year. Good value as long as you can keep selling surplus carriages and keep staff wages down by paying them in minor gongs rather than money. But step back for a second and ask that bigger question again. If this is the kind of majesty we want, why not crown the comptroller and auditor general instead? The jubilee wasn't a success because we counted every sparkler; it was a success because we spent loads and loads of cash. Our monarchs don't travel EasyJet; they cost nearly 4m a year buzzing around. Royal household wisdom. The Windsors are conspicuous consumers. That is their way and our way with them. Holding their contract cleaning bills up to the light won't save them - to the contrary. Down the pan and round the bend with Tesco's own label Harpic substitute? Salvation isn't value for money. Salvation is living and playing rich, salvation is looking down, not adding up - as even Mrs Simpson was bright enough the understand.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Peter Preston .
|
Your starter for 10, Herr von Ribbentrop...How, one fine day, will the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (UK division) come to dust? How will our royals reach the end of their line? It's a perennial question for historians, politicians, spooks. The trouble is that the answer keeps changing. After 1936 - the closest shave so far - you'd have said that Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson could do the job double-handed. There was the British establishment, flat on its back. There (an enterprising Guardian investigation now reveals) was the FBI, sure that Wallis Simpson had become a Nazi spy, prone to whisper sweet somethings in Von Ribbentrop's ear. Treachery and sex, primed to explode. Could any republican have asked for more? Yet, even then, even in that extremity, it didn't happen. Baldwin greased the slipway, Churchill wafted the dubious duo off to the Bahamas. J Edgar Hoover declined to leak his suspicions to the press. Had Hoover, as usual, got his plots in a twist? Probably, Mrs bin Simpson. The main thing about the duke and duchess wasn't their duplicity, but their invincible stupidity. They went off to Germany together to study "low-cost housing". They had tea with Hitler in Berchtesgaden. They joked with Goering about the map in his library which somehow didn't include Austria. "Ho, ho," said the field-marshal, jowls shaking with mirth, "I needed a new map, and since Austria will soon join Germany - voluntarily of course - it seemed more economical to anticipate the event." And the duchess, in her own memoirs, wrote all of this rancid stuff down. Never underestimate the dogged strength of royal stability pacts. They paper over every imbecility. They distract and move on. They give the institution of monarchy a resilience which stretches far beyond rationality. No, the Windsors will not easily go this way. But, since all dynasties depart at some time, the question remains: how will they go? Here the winds of changing opinion blow. There will not, as constitutional reformers such as Charter 88 once fondly believed, come a decisive moment when a government of the left decides to cleanse our body politic of its flummeries. The case for cleaning away the dung of deference is as strong as it ever was; but the force is not with it. You can publish pamphlets till kingdom come - but, in practice, the kingdom won't be moved. Nor, frankly, will personality disorders of the kind which surrounded the death of Diana bring the monarchy down. We've seen what happens in the wake of such PR disasters: a new team of spin doctors is recruited, a new PR pitch smoothly developed. There's no natural close to such a recycling process. Pay the right man the right money and you can survive indefinitely. In fact, it now emerges, the true threat to continuance lies elsewhere - in the vociferous advice of those who claim to be the royal family's greatest friends and defenders. Take, for instance, the Daily Mail, puffed with triumphalism after the Queen Mother's funeral and a golden party of a jubilee - and cheerfully duffing up this paper for trying to rain on such parades. Well, fair enough ... but then the Mail leads the charge against Princess Pushy and her 69-a-week Kensington Palace apartment. Pushy and Bushy, a new pair of royals on the make to revile. It's a scandal. MPs begin sounding off, the pressure grows. This isn't a Guardian campaign, though. It's a Mail campaign. The damage, however, could hardly be greater. Love and affection for HM, as commodiously chronicled at the start of June, turns swiftly to carping about the greed and arrogance of her family. She who was strong after 50 years is made to seem weak again. But what is the charge here, what's the offence? Of family looking after family, of more fortunate and moneyed Windsors taking care of the weaker brothers and sisters? It seems a slightly bizarre crusade from the ultimate newspaper of self-help and family values. The thesis, expounded a few days ago when the keeper of the privy purse - formerly of KPMG and not, praise heaven, Arthur Andersen - published his household accounts, is that you can keep the palace show on the road if you deliver good accounting value. Wine bills down from 135,000 to 97,000 year on year. (Out with the fine Bordeaux, in with South African merlot.) Helicopters down from 2m to 1.9m. Crockery and cutlery down from 16,000 to 11,000 - but stationery up from 14,000 to 22,000. And so on, in close detail. What you lose on the fire insurance premiums you try to make up on flowers, photocopying and second-class postage. Now, if they could only stop washing the sheets so often! The headline calculation from this exercise - the figure that puts the squeeze on Pushy's 69 - is that keeping our royals in the manner accustomed costs every Joe Citizen 58p a year. Good value as long as you can keep selling surplus carriages and keep staff wages down by paying them in minor gongs rather than money. But step back for a second and ask that bigger question again. If this is the kind of majesty we want, why not crown the comptroller and auditor general instead? The jubilee wasn't a success because we counted every sparkler; it was a success because we spent loads and loads of cash. Our monarchs don't travel EasyJet; they cost nearly 4m a year buzzing around. Royal household wisdom. The Windsors are conspicuous consumers. That is their way and our way with them. Holding their contract cleaning bills up to the light won't save them - to the contrary. Down the pan and round the bend with Tesco's own label Harpic substitute? Salvation isn't value for money. Salvation is living and playing rich, salvation is looking down, not adding up - as even Mrs Simpson was bright enough the understand.
|
7peterpreston
| 2UK
|
There is hard news and soft news, according to the sainted John Humphrys. (He likes the hard stuff; his BBC employers have gone soft at Six). But you can split categories of news every which way - including, as Mo Mowlam might add, real news; the news where reality bites. Consider: I'm sitting a few weeks ago with a very senior copper discussing the aftermath of the Jill Dando murder. Where did the hit man buy his gun? Surely Jack Straw's dynamic ban on gun ownership has made the whole firearms scene much tighter? Not really, says top cop reflectively. He can rattle out a long list of pubs where anyone with a wad of fivers can pick up a pistol in 30 minutes flat. Laws don't get in the way of trade. The Straw package may make life tougher for deranged amateurs: fewer guns in legal circulation mean fewer fumbling fingers on triggers. But don't, for a second, suppose that the professionally determined are much incommoded. There's a sharp bang a couple of streets away as I leave. A dodgy exhaust - or a touring Yardie? In other words, if you want a gun and know where to look for it, the underworld is your oyster. Parliament can pass laws till kingdom come - but, for the drug runners, bank robbers and terrorists, life and death continue as though nothing had happened. And if that's true in the east end of London or Manchester Moss Side, it must be even truer in Belfast (where the Straw law, remember, doesn't run anyway). Did anyone seriously suppose that the Good Friday agreement would lead to complete disarmament along the back alleys and side roads of Northern Ireland? Did David Trimble suppose that the IRA would turn in every last armalite and stash of grenades? Did Gerry Adams suppose that the UVF and the rest wouldn't forget to turn in the hardware under the floorboards? Of course not. They 're talking symbolism, not reality. See how, across Europe, the Kosovo Liberation Army claims to have met its own disarmament obligations. Nobody believes that - and the murder of Serbs continues unabated. Kosovo, in any case, is a vast dump of weaponry left behind: enough to keep the black markets of the west stocked for years. Even if the IRA, in some unimaginable circumstance, turned in every last gun tomorrow, it could be up and shooting again in three months. The reality of peace isn't turning revolvers into ploughshares: it is, slowly, painfully, ensuring that fingers slide away from the triggers. But unreality, alas, is so much easier to play with; the mouthings of unreality glide so much less painfully from political lips. And one unreality feeds on another. Thus the unreality of a symbolic start to disarmament (which wasn't in the agreement to begin with) leads, over stretching time, to a deliberative pause in which our secretary of state is required to deem the ceasefire firm or illusory. Mo Mowlam does what she was always going to do, what she had no option but to do. She deems the process battered but fundamentally intact. The IRA have not taken up guns again against the army or the police or the leaders of unionism. There has been no return to sectarian killing. The gangs and the protection racketeers are still operating with some brutality. But no Good Friday words on paper ever could or ever will do much about that - just as no words of Straw, transmuted by parliamentary draftsmen, could stop Dando's murderer going to a pub he'd heard about from the friend of a friend. The essential, basic peace remains. Again: everybody intimately involved knows this. David Trimble, first minister designate of Northern Ireland, knows it. Even the suddenly omnipresent Jeffrey Donaldson, Ulster Unionist MP, knows it. The roars of outrage and threats of legal action, the prating calls for Mo Mowlam's head, are ritualistic and synthetic. They are either a way for weak men of moderate goodwill to hang on to power in the hope that better times will come - or a thinly disguised attempt to wreck the agreement and shelve every vestige of what process remains by men who never wanted peace on these terms in the first place. The real news is that divide and that debate: not the flummery of fury. And the real issue behind it needs to be put still more starkly - in a way that even John Humphrys might quail over. Back to my truth-telling top cop. Can we (I once asked him, in the darker days before Good Friday) ever defeat the IRA? Can our army ever bring peace at the point of a gun? Is there a military answer of enforcement and internment and massive policing which is the alternative to accommodation and compromise? Straight questions: straight answer. No, there isn't an alternative. Good intelligence can abate the violence for a while, but it can't stop it. There is no law and order solution here (any more than a large army billeted in Kosovo can prevent ethnic cleansings or simple gangsterism). The alternative to the way things are is a return to the way things were. Two years ago, both sides implicitly recognised that. Nobody was winning and nobody losing. The conflict was just pottering bloodily on, in increasing futility. So there was a halt (perhaps, says my wise copper, only the first of several as the lessons are gradually learned). But time, in the passing, is another enemy here. Men with guns and politicians with restive constituencies forget. They load back the unreality. George Mitchell becomes a strolling player, not a saviour. The words of hope become ever more strained, the deadlines ever more malleable. The devil of the situation, though, is that the truth of our impotence in all its bleakness can never be voiced openly by those who understand. Neither Tony Blair nor Mo Mowlam can admit the inability of the state apparatus they control to impose a solution - and the Conservatives have all too swiftly forgotten what they learned through 18 bitter years. The ordinary people of Northern Ireland are left darkling among the posturers and the bigots. The ordinary voters of the rest of the UK are given no chance to tell the minority over the water what they think should be done. Real news? Real news gives you the real options and the real assessments - and confronts you with the real decisions. Real news gags on the surface show and shrugs off facile connections to four frightened lads in Dungannon. Real news deals in the fundamentals of life and death. Harder than hard, truer than truer. But there isn't, it seems, much of it around - at Six or any other spot on the clock.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Peter Preston .
|
There is hard news and soft news, according to the sainted John Humphrys. (He likes the hard stuff; his BBC employers have gone soft at Six). But you can split categories of news every which way - including, as Mo Mowlam might add, real news; the news where reality bites. Consider: I'm sitting a few weeks ago with a very senior copper discussing the aftermath of the Jill Dando murder. Where did the hit man buy his gun? Surely Jack Straw's dynamic ban on gun ownership has made the whole firearms scene much tighter? Not really, says top cop reflectively. He can rattle out a long list of pubs where anyone with a wad of fivers can pick up a pistol in 30 minutes flat. Laws don't get in the way of trade. The Straw package may make life tougher for deranged amateurs: fewer guns in legal circulation mean fewer fumbling fingers on triggers. But don't, for a second, suppose that the professionally determined are much incommoded. There's a sharp bang a couple of streets away as I leave. A dodgy exhaust - or a touring Yardie? In other words, if you want a gun and know where to look for it, the underworld is your oyster. Parliament can pass laws till kingdom come - but, for the drug runners, bank robbers and terrorists, life and death continue as though nothing had happened. And if that's true in the east end of London or Manchester Moss Side, it must be even truer in Belfast (where the Straw law, remember, doesn't run anyway). Did anyone seriously suppose that the Good Friday agreement would lead to complete disarmament along the back alleys and side roads of Northern Ireland? Did David Trimble suppose that the IRA would turn in every last armalite and stash of grenades? Did Gerry Adams suppose that the UVF and the rest wouldn't forget to turn in the hardware under the floorboards? Of course not. They 're talking symbolism, not reality. See how, across Europe, the Kosovo Liberation Army claims to have met its own disarmament obligations. Nobody believes that - and the murder of Serbs continues unabated. Kosovo, in any case, is a vast dump of weaponry left behind: enough to keep the black markets of the west stocked for years. Even if the IRA, in some unimaginable circumstance, turned in every last gun tomorrow, it could be up and shooting again in three months. The reality of peace isn't turning revolvers into ploughshares: it is, slowly, painfully, ensuring that fingers slide away from the triggers. But unreality, alas, is so much easier to play with; the mouthings of unreality glide so much less painfully from political lips. And one unreality feeds on another. Thus the unreality of a symbolic start to disarmament (which wasn't in the agreement to begin with) leads, over stretching time, to a deliberative pause in which our secretary of state is required to deem the ceasefire firm or illusory. Mo Mowlam does what she was always going to do, what she had no option but to do. She deems the process battered but fundamentally intact. The IRA have not taken up guns again against the army or the police or the leaders of unionism. There has been no return to sectarian killing. The gangs and the protection racketeers are still operating with some brutality. But no Good Friday words on paper ever could or ever will do much about that - just as no words of Straw, transmuted by parliamentary draftsmen, could stop Dando's murderer going to a pub he'd heard about from the friend of a friend. The essential, basic peace remains. Again: everybody intimately involved knows this. David Trimble, first minister designate of Northern Ireland, knows it. Even the suddenly omnipresent Jeffrey Donaldson, Ulster Unionist MP, knows it. The roars of outrage and threats of legal action, the prating calls for Mo Mowlam's head, are ritualistic and synthetic. They are either a way for weak men of moderate goodwill to hang on to power in the hope that better times will come - or a thinly disguised attempt to wreck the agreement and shelve every vestige of what process remains by men who never wanted peace on these terms in the first place. The real news is that divide and that debate: not the flummery of fury. And the real issue behind it needs to be put still more starkly - in a way that even John Humphrys might quail over. Back to my truth-telling top cop. Can we (I once asked him, in the darker days before Good Friday) ever defeat the IRA? Can our army ever bring peace at the point of a gun? Is there a military answer of enforcement and internment and massive policing which is the alternative to accommodation and compromise? Straight questions: straight answer. No, there isn't an alternative. Good intelligence can abate the violence for a while, but it can't stop it. There is no law and order solution here (any more than a large army billeted in Kosovo can prevent ethnic cleansings or simple gangsterism). The alternative to the way things are is a return to the way things were. Two years ago, both sides implicitly recognised that. Nobody was winning and nobody losing. The conflict was just pottering bloodily on, in increasing futility. So there was a halt (perhaps, says my wise copper, only the first of several as the lessons are gradually learned). But time, in the passing, is another enemy here. Men with guns and politicians with restive constituencies forget. They load back the unreality. George Mitchell becomes a strolling player, not a saviour. The words of hope become ever more strained, the deadlines ever more malleable. The devil of the situation, though, is that the truth of our impotence in all its bleakness can never be voiced openly by those who understand. Neither Tony Blair nor Mo Mowlam can admit the inability of the state apparatus they control to impose a solution - and the Conservatives have all too swiftly forgotten what they learned through 18 bitter years. The ordinary people of Northern Ireland are left darkling among the posturers and the bigots. The ordinary voters of the rest of the UK are given no chance to tell the minority over the water what they think should be done. Real news? Real news gives you the real options and the real assessments - and confronts you with the real decisions. Real news gags on the surface show and shrugs off facile connections to four frightened lads in Dungannon. Real news deals in the fundamentals of life and death. Harder than hard, truer than truer. But there isn't, it seems, much of it around - at Six or any other spot on the clock.
|
7peterpreston
| 2UK
|
Think of life as a twoway Mirror. On the one side, as we shall discover this week, stands the erstwhile editor of the Daily Eponymous, keeping a beady-eyed diary for rapid sale and Fleet Street serialisation. Piers Morgan dubs Cherie Blair "breathtakingly capricious and vindictive" (she's not much turned on by Piers) - if not "in the grip of personality disorder" (make that totally turned off ). But equally, Mr Morgan tells Daily Mail readers, Tony Blair himself is "inherently charming, nice, polite and well mannered". Apparently, Piers used to give the PM the benefit of his experience, man-to-man. "She causes you so much trouble," he'd say. He fears that the true victim of this political marriage is T Blair himself, "because ultimately it's the Blair brand that's damaged". Well, you can certainly draw some broken-brand conclusions from Labour's latest internal pollings. There, the leader's personal popularity with married women voters is down by six points. He's in almost as much bother as the Prince of Wales, whom only 31% of us now want to be king (when YouGov comes calling). Step, though, to the other side of the mirror. Look out rather than in, for the difference is instructive. What do Mr and Mrs Blair feel when they stare at the menacing world beyond? Pressure, of course: transient editors preparing to make a quick buck, rivals spreading poison, enemies stoking up every lecture tour or house purchase or personal friendship into some crisis of judgment. And careers - like the prospect of becoming a judge - going down the pan, flushed onward by so much detritus. For once, though, put all the usual arguments about future privacy to one side and concentrate on what remains - fixed here, today. The fact is that the Blairs are still firmly together, whatever the pressures; and that nice, polite, charming Tony seems as committed as ever. In short, this is a strong relationship toiled for and staunchly defended on both sides. Is that quite the message as currently conveyed? What about Blair the sophist, the acolyte of Bush, the betrayer of the faith, the quasi-president, the actor and smooth PR merchant? All or some of that may be true. But if marital wobbles at the top matter, then this look through the mirror tells us something useful, something most of us can relate to. Score one for commitment. Score one for not backing away when problems mount. And so we step inside the walls of Windsor. "All my life, people have been telling me what to do, and I'm tired of it," Prince Charles wails to Gavin Hewitt in a new book. "My private life has become an industry. People are making money out of it." (Just so: that's what books are for.) "I thought the British people were supposed to be compassionate. I don't see much sign of it." Typical whingeing from an over-privileged anachronism who betrayed a nation's sweetheart and still wants it all? Perhaps. But, one more time, look outward through that two-way mirror. If you do, you may conclude that there has never been anything but public grief for Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles through three decades of disappointment and tumult. The palace, in its uttermost reaches, recoiled at the first liaison. They found the heir to the throne a wholly unsuitable virgin bride and propelled him to the altar: one wedding, two victims. They did nothing to help any sliver of that marriage succeed. They were chill and manipulative throughout - and the prince was weak. But he has been strong about Camilla, when it would have been so easy to slide away. This is another enduring partnership, because it has endured so much. Now it must endure the careless coldness of a mother and father who don't grasp what ordinary human relationships are about and the publicity-grabbing cavortions of assorted priests fresh from the latest C of E disaster. Now compassion, in the family or the nation, is off the menu. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today, in the YouGov court of public opinion. Which is where, for a second, we should also pause. Most of us, if we're honest, know that staunchness and love walk side by side. We know there's a quality there, a branding that doesn't fade. And, if we value one quality in a cacophony without much compassion, then it's good to look through the mirror and see it still intact. Not the whole of the story, to be sure: but some of it. For intrusion, you see, has its uses.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Peter Preston .
|
Think of life as a twoway Mirror. On the one side, as we shall discover this week, stands the erstwhile editor of the Daily Eponymous, keeping a beady-eyed diary for rapid sale and Fleet Street serialisation. Piers Morgan dubs Cherie Blair "breathtakingly capricious and vindictive" (she's not much turned on by Piers) - if not "in the grip of personality disorder" (make that totally turned off ). But equally, Mr Morgan tells Daily Mail readers, Tony Blair himself is "inherently charming, nice, polite and well mannered". Apparently, Piers used to give the PM the benefit of his experience, man-to-man. "She causes you so much trouble," he'd say. He fears that the true victim of this political marriage is T Blair himself, "because ultimately it's the Blair brand that's damaged". Well, you can certainly draw some broken-brand conclusions from Labour's latest internal pollings. There, the leader's personal popularity with married women voters is down by six points. He's in almost as much bother as the Prince of Wales, whom only 31% of us now want to be king (when YouGov comes calling). Step, though, to the other side of the mirror. Look out rather than in, for the difference is instructive. What do Mr and Mrs Blair feel when they stare at the menacing world beyond? Pressure, of course: transient editors preparing to make a quick buck, rivals spreading poison, enemies stoking up every lecture tour or house purchase or personal friendship into some crisis of judgment. And careers - like the prospect of becoming a judge - going down the pan, flushed onward by so much detritus. For once, though, put all the usual arguments about future privacy to one side and concentrate on what remains - fixed here, today. The fact is that the Blairs are still firmly together, whatever the pressures; and that nice, polite, charming Tony seems as committed as ever. In short, this is a strong relationship toiled for and staunchly defended on both sides. Is that quite the message as currently conveyed? What about Blair the sophist, the acolyte of Bush, the betrayer of the faith, the quasi-president, the actor and smooth PR merchant? All or some of that may be true. But if marital wobbles at the top matter, then this look through the mirror tells us something useful, something most of us can relate to. Score one for commitment. Score one for not backing away when problems mount. And so we step inside the walls of Windsor. "All my life, people have been telling me what to do, and I'm tired of it," Prince Charles wails to Gavin Hewitt in a new book. "My private life has become an industry. People are making money out of it." (Just so: that's what books are for.) "I thought the British people were supposed to be compassionate. I don't see much sign of it." Typical whingeing from an over-privileged anachronism who betrayed a nation's sweetheart and still wants it all? Perhaps. But, one more time, look outward through that two-way mirror. If you do, you may conclude that there has never been anything but public grief for Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles through three decades of disappointment and tumult. The palace, in its uttermost reaches, recoiled at the first liaison. They found the heir to the throne a wholly unsuitable virgin bride and propelled him to the altar: one wedding, two victims. They did nothing to help any sliver of that marriage succeed. They were chill and manipulative throughout - and the prince was weak. But he has been strong about Camilla, when it would have been so easy to slide away. This is another enduring partnership, because it has endured so much. Now it must endure the careless coldness of a mother and father who don't grasp what ordinary human relationships are about and the publicity-grabbing cavortions of assorted priests fresh from the latest C of E disaster. Now compassion, in the family or the nation, is off the menu. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today, in the YouGov court of public opinion. Which is where, for a second, we should also pause. Most of us, if we're honest, know that staunchness and love walk side by side. We know there's a quality there, a branding that doesn't fade. And, if we value one quality in a cacophony without much compassion, then it's good to look through the mirror and see it still intact. Not the whole of the story, to be sure: but some of it. For intrusion, you see, has its uses.
|
7peterpreston
| 2UK
|
She invited a few of them in for supper the other day - the five surviving prime ministers from her 50 occasionally glorious years. Polite chitchat and photocalls. But what does she really think of them, and their five dead predecessors? How do they and their policies look from her seat in the royal circle? And "circle" is the word. The big contortions, of course, are the most obvious. She began with a Conservative PM making statesmanlike speeches about the need for European union (with Britain, as usual, somewhere adjacent to its ventricle regions) and a Labour party viscerally opposed. She winds up five decades later with a Labour PM piping Euro-rhetoric from every available artery and a Conservative would-be prime minister whose hair would stand on end at Churchill's visions, if he had any. (Hair that is, not visions.) But great upheavals are a natural part of politics: it's the detail of the years from Butler to Byers which is more dismaying. Why, Iain Duncan Smith inquired recently, "are we still running our public services in the same ways we did after the second world war?" This is the 21st century, he said. "We've lived through the cold war, the development of nuclear weapons, the fall of the Berlin wall and the rise of the internet." But health and education and the rest were still "Clem Attlee" stuff, frozen in time and immobility. Or so he seemed to think. In reality the record is far worse than that. It is a long and costly amble round the houses, a potter of constant change in order to get back to where we (and Her Majesty) started. IDS - because he's Winston's current heir and thinking aloud for his living these days - is the obvious marker for half a century; but, to be honest, new Blairism would serve almost equally well. Just consider... British education used to be local and wholly devolved, run by school boards in your home town, not ministries in London. The minister of education and his Sir Humphreys could jawbone but not prescribe; they worked - wait for that word again - through "circulars" bearing advice from on high. They were rarely taken much notice of. Who changed all that? A bit of Butler in 1944; a pinch of Crosland through the 60s. But I remember the 80s best, and sitting with Kenneth Baker in his shiny ministerial limo while he explained the wonders of a national curriculum. A pox on sloppy schools and sloppy teachers turning out kids who couldn't read because they and their unions defended failure: a chance, at last, for the centre to demand something better - true equality of opportunity - with means to deliver. It sounded good. And now? Mr Duncan Smith wants (somewhat mystically) to guarantee equal opportunity another way: by trusting heads and teachers, by getting centralised government and politics out of the act. "Trusting people is the modern way," he says - as opposed to the old way, when we absolutely knew that the people who mattered couldn't be trusted. "It is organisations operating on a human scale that succeed." So, in IDS-speak as well as Milburn-speak, the doctors and nurses become not merely the front men and women of health, but its front line of decision-making again. Just as they were before Elizabeth married Philip, and Nye Bevan, after the most draining of fights with Consultants Incorporated, founded the NHS. Once the NHS answer was centrally set targets delivered by an efficient management (mostly nurses seeking a better salary and career). Then we had trusts and more management. Now we may be going back to men in white coats running everyone's lives out of their own back pockets. Once we put our faith in waiting lists. Now these are suddenly tawdry devices. Crime? Bobbies on the beat or in their pandas? Dixon of Dock Green or Z-Cars? We've oscillated back and forth over the years. Devolution? "Switzerland is a very small country," reveals IDS, "yet it retains a vibrant and vital local tradition through its cantons." Does that mean that today's Conservatives want stronger, more independent local administration - Thatcherism in reverse? Er... yes and no. Not "regional assemblies which don't drive power down from Whitehall but strip it from local communities". They, apparently, mean "more centralisation, not less". Stronger local councils, then, with drastically increased revenue-raising capabilities? Er... no and yes. City mayors like Rudy Giuliani, "who turned crime around because he had the authority to do so"? Don't begin to explain that. The difficulty for the Tories is that there's virtually no social policy where they haven't turned turtle (often many times) through the past 50 years. Which secretary of state for education saw the greatest ever number of comprehensive schools created on her watch? Yip, Mrs T, the same lady who put her name to the Single European Act. A life of ever-increasing circularity. And the difficulty for Labour is turning out to be much the same. Here come the new super-ministries like transport and local government. There, barely a year later, they go again, dragging the remnants of their super-minister with them. Watch our latest patent variant on NHS internal markets come and go and come again. Here's what Roy Jenkins used to believe about penal (and asylum) policy - and here's the Blunkett version. There is, to be sure, some progress. Once in the 50s, Harold Macmillan made his reputation because he "built more houses"; now ministers don't "build" houses any longer because it's their changed job to make the trains run on time. Once upon a more baleful time, the Ministry of Labour provided the most gruelling test in town; now it is called employment and nobody quite remembers whose wing shelters the remnants. But on the main events, Your Majesty, on the big intractables like the hegemony of the Treasury that Harold Wilson tried to destroy with his Department of Economic Affairs and a deputy prime minister in charge? Ah! deputy prime ministers. They come and they go, too. The promise is always of progress. The delivery is always best suited to those with short memories and smaller expectations. Only one thing, it seems, remains constant: occasional republican chuntering about tax holidays for happy monarchs, about duties which pay nothing at death. Willie Hamilton of beloved memory used to sing that song; other paler shadows have taken up his refrain. But nothing happens, Your Majesty, nothing at all. One circle that's never squared.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Peter Preston .
|
She invited a few of them in for supper the other day - the five surviving prime ministers from her 50 occasionally glorious years. Polite chitchat and photocalls. But what does she really think of them, and their five dead predecessors? How do they and their policies look from her seat in the royal circle? And "circle" is the word. The big contortions, of course, are the most obvious. She began with a Conservative PM making statesmanlike speeches about the need for European union (with Britain, as usual, somewhere adjacent to its ventricle regions) and a Labour party viscerally opposed. She winds up five decades later with a Labour PM piping Euro-rhetoric from every available artery and a Conservative would-be prime minister whose hair would stand on end at Churchill's visions, if he had any. (Hair that is, not visions.) But great upheavals are a natural part of politics: it's the detail of the years from Butler to Byers which is more dismaying. Why, Iain Duncan Smith inquired recently, "are we still running our public services in the same ways we did after the second world war?" This is the 21st century, he said. "We've lived through the cold war, the development of nuclear weapons, the fall of the Berlin wall and the rise of the internet." But health and education and the rest were still "Clem Attlee" stuff, frozen in time and immobility. Or so he seemed to think. In reality the record is far worse than that. It is a long and costly amble round the houses, a potter of constant change in order to get back to where we (and Her Majesty) started. IDS - because he's Winston's current heir and thinking aloud for his living these days - is the obvious marker for half a century; but, to be honest, new Blairism would serve almost equally well. Just consider... British education used to be local and wholly devolved, run by school boards in your home town, not ministries in London. The minister of education and his Sir Humphreys could jawbone but not prescribe; they worked - wait for that word again - through "circulars" bearing advice from on high. They were rarely taken much notice of. Who changed all that? A bit of Butler in 1944; a pinch of Crosland through the 60s. But I remember the 80s best, and sitting with Kenneth Baker in his shiny ministerial limo while he explained the wonders of a national curriculum. A pox on sloppy schools and sloppy teachers turning out kids who couldn't read because they and their unions defended failure: a chance, at last, for the centre to demand something better - true equality of opportunity - with means to deliver. It sounded good. And now? Mr Duncan Smith wants (somewhat mystically) to guarantee equal opportunity another way: by trusting heads and teachers, by getting centralised government and politics out of the act. "Trusting people is the modern way," he says - as opposed to the old way, when we absolutely knew that the people who mattered couldn't be trusted. "It is organisations operating on a human scale that succeed." So, in IDS-speak as well as Milburn-speak, the doctors and nurses become not merely the front men and women of health, but its front line of decision-making again. Just as they were before Elizabeth married Philip, and Nye Bevan, after the most draining of fights with Consultants Incorporated, founded the NHS. Once the NHS answer was centrally set targets delivered by an efficient management (mostly nurses seeking a better salary and career). Then we had trusts and more management. Now we may be going back to men in white coats running everyone's lives out of their own back pockets. Once we put our faith in waiting lists. Now these are suddenly tawdry devices. Crime? Bobbies on the beat or in their pandas? Dixon of Dock Green or Z-Cars? We've oscillated back and forth over the years. Devolution? "Switzerland is a very small country," reveals IDS, "yet it retains a vibrant and vital local tradition through its cantons." Does that mean that today's Conservatives want stronger, more independent local administration - Thatcherism in reverse? Er... yes and no. Not "regional assemblies which don't drive power down from Whitehall but strip it from local communities". They, apparently, mean "more centralisation, not less". Stronger local councils, then, with drastically increased revenue-raising capabilities? Er... no and yes. City mayors like Rudy Giuliani, "who turned crime around because he had the authority to do so"? Don't begin to explain that. The difficulty for the Tories is that there's virtually no social policy where they haven't turned turtle (often many times) through the past 50 years. Which secretary of state for education saw the greatest ever number of comprehensive schools created on her watch? Yip, Mrs T, the same lady who put her name to the Single European Act. A life of ever-increasing circularity. And the difficulty for Labour is turning out to be much the same. Here come the new super-ministries like transport and local government. There, barely a year later, they go again, dragging the remnants of their super-minister with them. Watch our latest patent variant on NHS internal markets come and go and come again. Here's what Roy Jenkins used to believe about penal (and asylum) policy - and here's the Blunkett version. There is, to be sure, some progress. Once in the 50s, Harold Macmillan made his reputation because he "built more houses"; now ministers don't "build" houses any longer because it's their changed job to make the trains run on time. Once upon a more baleful time, the Ministry of Labour provided the most gruelling test in town; now it is called employment and nobody quite remembers whose wing shelters the remnants. But on the main events, Your Majesty, on the big intractables like the hegemony of the Treasury that Harold Wilson tried to destroy with his Department of Economic Affairs and a deputy prime minister in charge? Ah! deputy prime ministers. They come and they go, too. The promise is always of progress. The delivery is always best suited to those with short memories and smaller expectations. Only one thing, it seems, remains constant: occasional republican chuntering about tax holidays for happy monarchs, about duties which pay nothing at death. Willie Hamilton of beloved memory used to sing that song; other paler shadows have taken up his refrain. But nothing happens, Your Majesty, nothing at all. One circle that's never squared.
|
7peterpreston
| 2UK
|
He could have been almost anything he wanted for at least two or three productive decades. He could have had a career, made a name in his own right as uncle Linley has done, used the education bought for him at high price and the intelligence that came to him naturally. But instead he did the boring, banal thing. He chose what his younger brother - the one with the overworked elbow and dodgy A-level in art - had done only a few months ago. He opted for Sandhurst and a man's half-life in an army uniform.Thus the 23-year-old who would, sooner or later, be king faces a well-trodden few weeks of publicity. No beer, much relentless exercise. No sex or even trysts with Kate. Much yomping and early rising of the kind his dad remembers from Gordonstoun. It's routine publicity as the student prince turns to warrior prince for compact headline purposes. But it is also a dreadful waste of talent, another bumpy ride down the same rutted royal track.William, remember, is monarchy's last best hope: young, handsome, dashing, romantic. Most young voters, duly polled, would like him to be the next in line, the one who leaves his father alone in Highgrove to enjoy a leftover life of waiting in vain. Give us our media star asap!It won't happen, of course. Hereditary monarchies that start skipping generations for marketing's sake are signing their own death warrant. The Queen will not retire. She must go on and on. So, when his moment comes, must King Charles. And then, eventually, there is William.He will be 40 going on 50, or more. The David Cameron aura will have faded away, just like his hairline. Romance will have had its definitive day. This is James Hewitt territory with a twist of Charles Ingram added for millionaire luck. Mum always fancied chaps in uniform, we'll be told a hundred times. The throne, in extremis, will be saved or sunk by some ageing ex-Guards officer who relinquished a proper public profile for years when the barrack doors had closed behind him.The entire scenario reeks of defeat and disillusion. It is a very bad idea. Captain Willie Windsor won't live a life where reality bites. He will not - whatever blustering ex-colonels currently claim - be sent to Iraq or anywhere remotely dangerous. (Leave Harry as the only heir in town? You'd be cashiered first.) No, William will lead an active life for the cameras a suitable distance from any action. He will get promotion, but not too much of it. He will fill a recruiting slot. And then, in his middle or late 30s, he will be obliged to do what his father and uncle both did: that is, not very much, retired early, parked in the waiting room of monarchy.William, in sum, will become a killer of time and occasional cutter of ribbons. He can't be promoted too far, a runner of regiments, a power in the Ministry of Defence - because one fine day he'll be notional commander in chief of the whole damned show. He can rise so far but no further. He will be a lofty Guards officer who knows why lowlier guardsmen must keep their place. And then, like the Duke of York or papa for far too long, it will be more waving-and-shaking on Commonwealth circuits. Wills will be shopsoiled goods when his moment finally comes.Of course, the army (or navy or air force) has certain regal benefits for uncertain royals. Its entry requirements are benevolently enforced. It offers the company of other, suitably discreet fellow officers - and the hope that privacy can be protected once the mess bar is open. It provides a blameless, patriotic way of filling in a gap decade. But none of this is enough, not remotely enough. The army in its upper reaches is cut off from society, not fully part of the nation that must be ruled.Class distinctions and class pursuits still fill the pages of the Tatler. There's no way William can be a people's prince covered in braid as he gallops from polo ground to polo ground. There is no way he can keep in touch - or draw fulfilment from a job where the real rewards of danger and heroism are denied to him.He could have been so many things: a cartographer, using his geography degree; a schoolteacher, helping to shape young lives that would blossom as a legacy long after he'd left; a charity organiser, an Outward Bounder, a businessman learning to manage the Duchy estates in ways his father has never mastered. Even a journalist. He could, in short, have been useful - and signalled that his reign, at last, would be the start of something new, fresh and relevant.But no: the lack of inspiration and imagination is total, perhaps terminal. By the left, now, shuffle slowly towards oblivion ...
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Peter Preston .
|
He could have been almost anything he wanted for at least two or three productive decades. He could have had a career, made a name in his own right as uncle Linley has done, used the education bought for him at high price and the intelligence that came to him naturally. But instead he did the boring, banal thing. He chose what his younger brother - the one with the overworked elbow and dodgy A-level in art - had done only a few months ago. He opted for Sandhurst and a man's half-life in an army uniform.Thus the 23-year-old who would, sooner or later, be king faces a well-trodden few weeks of publicity. No beer, much relentless exercise. No sex or even trysts with Kate. Much yomping and early rising of the kind his dad remembers from Gordonstoun. It's routine publicity as the student prince turns to warrior prince for compact headline purposes. But it is also a dreadful waste of talent, another bumpy ride down the same rutted royal track.William, remember, is monarchy's last best hope: young, handsome, dashing, romantic. Most young voters, duly polled, would like him to be the next in line, the one who leaves his father alone in Highgrove to enjoy a leftover life of waiting in vain. Give us our media star asap!It won't happen, of course. Hereditary monarchies that start skipping generations for marketing's sake are signing their own death warrant. The Queen will not retire. She must go on and on. So, when his moment comes, must King Charles. And then, eventually, there is William.He will be 40 going on 50, or more. The David Cameron aura will have faded away, just like his hairline. Romance will have had its definitive day. This is James Hewitt territory with a twist of Charles Ingram added for millionaire luck. Mum always fancied chaps in uniform, we'll be told a hundred times. The throne, in extremis, will be saved or sunk by some ageing ex-Guards officer who relinquished a proper public profile for years when the barrack doors had closed behind him.The entire scenario reeks of defeat and disillusion. It is a very bad idea. Captain Willie Windsor won't live a life where reality bites. He will not - whatever blustering ex-colonels currently claim - be sent to Iraq or anywhere remotely dangerous. (Leave Harry as the only heir in town? You'd be cashiered first.) No, William will lead an active life for the cameras a suitable distance from any action. He will get promotion, but not too much of it. He will fill a recruiting slot. And then, in his middle or late 30s, he will be obliged to do what his father and uncle both did: that is, not very much, retired early, parked in the waiting room of monarchy.William, in sum, will become a killer of time and occasional cutter of ribbons. He can't be promoted too far, a runner of regiments, a power in the Ministry of Defence - because one fine day he'll be notional commander in chief of the whole damned show. He can rise so far but no further. He will be a lofty Guards officer who knows why lowlier guardsmen must keep their place. And then, like the Duke of York or papa for far too long, it will be more waving-and-shaking on Commonwealth circuits. Wills will be shopsoiled goods when his moment finally comes.Of course, the army (or navy or air force) has certain regal benefits for uncertain royals. Its entry requirements are benevolently enforced. It offers the company of other, suitably discreet fellow officers - and the hope that privacy can be protected once the mess bar is open. It provides a blameless, patriotic way of filling in a gap decade. But none of this is enough, not remotely enough. The army in its upper reaches is cut off from society, not fully part of the nation that must be ruled.Class distinctions and class pursuits still fill the pages of the Tatler. There's no way William can be a people's prince covered in braid as he gallops from polo ground to polo ground. There is no way he can keep in touch - or draw fulfilment from a job where the real rewards of danger and heroism are denied to him.He could have been so many things: a cartographer, using his geography degree; a schoolteacher, helping to shape young lives that would blossom as a legacy long after he'd left; a charity organiser, an Outward Bounder, a businessman learning to manage the Duchy estates in ways his father has never mastered. Even a journalist. He could, in short, have been useful - and signalled that his reign, at last, would be the start of something new, fresh and relevant.But no: the lack of inspiration and imagination is total, perhaps terminal. By the left, now, shuffle slowly towards oblivion ...
|
7peterpreston
| 2UK
|
The News of the World heaves with self-righteous anger. Mr Richard Desmond's fine Daily Star bathes in fury. The words of James Bulger's mother Denise are spread large across every sheet and TV station in the land: "I know that no matter where they go, someone out there is waiting." It is difficult not to feel ashamed of this country. We tut-tut, pruriently horrified, over the public execution of Timothy McVeigh. Our landslide prime minister joins with other EU luminaries to wag a consolidated finger at George Bush's punishing beliefs. Yet any civilised nation, anywhere in the world, would cringe over the punishment we are inflicting on Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. Take one dreadful tragedy, stir relentlessly over a decade; then await tragedy renewed. Some day soon - on an internet website, in a magazine bought at Milan or Madrid airport, after a punch in a pub or a stroke of vile luck - these two 18-year-olds will be "exposed". The law is an ass if it thinks that it can guarantee lifelong anonymity to the pair for much over five minutes. What else are "communities" but neighbourhoods that watch and talk together? We may lament such exposure, a continuance of our shame. But big secrets can't be kept forever in a small country. This, more balefully yet, is the old Spycatcher syndrome: judges and politicians don't decide - they have to persuade. And where, pray, is that persuasion? David Blunkett - at least in the beginning - doesn't even try. He issues one of those the-parole-board-has-informed-me statements which, barely between the lines, says: my hands are tied. The home secretary apparently thinks that holders of his great office, like Michael Howard, avid readers of the tabloids and public-opinion polls are better custodians of juvenile murderers than the judges who heard their cases or the psychologists who have worked to redeem them. European human rights? Forget it. Let's see if we can turn back the clock. What could his statement - or yesterday's slightly more responsive call for calm - have said? That here were two kids from fractured, disrupted homes which society - our society - left to fend for themselves. Already victims. They were 10 years old, falling out of the system. They killed a toddler; and the revulsion there is palpable. But what was supposed to happen next? A dose of the junior McVeighs? Obscenely ridiculous. A lifetime behind bars, without hope of release? Barely less obscene. These boys hadn't even had the chance to fail their 11-plus. Nowhere in mainland Europe is the age of criminal responsibility as low as it is here. Thirteen in Holland, 15 in Denmark, 16 in Spain, 18 in Luxembourg. Anywhere on the continent, Thompson and Venables would not have found themselves in some panoplied crown court listening to men in wigs deciding their fate in language they could not comprehend. They would have been taken away and tended in obscurity - because they were children. That, in a way, happened here, too. Our secure units are one of the better bits of the system. Robert and Jon have had the care they needed. They have grown up, found themselves and education and remorse. They have come to terms with their malign past. We call it rehabilitation. Everybody in a position to assess them thinks that they should be released to try to build lives which can never be normal but can, perhaps, be useful and fulfilling. Nobody who knows them today thinks that they should be spun over into adult prisonhood where all the work (and money) invested would surely go to malign waste. But - David Blunkett could have added - all this patient toil and love stands in pawn today: not from the efforts of those securely inside the unit, but from those outside in the society which first created Thompson and Venables. We dragged them through those adult courts that Europe would despise. We politicians joined the cry for retribution. We judges - like Mr Justice Morland in the case - stripped Child A and Child B of their anonymity so that the flames were fed. We journalists wove the boys of 18 and the kids of 10 into a seamless robe of supposed responsibility. All that was wrong and foolish. We saw the public wrath, the parental grief, and we trembled before it - or rode it out for our own ends. Shame on us. From that, in turn, inevitably flows the vital factor missing in this equation. Again, ourselves. The courts, which still look inward, clutching their majesty, have ordered lifelong anonymity for these new personalities released into the world. Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss fears vigilantes hunting two "uniquely notorious" lads - "a real possibility of serious physical harm and possible death from members of the public or from the Bulger family". Thus the cloaks are cut to cover them while they live. Her injunctions - which may well be doomed because they strain at reality - are only half the story, though. Lay it out in the clearest terms. This is also our test. So-called "vigilantes" are deluded thugs. The pain of the Bulger family is felt but, prolonged indefinitely, it merely builds further tragedy on tragedy. Denise Fergus has other children now: they deserve their normality, too. The memory of Jamie Bulger is best honoured not by vows of eternal revenge, but by closing that door on the past. The direst test comes not when Thompson and Venables are slipped into the outside world. It comes when, and if, they are discovered. Another media feeding frenzy? More photo-ops for placard wavers? More interviews with outraged neighbours? More politicians hopping up and down and judges eating their dignity? No: the test is whether, even uncovered, they can be brought to live in peace, to be known but not threatened or ostracised, to be treated for what they have become not what - in childhood - they were. It is a test of our civilisation and our maturity. And leaders who are elected to lead, like home secretaries - should set in directly. All we have, for the moment, is a dawning of concern (with Ann Widdecombe, to her credit, rather more forthright rather earlier than David Blunkett). But this release is not some neutral act by yet another panel of experts who can be duly excoriated if it goes wrong. It is a decision taken on our behalf because that is the way we have chosen to order our affairs and define our self-image. No ifs, no buts, no facile cop-outs about how five or 10 years more behind bars would have made everyone happier. Be honest: the time would never have been right. The edge of adulthood is the only point to choose. Heart-searching begins here: and if the home secretary isn't searching hard enough, then the prime minister should be. What's the point of a committed Christian who bites his tongue?
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Peter Preston .
|
The News of the World heaves with self-righteous anger. Mr Richard Desmond's fine Daily Star bathes in fury. The words of James Bulger's mother Denise are spread large across every sheet and TV station in the land: "I know that no matter where they go, someone out there is waiting." It is difficult not to feel ashamed of this country. We tut-tut, pruriently horrified, over the public execution of Timothy McVeigh. Our landslide prime minister joins with other EU luminaries to wag a consolidated finger at George Bush's punishing beliefs. Yet any civilised nation, anywhere in the world, would cringe over the punishment we are inflicting on Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. Take one dreadful tragedy, stir relentlessly over a decade; then await tragedy renewed. Some day soon - on an internet website, in a magazine bought at Milan or Madrid airport, after a punch in a pub or a stroke of vile luck - these two 18-year-olds will be "exposed". The law is an ass if it thinks that it can guarantee lifelong anonymity to the pair for much over five minutes. What else are "communities" but neighbourhoods that watch and talk together? We may lament such exposure, a continuance of our shame. But big secrets can't be kept forever in a small country. This, more balefully yet, is the old Spycatcher syndrome: judges and politicians don't decide - they have to persuade. And where, pray, is that persuasion? David Blunkett - at least in the beginning - doesn't even try. He issues one of those the-parole-board-has-informed-me statements which, barely between the lines, says: my hands are tied. The home secretary apparently thinks that holders of his great office, like Michael Howard, avid readers of the tabloids and public-opinion polls are better custodians of juvenile murderers than the judges who heard their cases or the psychologists who have worked to redeem them. European human rights? Forget it. Let's see if we can turn back the clock. What could his statement - or yesterday's slightly more responsive call for calm - have said? That here were two kids from fractured, disrupted homes which society - our society - left to fend for themselves. Already victims. They were 10 years old, falling out of the system. They killed a toddler; and the revulsion there is palpable. But what was supposed to happen next? A dose of the junior McVeighs? Obscenely ridiculous. A lifetime behind bars, without hope of release? Barely less obscene. These boys hadn't even had the chance to fail their 11-plus. Nowhere in mainland Europe is the age of criminal responsibility as low as it is here. Thirteen in Holland, 15 in Denmark, 16 in Spain, 18 in Luxembourg. Anywhere on the continent, Thompson and Venables would not have found themselves in some panoplied crown court listening to men in wigs deciding their fate in language they could not comprehend. They would have been taken away and tended in obscurity - because they were children. That, in a way, happened here, too. Our secure units are one of the better bits of the system. Robert and Jon have had the care they needed. They have grown up, found themselves and education and remorse. They have come to terms with their malign past. We call it rehabilitation. Everybody in a position to assess them thinks that they should be released to try to build lives which can never be normal but can, perhaps, be useful and fulfilling. Nobody who knows them today thinks that they should be spun over into adult prisonhood where all the work (and money) invested would surely go to malign waste. But - David Blunkett could have added - all this patient toil and love stands in pawn today: not from the efforts of those securely inside the unit, but from those outside in the society which first created Thompson and Venables. We dragged them through those adult courts that Europe would despise. We politicians joined the cry for retribution. We judges - like Mr Justice Morland in the case - stripped Child A and Child B of their anonymity so that the flames were fed. We journalists wove the boys of 18 and the kids of 10 into a seamless robe of supposed responsibility. All that was wrong and foolish. We saw the public wrath, the parental grief, and we trembled before it - or rode it out for our own ends. Shame on us. From that, in turn, inevitably flows the vital factor missing in this equation. Again, ourselves. The courts, which still look inward, clutching their majesty, have ordered lifelong anonymity for these new personalities released into the world. Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss fears vigilantes hunting two "uniquely notorious" lads - "a real possibility of serious physical harm and possible death from members of the public or from the Bulger family". Thus the cloaks are cut to cover them while they live. Her injunctions - which may well be doomed because they strain at reality - are only half the story, though. Lay it out in the clearest terms. This is also our test. So-called "vigilantes" are deluded thugs. The pain of the Bulger family is felt but, prolonged indefinitely, it merely builds further tragedy on tragedy. Denise Fergus has other children now: they deserve their normality, too. The memory of Jamie Bulger is best honoured not by vows of eternal revenge, but by closing that door on the past. The direst test comes not when Thompson and Venables are slipped into the outside world. It comes when, and if, they are discovered. Another media feeding frenzy? More photo-ops for placard wavers? More interviews with outraged neighbours? More politicians hopping up and down and judges eating their dignity? No: the test is whether, even uncovered, they can be brought to live in peace, to be known but not threatened or ostracised, to be treated for what they have become not what - in childhood - they were. It is a test of our civilisation and our maturity. And leaders who are elected to lead, like home secretaries - should set in directly. All we have, for the moment, is a dawning of concern (with Ann Widdecombe, to her credit, rather more forthright rather earlier than David Blunkett). But this release is not some neutral act by yet another panel of experts who can be duly excoriated if it goes wrong. It is a decision taken on our behalf because that is the way we have chosen to order our affairs and define our self-image. No ifs, no buts, no facile cop-outs about how five or 10 years more behind bars would have made everyone happier. Be honest: the time would never have been right. The edge of adulthood is the only point to choose. Heart-searching begins here: and if the home secretary isn't searching hard enough, then the prime minister should be. What's the point of a committed Christian who bites his tongue?
|
7peterpreston
| 2UK
|
After the perils of Pauline, the triumphs of Trimble. And with yet another bound, our unlikely hero is free, until the next time. The peace process is saved: mainland Britain switches its attention over to England against Brazil: Peter Mandelson prepares to concentrate on the next election campaign. A crisis averted becomes inside page news for yesterday's papers. This is politics as usual, which disguises the fact that there is nothing usual about Northern Irish politics. What, for instance, would any normal party leader do if his deputy drifted off to Taiwan for the vital days of decision-forming? What would Blair do to Prescott? He would drop big John into oblivion from a great height, not greet him home and fete him as some mighty prophet. Yet John Taylor, preened with self-importance, is hailed merely because he agrees to support his boss. You don't have to be loyal to be a loyalist. Jeffrey Donaldson and the rejectionists, playing to a bizarre audience of 860 grandees, won't give up. Paisley's DUP will probably stalk away from the reconvened assembly and rail outside the walls. Even without the IRA's dumps of mystic verbiage, words put beyond use where Cyril Ramaphosa keeps his dictionary, the scope for trouble remains almost infinite. It is painfully easy, amid such confusion, just to recite the word "process" as some kind of mantra and to forget what it means. Pause, though. What is this peace process? It is a formula for reconciliation and quiet on the streets. It puts London and Dublin in a settled context. It persuades once mortal enemies to sit side by side as ministerial colleagues, deciding about jobs and schools and hospitals. By this transference of power, too, it seeks to make Ulster politics real at last, freed from a time warp of rhetoric and opposition posturings: the most necessary devolution of the lot. But here there are other connections. Real politics also means winning and losing elections. It means change to the pulse of democracy - the eventual boot for Blair, the rise of the pensioner's friend. It involves ebb and flow. We know that already from the matching devolutions of the last three years. Alun Michael has ebbed for ever. Donald Dewar may soon be gone with the flow. If you give voters assemblies and executives to elect, the voters become sovereign. You may make it difficult for them by installing the drag anchors of proportional representation: Scotland and Wales have those. They're stuck, by design, with coalition administrations. They, though, can change the weighting of those coalitions and the faces who front them. One fine day, there'll be a Scots Nat chief minister in Edinburgh. One predictable day, Labour will be cut out of the Cardiff action. The question for Belfast, the hole in the heart of this process, is where the reality of politics bites there. Let's assume that the assembly is back in business, stronger than before because of the worsting of Donaldson and the guarantees of the IRA. Trimble and his other (useful) deputy, Seamus Mallon, resume work: Martin McGuinness is more interested in A level results than Armalite stocks. That, crucially, is the first base camp of reconciliation. Everybody who stood for election and still wants to play has a guaranteed part of the action. Badmouthing the British government doesn't stop the leaks in school roofs or improve ambulance response times. The focus inevitably shifts to practical policies and their delivery. Who cares about the Battle of the Boyne when there are jobs wanted now? Getting there: got that. You could tell, even from the first few weeks of assembly life, how power and accountability can alter perspectives. (It's the old Yasser Arafat test: make him responsible for clean tap water and electrical supplies and he is seen in a different light.) The practical politicisation of politicians is the underpinning of peace. But how, thereafter, does Northern Ireland move on the next camp, to the stage where leaking school roofs or job losses bring electoral retribution? The difficulty with the Good Friday agreement is that it doesn't know: it never envisages a Bad Saturday. Our old chum d'Hondt, with his mathematical system to share out the fruits of proportional representation, operates relentlessly. The assembly, monitored by equality commissioners, has inclusion engraved on its founding statutes. If you're one of the chosen 108, you have a stake: you have to register as a nationalist or a unionist or something other and your vote matters, by parallel consent or weighted majority, in the choice of every committee, every chairman, every minister. It seems an odd question to put, but where is the opposition in such a controlled, infinitely balanced arena? Answer: except for Paisley, stomping on the lawn outside, there won't be an opposition that matters. The big boys within the walls are yoked together for all Good Fridays. We ought to be clear that that fix, however essential it currently seems, is also a terrible snare. It freezes the religious divides and histories in another time warp. It makes party labels the key to power and seals them in their own little boxes. It purposely delays the moment when the Unionists or Sinn Fein or the SDLP will look out from their own sectarian audiences and begin to match their policies to the orientations of London or of Dublin. In short, to practise the real politics which can free Northern Ireland from its infernal cocoon. I want to see Sinn Fein's policy bag emptied on to the floor for wider inspection so that I can see how its old collection of sub-Marxist nostrums is changing (just as the ANC in South Africa has changed). I want to hear about hospital waiting lists and bobbies on the beat. I want to see David Trimble and Gerry Adams locked in debate about gay rights. I want a relevance which doesn't end at the ferry terminal. I would even (ye gods!) love a good row over the euro. The latest wobbly triumph of Trimble is a million miles from such mundane joys. It is still locked in its own, claustrophobic cage, still absorbed with the symbolism of flags and guns fallen silent but not destroyed: the whether, not the how. In mainland Britain, we have handed in all our guns, because that is the law. In Belfast, the legacy of Dunblane doesn't count. The debate remains wholly internalised. Devolution, within the United Kingdom, means finding a different kind of balance. It means finding a matching political system that fits. It means the political ability to talk about the same things in the same tone of voice and to exact the same kind of electoral punishment in failure. That is the only real culmination of what we glibly call the "peace process". A new rhythm and new beginning which one distant day may be called normality. <BR>Peter Preston
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Peter Preston .
|
After the perils of Pauline, the triumphs of Trimble. And with yet another bound, our unlikely hero is free, until the next time. The peace process is saved: mainland Britain switches its attention over to England against Brazil: Peter Mandelson prepares to concentrate on the next election campaign. A crisis averted becomes inside page news for yesterday's papers. This is politics as usual, which disguises the fact that there is nothing usual about Northern Irish politics. What, for instance, would any normal party leader do if his deputy drifted off to Taiwan for the vital days of decision-forming? What would Blair do to Prescott? He would drop big John into oblivion from a great height, not greet him home and fete him as some mighty prophet. Yet John Taylor, preened with self-importance, is hailed merely because he agrees to support his boss. You don't have to be loyal to be a loyalist. Jeffrey Donaldson and the rejectionists, playing to a bizarre audience of 860 grandees, won't give up. Paisley's DUP will probably stalk away from the reconvened assembly and rail outside the walls. Even without the IRA's dumps of mystic verbiage, words put beyond use where Cyril Ramaphosa keeps his dictionary, the scope for trouble remains almost infinite. It is painfully easy, amid such confusion, just to recite the word "process" as some kind of mantra and to forget what it means. Pause, though. What is this peace process? It is a formula for reconciliation and quiet on the streets. It puts London and Dublin in a settled context. It persuades once mortal enemies to sit side by side as ministerial colleagues, deciding about jobs and schools and hospitals. By this transference of power, too, it seeks to make Ulster politics real at last, freed from a time warp of rhetoric and opposition posturings: the most necessary devolution of the lot. But here there are other connections. Real politics also means winning and losing elections. It means change to the pulse of democracy - the eventual boot for Blair, the rise of the pensioner's friend. It involves ebb and flow. We know that already from the matching devolutions of the last three years. Alun Michael has ebbed for ever. Donald Dewar may soon be gone with the flow. If you give voters assemblies and executives to elect, the voters become sovereign. You may make it difficult for them by installing the drag anchors of proportional representation: Scotland and Wales have those. They're stuck, by design, with coalition administrations. They, though, can change the weighting of those coalitions and the faces who front them. One fine day, there'll be a Scots Nat chief minister in Edinburgh. One predictable day, Labour will be cut out of the Cardiff action. The question for Belfast, the hole in the heart of this process, is where the reality of politics bites there. Let's assume that the assembly is back in business, stronger than before because of the worsting of Donaldson and the guarantees of the IRA. Trimble and his other (useful) deputy, Seamus Mallon, resume work: Martin McGuinness is more interested in A level results than Armalite stocks. That, crucially, is the first base camp of reconciliation. Everybody who stood for election and still wants to play has a guaranteed part of the action. Badmouthing the British government doesn't stop the leaks in school roofs or improve ambulance response times. The focus inevitably shifts to practical policies and their delivery. Who cares about the Battle of the Boyne when there are jobs wanted now? Getting there: got that. You could tell, even from the first few weeks of assembly life, how power and accountability can alter perspectives. (It's the old Yasser Arafat test: make him responsible for clean tap water and electrical supplies and he is seen in a different light.) The practical politicisation of politicians is the underpinning of peace. But how, thereafter, does Northern Ireland move on the next camp, to the stage where leaking school roofs or job losses bring electoral retribution? The difficulty with the Good Friday agreement is that it doesn't know: it never envisages a Bad Saturday. Our old chum d'Hondt, with his mathematical system to share out the fruits of proportional representation, operates relentlessly. The assembly, monitored by equality commissioners, has inclusion engraved on its founding statutes. If you're one of the chosen 108, you have a stake: you have to register as a nationalist or a unionist or something other and your vote matters, by parallel consent or weighted majority, in the choice of every committee, every chairman, every minister. It seems an odd question to put, but where is the opposition in such a controlled, infinitely balanced arena? Answer: except for Paisley, stomping on the lawn outside, there won't be an opposition that matters. The big boys within the walls are yoked together for all Good Fridays. We ought to be clear that that fix, however essential it currently seems, is also a terrible snare. It freezes the religious divides and histories in another time warp. It makes party labels the key to power and seals them in their own little boxes. It purposely delays the moment when the Unionists or Sinn Fein or the SDLP will look out from their own sectarian audiences and begin to match their policies to the orientations of London or of Dublin. In short, to practise the real politics which can free Northern Ireland from its infernal cocoon. I want to see Sinn Fein's policy bag emptied on to the floor for wider inspection so that I can see how its old collection of sub-Marxist nostrums is changing (just as the ANC in South Africa has changed). I want to hear about hospital waiting lists and bobbies on the beat. I want to see David Trimble and Gerry Adams locked in debate about gay rights. I want a relevance which doesn't end at the ferry terminal. I would even (ye gods!) love a good row over the euro. The latest wobbly triumph of Trimble is a million miles from such mundane joys. It is still locked in its own, claustrophobic cage, still absorbed with the symbolism of flags and guns fallen silent but not destroyed: the whether, not the how. In mainland Britain, we have handed in all our guns, because that is the law. In Belfast, the legacy of Dunblane doesn't count. The debate remains wholly internalised. Devolution, within the United Kingdom, means finding a different kind of balance. It means finding a matching political system that fits. It means the political ability to talk about the same things in the same tone of voice and to exact the same kind of electoral punishment in failure. That is the only real culmination of what we glibly call the "peace process". A new rhythm and new beginning which one distant day may be called normality. <BR>Peter Preston
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7peterpreston
| 2UK
|
There's nothing like five weeks in court - as I spent with the Hamiltons - for making you feel utterly puny. Up in the witness box or down with the groundlings, the litany seems the same. "I can't remember." "I have no memory of that." "I have no such recollection." "I definitely have no such recollection." What happened five or 10 or 15 years ago? The fogs of forgetfulness fall constantly over witnesses on every side. Dunno. Search me, guv. There's a dreadful truth about human inadequacy lurking here. We're supposed to be men and women of intelligence, summoned to testify with extreme precision. The judge says he lays great store by consistency in detail. But how is such a miraculous state of grace to be produced? Mr Desmond Browne QC (for the plaintiff) keeps calling Miss Bozak, Miss Bond and vice versa. Two key witnesses; one tongue lock. My wife in the gallery persists in her belief that he's really Dennis Browne. (Some confusion with Dirty Den?) My lord on the bench introduces me solemnly as "editor of the Guardian for 20 days," which would be swift going, even on the old Daily Express. Memory as the millennium ends seems a suitable subject: intractable in its furthest scientific reaches. The definitive learned journal, Learning and Memory, constantly promises enlightenment. Try the essay on "the effect of varying the intensity and train frequency of forelimb and cerebelar crossing fiber conditioning stimuli on the latency of conditioned eye-block responses in decerebrate ferrets". You may be suitably instructed about "interneurons and food averse conditioning in the slug brain" but you will find very little that relates to Court 13. Only, perhaps, Hamann, Cahill, McGough and Squire on "intact enhancement of declarative memory for emotional material in amnesia," which means that, when the team told their forgetful subjects "emotionally arousing stories" with video slides attached, the images lingered longer. That is not a shattering conclusion. We assume that it's the high drama of our lives (professional and personal) which defines the scenes we do remember. The death of Kennedy, the moment 10 Christmases ago when Romania was suddenly free: or, closer to home, the births and crises of sickness. And yet, for me, the most vivid memories are often oddly tangential. I don't remember what my mother said 50 years ago when she told us our father had died. I do remember sitting in the bay window overlooking the lawn a few hours later and seeing his Biro pen and asking whether it could be mine now. "Yes, of course." And then feeling selfish and petty and suddenly overcome with grief. I remember my father in only one moment, when he'd bought another second-hand car (as he did every six months) and was showing me the gears. It was an Opel with a gear shift on the steering wheel. Slam the car door and he is gone. Why is memory so full of shifting sands? I have a good one, but stocked with useless facts. The assorted filmo-graphy of Rhonda Fleming; the real names of Tony Curtis and Walter Matthau. (Bernie Schwarz: Wally Matuschanskayasky). But it is a particular kind of memory. Faces? I could never have been a politician (or, if so, only David Steel, who once told me he was hopeless at putting names to faces). Those with that gift are kings. I once, after an absence of years, wandered into the Ledra Palace hotel in Nicosia, and there at reception was Pan, the chief concierge. "Ah, Mr Preston. Nice to see you again." One face among thousands passing through. He should have been president. Nor is there the consistency of a whole vision on call. Does such a thing exist? Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills, an evocation of a rural life so complete in its detail, so passionate in its re-creation, that you wondered where memory ended and fiction began. Does any child have the capacity to deliver back intact a world that is decades gone? I remember the first piece from Bosnia that Maggie O'Kane filed for the Guardian, but when I look through the yellowed cuttings of editorials, I can read a piece and not know that I wrote it. I can remember shaking Richard Nixon's cold, limp hand, but not a sentence that he said. I can remember ripping the agency tape of Harold Wilson's resignation from the wire service, but nothing of the paper that followed. And family memories are a compilation of all these things, as shared patchwork. My wife remembers with uncanny accuracy what we ate or wore 20 years ago. She remembers where I was when our first son was born (at the office, working) and where when the second son followed (downstairs, boiling water). Things I choose to forget; just, alas, as I choose to let slip the time when she walked down the hill to the hospital, carrying a suitcase, to have our twins induced (I was in the office, working). Are such omissions an acknowledgement of frailty? Naturally so. The taunting thing about memory is the essential frailty that dogs its every lurch into the past. Sometimes you can recall pivotal scenes which other players have totally forgotten. (I summoned back one in the Hamilton saga). But sometimes the screen mists and fades without explanation. What do I remember of my longest day in war, twice strafed by Indian jets in a Pakistani ditch? I remember cracking my teeth on a metal screw in the ravioli at Flashman's, Rawalpindi. Goodbye to the old century. We remember it after a fashion. But the most terrifying blight is not to remember it at all. I once had lunch with one of my heroes, Kenneth Millar, the writer Ross MacDonald, whose best-selling pitch was the haunting return of buried evils. Within a couple of years, Alzheimer's destroyed him. It was, and is, the purest tragedy, the annihilation of being. A witness no more: not even a slug or a ferret. A mind full of punctilious richness shut down like a broken computer. Memory full, memory wiped.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Peter Preston .
|
There's nothing like five weeks in court - as I spent with the Hamiltons - for making you feel utterly puny. Up in the witness box or down with the groundlings, the litany seems the same. "I can't remember." "I have no memory of that." "I have no such recollection." "I definitely have no such recollection." What happened five or 10 or 15 years ago? The fogs of forgetfulness fall constantly over witnesses on every side. Dunno. Search me, guv. There's a dreadful truth about human inadequacy lurking here. We're supposed to be men and women of intelligence, summoned to testify with extreme precision. The judge says he lays great store by consistency in detail. But how is such a miraculous state of grace to be produced? Mr Desmond Browne QC (for the plaintiff) keeps calling Miss Bozak, Miss Bond and vice versa. Two key witnesses; one tongue lock. My wife in the gallery persists in her belief that he's really Dennis Browne. (Some confusion with Dirty Den?) My lord on the bench introduces me solemnly as "editor of the Guardian for 20 days," which would be swift going, even on the old Daily Express. Memory as the millennium ends seems a suitable subject: intractable in its furthest scientific reaches. The definitive learned journal, Learning and Memory, constantly promises enlightenment. Try the essay on "the effect of varying the intensity and train frequency of forelimb and cerebelar crossing fiber conditioning stimuli on the latency of conditioned eye-block responses in decerebrate ferrets". You may be suitably instructed about "interneurons and food averse conditioning in the slug brain" but you will find very little that relates to Court 13. Only, perhaps, Hamann, Cahill, McGough and Squire on "intact enhancement of declarative memory for emotional material in amnesia," which means that, when the team told their forgetful subjects "emotionally arousing stories" with video slides attached, the images lingered longer. That is not a shattering conclusion. We assume that it's the high drama of our lives (professional and personal) which defines the scenes we do remember. The death of Kennedy, the moment 10 Christmases ago when Romania was suddenly free: or, closer to home, the births and crises of sickness. And yet, for me, the most vivid memories are often oddly tangential. I don't remember what my mother said 50 years ago when she told us our father had died. I do remember sitting in the bay window overlooking the lawn a few hours later and seeing his Biro pen and asking whether it could be mine now. "Yes, of course." And then feeling selfish and petty and suddenly overcome with grief. I remember my father in only one moment, when he'd bought another second-hand car (as he did every six months) and was showing me the gears. It was an Opel with a gear shift on the steering wheel. Slam the car door and he is gone. Why is memory so full of shifting sands? I have a good one, but stocked with useless facts. The assorted filmo-graphy of Rhonda Fleming; the real names of Tony Curtis and Walter Matthau. (Bernie Schwarz: Wally Matuschanskayasky). But it is a particular kind of memory. Faces? I could never have been a politician (or, if so, only David Steel, who once told me he was hopeless at putting names to faces). Those with that gift are kings. I once, after an absence of years, wandered into the Ledra Palace hotel in Nicosia, and there at reception was Pan, the chief concierge. "Ah, Mr Preston. Nice to see you again." One face among thousands passing through. He should have been president. Nor is there the consistency of a whole vision on call. Does such a thing exist? Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills, an evocation of a rural life so complete in its detail, so passionate in its re-creation, that you wondered where memory ended and fiction began. Does any child have the capacity to deliver back intact a world that is decades gone? I remember the first piece from Bosnia that Maggie O'Kane filed for the Guardian, but when I look through the yellowed cuttings of editorials, I can read a piece and not know that I wrote it. I can remember shaking Richard Nixon's cold, limp hand, but not a sentence that he said. I can remember ripping the agency tape of Harold Wilson's resignation from the wire service, but nothing of the paper that followed. And family memories are a compilation of all these things, as shared patchwork. My wife remembers with uncanny accuracy what we ate or wore 20 years ago. She remembers where I was when our first son was born (at the office, working) and where when the second son followed (downstairs, boiling water). Things I choose to forget; just, alas, as I choose to let slip the time when she walked down the hill to the hospital, carrying a suitcase, to have our twins induced (I was in the office, working). Are such omissions an acknowledgement of frailty? Naturally so. The taunting thing about memory is the essential frailty that dogs its every lurch into the past. Sometimes you can recall pivotal scenes which other players have totally forgotten. (I summoned back one in the Hamilton saga). But sometimes the screen mists and fades without explanation. What do I remember of my longest day in war, twice strafed by Indian jets in a Pakistani ditch? I remember cracking my teeth on a metal screw in the ravioli at Flashman's, Rawalpindi. Goodbye to the old century. We remember it after a fashion. But the most terrifying blight is not to remember it at all. I once had lunch with one of my heroes, Kenneth Millar, the writer Ross MacDonald, whose best-selling pitch was the haunting return of buried evils. Within a couple of years, Alzheimer's destroyed him. It was, and is, the purest tragedy, the annihilation of being. A witness no more: not even a slug or a ferret. A mind full of punctilious richness shut down like a broken computer. Memory full, memory wiped.
|
7peterpreston
| 2UK
|
The inquiry evidence is clear enough. There was totally unacceptable violence: "whipping on the soles of the feet, burning with lighted cigarettes". Victims had "leather thongs tied round their necks and were dragged along the ground". Perhaps 170 more prisoners were involved: at least 32 emerged badly injured. Another case for concern of the kind that besets the MoD in increasing and worrying numbers if weekend reports speak true? No: actually this is the detritus of Northern Tanganyika 1953, when young district officer Brian Hayward and 21 men were dispatched to "screen" any wandering Kikuyu who might have crossed colonial borders and brought the infection of Mau Mau with them. Faded stuff, creeping into irrelevance? Who, you might well ask, cares any longer about the East Africa of half a century ago - or remembers what happened before Nyasaland turned into Malawi? Who, for that matter, gives a moment's thought to the shade of Sir Gerald Templer and the ruthless ways of his Malayan "emergency"? Mr Gordon Brown, stepping out boldly where only Tony Blair usually goes, tells us to stop apologising for our colonial past. Britain's legacy - of law, freedom and honour - is something to be proud of, even before he opens his chequebook. And that is true, in a way, if truth is a basket of apples. More Metropolitan commissioners of police than I care to contemplate have lectured me over the years about the inevitability of the occasional bad apple. A few cops on the take or a prisoner bruised and battered in his cell? Sorry, but in a force of so many thousand, there are always going to be a few bad Coxes, old boy. It appals us, just like you: but keep it in perspective, please. Don't let isolated horrors taint the dedicated work of the great majority of officers. That's an utterly reasonable pitch - as obviously valid as the editor of the New York Times claiming one Jayson Blair doesn't make a barrel of rancid cider in his newsroom. But you can't stop there and turn away, for sometimes the tale of the odd rotten apple is also a rotten defence of a rotten regime. There's the point, for some of us, in repeatedly raising the lessons of Caroline Elkins' new book Britain's Gulag, about the Kenya of the 1950's where tens - maybe hundreds - of thousands of Kikuyu died, where well over a thousand were summarily hanged, where 300,000 or more were thrown in and out of 50 detention camps without trial, sentence or foreseeable end to their ordeal. We don't want to spoil Gordon's breakfast (or stop him becoming foreign secretary, if the travel bug bites again). We simply think that he should eat the whole apple pie. Nobody, looking back at the final throes of colonial withdrawal, can escape seeing a pattern of events endlessly repeated: too many deaths out of reach of justice, too many cover-ups and self-serving "reports" into manifest atrocities, too many ministers back in London washing their hands. And all because, as Professor Elkins says, the perceived "bestiality, filth and evil" of the victims rendered them "subhuman, and therefore without rights". These were enemies in war and enemies of civilisation. Anything went for them, just as seemingly, for instance, anything goes in Abu Ghraib. Putrefying pippins on a bough far out of reach? That is the convenient answer over decades - convenient not just for politicians in a muck sweat, but also for we ordinary Joes who like our squaddies cheery and our coppers honest. We want to believe the best of them. We're horrified when we feel ourselves let down. We bow meekly enough before the word of the Met or Hoon or Rumsfeld. Other countries, to be sure, have their problems. Remember the French in Algiers or the legions of the lost in Argentina. Remember Auschwitz, Harry. Thank heaven that we, in our civilisation and tolerance, can never slide so far. Thank heaven that all our difficulties, however distressing, are merely apple dumplings. But it's not good enough any longer: simply not good enough. The reality of the matter, the reality we need to face, is both more complex and more banal. Have awful, and continuingly awful, things gone on at Guantnamo Bay? Of course: the inmates are subhuman makers of terrorist war wallowing in their own filth. And Abu Ghraib? Make that a dismal ditto. And Basra? Well, we'll see what the court martial decides, but every picture tells a story - and didn't an order called Frago152 from Army Legal Services warn commanders that "detained people should not be assaulted"? In short, on the British army's own evidence, there was alarm that things might go disastrously astray once the Iraq war itself was over: the first days of peace were edgy, going on ominous. But where, pray, did this message "to commanders" go next? Not, apparently, to some crumbs at the bottom of the basket. Not, in Abu Ghraib, to corporals and privates filling their photo album. So there we go back once more to the colonies of long ago. Young Hayward served "three months hard labour", keeping accounts in a hotel. Guys higher up the chain who'd beaten prisoners into submission got OBE's or Whitehall jobs in intelligence. Nobody important could take the rap because that would suggest the violence was sanctioned. Now history, eerily, repeats itself (for the little corporal of Abu Ghraib, amongst others). And we have one more chance to learn: not that this or that war was evil, or this or that back deserved to be flogged; not that our boys are better or worse - or that the war itself was right, wrong or indifferent. The lesson says there is no superiority here, nor any bland assumptions of civilisation. The lesson says we can all be subhuman, too.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Peter Preston .
|
The inquiry evidence is clear enough. There was totally unacceptable violence: "whipping on the soles of the feet, burning with lighted cigarettes". Victims had "leather thongs tied round their necks and were dragged along the ground". Perhaps 170 more prisoners were involved: at least 32 emerged badly injured. Another case for concern of the kind that besets the MoD in increasing and worrying numbers if weekend reports speak true? No: actually this is the detritus of Northern Tanganyika 1953, when young district officer Brian Hayward and 21 men were dispatched to "screen" any wandering Kikuyu who might have crossed colonial borders and brought the infection of Mau Mau with them. Faded stuff, creeping into irrelevance? Who, you might well ask, cares any longer about the East Africa of half a century ago - or remembers what happened before Nyasaland turned into Malawi? Who, for that matter, gives a moment's thought to the shade of Sir Gerald Templer and the ruthless ways of his Malayan "emergency"? Mr Gordon Brown, stepping out boldly where only Tony Blair usually goes, tells us to stop apologising for our colonial past. Britain's legacy - of law, freedom and honour - is something to be proud of, even before he opens his chequebook. And that is true, in a way, if truth is a basket of apples. More Metropolitan commissioners of police than I care to contemplate have lectured me over the years about the inevitability of the occasional bad apple. A few cops on the take or a prisoner bruised and battered in his cell? Sorry, but in a force of so many thousand, there are always going to be a few bad Coxes, old boy. It appals us, just like you: but keep it in perspective, please. Don't let isolated horrors taint the dedicated work of the great majority of officers. That's an utterly reasonable pitch - as obviously valid as the editor of the New York Times claiming one Jayson Blair doesn't make a barrel of rancid cider in his newsroom. But you can't stop there and turn away, for sometimes the tale of the odd rotten apple is also a rotten defence of a rotten regime. There's the point, for some of us, in repeatedly raising the lessons of Caroline Elkins' new book Britain's Gulag, about the Kenya of the 1950's where tens - maybe hundreds - of thousands of Kikuyu died, where well over a thousand were summarily hanged, where 300,000 or more were thrown in and out of 50 detention camps without trial, sentence or foreseeable end to their ordeal. We don't want to spoil Gordon's breakfast (or stop him becoming foreign secretary, if the travel bug bites again). We simply think that he should eat the whole apple pie. Nobody, looking back at the final throes of colonial withdrawal, can escape seeing a pattern of events endlessly repeated: too many deaths out of reach of justice, too many cover-ups and self-serving "reports" into manifest atrocities, too many ministers back in London washing their hands. And all because, as Professor Elkins says, the perceived "bestiality, filth and evil" of the victims rendered them "subhuman, and therefore without rights". These were enemies in war and enemies of civilisation. Anything went for them, just as seemingly, for instance, anything goes in Abu Ghraib. Putrefying pippins on a bough far out of reach? That is the convenient answer over decades - convenient not just for politicians in a muck sweat, but also for we ordinary Joes who like our squaddies cheery and our coppers honest. We want to believe the best of them. We're horrified when we feel ourselves let down. We bow meekly enough before the word of the Met or Hoon or Rumsfeld. Other countries, to be sure, have their problems. Remember the French in Algiers or the legions of the lost in Argentina. Remember Auschwitz, Harry. Thank heaven that we, in our civilisation and tolerance, can never slide so far. Thank heaven that all our difficulties, however distressing, are merely apple dumplings. But it's not good enough any longer: simply not good enough. The reality of the matter, the reality we need to face, is both more complex and more banal. Have awful, and continuingly awful, things gone on at Guantnamo Bay? Of course: the inmates are subhuman makers of terrorist war wallowing in their own filth. And Abu Ghraib? Make that a dismal ditto. And Basra? Well, we'll see what the court martial decides, but every picture tells a story - and didn't an order called Frago152 from Army Legal Services warn commanders that "detained people should not be assaulted"? In short, on the British army's own evidence, there was alarm that things might go disastrously astray once the Iraq war itself was over: the first days of peace were edgy, going on ominous. But where, pray, did this message "to commanders" go next? Not, apparently, to some crumbs at the bottom of the basket. Not, in Abu Ghraib, to corporals and privates filling their photo album. So there we go back once more to the colonies of long ago. Young Hayward served "three months hard labour", keeping accounts in a hotel. Guys higher up the chain who'd beaten prisoners into submission got OBE's or Whitehall jobs in intelligence. Nobody important could take the rap because that would suggest the violence was sanctioned. Now history, eerily, repeats itself (for the little corporal of Abu Ghraib, amongst others). And we have one more chance to learn: not that this or that war was evil, or this or that back deserved to be flogged; not that our boys are better or worse - or that the war itself was right, wrong or indifferent. The lesson says there is no superiority here, nor any bland assumptions of civilisation. The lesson says we can all be subhuman, too.
|
2hugoyoung
| 2UK
|
The Millennium Dome is out of sight. Down there in Greenwich, it's a long way from being in your face, even for most Londoners. For the nation, on whose children the prime minister once said the dome should confer "memories so strong that it gives them that abiding sense of purpose and unity that stays with them through the rest of their lives", it could be on another planet. But let memory speak, before the monster goes. It has been the most particular and incontestable folly of our time. The physical distance assists the political amnesia. It's hard to find any politician who will talk about the dome now. Lord Falconer shuffles forward to mutter about an exit strategy, while Chris Smith is compelled, as a coda to the disaster the government set in train, to pour another 29m of lottery money down the Greenwich drain, the better to ensure that this exit, selling off the asset for a fraction of what was put into it, can duly happen. The announcement is as blithe as it is insulting. Otherwise, what's past is past, we're told. Time to move on. Time to talk about Tate Modern, an altogether superior monument built from the pockets of the poor who finance the lottery. The dome? Forget it. This request I cannot meet. Somehow boredom wouldn't measure up. There was such grandeur here that slinking silently away would do an injustice to history. And history was the frame. Greenwich is the home of time, the government said. This was why Britain had a special duty to put on a millennial event that would lead the world and startle all who came from the ends of the earth to see it. The dome would "make a statement for the whole nation," said Mr Blair. It was the way for us "to take stock of ourselves". How, by that test, do we look? The amount of lottery money consumed on the dome is closing in on 550m. Only half the expected audience have so far been willing to pay out of their own pockets for the experience. For this financial failure, they themselves, the British and global public, are to blame. Damn the punters, they inexplicably found better things to do. So the first thing we look, as a nation, is culpable. We let our prophets down. We didn't do what we were told. But this was because we were not properly informed. The public is one scapegoat, the media are another. Asked a few awkward questions, Michael Heseltine, who can be called the dome's first begetter, was anticipating this before the money had been spent. "It's virtually impossible," he said, "to do anything in this country of any imagination without the media trying to vilify and ruin it." He was highlighting another national defect. We are apparently credulous in overlooking a brilliant creation just because a bunch of malign journalists tell us to. Or so the minister said.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Hugo Young .
|
The Millennium Dome is out of sight. Down there in Greenwich, it's a long way from being in your face, even for most Londoners. For the nation, on whose children the prime minister once said the dome should confer "memories so strong that it gives them that abiding sense of purpose and unity that stays with them through the rest of their lives", it could be on another planet. But let memory speak, before the monster goes. It has been the most particular and incontestable folly of our time. The physical distance assists the political amnesia. It's hard to find any politician who will talk about the dome now. Lord Falconer shuffles forward to mutter about an exit strategy, while Chris Smith is compelled, as a coda to the disaster the government set in train, to pour another 29m of lottery money down the Greenwich drain, the better to ensure that this exit, selling off the asset for a fraction of what was put into it, can duly happen. The announcement is as blithe as it is insulting. Otherwise, what's past is past, we're told. Time to move on. Time to talk about Tate Modern, an altogether superior monument built from the pockets of the poor who finance the lottery. The dome? Forget it. This request I cannot meet. Somehow boredom wouldn't measure up. There was such grandeur here that slinking silently away would do an injustice to history. And history was the frame. Greenwich is the home of time, the government said. This was why Britain had a special duty to put on a millennial event that would lead the world and startle all who came from the ends of the earth to see it. The dome would "make a statement for the whole nation," said Mr Blair. It was the way for us "to take stock of ourselves". How, by that test, do we look? The amount of lottery money consumed on the dome is closing in on 550m. Only half the expected audience have so far been willing to pay out of their own pockets for the experience. For this financial failure, they themselves, the British and global public, are to blame. Damn the punters, they inexplicably found better things to do. So the first thing we look, as a nation, is culpable. We let our prophets down. We didn't do what we were told. But this was because we were not properly informed. The public is one scapegoat, the media are another. Asked a few awkward questions, Michael Heseltine, who can be called the dome's first begetter, was anticipating this before the money had been spent. "It's virtually impossible," he said, "to do anything in this country of any imagination without the media trying to vilify and ruin it." He was highlighting another national defect. We are apparently credulous in overlooking a brilliant creation just because a bunch of malign journalists tell us to. Or so the minister said.
|
2hugoyoung
| 2UK
|
Tony Martin should never have been sentenced to life imprisonment. Punishing the Norfolk farmer in this way is an outrage. It offends any sane person's instincts about the meaning of justice. On the spectrum of heinous murders it places Martin at the same point as the Yorkshire Ripper, which is plainly unacceptable. All murderers do not weigh the same in the scales of human wickedness, yet we discover that they are equal before the law. Something very wrong is happening to a man who went too far, with a terrible result, in defending himself and his property. It is obvious, therefore, that politicians should be heard from. They have a duty to say what they would do not only for Martin but for others in similar situations. William Hague had a go at doing that yesterday. Very naturally there has been an outcry, and you don't have to be a Daily Mail reader to experience the indignation that produces it. But one does need to take a little care. Ends and means bear some examination. The very same political instincts that drive Mr Hague to lash out in all directions are the ones that sent Martin to jail for life. Politicians, especially Tory politicians, are accomplices before the fact of the outrage that has now occurred. For Martin got his life sentence because the judge had no option but to impose it. Ever since the abolition of capital punishment, life has been mandatory for murder. This was the political sweetener that got rid of the gallows, a necessary reassurance to the public at that revolutionary penal moment. But as the gallows receded, the weakness of the mandatory life sentence became clearer, precisely for the reason that it fails to distinguish between the Ripper and the farmer. By lumping all murders together, it reduces recognition of what is truly heinous, and nullifies the grades of stigma between a desperate act of domestic violence and contract murders by a professional killer. Over the years, there has been a build-up of studies and reports with detailed argument showing that life should be a maximum and not a mandatory sentence for murder. It would not only be fairer but more effective. The Butler committee said so in 1975, the Advisory Council on the Penal System in 1978, the Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1980, the parliamentary all-party penal affairs group in 1986, a House of Lords select committee in 1989. All lord chief justices in living memory have thought that a judge was no less qualified to exercise discretion in murder cases than in others, and to determine a fixed sentence appropriate to the case - retaining life only for the very worst. If this collective wisdom had been followed, Tony Martin would now be serving a proper and not a repugnant sentence for murder. But the wisdom was spurned by politicians. Although it acquired critical mass in the Tory years, no home secretary would listen to it. David Waddington said removing mandatory life would "greatly damage public confidence". Kenneth Baker said that all murder, whatever the circumstances, was more abhorrent than any other crime. Douglas Hurd, an aspirant reformer, said it was impossible to get away from the politics of it. None of them paid attention to their colleague, Lord Chancellor Hailsham, who scorned the mandatory life rule and what he called the "hairy heel of populism" that made it apparently untouchable. The Martin case could be used as a unique moment to turn the hairy heel to advantage. Isn't it the best proof yet available of how mandatory life sentences can offend popular instincts? Couldn't the thorny issues of what is appropriate self-defence and what is reasonable force be dealt with, after the jury has spoken, precisely by the judicial discretion that the mandatory sentence takes away? If, as the tabloids and the Tories scream, a better balance must be struck between wicked criminals and overheated householders with a gun to hand, isn't reform of the blanket life sentence by far the most sensible way to do it? Not to William Hague. Nor to Jack Straw - though abolishing mandatory life is another penal reform Labour once favoured but now rejects. Instead Hague finds the conventional populist appeal irresistible, and overlooks the penal failures it incessantly produced during the Thatcher-Howard years. In 1996, after all, Michael Howard produced mandatory minimum three-year sentences for persistent domestic burglars, which didn't do much good to Tony Martin. A decade of answering what Hague now righteously calls "an explosion of anger among millions of law abiding people" with explosions of anger by ranting politicians had limited success in crime-reduction, and still less in restoring to society a hard sense of the difference between right and wrong. There are many reasons for that failure: moral decline, godless materialism, social neglect, personal indifference, a duty-free society. For vigilante-ism to be written into law, the remedy Hague comes close to proposing, is insupportable, but people must be able, within the law, to defend themselves proportionately to the threat they face. Martin had an illegal weapon, and committed a shocking crime. The issue is the context, especially the legal context, in which this should henceforth be dealt with. There are sharply contrasting possibilities. The politicians' way is to pass sweeping laws of ever greater crudity. These are what have put Tony Martin in jail for life, and Hague wants more of them. They reject individual justice, in favour of grand statements that brush aside particulars. They may catch some serious criminals and send them down for a long time, but people of minor as well as major evil are caught in a penal regime which, more and more over the past decade, has promoted political over judicial decision-making. Life sentences, with discretion over the real time served given to the home secretary, are a burgeoning phenomenon of the British system, now extending well beyond murder. They undermine the notion of justice as a juridical not a political commodity, applying to people not to categories, addressing real lives and not tabloid furies. The judges' way is different. The judge uses his judgment in all the circum- stances. He can look at Tony Martin and see he's not one of the Krays. Restoring his power to discriminate between one murderer and another would restore justice without imperilling social order in any way. Judges can be as hard as politicians, but aren't locked into a system that guarantees injustice. Actually, they will get their power back. As the Bulger case showed, political intervention in sentencing is beginning to seep away, because it violates the European human rights convention. This will retrieve some sanity. But not before the Martin case has sent politicians raging in the wrong direction. <A
|
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Hugo Young .
|
Tony Martin should never have been sentenced to life imprisonment. Punishing the Norfolk farmer in this way is an outrage. It offends any sane person's instincts about the meaning of justice. On the spectrum of heinous murders it places Martin at the same point as the Yorkshire Ripper, which is plainly unacceptable. All murderers do not weigh the same in the scales of human wickedness, yet we discover that they are equal before the law. Something very wrong is happening to a man who went too far, with a terrible result, in defending himself and his property. It is obvious, therefore, that politicians should be heard from. They have a duty to say what they would do not only for Martin but for others in similar situations. William Hague had a go at doing that yesterday. Very naturally there has been an outcry, and you don't have to be a Daily Mail reader to experience the indignation that produces it. But one does need to take a little care. Ends and means bear some examination. The very same political instincts that drive Mr Hague to lash out in all directions are the ones that sent Martin to jail for life. Politicians, especially Tory politicians, are accomplices before the fact of the outrage that has now occurred. For Martin got his life sentence because the judge had no option but to impose it. Ever since the abolition of capital punishment, life has been mandatory for murder. This was the political sweetener that got rid of the gallows, a necessary reassurance to the public at that revolutionary penal moment. But as the gallows receded, the weakness of the mandatory life sentence became clearer, precisely for the reason that it fails to distinguish between the Ripper and the farmer. By lumping all murders together, it reduces recognition of what is truly heinous, and nullifies the grades of stigma between a desperate act of domestic violence and contract murders by a professional killer. Over the years, there has been a build-up of studies and reports with detailed argument showing that life should be a maximum and not a mandatory sentence for murder. It would not only be fairer but more effective. The Butler committee said so in 1975, the Advisory Council on the Penal System in 1978, the Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1980, the parliamentary all-party penal affairs group in 1986, a House of Lords select committee in 1989. All lord chief justices in living memory have thought that a judge was no less qualified to exercise discretion in murder cases than in others, and to determine a fixed sentence appropriate to the case - retaining life only for the very worst. If this collective wisdom had been followed, Tony Martin would now be serving a proper and not a repugnant sentence for murder. But the wisdom was spurned by politicians. Although it acquired critical mass in the Tory years, no home secretary would listen to it. David Waddington said removing mandatory life would "greatly damage public confidence". Kenneth Baker said that all murder, whatever the circumstances, was more abhorrent than any other crime. Douglas Hurd, an aspirant reformer, said it was impossible to get away from the politics of it. None of them paid attention to their colleague, Lord Chancellor Hailsham, who scorned the mandatory life rule and what he called the "hairy heel of populism" that made it apparently untouchable. The Martin case could be used as a unique moment to turn the hairy heel to advantage. Isn't it the best proof yet available of how mandatory life sentences can offend popular instincts? Couldn't the thorny issues of what is appropriate self-defence and what is reasonable force be dealt with, after the jury has spoken, precisely by the judicial discretion that the mandatory sentence takes away? If, as the tabloids and the Tories scream, a better balance must be struck between wicked criminals and overheated householders with a gun to hand, isn't reform of the blanket life sentence by far the most sensible way to do it? Not to William Hague. Nor to Jack Straw - though abolishing mandatory life is another penal reform Labour once favoured but now rejects. Instead Hague finds the conventional populist appeal irresistible, and overlooks the penal failures it incessantly produced during the Thatcher-Howard years. In 1996, after all, Michael Howard produced mandatory minimum three-year sentences for persistent domestic burglars, which didn't do much good to Tony Martin. A decade of answering what Hague now righteously calls "an explosion of anger among millions of law abiding people" with explosions of anger by ranting politicians had limited success in crime-reduction, and still less in restoring to society a hard sense of the difference between right and wrong. There are many reasons for that failure: moral decline, godless materialism, social neglect, personal indifference, a duty-free society. For vigilante-ism to be written into law, the remedy Hague comes close to proposing, is insupportable, but people must be able, within the law, to defend themselves proportionately to the threat they face. Martin had an illegal weapon, and committed a shocking crime. The issue is the context, especially the legal context, in which this should henceforth be dealt with. There are sharply contrasting possibilities. The politicians' way is to pass sweeping laws of ever greater crudity. These are what have put Tony Martin in jail for life, and Hague wants more of them. They reject individual justice, in favour of grand statements that brush aside particulars. They may catch some serious criminals and send them down for a long time, but people of minor as well as major evil are caught in a penal regime which, more and more over the past decade, has promoted political over judicial decision-making. Life sentences, with discretion over the real time served given to the home secretary, are a burgeoning phenomenon of the British system, now extending well beyond murder. They undermine the notion of justice as a juridical not a political commodity, applying to people not to categories, addressing real lives and not tabloid furies. The judges' way is different. The judge uses his judgment in all the circum- stances. He can look at Tony Martin and see he's not one of the Krays. Restoring his power to discriminate between one murderer and another would restore justice without imperilling social order in any way. Judges can be as hard as politicians, but aren't locked into a system that guarantees injustice. Actually, they will get their power back. As the Bulger case showed, political intervention in sentencing is beginning to seep away, because it violates the European human rights convention. This will retrieve some sanity. But not before the Martin case has sent politicians raging in the wrong direction. <A
|
2hugoyoung
| 2UK
|
It is hard to believe the Northern Ireland peace process may yet founder. Such a collapse would affront many histories of evolution from civil war to political peace all over the world. The process has come so far. Yet this, of course, is the very reason why, in the end game, the deal may not stick. The rejectionism that has sustained the war for 30 years resists the notion that the peace momentum must lead somewhere. The end is the time when it is put to the only test that counts. The closer this comes, the harder it gets. The two intransigencies on display here are no longer contesting power, still less, in any essential way, religion. Fundamentally, they're about attitudes to the prospect of mutual surrender. The surrenders that have got us this far have been substantial already. But there is just one more surrender to make, the decisive one, which really could liquidate, in the practical world, the violence of the decades. After the years of civil war, in which the ceaseless flow of calumnies and special pleading and implanted deviousness always confused the issue, two forms of real sincerity are now ranged against each other. That is why the challenge may defeat them. On the republican side, there is a sincere belief that the war is over. The guns are silent, the Semtex is buried. Sinn Fein-IRA, the most disciplined political organisation in Europe, has embarked on a political track which its leaders, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, know they can carry through. They have taken the republicans very far. Even the IRA, when speaking solo - if namelessly - for itself, asserts that its commitment to the process is "total", and says it wants "a permanent peace". Look at what is happening, says Mr Adams. Irish republicanism has given up its constitutional claim to the north. We have carried the terrorists a long way, as the IRA statement proves. We are sitting down and starting to run the country rather than destroying it. We talk with the hated British government. All this shows our renunciation of the past. It is a fantastic, constructive shift. We have chosen a different track, which we can sustain up to and through the deadline of May 22, even against forays by our dissident groups. The credence to be given to this, moreover, is greater for the length of time over which we resisted it. When we do a U-turn, we are serious. The Good Friday agreement prescribes arms decommissioning by May, but that is not, at bottom, the point. Decommissioning, Mr Adams concedes, is achievable. But the point, he says, is that de facto the war has stopped. To disregard such progress towards an appointment with destiny in May would be to imperil what has been done under the shadow of the undecommissioned, but unused, gun. Let this objectively existing reality be sustained. On the unionists' side one recognises the same brand of sincerity. By historic standards it is just as startling. The reality of peace has drawn them into credible politics. They have accepted their republican enemies into power. They are starting to run the place together. They have surmounted the vast obstacles placed in the unionist psyche by memory and worse. They are still goaded by their own hate-filled supporters, including bits of the London press, who have operated from the start in the hope that the deal will fail, and characterise it relentlessly as a blueprint for gangster rule. These play to the bloody inheritance which unionists believe they alone endured. But the leadership, courageously, has got past that. It sees further. The name is statesmanship. Along with the other partners in Good Friday -London, Dublin, Washington - David Trimble has manoeuvred round the easy negatives which history endorses and on which so many decades of fatalistic rumination have been lavished. T o this state of mind, the republican analysis could seem quite attractive. It is, after all, true. The war seems to be over. The unionists have taken their own steps towards underwriting this happy development. They have lived with the procrasti nation over decommissioning. They will swallow most of the Patten report on the RUC. The hatreds simmer, and Mr Trimble's enemies gather. But on the unionist side, there have been the same successes as on Sinn Fein's, for realism over viscera. Why can't they take one more stride along this fruitful road - which already leads so far away from the dismal past - even though General de Chastelaine cannot yet report any decommissioning by the IRA? To most outsiders, not steeped in the all-consuming obsessionalism of Ulster politics, this must be the way it seems. We don't diminish the importance of the arms. We read the agreement, and we know weapons have to start going. We can see the mistrust that has yet to be de-contaminated by the sincerity and the compromises already made. Having swallowed the camel, aren't unionists straining at the gnat? It is a tempting proposition. One more, final-final deadline in May - as against the possible ruination of a process that has already changed so much. When the unionists insist on Mr Trimble keeping his promise to resign if the gnat is not delivered, will the blood not be on their hands? People say that at this delicate time, it is insensitive to be talking about blame. Republicans, pointing to the absence of war, are particularly prone to that opinion. Mr Adams's optimism, as I say, is sincere enough; and it is remarkable how swiftly his whole demeanour has changed into that of a governing politician. But especially in this delicate end game, it is important not to mistake the matter. No amount of bluster, or axiomatic assertion, or small-print casuistry, or pseudo-statesmanship can obscure the truth that in the hour of crisis it is the republicans who are on trial. Realpolitik has done us proud, but there is a limit to its virtues and we have reached it. Basking in the new-found success of Adams's strategy, Sinn Fein-IRA have to take their own small step and make a decisive - though entirely incomplete - surrender. The symbolic gesture, the token handover, is the substantively meaningless but politically crucial event now required if further credence is to be attached to the promises of peace. Only in the vocabulary of IRA self- regard, which demands that their arms and nobody else's are inalienable, does that appear unreasonable. They say they are serious about peace. Let us believe they mean it, and will continue to deliver - even as they continue to hold, as everyone will know, a secret arsenal. Unfortunately, in the real world, it is not enough to make the promise. The unbearable discomfort of a necessary gesture is required, as proof that republicanism has really entered the world it chose some time ago to belong to. Everything else, at this late stage, is bunker piety, which not only Ulster unionists will rightly curse.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Hugo Young .
|
It is hard to believe the Northern Ireland peace process may yet founder. Such a collapse would affront many histories of evolution from civil war to political peace all over the world. The process has come so far. Yet this, of course, is the very reason why, in the end game, the deal may not stick. The rejectionism that has sustained the war for 30 years resists the notion that the peace momentum must lead somewhere. The end is the time when it is put to the only test that counts. The closer this comes, the harder it gets. The two intransigencies on display here are no longer contesting power, still less, in any essential way, religion. Fundamentally, they're about attitudes to the prospect of mutual surrender. The surrenders that have got us this far have been substantial already. But there is just one more surrender to make, the decisive one, which really could liquidate, in the practical world, the violence of the decades. After the years of civil war, in which the ceaseless flow of calumnies and special pleading and implanted deviousness always confused the issue, two forms of real sincerity are now ranged against each other. That is why the challenge may defeat them. On the republican side, there is a sincere belief that the war is over. The guns are silent, the Semtex is buried. Sinn Fein-IRA, the most disciplined political organisation in Europe, has embarked on a political track which its leaders, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, know they can carry through. They have taken the republicans very far. Even the IRA, when speaking solo - if namelessly - for itself, asserts that its commitment to the process is "total", and says it wants "a permanent peace". Look at what is happening, says Mr Adams. Irish republicanism has given up its constitutional claim to the north. We have carried the terrorists a long way, as the IRA statement proves. We are sitting down and starting to run the country rather than destroying it. We talk with the hated British government. All this shows our renunciation of the past. It is a fantastic, constructive shift. We have chosen a different track, which we can sustain up to and through the deadline of May 22, even against forays by our dissident groups. The credence to be given to this, moreover, is greater for the length of time over which we resisted it. When we do a U-turn, we are serious. The Good Friday agreement prescribes arms decommissioning by May, but that is not, at bottom, the point. Decommissioning, Mr Adams concedes, is achievable. But the point, he says, is that de facto the war has stopped. To disregard such progress towards an appointment with destiny in May would be to imperil what has been done under the shadow of the undecommissioned, but unused, gun. Let this objectively existing reality be sustained. On the unionists' side one recognises the same brand of sincerity. By historic standards it is just as startling. The reality of peace has drawn them into credible politics. They have accepted their republican enemies into power. They are starting to run the place together. They have surmounted the vast obstacles placed in the unionist psyche by memory and worse. They are still goaded by their own hate-filled supporters, including bits of the London press, who have operated from the start in the hope that the deal will fail, and characterise it relentlessly as a blueprint for gangster rule. These play to the bloody inheritance which unionists believe they alone endured. But the leadership, courageously, has got past that. It sees further. The name is statesmanship. Along with the other partners in Good Friday -London, Dublin, Washington - David Trimble has manoeuvred round the easy negatives which history endorses and on which so many decades of fatalistic rumination have been lavished. T o this state of mind, the republican analysis could seem quite attractive. It is, after all, true. The war seems to be over. The unionists have taken their own steps towards underwriting this happy development. They have lived with the procrasti nation over decommissioning. They will swallow most of the Patten report on the RUC. The hatreds simmer, and Mr Trimble's enemies gather. But on the unionist side, there have been the same successes as on Sinn Fein's, for realism over viscera. Why can't they take one more stride along this fruitful road - which already leads so far away from the dismal past - even though General de Chastelaine cannot yet report any decommissioning by the IRA? To most outsiders, not steeped in the all-consuming obsessionalism of Ulster politics, this must be the way it seems. We don't diminish the importance of the arms. We read the agreement, and we know weapons have to start going. We can see the mistrust that has yet to be de-contaminated by the sincerity and the compromises already made. Having swallowed the camel, aren't unionists straining at the gnat? It is a tempting proposition. One more, final-final deadline in May - as against the possible ruination of a process that has already changed so much. When the unionists insist on Mr Trimble keeping his promise to resign if the gnat is not delivered, will the blood not be on their hands? People say that at this delicate time, it is insensitive to be talking about blame. Republicans, pointing to the absence of war, are particularly prone to that opinion. Mr Adams's optimism, as I say, is sincere enough; and it is remarkable how swiftly his whole demeanour has changed into that of a governing politician. But especially in this delicate end game, it is important not to mistake the matter. No amount of bluster, or axiomatic assertion, or small-print casuistry, or pseudo-statesmanship can obscure the truth that in the hour of crisis it is the republicans who are on trial. Realpolitik has done us proud, but there is a limit to its virtues and we have reached it. Basking in the new-found success of Adams's strategy, Sinn Fein-IRA have to take their own small step and make a decisive - though entirely incomplete - surrender. The symbolic gesture, the token handover, is the substantively meaningless but politically crucial event now required if further credence is to be attached to the promises of peace. Only in the vocabulary of IRA self- regard, which demands that their arms and nobody else's are inalienable, does that appear unreasonable. They say they are serious about peace. Let us believe they mean it, and will continue to deliver - even as they continue to hold, as everyone will know, a secret arsenal. Unfortunately, in the real world, it is not enough to make the promise. The unbearable discomfort of a necessary gesture is required, as proof that republicanism has really entered the world it chose some time ago to belong to. Everything else, at this late stage, is bunker piety, which not only Ulster unionists will rightly curse.
|
2hugoyoung
| 2UK
|
Down at the wire, the word that fits the Trimble/Adams stand-off is a strange one. Artificial. That's the sense that screams from the positions taken by either side. Both are gripped by what they see as matters of inalienable substance: the substance of arms, of lifelong passion, of sanctified conviction, of justified mistrust, above all the substance of history. Could any two men on the face of the planet be deeper dug in behind impermeable rocks of actuality? But when you look at it, what their argument most seems is unreal. Consider Mr Trimble and his party. They have already come a long way. They wanted the Good Friday deal, and their leader has taken some risks to keep it alive. They know, also, that the IRA will never give up all its weapons. They knew that all along. It is one of the givens they have learned to tolerate, as they contemplate sitting alongside former killers and torturers on the Northern Ireland executive. They well understand, even if Sinn Fein-IRA were to hand over some weapons now, and make a pledge on decommissioning later, that arms will remain. The possibility of re-starting hostilities will be there, moving out from arms dumps whose location the IRA has presumably mapped with greater exactness than it did the murder-graves of 20 years ago. Knowing this, the Ulster Unionists none the less sat down with Sinn Fein-IRA, and talked about a future that, as everyone silently understood, encompassed it. They did this because they believed the process would assist the outcome, saying, in effect, that politics should be allowed to take over, and that this experience in itself would begin to render the arms redundant. This was the point of Good Friday. With the growth of politics, battle would finally cease. Yet, having swallowed all that, which required an impressive if long-delayed magnanimity on the Unionists' part, they are now balking. They can't make the final stride. They refuse to let the executive start functioning unless this is preceded by some tiny sign from the other side. The camel is digested, but the gnat sticks immovably in the throat. Republicans too, however, are masters of the artificial point. By offering this tiny sign, they would lose nothing. The scenario which the Unionists have privately conceded acknowledges that some weaponry would always, in the real world, remain. Certainly a great deal of it would still be there next week and next month if, this week, the IRA were to meet Mr Blair's deadline and launch a decommissioning process. For all that is asked of them, to keep momentum going, is a token, in effect a nullity, a symbolic act: a gesture of entirely artificial importance. Yet they cannot do it. And people humour them in the not-doing of it. They established some time ago, especially among mainland opinion that is anywhere close to the government, that they could not be expected to do it. History entirely ruled it out. Those of us who wrote in the opposite sense - said that some little gesture of symbolic disarming was a sine qua non which Unionists were entitled to rely on - were given lectures about our regrettable insensitivity and our woeful lack of realism. Sinn Fein-IRA has, like the Unionists, come quite far. It accepted the consent principle, protecting the democratic rights of the Ulster majority. It complied with the impulse in Dublin to redefine the constitutional objective of a united Ireland. It embarked on a process which implicitly conceded that its departed heroes had fought and died in a struggle that could no longer be won by military means. But Mr Adams too, like Mr Trimble, goes to the wire quite willing, it would seem, to jeopardise all this by his resistance to a very small point. Actually, of the two, Sinn Fein's sabotage, if this is what it proves to be, is the more culpable. It has seized more, while offering less. It has got many of its killers out of prison early, but is not prepared even to urge that decommissioning should happen. While insisting on its separateness from the IRA, it will not expend so much as a single word telling the IRA what it thinks it should do. Sinn Fein, in other words, will take hardly any risks. We assume that Mr Adams is desperate for Good Friday to survive, but he exhibits no equivalent public urgency. While goading Mr Trimble to take one more risk, he affects to believe that for his part it is not within his power to take the one everyone wants him to, because he continues to shelter behind the claim - the insulting fiction - that he carries no influence with the IRA. Judged by where it now stands, the negotiation has been one-sided in the concessions made, while sustaining the ridiculous pretence that any party close to a paramilitary group could not bring about sufficient decommissioning to allow the peace process to continue and the institutions to start work All the same, the points at issue remain definable by that word: artificial. Taking the process as a whole, their reality does not accord in any way with the scale of the prize that is otherwise available. Both sides have expended great effort, alongside the British and Irish governments, to achieve a change that has eluded these islands for 30 years - to name but the most recent fragment of time. It would now take only a small shift by either or both of them to enable the larger deal to make a measure of progress. It is tempting to say this has to come from Sinn Fein. For while it is certainly easier to say what Mr Trimble should do - to tell him, with lofty disregard for his viability as leader of a functioning party, to move ahead without any decommissioning gesture from the other side -Sinn Fein's recalcitrance has been the more unyielding, and therefore the more culpably calamitous for the project its leaders want to see succeed. What is more striking than the fault to be found in one side or the other, however, is the failure they share: their absence of perspective in the end-game. Must the gnats have another accursed victory? This is what today and tomorrow will have to be about. A venture that has seen, from all sides, a fair amount of largeness - reluctant and chippy and unadmitted, but also large - is in danger of collapsing round points that are not, in the broad scheme of things already accomplished, either large or real. Perhaps this is a definition of the Irish problem. But that is what seemed so close to being re-defined.
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Hugo Young .
|
Down at the wire, the word that fits the Trimble/Adams stand-off is a strange one. Artificial. That's the sense that screams from the positions taken by either side. Both are gripped by what they see as matters of inalienable substance: the substance of arms, of lifelong passion, of sanctified conviction, of justified mistrust, above all the substance of history. Could any two men on the face of the planet be deeper dug in behind impermeable rocks of actuality? But when you look at it, what their argument most seems is unreal. Consider Mr Trimble and his party. They have already come a long way. They wanted the Good Friday deal, and their leader has taken some risks to keep it alive. They know, also, that the IRA will never give up all its weapons. They knew that all along. It is one of the givens they have learned to tolerate, as they contemplate sitting alongside former killers and torturers on the Northern Ireland executive. They well understand, even if Sinn Fein-IRA were to hand over some weapons now, and make a pledge on decommissioning later, that arms will remain. The possibility of re-starting hostilities will be there, moving out from arms dumps whose location the IRA has presumably mapped with greater exactness than it did the murder-graves of 20 years ago. Knowing this, the Ulster Unionists none the less sat down with Sinn Fein-IRA, and talked about a future that, as everyone silently understood, encompassed it. They did this because they believed the process would assist the outcome, saying, in effect, that politics should be allowed to take over, and that this experience in itself would begin to render the arms redundant. This was the point of Good Friday. With the growth of politics, battle would finally cease. Yet, having swallowed all that, which required an impressive if long-delayed magnanimity on the Unionists' part, they are now balking. They can't make the final stride. They refuse to let the executive start functioning unless this is preceded by some tiny sign from the other side. The camel is digested, but the gnat sticks immovably in the throat. Republicans too, however, are masters of the artificial point. By offering this tiny sign, they would lose nothing. The scenario which the Unionists have privately conceded acknowledges that some weaponry would always, in the real world, remain. Certainly a great deal of it would still be there next week and next month if, this week, the IRA were to meet Mr Blair's deadline and launch a decommissioning process. For all that is asked of them, to keep momentum going, is a token, in effect a nullity, a symbolic act: a gesture of entirely artificial importance. Yet they cannot do it. And people humour them in the not-doing of it. They established some time ago, especially among mainland opinion that is anywhere close to the government, that they could not be expected to do it. History entirely ruled it out. Those of us who wrote in the opposite sense - said that some little gesture of symbolic disarming was a sine qua non which Unionists were entitled to rely on - were given lectures about our regrettable insensitivity and our woeful lack of realism. Sinn Fein-IRA has, like the Unionists, come quite far. It accepted the consent principle, protecting the democratic rights of the Ulster majority. It complied with the impulse in Dublin to redefine the constitutional objective of a united Ireland. It embarked on a process which implicitly conceded that its departed heroes had fought and died in a struggle that could no longer be won by military means. But Mr Adams too, like Mr Trimble, goes to the wire quite willing, it would seem, to jeopardise all this by his resistance to a very small point. Actually, of the two, Sinn Fein's sabotage, if this is what it proves to be, is the more culpable. It has seized more, while offering less. It has got many of its killers out of prison early, but is not prepared even to urge that decommissioning should happen. While insisting on its separateness from the IRA, it will not expend so much as a single word telling the IRA what it thinks it should do. Sinn Fein, in other words, will take hardly any risks. We assume that Mr Adams is desperate for Good Friday to survive, but he exhibits no equivalent public urgency. While goading Mr Trimble to take one more risk, he affects to believe that for his part it is not within his power to take the one everyone wants him to, because he continues to shelter behind the claim - the insulting fiction - that he carries no influence with the IRA. Judged by where it now stands, the negotiation has been one-sided in the concessions made, while sustaining the ridiculous pretence that any party close to a paramilitary group could not bring about sufficient decommissioning to allow the peace process to continue and the institutions to start work All the same, the points at issue remain definable by that word: artificial. Taking the process as a whole, their reality does not accord in any way with the scale of the prize that is otherwise available. Both sides have expended great effort, alongside the British and Irish governments, to achieve a change that has eluded these islands for 30 years - to name but the most recent fragment of time. It would now take only a small shift by either or both of them to enable the larger deal to make a measure of progress. It is tempting to say this has to come from Sinn Fein. For while it is certainly easier to say what Mr Trimble should do - to tell him, with lofty disregard for his viability as leader of a functioning party, to move ahead without any decommissioning gesture from the other side -Sinn Fein's recalcitrance has been the more unyielding, and therefore the more culpably calamitous for the project its leaders want to see succeed. What is more striking than the fault to be found in one side or the other, however, is the failure they share: their absence of perspective in the end-game. Must the gnats have another accursed victory? This is what today and tomorrow will have to be about. A venture that has seen, from all sides, a fair amount of largeness - reluctant and chippy and unadmitted, but also large - is in danger of collapsing round points that are not, in the broad scheme of things already accomplished, either large or real. Perhaps this is a definition of the Irish problem. But that is what seemed so close to being re-defined.
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2hugoyoung
| 2UK
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The politics of law and order are entirely about spin. Not just partly. Entirely. There is no field of political conflict where impression more fully eclipses reality. The two may not always be at odds. Some impressions are correct. Crime has doubled over the last 20 years, for example. That is a fact. Politicians' belief that the public wants only heavier sentencing is another truth that's not entirely fanciful. But the raw material Jack Straw and Ann Widdecombe are handling when they promote this as an election issue is not fact but propaganda, otherwise known as spin. Consider the opening bids made yesterday. Mr Straw, introducing Labour's 10-year plan, said that his record on crime was "the best of any incoming government for 50 years". Sounds impressive. Ms Widdecombe countered that the Tory record from 1993-97 was the best four-year performance any outgoing government could show. Also, relatively, true. But what voter can begin to absorb, let alone believe, either statement, when every party is busy culling statistics to show that things have never been better, or, alternatively, worse in an area of policy where, depending when you start and what you cover and how you exclude and where you shade the figures, both claims are defensible? Is crime going up? It depends what you're talking about. My colleagues Polly Toynbee and David Walker, in their valuable audit of the government, Did Things Get Better? (Penguin 6.99) take a shot at it. Burglary? Down 21% in 2000. Car thefts? Down 15%, along with a 16% fall in thefts from cars. Crimes of violence fell by 4%. But street robbery? Up 14%. Clear-up rates? "Haven't improved since 1997", according to a worried memo from Straw's political adviser leaked this weekend. Ah, but what about convictions? "Up by 13%," according to Straw on the Today programme yesterday. Such statistics will fly about in the coming weeks. For the Tories are determined to make crime one of the biggest issues. It's one of the few they've got, perhaps the only one where the glass of governance will always reliably be seen as half empty not half full. For every stat, there may be an explanation that qualifies its meaning, as the Home Office's own research department often shows. What, why, when, where, how? You could write a book on each question applied to every crime, and people do. But in the politics of law and order, sophistication, however true, will always be outgunned by simplicity, however false. This is made easier by public ignorance. In 1998 the British Crime Survey reported that the public thought judges' sentencing was too lenient. Four out of five people believed they were out of touch with what "ordinary people think". Questioned further, these ordinary people proved startlingly uninformed. Over half underestimated by at least 30% the sentences that were actually handed out. They believed half of male rapists were sent to prison, whereas the actual figure was 97%. House burglars and muggers were similarly thought to be let off, when well over half in each category went to jail. Such are the sometimes grotesque misperceptions on which the reputation of the judiciary as a soft touch is based. Yet that's the image brainlessly cultivated by the tabloid press, which then finds its inescapable way into the critique and policies of ministers. These policies are not always foolish. Serious experts are always trying to get to grips with the aberrations of social and human behaviour. The Thatcher-Major government passed a criminal justice act every year for so long that the later statutes began to undo what the earlier ones had done. The Blair government has a mixed record with its own creative initiatives. Both curfew orders and anti-social behaviour orders, much brooded on and ostensibly reasonable, have failed to convince the people in the courts and on the ground, and have come to almost nothing. The latest proposed reforms also have something to be said for them. Explicitly permitting judges to take account of previous convictions when settling a sentence is a rational idea. It addresses the prime problem thrown up by the latest fashionable analysis, the familiar theme that much crime is committed by no more than 100,000 people. The package looks like serious action. It's intended to be so. It should spin well, though the Tories will, as easily and bewilderingly, spin against it. But through the murk and counter-murk three conclusions stare out, which confront ministers and their opponents with challenges that spinning doesn't adequately address. First, the best things the government wants to try will cost money. Yesterday's package is priced at 700m. Can this be enough to create the new custodial and semi-custodial regimes ministers talk of, pay courts to work twice as hard to accelerate hearings, and seriously increase police manpower all over the country? Of all remedies for deterrence and detection, common across all these confusing stats and counter-stats, a bigger police force is by far the most persuasive. Quite why Straw has so conspicuously failed to keep promises about police recruitment is a complicated mystery. It may not be entirely about money. But money will help. Is the Treasury committed to providing it for this vastly ambitious programme? Or are we watching mere propaganda sufficient unto May 3? Second, though Straw, to show his all-round vision, stressed the causes of crime as much as crime itself, and commended the government's education and employment programmes, there's a hole at the heart of the picture. While offering drugs as an explanation for such crime problems as he will admit to, he won't address the drug laws as a focus for reform, despite pressure and expert argument from those who are just as concerned and responsible as politicians. Decriminalising cannabis would wipe out a certain amount of crime at a stroke, freeing up police and courts for other priorities. The spinners dare not look at it. Third, they dictate that prisons must go on blithely multiplying. Two of the less disputable current statistics are a) that Britain has the highest proportion of its population in prison of any country in Europe, and b) that, in a league table of crime as experienced by victims, England and Wales, with 58 crimes per 100 inhabitants, came out joint first in the industrialised world. No accountable politician is willing to make a connection between these profoundly interesting trends. The lord chief justice, the inspector of prisons, and the director of the prison service have all recently delivered clinical and passionate critiques of prison. The electoral auctioneers dare not change the terms of the debate. One reason for this is that spinners can only deal with the lowest denominator of opinion, however ignorant. But the spinner always, more or less, lies. A more fruitful approach is available. The beginning of wisdom in the politics of law and order would be to understand that, since nobody can sort out one spinner from another, someone might start the arduous business of addressing the truth.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Hugo Young .
|
The politics of law and order are entirely about spin. Not just partly. Entirely. There is no field of political conflict where impression more fully eclipses reality. The two may not always be at odds. Some impressions are correct. Crime has doubled over the last 20 years, for example. That is a fact. Politicians' belief that the public wants only heavier sentencing is another truth that's not entirely fanciful. But the raw material Jack Straw and Ann Widdecombe are handling when they promote this as an election issue is not fact but propaganda, otherwise known as spin. Consider the opening bids made yesterday. Mr Straw, introducing Labour's 10-year plan, said that his record on crime was "the best of any incoming government for 50 years". Sounds impressive. Ms Widdecombe countered that the Tory record from 1993-97 was the best four-year performance any outgoing government could show. Also, relatively, true. But what voter can begin to absorb, let alone believe, either statement, when every party is busy culling statistics to show that things have never been better, or, alternatively, worse in an area of policy where, depending when you start and what you cover and how you exclude and where you shade the figures, both claims are defensible? Is crime going up? It depends what you're talking about. My colleagues Polly Toynbee and David Walker, in their valuable audit of the government, Did Things Get Better? (Penguin 6.99) take a shot at it. Burglary? Down 21% in 2000. Car thefts? Down 15%, along with a 16% fall in thefts from cars. Crimes of violence fell by 4%. But street robbery? Up 14%. Clear-up rates? "Haven't improved since 1997", according to a worried memo from Straw's political adviser leaked this weekend. Ah, but what about convictions? "Up by 13%," according to Straw on the Today programme yesterday. Such statistics will fly about in the coming weeks. For the Tories are determined to make crime one of the biggest issues. It's one of the few they've got, perhaps the only one where the glass of governance will always reliably be seen as half empty not half full. For every stat, there may be an explanation that qualifies its meaning, as the Home Office's own research department often shows. What, why, when, where, how? You could write a book on each question applied to every crime, and people do. But in the politics of law and order, sophistication, however true, will always be outgunned by simplicity, however false. This is made easier by public ignorance. In 1998 the British Crime Survey reported that the public thought judges' sentencing was too lenient. Four out of five people believed they were out of touch with what "ordinary people think". Questioned further, these ordinary people proved startlingly uninformed. Over half underestimated by at least 30% the sentences that were actually handed out. They believed half of male rapists were sent to prison, whereas the actual figure was 97%. House burglars and muggers were similarly thought to be let off, when well over half in each category went to jail. Such are the sometimes grotesque misperceptions on which the reputation of the judiciary as a soft touch is based. Yet that's the image brainlessly cultivated by the tabloid press, which then finds its inescapable way into the critique and policies of ministers. These policies are not always foolish. Serious experts are always trying to get to grips with the aberrations of social and human behaviour. The Thatcher-Major government passed a criminal justice act every year for so long that the later statutes began to undo what the earlier ones had done. The Blair government has a mixed record with its own creative initiatives. Both curfew orders and anti-social behaviour orders, much brooded on and ostensibly reasonable, have failed to convince the people in the courts and on the ground, and have come to almost nothing. The latest proposed reforms also have something to be said for them. Explicitly permitting judges to take account of previous convictions when settling a sentence is a rational idea. It addresses the prime problem thrown up by the latest fashionable analysis, the familiar theme that much crime is committed by no more than 100,000 people. The package looks like serious action. It's intended to be so. It should spin well, though the Tories will, as easily and bewilderingly, spin against it. But through the murk and counter-murk three conclusions stare out, which confront ministers and their opponents with challenges that spinning doesn't adequately address. First, the best things the government wants to try will cost money. Yesterday's package is priced at 700m. Can this be enough to create the new custodial and semi-custodial regimes ministers talk of, pay courts to work twice as hard to accelerate hearings, and seriously increase police manpower all over the country? Of all remedies for deterrence and detection, common across all these confusing stats and counter-stats, a bigger police force is by far the most persuasive. Quite why Straw has so conspicuously failed to keep promises about police recruitment is a complicated mystery. It may not be entirely about money. But money will help. Is the Treasury committed to providing it for this vastly ambitious programme? Or are we watching mere propaganda sufficient unto May 3? Second, though Straw, to show his all-round vision, stressed the causes of crime as much as crime itself, and commended the government's education and employment programmes, there's a hole at the heart of the picture. While offering drugs as an explanation for such crime problems as he will admit to, he won't address the drug laws as a focus for reform, despite pressure and expert argument from those who are just as concerned and responsible as politicians. Decriminalising cannabis would wipe out a certain amount of crime at a stroke, freeing up police and courts for other priorities. The spinners dare not look at it. Third, they dictate that prisons must go on blithely multiplying. Two of the less disputable current statistics are a) that Britain has the highest proportion of its population in prison of any country in Europe, and b) that, in a league table of crime as experienced by victims, England and Wales, with 58 crimes per 100 inhabitants, came out joint first in the industrialised world. No accountable politician is willing to make a connection between these profoundly interesting trends. The lord chief justice, the inspector of prisons, and the director of the prison service have all recently delivered clinical and passionate critiques of prison. The electoral auctioneers dare not change the terms of the debate. One reason for this is that spinners can only deal with the lowest denominator of opinion, however ignorant. But the spinner always, more or less, lies. A more fruitful approach is available. The beginning of wisdom in the politics of law and order would be to understand that, since nobody can sort out one spinner from another, someone might start the arduous business of addressing the truth.
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1georgemonbiot
| 2UK
|
The most interesting aspect of France's BSE scandal is that it makes no sense at all. Britain stopped exporting contaminated cattle feed to Europe in 1991 (though we continued sending it to the third world until 1996). In most other EU countries cases have already peaked and declined, as expected. But in France, the number of infected animals has doubled in the last year. It is impossible to see how this pattern could result from the export of British bone meal. The simple fact is that the transmission of BSE has never been satisfactorily explained by the prevailing theory. The consumption of meat and bone meal from infected cows has doubtless had an important role to play. Yet this explanation alone fails to account for the huge numbers of cattle in Britain which continued to become infected after most contaminated feed had been removed from the food chain. The latest research on the human form of the disease, nvCJD, published three weeks ago, failed to find any link with the consumption of infected beef. You might have imagined that when its theory isn't working, a government would wish to test the alternatives. But the British administration has, so far, sought only to attack a hypothesis which does appear to fit the facts. Since 1988, a Somerset farmer called Mark Purdey has been arguing that scientists have overlooked the root causes of BSE. Self-taught and self- financed, he has mastered the brain's complex biochemical pathways and this year published a groundbreaking paper in a respected medical journal. His reward is to have been reviled, misrepresented and physically attacked. Prions, the brain proteins whose alteration seems to be responsible for BSE, are designed to protect the brain from the oxidising properties of chemicals activated by dangerous agents such as ultra- violet light, Purdey argues. When, he suggests, the prion proteins are exposed to too little copper and too much manganese, the manganese takes the place of the copper the prion normally binds to. This means that the protein becomes distorted and loses its function. BSE arose in British herds during the 1980s, Mark Purdey asserts, because the Ministry of Agriculture started forcing all cattle farmers to treat their animals with an organophosphate pesticide called phosmet, at far higher doses than are used elsewhere in the world. The pesticide had to be poured along the line of the spinal cord. Phosmet, Purdey has shown, captures copper. At the same time, cattle feed was being supplemented with chicken manure, from birds dosed with manganese to increase their egg yield. The prion proteins in the cows' brains were both deprived of copper and dosed with manganese. In France, the use of phosmet first became mandatory in Brittany. Twenty of the country's initial 28 cases of BSE emerged there. BSE's subsequent spread, Purdey maintains, mirrors the use of the pesticide. Poisoning by similar means may explain the distribution of the human form of the disease. Of the two main clusters in Britain one, in Kent, is in the middle of a fruit and hop growing area where huge quantities of both organophosphates and manganese-based fungicides are used. The other is in Queniborough in Leicestershire, whose dyeworks (until they caught fire a few years ago, spraying chemicals over the village) used to dump some of their residues into the sewage system, Purdey alleges. The sewage was spread over the fields. Dyeworks use shedloads of manganese. Purdey has tested his theory on BSE and CJD clusters in Iceland, Colorado, Slovakia and Sardinia. He found that people and animals had been exposed to deficiencies of copper and surfeits of manganese. Most of the clusters, intriguingly, are in mountainous areas, where levels of ultraviolet light are high. But the most compelling evidence in support of his hypothesis comes from a paper published by a team of biochemists at Cambridge this year. They found that when copper was substituted by manganese in prion proteins, the prions adopted precisely the distinguishing features which identify the infective agent in BSE. If Purdey is right, he deserves a Nobel Prize for medicine. Instead he has been shot at, his phone lines have been cut and his house has been burnt down. The Ministry of Agriculture, which for 50 years has enjoyed a dangerously close relationship with the agrochemical industry, has repeatedly sought to discredit him. Suddenly, however, its tone has changed, and it has now promised to start funding his research. The families of the French victims of CJD are threatening to sue the British government, and it desperately needs an alternative transmission theory. With funding on its way, and new evidence accumulating every month, a self-educated Somerset dairy farmer could be about to overturn the entire body of scientific research on the biggest public health scandal of modern times.
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of George Monbiot .
|
The most interesting aspect of France's BSE scandal is that it makes no sense at all. Britain stopped exporting contaminated cattle feed to Europe in 1991 (though we continued sending it to the third world until 1996). In most other EU countries cases have already peaked and declined, as expected. But in France, the number of infected animals has doubled in the last year. It is impossible to see how this pattern could result from the export of British bone meal. The simple fact is that the transmission of BSE has never been satisfactorily explained by the prevailing theory. The consumption of meat and bone meal from infected cows has doubtless had an important role to play. Yet this explanation alone fails to account for the huge numbers of cattle in Britain which continued to become infected after most contaminated feed had been removed from the food chain. The latest research on the human form of the disease, nvCJD, published three weeks ago, failed to find any link with the consumption of infected beef. You might have imagined that when its theory isn't working, a government would wish to test the alternatives. But the British administration has, so far, sought only to attack a hypothesis which does appear to fit the facts. Since 1988, a Somerset farmer called Mark Purdey has been arguing that scientists have overlooked the root causes of BSE. Self-taught and self- financed, he has mastered the brain's complex biochemical pathways and this year published a groundbreaking paper in a respected medical journal. His reward is to have been reviled, misrepresented and physically attacked. Prions, the brain proteins whose alteration seems to be responsible for BSE, are designed to protect the brain from the oxidising properties of chemicals activated by dangerous agents such as ultra- violet light, Purdey argues. When, he suggests, the prion proteins are exposed to too little copper and too much manganese, the manganese takes the place of the copper the prion normally binds to. This means that the protein becomes distorted and loses its function. BSE arose in British herds during the 1980s, Mark Purdey asserts, because the Ministry of Agriculture started forcing all cattle farmers to treat their animals with an organophosphate pesticide called phosmet, at far higher doses than are used elsewhere in the world. The pesticide had to be poured along the line of the spinal cord. Phosmet, Purdey has shown, captures copper. At the same time, cattle feed was being supplemented with chicken manure, from birds dosed with manganese to increase their egg yield. The prion proteins in the cows' brains were both deprived of copper and dosed with manganese. In France, the use of phosmet first became mandatory in Brittany. Twenty of the country's initial 28 cases of BSE emerged there. BSE's subsequent spread, Purdey maintains, mirrors the use of the pesticide. Poisoning by similar means may explain the distribution of the human form of the disease. Of the two main clusters in Britain one, in Kent, is in the middle of a fruit and hop growing area where huge quantities of both organophosphates and manganese-based fungicides are used. The other is in Queniborough in Leicestershire, whose dyeworks (until they caught fire a few years ago, spraying chemicals over the village) used to dump some of their residues into the sewage system, Purdey alleges. The sewage was spread over the fields. Dyeworks use shedloads of manganese. Purdey has tested his theory on BSE and CJD clusters in Iceland, Colorado, Slovakia and Sardinia. He found that people and animals had been exposed to deficiencies of copper and surfeits of manganese. Most of the clusters, intriguingly, are in mountainous areas, where levels of ultraviolet light are high. But the most compelling evidence in support of his hypothesis comes from a paper published by a team of biochemists at Cambridge this year. They found that when copper was substituted by manganese in prion proteins, the prions adopted precisely the distinguishing features which identify the infective agent in BSE. If Purdey is right, he deserves a Nobel Prize for medicine. Instead he has been shot at, his phone lines have been cut and his house has been burnt down. The Ministry of Agriculture, which for 50 years has enjoyed a dangerously close relationship with the agrochemical industry, has repeatedly sought to discredit him. Suddenly, however, its tone has changed, and it has now promised to start funding his research. The families of the French victims of CJD are threatening to sue the British government, and it desperately needs an alternative transmission theory. With funding on its way, and new evidence accumulating every month, a self-educated Somerset dairy farmer could be about to overturn the entire body of scientific research on the biggest public health scandal of modern times.
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1georgemonbiot
| 2UK
|
A few days ago, after a furious argument, I was thrown out of a wood where I have walked for more than 20 years. I must admit that I did not behave very well. As I walked away I did something I haven't done for a long time: I gave the gamekeeper a one-fingered salute. In my defence, I would plead that I was overcome with unhappiness and anger.The time I have spent in that wood must amount to months. Every autumn I would spend days there, watching the turning colours or grubbing for mushrooms and beechmast and knapped flints. In the summer I would look for warblers and redstarts. I saw a nightjar there once. It is one of the few peaceful and beautiful places in my part of the world that's within a couple of miles of a station: I could escape from the traffic without the help of a car. Part of me, I feel, belongs there. Or it did.It is not that I wasn't trespassing before. Nor has the status of the land changed: it is still owned, as far as I know, by the same private estate. No one tried to stop me in those 20-odd years because no one was there. But now there is a blue plastic barrel every 50 metres, and the surrounding fields are planted with millet and maize. The wood has been turned into a pheasant run. Having scarcely figured in the landowner's books, it must now be making him a fortune. And I am perceived as a threat.The words that rang in my ears as I stomped away were these: "You've got your bloody right to roam now - why do you need to come here?" It struck me that this could be a perverse outcome of the legislation for which I spent years campaigning: that the right to walk in certain places is seen by landowners as consolidating their relations with the public. All that is not permitted will become forbidden.But this, I expect, is a secondary problem. The more important one is surely the surge of money foaming through the south-east of England. A thousand woods can be filled with pheasants and still there are not enough to serve the people who have the money required - the many hundreds of pounds a day - to shoot them. We were told that the rising tide would lift all boats. But I feel I am drowning in it.Two weeks ago, writing in the Financial Times, the economist Andrew Oswald observed that "the hippies, the greens, the road protesters, the downshifters, the slow-food movement - all are having their quiet revenge. Routinely derided, the ideas of these down-to-earth philosophers are being confirmed by new statistical work by psychologists and economists." As I qualify on most counts, I will regard this as a vindication.Oswald's point is that the industrialised countries have not become happier as they've become richer. Rates of depression and stress have risen, and people report no greater degree of satisfaction with their lives than their poorer ancestors did. In the US, the sense of wellbeing has actually declined. One of the problems is that "humans are creatures of comparison ... it is relative income that matters: when everyone in a society gets wealthier, average wellbeing stays the same."The same point has been made recently by the New Economics Foundation and by Professor Richard Layard in his book Happiness. New developments in psychological testing and neurobiology allow happiness to be measured with greater confidence than before. Layard cites research that suggests that it peaked in the UK in 1975. Beyond a certain degree of wealth - an average GDP of around $20,000 per head - "additional income is not associated with extra happiness". Once a society's basic needs and comforts have been met, there is no point in becoming richer.I am astonished by the astonishment with which their findings have been received. Compare, for example, these two statements:"So one secret of happiness is to ignore comparisons with people who are more successful than you are: always compare downwards, not upwards." Richard Layard, 2005."It put me to reflecting, how little repining there would be among mankind, at any condition of life, if people would rather compare their condition with those that are worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complainings." Daniel Defoe, 1719.We have been led, by the thinking of people such as the psychologist John Watson and the economist Lionel Robbins, to forget what everyone once knew: that wealth and happiness are not the same thing.Comparison is not the only reason the professors of happiness cite for our failure to feel better as we become richer. They point to the fact that we become habituated to wealth: Layard calls this "the hedonic treadmill". They blame the longer hours we work and our deteriorating relationships. But there is something I think they have missed: that wealth itself can become a source of deprivation.Having money enhances your freedom. You can travel further and you can do more when you get there. But other people's money restricts your freedom. Where you once felt free, now you find fences. In fact, you must travel further to find somewhere in which you can be free.As people become richer, and as they can extract more wealth from their property, other people become more threatening to them. We know that the fear of crime is a cause of unhappiness, but so is the sense of being seen as a potential criminal. The spikes and lights and cameras proclaim that society is not to be trusted, that we live in a world of Hobbesian relations. The story they tell becomes true, as property paranoia makes us hate each other. The harmless wanderer in the woods becomes a mortal enemy.It is hard to see how that plague of pheasants could be deemed to have caused a net increase in happiness. A group of very wealthy people, who already have an endless choice of activities, have one more wood in which to shoot. The rest of us have one less wood in which to walk. The landowners tell us that by putting down birds they have an incentive to preserve the woods - this was one of the arguments the gamekeeper used as he was throwing me off. But what good does that do us if we are not allowed to walk there?The Countryside and Rights of Way Act of 2000, which granted us the right to roam on mountains, moors, heath, downland and commons, has surely increased the sum of human happiness. But in those parts of the country that retain very little habitat of that kind (because it has been destroyed or enclosed by the land- owners), the gains we made then might already have been cancelled out by the losses, as the landlords' new opportunities for making money reduce our opportunities for leaving money behind.We need the full set of rights we were once promised, and which, in Scotland, have already been granted: access to the woods, the rivers and the coast as well as the open country. But as these places are turned into money-making monocultures, the question changes. Will we still want to visit them?
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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Generate an article based on the writing style of George Monbiot .
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A few days ago, after a furious argument, I was thrown out of a wood where I have walked for more than 20 years. I must admit that I did not behave very well. As I walked away I did something I haven't done for a long time: I gave the gamekeeper a one-fingered salute. In my defence, I would plead that I was overcome with unhappiness and anger.The time I have spent in that wood must amount to months. Every autumn I would spend days there, watching the turning colours or grubbing for mushrooms and beechmast and knapped flints. In the summer I would look for warblers and redstarts. I saw a nightjar there once. It is one of the few peaceful and beautiful places in my part of the world that's within a couple of miles of a station: I could escape from the traffic without the help of a car. Part of me, I feel, belongs there. Or it did.It is not that I wasn't trespassing before. Nor has the status of the land changed: it is still owned, as far as I know, by the same private estate. No one tried to stop me in those 20-odd years because no one was there. But now there is a blue plastic barrel every 50 metres, and the surrounding fields are planted with millet and maize. The wood has been turned into a pheasant run. Having scarcely figured in the landowner's books, it must now be making him a fortune. And I am perceived as a threat.The words that rang in my ears as I stomped away were these: "You've got your bloody right to roam now - why do you need to come here?" It struck me that this could be a perverse outcome of the legislation for which I spent years campaigning: that the right to walk in certain places is seen by landowners as consolidating their relations with the public. All that is not permitted will become forbidden.But this, I expect, is a secondary problem. The more important one is surely the surge of money foaming through the south-east of England. A thousand woods can be filled with pheasants and still there are not enough to serve the people who have the money required - the many hundreds of pounds a day - to shoot them. We were told that the rising tide would lift all boats. But I feel I am drowning in it.Two weeks ago, writing in the Financial Times, the economist Andrew Oswald observed that "the hippies, the greens, the road protesters, the downshifters, the slow-food movement - all are having their quiet revenge. Routinely derided, the ideas of these down-to-earth philosophers are being confirmed by new statistical work by psychologists and economists." As I qualify on most counts, I will regard this as a vindication.Oswald's point is that the industrialised countries have not become happier as they've become richer. Rates of depression and stress have risen, and people report no greater degree of satisfaction with their lives than their poorer ancestors did. In the US, the sense of wellbeing has actually declined. One of the problems is that "humans are creatures of comparison ... it is relative income that matters: when everyone in a society gets wealthier, average wellbeing stays the same."The same point has been made recently by the New Economics Foundation and by Professor Richard Layard in his book Happiness. New developments in psychological testing and neurobiology allow happiness to be measured with greater confidence than before. Layard cites research that suggests that it peaked in the UK in 1975. Beyond a certain degree of wealth - an average GDP of around $20,000 per head - "additional income is not associated with extra happiness". Once a society's basic needs and comforts have been met, there is no point in becoming richer.I am astonished by the astonishment with which their findings have been received. Compare, for example, these two statements:"So one secret of happiness is to ignore comparisons with people who are more successful than you are: always compare downwards, not upwards." Richard Layard, 2005."It put me to reflecting, how little repining there would be among mankind, at any condition of life, if people would rather compare their condition with those that are worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complainings." Daniel Defoe, 1719.We have been led, by the thinking of people such as the psychologist John Watson and the economist Lionel Robbins, to forget what everyone once knew: that wealth and happiness are not the same thing.Comparison is not the only reason the professors of happiness cite for our failure to feel better as we become richer. They point to the fact that we become habituated to wealth: Layard calls this "the hedonic treadmill". They blame the longer hours we work and our deteriorating relationships. But there is something I think they have missed: that wealth itself can become a source of deprivation.Having money enhances your freedom. You can travel further and you can do more when you get there. But other people's money restricts your freedom. Where you once felt free, now you find fences. In fact, you must travel further to find somewhere in which you can be free.As people become richer, and as they can extract more wealth from their property, other people become more threatening to them. We know that the fear of crime is a cause of unhappiness, but so is the sense of being seen as a potential criminal. The spikes and lights and cameras proclaim that society is not to be trusted, that we live in a world of Hobbesian relations. The story they tell becomes true, as property paranoia makes us hate each other. The harmless wanderer in the woods becomes a mortal enemy.It is hard to see how that plague of pheasants could be deemed to have caused a net increase in happiness. A group of very wealthy people, who already have an endless choice of activities, have one more wood in which to shoot. The rest of us have one less wood in which to walk. The landowners tell us that by putting down birds they have an incentive to preserve the woods - this was one of the arguments the gamekeeper used as he was throwing me off. But what good does that do us if we are not allowed to walk there?The Countryside and Rights of Way Act of 2000, which granted us the right to roam on mountains, moors, heath, downland and commons, has surely increased the sum of human happiness. But in those parts of the country that retain very little habitat of that kind (because it has been destroyed or enclosed by the land- owners), the gains we made then might already have been cancelled out by the losses, as the landlords' new opportunities for making money reduce our opportunities for leaving money behind.We need the full set of rights we were once promised, and which, in Scotland, have already been granted: access to the woods, the rivers and the coast as well as the open country. But as these places are turned into money-making monocultures, the question changes. Will we still want to visit them?
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1georgemonbiot
| 2UK
|
Injudicious as Neil Hamilton's misdemeanors were, they were only the flotsam on the tide of Tory sleaze. Houses were boarded up to change voting patterns, false certificates were used to evade arms embargoes and palms were greased to help secure foreign contracts. Conservative corruption left such a broad tideline that it isn't easy to say where the highwater mark was. But many would choose a story which resulted in the most humiliating legal verdict any recent British government has faced: the Pergau dam scandal. The Tory administration, being determined to secure contracts for both its arms manufacturers and the construction company Balfour Beatty, misdirected some 200m to finance a white elephant dam in Malaysia, through an obscure funding mechanism called the Aid and Trade Provision. If, somehow, you managed to miss this drama, don't worry. The whole intriguing tale is now being repeated by a government near you. The Labour administration, being determined to secure contracts for both its arms manufacturers and the construction company Balfour Beatty, has misdirected some 200m to finance a white elephant dam in Turkey, through an obscure funding mechanism called the Export Credit Guarantee Department. There is, however, one critical difference. The primary purpose of the Pergau dam, like that of most major construction, was to provide lucrative work for large companies. The Ilisu dam in Turkey will certainly fulfil this function. Like Pergau, it will also provide some electricity, though not, of course, as much as forecast. But the main purposes of the Turkish government's project are quite different. The first is to hold Syria and Iraq to ransom by controlling the flow of the river Tigris. The second is to assist its ethnic cleansing programme. Hasankeyf, an ancient city, is one of the most important archaeological sites on earth; contin- uously inhabited for 10,000 years, it bears the remains of nine distinct civilisations. The Kurds regard the city as their cultural heartland. Turkey sees it as an emblem of resistance. When Hasankeyf and surrounding settlements are drowned by the dam, some 20,000 Kurds will be forced from their homes and moved into model villages in which they can be monitored and controlled. Our government, which went to war in the spring to stop ethnic cleansing, is, in the winter, underwriting it. It is not hard to see why. European leaders have just agreed that Turkey can join the union: one result will be valuable contracts for British companies if the government can forge strong commercial links with the Turkish administration. British companies see the country's defence sector as a massive potential market. The Labour government's involvement in the Ilisu dam may be the biggest corruption scandal in western Europe, but you could be forgiven for having missed it. The decision was, it seems, to have been announced on Christmas Eve, but when the Hamilton verdict broke, the government seized its chance. The headline on the press release it distributed indicated only that Stephen Byers, the secretary of state for trade and industry, had released reports about the dam. Only halfway down the press release was notice given that Mr Byers was "minded to grant" the project government backing. A story which should have been at the top of the bulletins was either missed or excluded altogether. The Labour government, in other words, has successfully hidden its own corruption behind a tale of Tory sleaze. The reports on which the government's decision is supposed to have been based provide a compelling case for taking precisely the opposite course. They show that most local people object to the dam, that no provisions have been made for adequate compensation, that the project has been attended by an information black-out, that it threatens fish species found only in the Tigris, and could poison the water downstream. The "consultation" and "informed consent" the reports insist must take place before the project goes ahead are a sick joke in a region in which dissent is ruthlessly crushed and people are imprisoned and tortured simply for speaking their own language. As the Kurdish Human Rights Project has documented, 19 villages in the area due to be flooded have already been evicted at gunpoint and destroyed. Instead of insisting that human rights are respected and the environment is defended, the British government is relying on assurances from the Turkish authorities, which are about as dependable as Neil Hamilton's memory. Silenced by Turkey's repression, the Kurds are a half- forgotten, disposable people. Our government has wrapped them up and handed them over to big business. Christmas presents seldom come so generous.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of George Monbiot .
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Injudicious as Neil Hamilton's misdemeanors were, they were only the flotsam on the tide of Tory sleaze. Houses were boarded up to change voting patterns, false certificates were used to evade arms embargoes and palms were greased to help secure foreign contracts. Conservative corruption left such a broad tideline that it isn't easy to say where the highwater mark was. But many would choose a story which resulted in the most humiliating legal verdict any recent British government has faced: the Pergau dam scandal. The Tory administration, being determined to secure contracts for both its arms manufacturers and the construction company Balfour Beatty, misdirected some 200m to finance a white elephant dam in Malaysia, through an obscure funding mechanism called the Aid and Trade Provision. If, somehow, you managed to miss this drama, don't worry. The whole intriguing tale is now being repeated by a government near you. The Labour administration, being determined to secure contracts for both its arms manufacturers and the construction company Balfour Beatty, has misdirected some 200m to finance a white elephant dam in Turkey, through an obscure funding mechanism called the Export Credit Guarantee Department. There is, however, one critical difference. The primary purpose of the Pergau dam, like that of most major construction, was to provide lucrative work for large companies. The Ilisu dam in Turkey will certainly fulfil this function. Like Pergau, it will also provide some electricity, though not, of course, as much as forecast. But the main purposes of the Turkish government's project are quite different. The first is to hold Syria and Iraq to ransom by controlling the flow of the river Tigris. The second is to assist its ethnic cleansing programme. Hasankeyf, an ancient city, is one of the most important archaeological sites on earth; contin- uously inhabited for 10,000 years, it bears the remains of nine distinct civilisations. The Kurds regard the city as their cultural heartland. Turkey sees it as an emblem of resistance. When Hasankeyf and surrounding settlements are drowned by the dam, some 20,000 Kurds will be forced from their homes and moved into model villages in which they can be monitored and controlled. Our government, which went to war in the spring to stop ethnic cleansing, is, in the winter, underwriting it. It is not hard to see why. European leaders have just agreed that Turkey can join the union: one result will be valuable contracts for British companies if the government can forge strong commercial links with the Turkish administration. British companies see the country's defence sector as a massive potential market. The Labour government's involvement in the Ilisu dam may be the biggest corruption scandal in western Europe, but you could be forgiven for having missed it. The decision was, it seems, to have been announced on Christmas Eve, but when the Hamilton verdict broke, the government seized its chance. The headline on the press release it distributed indicated only that Stephen Byers, the secretary of state for trade and industry, had released reports about the dam. Only halfway down the press release was notice given that Mr Byers was "minded to grant" the project government backing. A story which should have been at the top of the bulletins was either missed or excluded altogether. The Labour government, in other words, has successfully hidden its own corruption behind a tale of Tory sleaze. The reports on which the government's decision is supposed to have been based provide a compelling case for taking precisely the opposite course. They show that most local people object to the dam, that no provisions have been made for adequate compensation, that the project has been attended by an information black-out, that it threatens fish species found only in the Tigris, and could poison the water downstream. The "consultation" and "informed consent" the reports insist must take place before the project goes ahead are a sick joke in a region in which dissent is ruthlessly crushed and people are imprisoned and tortured simply for speaking their own language. As the Kurdish Human Rights Project has documented, 19 villages in the area due to be flooded have already been evicted at gunpoint and destroyed. Instead of insisting that human rights are respected and the environment is defended, the British government is relying on assurances from the Turkish authorities, which are about as dependable as Neil Hamilton's memory. Silenced by Turkey's repression, the Kurds are a half- forgotten, disposable people. Our government has wrapped them up and handed them over to big business. Christmas presents seldom come so generous.
|
4martinkettle
| 2UK
|
At a time like this Sir Ian Blair can perhaps be excused his historical exaggeration. The hunt for the London suicide bombers, the Scotland Yard commissioner says, is the biggest challenge that the Metropolitan police have ever faced.I'm sorry, Sir Ian, but that's just not true. Bigger than Chartism? Bigger than the Fenians? Bigger than the unemployed demonstrations in the 1880s? Bigger than the Mosleyites in the 1930s? Bigger than the Blitz? Bigger than the urban riots of the 1980s? With respect, I think not.For large parts of the Met's history - perhaps indeed for most of it - Londoners and their police have not lived easily together. The police were imposed on London in the riotous 1820s, and the imposition defined the relationship for decades to come - until well into my lifetime. Policing with consent may be the buzz phrase today but it was not always so. For most of its history the Met tried to recruit from outside London - from the army and from Scotland in particular - in order to maintain a distance from, not a closeness to, the London community. The mythology summed up in the old Dixon of Dock Green image of the 1950s was very largely just that, mythology.That's not to say that there was no truth in the image of the local, avuncular bobby. But it was never the whole story. In Cold Bath Fields in 1833, just around the corner from where the Guardian's offices now stand, police attacked a political reform meeting without provocation and an officer, Constable Culley, was killed by the crowd. Local people made their views clear when a coroner's jury brought in the astonishing verdict of "justifiable homicide". Not much community policing there.And so it continued. Half a century later, when police trampled a bystander to death in the original Bloody Sunday riots of 1887, the funeral generated one of the largest and angriest crowds of the 19th century. As the coffin of Alfred Linnell - decorated with the words Killed in Trafalgar Square - was carried to Bow cemetery, the police were greeted with repeated chants of: "That's your work!" Shades of Blair Peach a century later.What the Metropolitan police need, Margaret Thatcher once said in that peremptory way of hers, is "support not criticism". Yet this was never a universal view. Most people accepted the police, then as now. But support had to be won, and too often it was not. Not for nothing did one young Londoner, Alfred Hitchcock, sum up his views of the police in ways many shared. "I'm not against the police," the great film-maker once declared. "I'm just afraid of them."It is hardly surprising that those kinds of views are being expressed yet again this week, after the Met shot Jean Charles de Menezes dead on a tube train last Friday. In the aftermath of this month's bombings there may be as many as 3,000 armed police on the capital's streets, a number that far exceeds either the Met's specialist armed response units or the armed police who guard key public figures and important buildings. In current circumstances that's an awful lot of people in our midst who are all a hair's breadth away from firing at a suspect. With the revelation of the "shoot to kill to protect" policy, suspicions must be expected and questions answered. Like Hitchcock, reasonable people may be afraid. The Commons home affairs committee ought to sit immediately.Shootings by the police still remain incredibly rare in this country. In most places, years can go by between one police bullet being fired and the next. But the key question is when it is legitimate. From what has been reported, the officer who killed the young Brazilian last week appeared to act in line with the rules issued under Lord Stevens. In extreme circumstances, he said, an armed officer can shoot a suspect in the head if the intelligence suggests that he is a suicide bomber who poses an imminent danger to the public or the police.At first sight this could be depicted as a radical extension of police guidelines. But is it? A closer examination reveals that it is more a particularisation of appropriate rules that have governed firearm use by police and the military in Britain, especially Northern Ireland, over many years. These rules contain a number of basic principles: that any force used should be the minimum necessary, that force should be used against particular targets rather than indiscriminately, that no more rounds should be fired than is necessary, that an audible warning must be given and that the officer should be certain that the suspect is about to take offensive action.What is important, though, is that the guidelines do not have the full force of the law unless and until they are tested in court. Now, tragically, we have such a case and the issues must be put to the test. Part of one's heart sinks. Matters of this kind have been a legal battleground in Northern Ireland for decades, not least in the Saville inquiry, mainly because of republicans' determination to depict themselves as the victims of British state violence but also because there are real issues of liberty and law at stake. Even Northern Ireland's often-maligned courts have found, for instance, that the mere failure of a suspect to halt when challenged does not justify shooting him.We need to be prepared to make a similar distinction in the De Menezes case. Just because some mischief makers are already trying to imply that the Met has a shoot-to-kill policy against young, dark-skinned men - which it doesn't - this does not absolve either the Met in general or the officers involved from having to answer for their decisions before a proper tribunal. An innocent man has been killed in the effort to protect other innocent people. That action must be judged. That would happen in Iraq and Israel - and in the British army. It should happen here too.The police should not panic about this. Over the past 25 years, largely since the Scarman report, there has been more reform of London's police than in the preceding century and a half. A police force has become a police service. The quality of leadership has been transformed - compare Ian Blair with David McNee - as have the quality and diversity of its officers. Much remains undone. There are too many boys with toys. Politicians still veer away from constructive criticism of the police.But this should not blind us to what has changed. The relationship between the police and Londoners is unrecognisable from what it was. In the McNee era there would have been no apologies and the force would have drawn tightly together, maligning the critics rather than facing up to the criticism. In the Blair era that is not necessary. Dreadful errors will still happen, from which lessons must be learned. The police are not magicians. But the public has learned to trust the police, errors and all, and I think they are right to do so.
|
article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Martin Kettle .
|
At a time like this Sir Ian Blair can perhaps be excused his historical exaggeration. The hunt for the London suicide bombers, the Scotland Yard commissioner says, is the biggest challenge that the Metropolitan police have ever faced.I'm sorry, Sir Ian, but that's just not true. Bigger than Chartism? Bigger than the Fenians? Bigger than the unemployed demonstrations in the 1880s? Bigger than the Mosleyites in the 1930s? Bigger than the Blitz? Bigger than the urban riots of the 1980s? With respect, I think not.For large parts of the Met's history - perhaps indeed for most of it - Londoners and their police have not lived easily together. The police were imposed on London in the riotous 1820s, and the imposition defined the relationship for decades to come - until well into my lifetime. Policing with consent may be the buzz phrase today but it was not always so. For most of its history the Met tried to recruit from outside London - from the army and from Scotland in particular - in order to maintain a distance from, not a closeness to, the London community. The mythology summed up in the old Dixon of Dock Green image of the 1950s was very largely just that, mythology.That's not to say that there was no truth in the image of the local, avuncular bobby. But it was never the whole story. In Cold Bath Fields in 1833, just around the corner from where the Guardian's offices now stand, police attacked a political reform meeting without provocation and an officer, Constable Culley, was killed by the crowd. Local people made their views clear when a coroner's jury brought in the astonishing verdict of "justifiable homicide". Not much community policing there.And so it continued. Half a century later, when police trampled a bystander to death in the original Bloody Sunday riots of 1887, the funeral generated one of the largest and angriest crowds of the 19th century. As the coffin of Alfred Linnell - decorated with the words Killed in Trafalgar Square - was carried to Bow cemetery, the police were greeted with repeated chants of: "That's your work!" Shades of Blair Peach a century later.What the Metropolitan police need, Margaret Thatcher once said in that peremptory way of hers, is "support not criticism". Yet this was never a universal view. Most people accepted the police, then as now. But support had to be won, and too often it was not. Not for nothing did one young Londoner, Alfred Hitchcock, sum up his views of the police in ways many shared. "I'm not against the police," the great film-maker once declared. "I'm just afraid of them."It is hardly surprising that those kinds of views are being expressed yet again this week, after the Met shot Jean Charles de Menezes dead on a tube train last Friday. In the aftermath of this month's bombings there may be as many as 3,000 armed police on the capital's streets, a number that far exceeds either the Met's specialist armed response units or the armed police who guard key public figures and important buildings. In current circumstances that's an awful lot of people in our midst who are all a hair's breadth away from firing at a suspect. With the revelation of the "shoot to kill to protect" policy, suspicions must be expected and questions answered. Like Hitchcock, reasonable people may be afraid. The Commons home affairs committee ought to sit immediately.Shootings by the police still remain incredibly rare in this country. In most places, years can go by between one police bullet being fired and the next. But the key question is when it is legitimate. From what has been reported, the officer who killed the young Brazilian last week appeared to act in line with the rules issued under Lord Stevens. In extreme circumstances, he said, an armed officer can shoot a suspect in the head if the intelligence suggests that he is a suicide bomber who poses an imminent danger to the public or the police.At first sight this could be depicted as a radical extension of police guidelines. But is it? A closer examination reveals that it is more a particularisation of appropriate rules that have governed firearm use by police and the military in Britain, especially Northern Ireland, over many years. These rules contain a number of basic principles: that any force used should be the minimum necessary, that force should be used against particular targets rather than indiscriminately, that no more rounds should be fired than is necessary, that an audible warning must be given and that the officer should be certain that the suspect is about to take offensive action.What is important, though, is that the guidelines do not have the full force of the law unless and until they are tested in court. Now, tragically, we have such a case and the issues must be put to the test. Part of one's heart sinks. Matters of this kind have been a legal battleground in Northern Ireland for decades, not least in the Saville inquiry, mainly because of republicans' determination to depict themselves as the victims of British state violence but also because there are real issues of liberty and law at stake. Even Northern Ireland's often-maligned courts have found, for instance, that the mere failure of a suspect to halt when challenged does not justify shooting him.We need to be prepared to make a similar distinction in the De Menezes case. Just because some mischief makers are already trying to imply that the Met has a shoot-to-kill policy against young, dark-skinned men - which it doesn't - this does not absolve either the Met in general or the officers involved from having to answer for their decisions before a proper tribunal. An innocent man has been killed in the effort to protect other innocent people. That action must be judged. That would happen in Iraq and Israel - and in the British army. It should happen here too.The police should not panic about this. Over the past 25 years, largely since the Scarman report, there has been more reform of London's police than in the preceding century and a half. A police force has become a police service. The quality of leadership has been transformed - compare Ian Blair with David McNee - as have the quality and diversity of its officers. Much remains undone. There are too many boys with toys. Politicians still veer away from constructive criticism of the police.But this should not blind us to what has changed. The relationship between the police and Londoners is unrecognisable from what it was. In the McNee era there would have been no apologies and the force would have drawn tightly together, maligning the critics rather than facing up to the criticism. In the Blair era that is not necessary. Dreadful errors will still happen, from which lessons must be learned. The police are not magicians. But the public has learned to trust the police, errors and all, and I think they are right to do so.
|
4martinkettle
| 2UK
|
On Sunday we had an evening of rum, sodomy and the lash. Last night it was followed by amputations without anaesthetic and gutters running with blood. Quite a bank holiday weekend. Certainly nobody can accuse Channel 4 of offering an airbrushed version of the Nelson bicentenary in its schedules this week.But Channel 4 is not alone in its preoccupation. The bookshops are groaning with new volumes on Trafalgar. Interest in the Royal Navy of Nelson's - and Jack Aubrey's - day is as strong as ever. The drumbeat of commemorative events is already difficult to ignore as October 21 nears. All of which provokes a large question: what, if anything, should we be celebrating on the 200th anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar?To many, of course, the answer is so self-evident as not to be worth further thought: Nelson was simply the brave and innovative commander whose death in a decisive battle against an aggressive enemy cemented his place as the emblematic British national hero. Merely to ask such a question is to run the risk of suspicion and derision in some quarters.Yet it is precisely because Nelson and Trafalgar are so iconic that it is worth examining them anew, in the light of modern needs. Nelson's war-torn Europe may seem light years from the peaceful, cooperative Europe of the 21st century - but Nelson is still the man carved in stone on top of our most famous national monument. Few of us are wholly resistant to his magic. Channel 4's coverage understands these complexities. And as Andrew Lambert, one of his best recent biographers, puts it: "Whatever it means to be British in the 21st century, Nelson is part of that identity."If that is right, which it is, then we need, as individuals and as a nation, to have a view about Nelson - and we need to know why we have that view. His story is more, much more, than a national heritage costume drama. We need to rise to the challenge of saying whether, how and why he fits into Britain today.This is not to belittle an indisputably remarkable man, whose death triggered almost unanimous national mourning and pride. Whatever else one can say about Nelson, he was a man who both lived up to his billing and who, in a very modern way, created it too. Remember, he was the national hero - title and all - in life before Trafalgar as well as in death afterwards. Death just made it more so.Nor is it to encourage those who want to judge him by our own standards rather than those of his own time. Nervertheless, an entirely proper historical argument against the celebration of Trafalgar is that the wrong side won. Nelson, after all, was waging war not just in defence of Britain, but in defence of reactionary and royalist Europe against not just France, but the democratic and republican ideals of the French revolution too.So would it have been such a terrible thing if Napoleon's planned invasion of Britain had taken place? More than a decade after Trafalgar, the fallen emperor explained to his doctor on St Helena what he had in mind in the summer of 1805."I would have hastened over my flotilla with 200,000 men, landed as near Chatham as possible and proceeded direct to London, where I calculated to arrive in four days from the time of my landing. I would have proclaimed a republic and the abolition of the nobility and the house of peers, the distribution of the property of such of the latter as opposed me among my partisans, liberty, equality and the sovereignty of the people."Bring it on, some will be tempted to say. Except that we would not have been offered the second half of Napoleon's scenario without the first. The reform would have been established, but it would only have been achieved at the point of a French bayonet. It was a package deal. And if there is one thing that the emperor actually achieved in the many countries on which he briefly imposed republican constitutions, it was to mobilise those countries to get rid of him so that they could govern themselves as free, rather than subject, peoples.A more historically accurate objection is that Trafalgar was not the victory we like to imagine. No, this is not some smart revisionist way of claiming that the French and Spanish actually won a battle they lost. But it is to say that Trafalgar was a victory in a different war to the one in the myth.It is at best arguable that Trafalgar saved Britain from invasion. In fact, Napoleon had turned his armies eastwards, against Austria and Russia, well before Nelson's finest hour. Decisive though it was, Trafalgar did little to alter the course of the Napoleonic wars. But it did mark the climax of the long-running 18th-century battle between Britain and France for global naval supremacy - what some have called the true first world war. "The major long-term strategic consequence of the battle was that Britain possessed an unchallenged supremacy on the seas for the best part of a century," write Tim Clayton and Phil Craig in their book on Trafalgar.So that makes Nelson not the man who saved the nation but the man who made the British empire possible - not a comfortable thought for many, and not intended to be. Except that here too there are subtle issues. Napoleon may have presented himself as a warrior on behalf of 18th-century Enlightenment values, albeit in an increasingly perverted form. But Nelson, like the Royal Navy of his day, was a child of the Enlightenment as well. Nelson's navy would never have been the success that it was without a belief both in science and in treating people well. Nelson's leadership was based, Lambert argues, "on love, not authority". And certainly, if there was one thing that everyone agrees about Nelson, it is that his officers and men - black as well as white - thought he was the embodiment of great leadership. It has gone down in history as "the Nelson touch".In the end we return to Nelson not because what he represents is easy to accept, but because what he represents is hard to accept; not just because he knew how to command but because he knew how to command in a fight. There is no getting away from it. Nelson was a war leader, not a business leader. His true greatness lay in the clarity with which he persuaded people to follow him into highly aggressive actions that went beyond the limit of what they thought possible - and then, when on their own, to continue to act consistently with the spirit of his plans. Today we would call it empowerment. But Trafalgar is the classic example of that.Two hundred years ago this week, as he spent his last days ashore, Nelson repeatedly spoke of achieving an "annihilating" victory over France. It is a terrible word. But at Trafalgar he made the word a reality. It has to be faced that this is where Nelson's genius lay. Very occasionally it is necessary to do dreadful things. When it is they need doing brilliantly. That was what Nelson achieved, above all others in this country's history. For some it makes him a criminal. For the rest it makes him a hero. Sometimes the line between the two is a fine one.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Martin Kettle .
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On Sunday we had an evening of rum, sodomy and the lash. Last night it was followed by amputations without anaesthetic and gutters running with blood. Quite a bank holiday weekend. Certainly nobody can accuse Channel 4 of offering an airbrushed version of the Nelson bicentenary in its schedules this week.But Channel 4 is not alone in its preoccupation. The bookshops are groaning with new volumes on Trafalgar. Interest in the Royal Navy of Nelson's - and Jack Aubrey's - day is as strong as ever. The drumbeat of commemorative events is already difficult to ignore as October 21 nears. All of which provokes a large question: what, if anything, should we be celebrating on the 200th anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar?To many, of course, the answer is so self-evident as not to be worth further thought: Nelson was simply the brave and innovative commander whose death in a decisive battle against an aggressive enemy cemented his place as the emblematic British national hero. Merely to ask such a question is to run the risk of suspicion and derision in some quarters.Yet it is precisely because Nelson and Trafalgar are so iconic that it is worth examining them anew, in the light of modern needs. Nelson's war-torn Europe may seem light years from the peaceful, cooperative Europe of the 21st century - but Nelson is still the man carved in stone on top of our most famous national monument. Few of us are wholly resistant to his magic. Channel 4's coverage understands these complexities. And as Andrew Lambert, one of his best recent biographers, puts it: "Whatever it means to be British in the 21st century, Nelson is part of that identity."If that is right, which it is, then we need, as individuals and as a nation, to have a view about Nelson - and we need to know why we have that view. His story is more, much more, than a national heritage costume drama. We need to rise to the challenge of saying whether, how and why he fits into Britain today.This is not to belittle an indisputably remarkable man, whose death triggered almost unanimous national mourning and pride. Whatever else one can say about Nelson, he was a man who both lived up to his billing and who, in a very modern way, created it too. Remember, he was the national hero - title and all - in life before Trafalgar as well as in death afterwards. Death just made it more so.Nor is it to encourage those who want to judge him by our own standards rather than those of his own time. Nervertheless, an entirely proper historical argument against the celebration of Trafalgar is that the wrong side won. Nelson, after all, was waging war not just in defence of Britain, but in defence of reactionary and royalist Europe against not just France, but the democratic and republican ideals of the French revolution too.So would it have been such a terrible thing if Napoleon's planned invasion of Britain had taken place? More than a decade after Trafalgar, the fallen emperor explained to his doctor on St Helena what he had in mind in the summer of 1805."I would have hastened over my flotilla with 200,000 men, landed as near Chatham as possible and proceeded direct to London, where I calculated to arrive in four days from the time of my landing. I would have proclaimed a republic and the abolition of the nobility and the house of peers, the distribution of the property of such of the latter as opposed me among my partisans, liberty, equality and the sovereignty of the people."Bring it on, some will be tempted to say. Except that we would not have been offered the second half of Napoleon's scenario without the first. The reform would have been established, but it would only have been achieved at the point of a French bayonet. It was a package deal. And if there is one thing that the emperor actually achieved in the many countries on which he briefly imposed republican constitutions, it was to mobilise those countries to get rid of him so that they could govern themselves as free, rather than subject, peoples.A more historically accurate objection is that Trafalgar was not the victory we like to imagine. No, this is not some smart revisionist way of claiming that the French and Spanish actually won a battle they lost. But it is to say that Trafalgar was a victory in a different war to the one in the myth.It is at best arguable that Trafalgar saved Britain from invasion. In fact, Napoleon had turned his armies eastwards, against Austria and Russia, well before Nelson's finest hour. Decisive though it was, Trafalgar did little to alter the course of the Napoleonic wars. But it did mark the climax of the long-running 18th-century battle between Britain and France for global naval supremacy - what some have called the true first world war. "The major long-term strategic consequence of the battle was that Britain possessed an unchallenged supremacy on the seas for the best part of a century," write Tim Clayton and Phil Craig in their book on Trafalgar.So that makes Nelson not the man who saved the nation but the man who made the British empire possible - not a comfortable thought for many, and not intended to be. Except that here too there are subtle issues. Napoleon may have presented himself as a warrior on behalf of 18th-century Enlightenment values, albeit in an increasingly perverted form. But Nelson, like the Royal Navy of his day, was a child of the Enlightenment as well. Nelson's navy would never have been the success that it was without a belief both in science and in treating people well. Nelson's leadership was based, Lambert argues, "on love, not authority". And certainly, if there was one thing that everyone agrees about Nelson, it is that his officers and men - black as well as white - thought he was the embodiment of great leadership. It has gone down in history as "the Nelson touch".In the end we return to Nelson not because what he represents is easy to accept, but because what he represents is hard to accept; not just because he knew how to command but because he knew how to command in a fight. There is no getting away from it. Nelson was a war leader, not a business leader. His true greatness lay in the clarity with which he persuaded people to follow him into highly aggressive actions that went beyond the limit of what they thought possible - and then, when on their own, to continue to act consistently with the spirit of his plans. Today we would call it empowerment. But Trafalgar is the classic example of that.Two hundred years ago this week, as he spent his last days ashore, Nelson repeatedly spoke of achieving an "annihilating" victory over France. It is a terrible word. But at Trafalgar he made the word a reality. It has to be faced that this is where Nelson's genius lay. Very occasionally it is necessary to do dreadful things. When it is they need doing brilliantly. That was what Nelson achieved, above all others in this country's history. For some it makes him a criminal. For the rest it makes him a hero. Sometimes the line between the two is a fine one.
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4martinkettle
| 2UK
|
Every year in this country, several hundred people are murdered. Of the hundreds, only a minority are ever widely reported. Of the minority, only a handful imprint themselves upon the psyche of a nation. And of the handful, only one or two in a decade become so infamous that they become the emblematic murders of their era. The killing of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman by Ian Huntley in the village of Soham is one of those cases. No murder investigation has ever been more lavishly reported. No murder victims have ever acquired the iconic status of Holly and Jessica in their Beckham shirts. (Would the crime have captured the nation if they had been Norwich City fans?) Few murder trials have dominated the news for so long as the one that ended at the Old Bailey yesterday. Ian Huntley has now been instantly consigned to a very select national pandemonium of the nation's most loathed killers. Some of his more recent fellow inmates include Fred and Rose West, Dennis Nilsen, Peter Sutcliffe, Harry Roberts, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. More distant denizens include Dr Harvey Crippen, Jack the Ripper and William Corder of Red Barn fame. Like them, Huntley will now become a byword for evil and Soham a place like Cranley Gardens and Saddleworth moor, remembered for one awful thing alone. Already last night, the broadcasting schedules were cleared for extended special reports, a rare and revealing tribute to the case. Books will now be hastily written about Huntley's crimes. Official inquiries will be held into how such a man could do such things. In time, criminologists, cultural commentators, novelists and film-makers will all rake over the case in their own ways. Though the trend in murder is upwards, it remains a very rare crime. Holly and Jessica were two of the total of 1,048 homicides in 2002-03 in England and Wales (the figure has been greatly inflated by the work of Dr Harold Shipman). Their chance of being a murder victim - like yours and mine - was around one in 60,000. Yet murder is obviously also the gravest of all crimes, one of the only serious offences to carry a mandatory sentence. For all their rarity, that select group of emblematic murders has always reflected something special about the dangers, fears and myths of the society in which they took place. In his 1946 essay on the decline of the English murder, George Orwell reflected on the characteristics of the killings that, then as now, filled the pages of the News of the World. The English murderer, Orwell wrote, would normally be a "little man of the professional class", living a respectable and conformist life in the suburbs. He would "go astray" through cherishing a passion for his secretary or another man's wife. He would bring himself to the point of murder only after great wrestling with his conscience. Having determined on murder, he then planned the crime - normally a poisoning - with the utmost cunning, only to be undone by some small unforeseen error. Such dramas, Orwell concluded, proved irresistible to the readers of middle Britain because they were the "product of a stable society where the all-prevailing hypocrisy did at least ensure that crimes as serious as murder should have strong emotions behind them". Nearly 60 years after Orwell, we are still mesmerised by murder. But the characteristics of the emblematic murder of today are very different from those noted by Orwell. This is strikingly true of the Soham murders, which were committed by a minor public official rather than a professional person, apparently answering to his sexual demons not a cherished passion, and carried out seemingly on the spur of the moment rather than after great planning. If the distinguishing feature of the emblematic murder of the past was its careful premeditation, the equivalent feature of today's is its randomness and its opportunism. This is why the unprecedented intensity of the coverage of the case is so important. Roy Hattersley rightly observed last week that there has never been anything like it. Day after day the case has dominated the airwaves and the front pages. For sheer volume Soham has eclipsed anything generated by the Wests or even by the murder of the toddler James Bulger, never mind the Moors murders or even the penny dreadfuls long ago. The volume of coverage has been matched only by its often provocative stridency, especially in the weeks that followed the arrests of Huntley and Maxine Carr. This led the attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, to tell journalists last month that "at times some of the reporting of the investigation and trial has been quite frankly unacceptable". It was hardly surprising that Carr was taunted in Holloway before the trial as a second Myra Hindley. Carr was manifestly no such thing, but the tabloid depictions of her in the autumn of 2002 left no doubt that, for some newspaper editors and their readers, Carr now filled the post of national female demon left vacant by Hindley's death. With every possible due respect to the murdered girls and their families, it has to be aggressively stated that the coverage of this case has been wholly out of proportion to its implied meaning. The subtext of the case is that your daughters are at risk of being murdered if they go out alone, even in a quiet East Anglian village, never mind on the mean streets of the inner city. Yet this is scarcely more true today than it has ever been. Holly and Jessica, both aged 10, fell into the category of the population - girls aged between five and 16 - that is least likely of all of us to be the victims of murder. When young people are murdered, which after the age of 12 months they rarely are, by far the chief threat to them comes from their parents, then by other adults known to them (as Huntley was), but not from strangers. Boys, moreover, are more likely to be murdered than girls. "It was the powder keg waiting for the match. I was the match," Dennis Nilsen wrote about his own murder spree 20 years ago, implying that someone like himself lurks around every corner of every street. Some will say the same about Huntley's opportunist killings too. The persistent implication is that something like this can happen to anyone, any time, anywhere. But the reality is that it can't and doesn't. Huntley's was an exceptionally awful crime, but it was also exceptionally unusual. It has been invested with national meaning less because of the crime than because of the way it has been reported. Under pressure from 24-hour news TV channels and the tabloids, the mainstream TV channels and what were then all still broadsheets bowed before the storm. The episode certainly tells us something about the kind of society we have become, but the truth is that it tells us rather more about the decline of the English media than it does about the decline of the English murder. <BR>
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article_from_author
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Martin Kettle .
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Every year in this country, several hundred people are murdered. Of the hundreds, only a minority are ever widely reported. Of the minority, only a handful imprint themselves upon the psyche of a nation. And of the handful, only one or two in a decade become so infamous that they become the emblematic murders of their era. The killing of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman by Ian Huntley in the village of Soham is one of those cases. No murder investigation has ever been more lavishly reported. No murder victims have ever acquired the iconic status of Holly and Jessica in their Beckham shirts. (Would the crime have captured the nation if they had been Norwich City fans?) Few murder trials have dominated the news for so long as the one that ended at the Old Bailey yesterday. Ian Huntley has now been instantly consigned to a very select national pandemonium of the nation's most loathed killers. Some of his more recent fellow inmates include Fred and Rose West, Dennis Nilsen, Peter Sutcliffe, Harry Roberts, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. More distant denizens include Dr Harvey Crippen, Jack the Ripper and William Corder of Red Barn fame. Like them, Huntley will now become a byword for evil and Soham a place like Cranley Gardens and Saddleworth moor, remembered for one awful thing alone. Already last night, the broadcasting schedules were cleared for extended special reports, a rare and revealing tribute to the case. Books will now be hastily written about Huntley's crimes. Official inquiries will be held into how such a man could do such things. In time, criminologists, cultural commentators, novelists and film-makers will all rake over the case in their own ways. Though the trend in murder is upwards, it remains a very rare crime. Holly and Jessica were two of the total of 1,048 homicides in 2002-03 in England and Wales (the figure has been greatly inflated by the work of Dr Harold Shipman). Their chance of being a murder victim - like yours and mine - was around one in 60,000. Yet murder is obviously also the gravest of all crimes, one of the only serious offences to carry a mandatory sentence. For all their rarity, that select group of emblematic murders has always reflected something special about the dangers, fears and myths of the society in which they took place. In his 1946 essay on the decline of the English murder, George Orwell reflected on the characteristics of the killings that, then as now, filled the pages of the News of the World. The English murderer, Orwell wrote, would normally be a "little man of the professional class", living a respectable and conformist life in the suburbs. He would "go astray" through cherishing a passion for his secretary or another man's wife. He would bring himself to the point of murder only after great wrestling with his conscience. Having determined on murder, he then planned the crime - normally a poisoning - with the utmost cunning, only to be undone by some small unforeseen error. Such dramas, Orwell concluded, proved irresistible to the readers of middle Britain because they were the "product of a stable society where the all-prevailing hypocrisy did at least ensure that crimes as serious as murder should have strong emotions behind them". Nearly 60 years after Orwell, we are still mesmerised by murder. But the characteristics of the emblematic murder of today are very different from those noted by Orwell. This is strikingly true of the Soham murders, which were committed by a minor public official rather than a professional person, apparently answering to his sexual demons not a cherished passion, and carried out seemingly on the spur of the moment rather than after great planning. If the distinguishing feature of the emblematic murder of the past was its careful premeditation, the equivalent feature of today's is its randomness and its opportunism. This is why the unprecedented intensity of the coverage of the case is so important. Roy Hattersley rightly observed last week that there has never been anything like it. Day after day the case has dominated the airwaves and the front pages. For sheer volume Soham has eclipsed anything generated by the Wests or even by the murder of the toddler James Bulger, never mind the Moors murders or even the penny dreadfuls long ago. The volume of coverage has been matched only by its often provocative stridency, especially in the weeks that followed the arrests of Huntley and Maxine Carr. This led the attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, to tell journalists last month that "at times some of the reporting of the investigation and trial has been quite frankly unacceptable". It was hardly surprising that Carr was taunted in Holloway before the trial as a second Myra Hindley. Carr was manifestly no such thing, but the tabloid depictions of her in the autumn of 2002 left no doubt that, for some newspaper editors and their readers, Carr now filled the post of national female demon left vacant by Hindley's death. With every possible due respect to the murdered girls and their families, it has to be aggressively stated that the coverage of this case has been wholly out of proportion to its implied meaning. The subtext of the case is that your daughters are at risk of being murdered if they go out alone, even in a quiet East Anglian village, never mind on the mean streets of the inner city. Yet this is scarcely more true today than it has ever been. Holly and Jessica, both aged 10, fell into the category of the population - girls aged between five and 16 - that is least likely of all of us to be the victims of murder. When young people are murdered, which after the age of 12 months they rarely are, by far the chief threat to them comes from their parents, then by other adults known to them (as Huntley was), but not from strangers. Boys, moreover, are more likely to be murdered than girls. "It was the powder keg waiting for the match. I was the match," Dennis Nilsen wrote about his own murder spree 20 years ago, implying that someone like himself lurks around every corner of every street. Some will say the same about Huntley's opportunist killings too. The persistent implication is that something like this can happen to anyone, any time, anywhere. But the reality is that it can't and doesn't. Huntley's was an exceptionally awful crime, but it was also exceptionally unusual. It has been invested with national meaning less because of the crime than because of the way it has been reported. Under pressure from 24-hour news TV channels and the tabloids, the mainstream TV channels and what were then all still broadsheets bowed before the storm. The episode certainly tells us something about the kind of society we have become, but the truth is that it tells us rather more about the decline of the English media than it does about the decline of the English murder. <BR>
|
9royhattersley
| 2UK
|
We had a traditional Christmas. The pilot light went out in the boiler. My mother was bad-tempered. The giblets made the dog sick. Sheffield Wednesday lost. But one unexpected incident shone more brightly than the star in the east. Princess Anne's behaviour immediately after she had celebrated the birth of the Prince of Peace made it the most memorable season of goodwill for years. I offer her royal highness my humble congratulations and hope it is not lese-majeste on my part to add: "Keep it up, Ma'am. Keep it up." Endpiece readers may not be familiar with what happened outside Sandringham Church - and may find the details of the story difficult to believe even when they hear them. But they were reported in the tabloid newspapers and are therefore beyond dispute. A 75-year-old lady called Mrs Halfpenny made a basket - plaiting the wicker with her own hands - and filled it with flowers.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
|||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Roy Hattersley .
|
We had a traditional Christmas. The pilot light went out in the boiler. My mother was bad-tempered. The giblets made the dog sick. Sheffield Wednesday lost. But one unexpected incident shone more brightly than the star in the east. Princess Anne's behaviour immediately after she had celebrated the birth of the Prince of Peace made it the most memorable season of goodwill for years. I offer her royal highness my humble congratulations and hope it is not lese-majeste on my part to add: "Keep it up, Ma'am. Keep it up." Endpiece readers may not be familiar with what happened outside Sandringham Church - and may find the details of the story difficult to believe even when they hear them. But they were reported in the tabloid newspapers and are therefore beyond dispute. A 75-year-old lady called Mrs Halfpenny made a basket - plaiting the wicker with her own hands - and filled it with flowers.
|
9royhattersley
| 2UK
|
Last Tuesday morning, every national newspaper - including the Guardian - made the Soham murder trial its front-page lead. Some of the headlines were written in taut American colloquialisms, which, as well as saving space, convey an impression of dramatic urgency. The Manchester United replica shirts, in which Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman died, had been "binned". Ian Huntley, the principal defendant, "took the stand". The effect was so startling that, for a moment, it seemed irresponsible not to read what one tabloid called "the chilling details". Most of the stories were illustrated with two photographs. One was of the bath in which Holly Wells was said to have died. The other - reproduced in colour - showed, half-burned at the bottom of a school dustbin, the shirts in which the girls were last seen. I do not follow murder trails with the care that would make me an authority of their coverage by the press. But I cannot recall any recent prosecution being reported in such detail. And Tuesday was only one day in the continuing saga. In the next week, after the judge has summed up and the jury announced its verdict, we can expect the coverage to be augmented by an avalanche of comment. Newspapers fill their front pages with stories that they judge will attract readers and increase circulation. So we are required to believe - as a result of last Tuesday's unanimous editorial verdict - that the British public, whatever its general taste in journalism, combines in its enthusiasm for information about human suffering. Accounts of Ian Huntley "sobbing in court", admitting responsibility for the two girls' deaths and expressing his bitter regret that he cannot "turn back the clock" to the time before they died, apparently sold newspapers. It seems that large sections of the great British public have an inexhaustible appetite for horror. Newspapers have a duty to report the trial of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr and the right to describe it in whatever way they choose. In a democracy, justice must be done in public. Newspapers often pretend that their penchant for sensation is essential to the national interest rather than to circulation. But, while we are entitled to deplore their hypocrisy, we should not complain too loudly about the run-of-the-mill revelation and routine expos. They have to sell copies to survive. That explains their readiness to supply the salacious details of murder, rape and assault cases once the stories can be legitimised as court reporting. But what about the demand? There is only one word with which to describe the desire for details of the Soham tragedy. The word is prurience. All decent people felt unmitigated horror when they heard the simple fact of the two girls' deaths. And no one who has not endured a similar trauma is fully able to imagine the depth of grief in which their parents must still be engulfed. The Chapmans and the Wellses deserve our unqualified sympathy. Absorption in the squalid details of Ian Huntley's behaviour is a strange way in which to show it. Reading his explanation of how he fitted the girls' bodies into the boot of his car is hardly an expression of condolence. The lawyers have to argue about his conduct. But there is something sick about the casual reader following him on that last tragic journey. Poring over every detail of the evidence and cross-examination - "Had you disturbed the clothing of either girl before they went into the ditch?" - is not very different from standing outside the courthouse in the hope of catching a glimpse of the defendant through the window of the prison van or waiting at Tyburn to see the week's hangings. Last week, the country was awash with sedentary voyeurism. The vicarious emotions that the accounts of the trial provoked range from the honourable, through the ignoble to the thoroughly perverse. Sentimentalists will claim that by learning of the two girls' suffering they share the parents' grief and loss. Can they really believe that families bereaved by such tragedies want complete strangers to read the necessarily sordid arguments about their children's last hours? It has to happen in court. And the families have shown admirable courage in being there to see justice done. But they are unlikely to find much consolation in headlines such as "I put the body in the ditch and rolled her down". If people really enjoy reading that sort of thing, there is no way in which we can stop newspapers publishing such stories. Nor, in a free society, should we wish to do so. But I resolutely refuse to believe that fascination with the details of vicious death is an inherent part of human nature. How many sales would a serious newspaper lose if, in the days ahead, it reported the result of the Soham trial unelaborated with the salacious details that we must brace ourselves to expect? Regrettably, we shall never know.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Roy Hattersley .
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Last Tuesday morning, every national newspaper - including the Guardian - made the Soham murder trial its front-page lead. Some of the headlines were written in taut American colloquialisms, which, as well as saving space, convey an impression of dramatic urgency. The Manchester United replica shirts, in which Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman died, had been "binned". Ian Huntley, the principal defendant, "took the stand". The effect was so startling that, for a moment, it seemed irresponsible not to read what one tabloid called "the chilling details". Most of the stories were illustrated with two photographs. One was of the bath in which Holly Wells was said to have died. The other - reproduced in colour - showed, half-burned at the bottom of a school dustbin, the shirts in which the girls were last seen. I do not follow murder trails with the care that would make me an authority of their coverage by the press. But I cannot recall any recent prosecution being reported in such detail. And Tuesday was only one day in the continuing saga. In the next week, after the judge has summed up and the jury announced its verdict, we can expect the coverage to be augmented by an avalanche of comment. Newspapers fill their front pages with stories that they judge will attract readers and increase circulation. So we are required to believe - as a result of last Tuesday's unanimous editorial verdict - that the British public, whatever its general taste in journalism, combines in its enthusiasm for information about human suffering. Accounts of Ian Huntley "sobbing in court", admitting responsibility for the two girls' deaths and expressing his bitter regret that he cannot "turn back the clock" to the time before they died, apparently sold newspapers. It seems that large sections of the great British public have an inexhaustible appetite for horror. Newspapers have a duty to report the trial of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr and the right to describe it in whatever way they choose. In a democracy, justice must be done in public. Newspapers often pretend that their penchant for sensation is essential to the national interest rather than to circulation. But, while we are entitled to deplore their hypocrisy, we should not complain too loudly about the run-of-the-mill revelation and routine expos. They have to sell copies to survive. That explains their readiness to supply the salacious details of murder, rape and assault cases once the stories can be legitimised as court reporting. But what about the demand? There is only one word with which to describe the desire for details of the Soham tragedy. The word is prurience. All decent people felt unmitigated horror when they heard the simple fact of the two girls' deaths. And no one who has not endured a similar trauma is fully able to imagine the depth of grief in which their parents must still be engulfed. The Chapmans and the Wellses deserve our unqualified sympathy. Absorption in the squalid details of Ian Huntley's behaviour is a strange way in which to show it. Reading his explanation of how he fitted the girls' bodies into the boot of his car is hardly an expression of condolence. The lawyers have to argue about his conduct. But there is something sick about the casual reader following him on that last tragic journey. Poring over every detail of the evidence and cross-examination - "Had you disturbed the clothing of either girl before they went into the ditch?" - is not very different from standing outside the courthouse in the hope of catching a glimpse of the defendant through the window of the prison van or waiting at Tyburn to see the week's hangings. Last week, the country was awash with sedentary voyeurism. The vicarious emotions that the accounts of the trial provoked range from the honourable, through the ignoble to the thoroughly perverse. Sentimentalists will claim that by learning of the two girls' suffering they share the parents' grief and loss. Can they really believe that families bereaved by such tragedies want complete strangers to read the necessarily sordid arguments about their children's last hours? It has to happen in court. And the families have shown admirable courage in being there to see justice done. But they are unlikely to find much consolation in headlines such as "I put the body in the ditch and rolled her down". If people really enjoy reading that sort of thing, there is no way in which we can stop newspapers publishing such stories. Nor, in a free society, should we wish to do so. But I resolutely refuse to believe that fascination with the details of vicious death is an inherent part of human nature. How many sales would a serious newspaper lose if, in the days ahead, it reported the result of the Soham trial unelaborated with the salacious details that we must brace ourselves to expect? Regrettably, we shall never know.
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9royhattersley
| 2UK
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Driving north with an indomitable determination to allow neither floods nor Railtrack to cut me off from civilisation, I listened to a radio programme in which Michael Wills MP admitted that the prime minister had given him a special task. He is to encourage other members of the government to pay special respect to our national identity - always in their speeches and whenever possible in their policy decisions. People who know Mr Wills tell me that he is among the brightest and best of the new political generation. He will need all his talents if he is to discharge his new responsibilities successfully. For he has to begin by deciding which nation he is going to identify. Then - having chosen between Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the countries which make up the still heterogeneous union - provide a working definition of what the appropriate national identity is. All the easy answers to his questions have more to do with fascism than philosophy. Let me, in order to avoid the accusation of loving every country better than my own, describe my attitude towards England. It is the only place in which I want to live. Indeed, with the exception of Scotland - in which I spend a couple of happy weeks each summer - it is the only place in which I want to be for any length of time. English is the only language I speak and the only literature I know well. I enjoy England's unpredictable weather and its ever changing landscape. I still hope that the New Jerusalem can be builded here. So I can answer the question about which national identity matters to me easily enough. I am British only by the legal definition of my citizenship. But I am English by instinct and emotion. However, Mr Wills cannot base his work on any such dichotomy. The national identity which our Scottish prime minister wishes to promote must at least embrace Great Britain. John Major's notion of a people bound together by village cricket, warm beer and old ladies cycling to church will not do for Tony Blair. It will not do for me either. Despite my sentimental attraction to the reigns of Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria (when the idea of England was established) the country in which I want to live is multiracial and more concerned with facing the hard challenges of the future than dwelling on the glories of the past. There is a ready definition of British nationality which Mr Wills could use as the basis of his work. Quite rightly he has rejected it. It is usually illustrated by a description of territorial acquisitions and claims of military success. Both illustrations lead to the conclusion that there is something superior about this sceptred isle. We can argue about whether of not Rudyard Kipling's reference to "lesser breeds without the law" was a statement of his true opinion or an ironic criticism of a chauvinism which he had come to hate. Either way, it an eloquent illustration of what British identity meant at the end of the 19th century. I fear that Mr Wills's definition, when he hits upon it, will have many of the same shortcomings. If what he said on radio is to be believed, he means to encourage a view of our national identity which is based on characteristic values - love of fair play, belief in justice, devotion to liberty. We can only define Britain by those admirable qualities if we assert or imply that they are absent, or less pronounced, in other nationalities. Are the French less compassionate and the Swedes more intolerant than we are? I am too insular to know the answer. But to suggest that we are superior to them in these respects is not very different from regarding them as lesser breeds without the law. In truth Mr Wills's task is no more about encouraging respect for our national identity than it is about deciding whether Shakespeare belongs to England or to the world. His job is to make sure that ministers sound as if they are "standing up for Britain". That is an attitude which I wholeheartedly support on those occasions when Britain is right. But that is quite different from defending every element of "Britishness" - from outdated monarchy to antiquated independent nuclear deterrent - that the Tory party claim tests the government's love of country. I feared that before I finished this there would be a reference to "love of country" - a phrase which, being properly English, I find embarrassing. So I cover my shame by describing how mine came about. Chickens are irrevocably attached to the first hen they see after they burst from the egg. For all of my formative years all I knew was England. Irrational affection has its advantages. Even when the old bird begins to moult, it remains an object of irrational devotion. But the irrationality should only go so far. Claims to superiority are both demeaning and dangerous.
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"George Monbiot",
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"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
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"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Roy Hattersley .
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Driving north with an indomitable determination to allow neither floods nor Railtrack to cut me off from civilisation, I listened to a radio programme in which Michael Wills MP admitted that the prime minister had given him a special task. He is to encourage other members of the government to pay special respect to our national identity - always in their speeches and whenever possible in their policy decisions. People who know Mr Wills tell me that he is among the brightest and best of the new political generation. He will need all his talents if he is to discharge his new responsibilities successfully. For he has to begin by deciding which nation he is going to identify. Then - having chosen between Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the countries which make up the still heterogeneous union - provide a working definition of what the appropriate national identity is. All the easy answers to his questions have more to do with fascism than philosophy. Let me, in order to avoid the accusation of loving every country better than my own, describe my attitude towards England. It is the only place in which I want to live. Indeed, with the exception of Scotland - in which I spend a couple of happy weeks each summer - it is the only place in which I want to be for any length of time. English is the only language I speak and the only literature I know well. I enjoy England's unpredictable weather and its ever changing landscape. I still hope that the New Jerusalem can be builded here. So I can answer the question about which national identity matters to me easily enough. I am British only by the legal definition of my citizenship. But I am English by instinct and emotion. However, Mr Wills cannot base his work on any such dichotomy. The national identity which our Scottish prime minister wishes to promote must at least embrace Great Britain. John Major's notion of a people bound together by village cricket, warm beer and old ladies cycling to church will not do for Tony Blair. It will not do for me either. Despite my sentimental attraction to the reigns of Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria (when the idea of England was established) the country in which I want to live is multiracial and more concerned with facing the hard challenges of the future than dwelling on the glories of the past. There is a ready definition of British nationality which Mr Wills could use as the basis of his work. Quite rightly he has rejected it. It is usually illustrated by a description of territorial acquisitions and claims of military success. Both illustrations lead to the conclusion that there is something superior about this sceptred isle. We can argue about whether of not Rudyard Kipling's reference to "lesser breeds without the law" was a statement of his true opinion or an ironic criticism of a chauvinism which he had come to hate. Either way, it an eloquent illustration of what British identity meant at the end of the 19th century. I fear that Mr Wills's definition, when he hits upon it, will have many of the same shortcomings. If what he said on radio is to be believed, he means to encourage a view of our national identity which is based on characteristic values - love of fair play, belief in justice, devotion to liberty. We can only define Britain by those admirable qualities if we assert or imply that they are absent, or less pronounced, in other nationalities. Are the French less compassionate and the Swedes more intolerant than we are? I am too insular to know the answer. But to suggest that we are superior to them in these respects is not very different from regarding them as lesser breeds without the law. In truth Mr Wills's task is no more about encouraging respect for our national identity than it is about deciding whether Shakespeare belongs to England or to the world. His job is to make sure that ministers sound as if they are "standing up for Britain". That is an attitude which I wholeheartedly support on those occasions when Britain is right. But that is quite different from defending every element of "Britishness" - from outdated monarchy to antiquated independent nuclear deterrent - that the Tory party claim tests the government's love of country. I feared that before I finished this there would be a reference to "love of country" - a phrase which, being properly English, I find embarrassing. So I cover my shame by describing how mine came about. Chickens are irrevocably attached to the first hen they see after they burst from the egg. For all of my formative years all I knew was England. Irrational affection has its advantages. Even when the old bird begins to moult, it remains an object of irrational devotion. But the irrationality should only go so far. Claims to superiority are both demeaning and dangerous.
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9royhattersley
| 2UK
|
The issue is no longer foxhunting. From now on the argument is about the rule of law. I make no secret of my belief that a civilised society should not allow an amusement which has as its object - or at least its known consequence - the death of an animal. If the right to hunt foxes is a question of civil liberties, so is the right to organise bear-baiting and cockfights. But the debate on that subject is about to be concluded - at least in parliament. No doubt, it will go on in the country. That is the way that free societies behave. Foxhunters will, entirely legitimately, attempt to persuade the House of Commons to change its mind. Today's question concerns how they react to the decision when and while it has the force of law. There are several precedents to guide their conduct. I spent years of my life telling trade unions that there were no such things as "Tory laws". Most of the foxhunting fraternity took the same view. Those of us who told Arthur Scargill to respect the will of a democratically elected parliament are entitled to say the same to the masters of assorted hunts. Indeed, we are entitled to ask what so many people asked us when we were part of what was laughingly called the Labour party leadership. Are persons of influence and authority going to set an example by condemning their lawless associates? That is a question the Prince of Wales now needs to answer. Rumours that he will go on hunting, even when it is illegal, are clearly absurd. A prince who knowingly defied the law could not become king. But last week's events still cause him a problem. The upper-class hooligans who invaded the House of Commons are associated with him in the public mind. The newspapers published photographs of them grinning together, and he is a well-known supporter of the cause which prompted their "invasion" of the Commons. While it was still a legal activity, no one could reasonably feel more than distaste for his hunting enthusiasm. Now that it is about to become illegal, he has a duty to tell the more excitable devotees of the chase that they are no more above the law than the miners were. He ought already to have condemned the Hooray Henrys who disrupted the Commons. The Act of Settlement requires him to protect parliament. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt and put his silence down to slow reaction time. If he remains silent when the promised lawlessness begins, it will be generally assumed that he supports the motorway blockades and the trashing of MPs' constituency offices. No doubt, apologists for the monarchy will say that he should not be dragged into politics. Right, but too late. Thanks to his hooligan associates, he is already part of the political debate. To preserve his constitutional integrity he needs to say that, emotional huntsman though he remains, he accepts the will of parliament and expects all of his putative subjects to do the same. If Charles III makes the same mistake as Charles I, his defiance of parliament will have less spectacular consequences. But its long-term effect on the future of the monarchy might be more damaging. People who pay parking fines and get caught on speed cameras are likely to be impatient with the notion that foxhunters are a special legal case. That is the cry of every petty criminal who is caught. The Prince of Wales will not increase his popularity by tacitly subscribing to the view that their cause justifies a privileged position which would be denied to the men and women protesting against an unjust war and was denied to men at Cortonwood colliery who demonstrated against the decision to destroy their livelihoods. All the emotive arguments in favour of foxhunting could have been applied to mining 20 years ago, with 10 times more force. Jobs were lost. A way of life was sacrificed. A noble part of our history died. The newspapers which are treating the Commons invaders like heroes need to show a little consistency. And the heir to the throne ought to create a few headlines by speaking up for the law. Neither the Prince of Wales nor the Countryside Alliance can hide behind the demeaning excuse that the hooligans are an unwanted addition the peaceful protests. Grown-ups have to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. We know, as a result of last week's events, that a lawless fringe - blocking roads and throwing flash bombs at police horses - will always hang round the pro-hunt demonstrations, initially peaceful or not. Someone the hunters will listen to has to demand that the law be respected. The Prince of Wales is the ideal candidate for the job - unless he is a secret sympathiser with the people who hold democracy in contempt.
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[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Roy Hattersley .
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The issue is no longer foxhunting. From now on the argument is about the rule of law. I make no secret of my belief that a civilised society should not allow an amusement which has as its object - or at least its known consequence - the death of an animal. If the right to hunt foxes is a question of civil liberties, so is the right to organise bear-baiting and cockfights. But the debate on that subject is about to be concluded - at least in parliament. No doubt, it will go on in the country. That is the way that free societies behave. Foxhunters will, entirely legitimately, attempt to persuade the House of Commons to change its mind. Today's question concerns how they react to the decision when and while it has the force of law. There are several precedents to guide their conduct. I spent years of my life telling trade unions that there were no such things as "Tory laws". Most of the foxhunting fraternity took the same view. Those of us who told Arthur Scargill to respect the will of a democratically elected parliament are entitled to say the same to the masters of assorted hunts. Indeed, we are entitled to ask what so many people asked us when we were part of what was laughingly called the Labour party leadership. Are persons of influence and authority going to set an example by condemning their lawless associates? That is a question the Prince of Wales now needs to answer. Rumours that he will go on hunting, even when it is illegal, are clearly absurd. A prince who knowingly defied the law could not become king. But last week's events still cause him a problem. The upper-class hooligans who invaded the House of Commons are associated with him in the public mind. The newspapers published photographs of them grinning together, and he is a well-known supporter of the cause which prompted their "invasion" of the Commons. While it was still a legal activity, no one could reasonably feel more than distaste for his hunting enthusiasm. Now that it is about to become illegal, he has a duty to tell the more excitable devotees of the chase that they are no more above the law than the miners were. He ought already to have condemned the Hooray Henrys who disrupted the Commons. The Act of Settlement requires him to protect parliament. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt and put his silence down to slow reaction time. If he remains silent when the promised lawlessness begins, it will be generally assumed that he supports the motorway blockades and the trashing of MPs' constituency offices. No doubt, apologists for the monarchy will say that he should not be dragged into politics. Right, but too late. Thanks to his hooligan associates, he is already part of the political debate. To preserve his constitutional integrity he needs to say that, emotional huntsman though he remains, he accepts the will of parliament and expects all of his putative subjects to do the same. If Charles III makes the same mistake as Charles I, his defiance of parliament will have less spectacular consequences. But its long-term effect on the future of the monarchy might be more damaging. People who pay parking fines and get caught on speed cameras are likely to be impatient with the notion that foxhunters are a special legal case. That is the cry of every petty criminal who is caught. The Prince of Wales will not increase his popularity by tacitly subscribing to the view that their cause justifies a privileged position which would be denied to the men and women protesting against an unjust war and was denied to men at Cortonwood colliery who demonstrated against the decision to destroy their livelihoods. All the emotive arguments in favour of foxhunting could have been applied to mining 20 years ago, with 10 times more force. Jobs were lost. A way of life was sacrificed. A noble part of our history died. The newspapers which are treating the Commons invaders like heroes need to show a little consistency. And the heir to the throne ought to create a few headlines by speaking up for the law. Neither the Prince of Wales nor the Countryside Alliance can hide behind the demeaning excuse that the hooligans are an unwanted addition the peaceful protests. Grown-ups have to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. We know, as a result of last week's events, that a lawless fringe - blocking roads and throwing flash bombs at police horses - will always hang round the pro-hunt demonstrations, initially peaceful or not. Someone the hunters will listen to has to demand that the law be respected. The Prince of Wales is the ideal candidate for the job - unless he is a secret sympathiser with the people who hold democracy in contempt.
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9royhattersley
| 2UK
|
If, as the Queen tells us, "there are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge", how does she know about them? The answer to that conundrum is that there is no answer. Nothing about the monarchy is rational. We inhabit a Ruritanian fantasy in which the parliamentary year begins with the monarch - magnificent at mid-morning in evening dress and tiara - reading the details of the government's legislative programme from a piece of hand-inscribed vellum. That is the dull routine of royal family life. From time to time it erupts into a demonstration that the notion on which it is built is inherently dangerous as well as absurd. The amount of time and space which has been wasted on a butler who became obsessed with his employer is the direct result of the fiction that there is something special about the royal family. That is only true if, by special, we mean strange. The squalid absurdity of the latest revelations is illustrated by a growing feeling of sympathy for Mohamed Al Fayed. The man who is adjudged unworthy of a British passport must deeply regret that his son became associated with such a disreputable bunch. Writing about the royal family's foibles is, for me, a novelty. Ten days ago, I was about to resign from the Campaign for an Elected Head of State because of its attitude towards the Windsors' private lives, as revealed in the Panorama investigation of Camilla Parker Bowles's prospects of becoming queen. The simulated meeting of the campaign's committee showed an intolerably cynical approach to the business of promoting a republic. Professor Stephen Haseler, the chairman, announced that the personal conduct of the Prince of Wales must be exploited in the drive to end the hereditary monarchy. My arguments in favour of an elected head of state have always been built around the inadequacy of the institution, not the shortcomings of the individuals. Of course, I accepted that the heredity principle is based on the notion of a genetically distinct family, with everything that family does - in private as well as public - providing evidence of its suitability to rule. But I was against the monarchy because it embodied the idea of a social hierarchy and encouraged the nation to look back instead of forward, not because the heir to the throne made childishly prurient telephone calls. I was wrong. The real objection to a monarchy remains the debilitating effect it has upon society. But the damage done by its public existence is compounded by the private conduct of the monarch and her relations. The Queen's role in the Paul Burrell case makes that clear. It is impossible to believe that Her Majesty only realised the significance of her three-hour meeting with Burrell a couple of days before he was to give evidence in his trial for theft. Her personal conduct was clearly influenced by belief in the constitutional fiction on which her status rests. In private as well as public, she was above the law. Her first instinct - as mother and sovereign - was to preserve the good name of her (royal) family. Initially, that seemed best achieved by keeping well out of the Burrell affair. She only intervened when abdication (in this limited sense) seemed unlikely to prevent revelations about the home life of our dear Princess of Wales. The intervention hopelessly failed. But that does not reduce its significance. The personal conduct of the royal family, Diana's estrangement from the Prince of Wales, and her weird relationship with staff, combined with her mother-in-law's determination to protect the Windsors' reputation to produce a legal travesty. In the case of Regina versus Burrell, the defendant was alleged to have stolen property from Regina's daughter-in-law. Then Regina herself became the star witness. While the monarchy exists, the deference afforded to them will continue to prejudice everything they touch. As long as the reverence was simply extended to the Duke of York being escorted to the Ministry of Defence each day by motorcycle policemen, no great harm was done. The conduct of the Burrell investigation shows the monarchy is not just a bad joke. Detectives from a squad that specialised in dealing with celebrities - an arrangement which itself says something about society - knew, or ought to have known, that Burrell had claimed to have spoken of his acquisitions during a royal audience. Yet none of them thought it appropriate to check his claim with the Queen. At best, they were overawed at the thought of cross-examining Her Majesty. Some of them may even have imagined that she was beyond their jurisdiction. Either way, justice might well have been denied because of their obsequiousness. The problems of the hereditary monarchy result from its existence. The only solution to any of the consequent absurdities is a republic.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Roy Hattersley .
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If, as the Queen tells us, "there are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge", how does she know about them? The answer to that conundrum is that there is no answer. Nothing about the monarchy is rational. We inhabit a Ruritanian fantasy in which the parliamentary year begins with the monarch - magnificent at mid-morning in evening dress and tiara - reading the details of the government's legislative programme from a piece of hand-inscribed vellum. That is the dull routine of royal family life. From time to time it erupts into a demonstration that the notion on which it is built is inherently dangerous as well as absurd. The amount of time and space which has been wasted on a butler who became obsessed with his employer is the direct result of the fiction that there is something special about the royal family. That is only true if, by special, we mean strange. The squalid absurdity of the latest revelations is illustrated by a growing feeling of sympathy for Mohamed Al Fayed. The man who is adjudged unworthy of a British passport must deeply regret that his son became associated with such a disreputable bunch. Writing about the royal family's foibles is, for me, a novelty. Ten days ago, I was about to resign from the Campaign for an Elected Head of State because of its attitude towards the Windsors' private lives, as revealed in the Panorama investigation of Camilla Parker Bowles's prospects of becoming queen. The simulated meeting of the campaign's committee showed an intolerably cynical approach to the business of promoting a republic. Professor Stephen Haseler, the chairman, announced that the personal conduct of the Prince of Wales must be exploited in the drive to end the hereditary monarchy. My arguments in favour of an elected head of state have always been built around the inadequacy of the institution, not the shortcomings of the individuals. Of course, I accepted that the heredity principle is based on the notion of a genetically distinct family, with everything that family does - in private as well as public - providing evidence of its suitability to rule. But I was against the monarchy because it embodied the idea of a social hierarchy and encouraged the nation to look back instead of forward, not because the heir to the throne made childishly prurient telephone calls. I was wrong. The real objection to a monarchy remains the debilitating effect it has upon society. But the damage done by its public existence is compounded by the private conduct of the monarch and her relations. The Queen's role in the Paul Burrell case makes that clear. It is impossible to believe that Her Majesty only realised the significance of her three-hour meeting with Burrell a couple of days before he was to give evidence in his trial for theft. Her personal conduct was clearly influenced by belief in the constitutional fiction on which her status rests. In private as well as public, she was above the law. Her first instinct - as mother and sovereign - was to preserve the good name of her (royal) family. Initially, that seemed best achieved by keeping well out of the Burrell affair. She only intervened when abdication (in this limited sense) seemed unlikely to prevent revelations about the home life of our dear Princess of Wales. The intervention hopelessly failed. But that does not reduce its significance. The personal conduct of the royal family, Diana's estrangement from the Prince of Wales, and her weird relationship with staff, combined with her mother-in-law's determination to protect the Windsors' reputation to produce a legal travesty. In the case of Regina versus Burrell, the defendant was alleged to have stolen property from Regina's daughter-in-law. Then Regina herself became the star witness. While the monarchy exists, the deference afforded to them will continue to prejudice everything they touch. As long as the reverence was simply extended to the Duke of York being escorted to the Ministry of Defence each day by motorcycle policemen, no great harm was done. The conduct of the Burrell investigation shows the monarchy is not just a bad joke. Detectives from a squad that specialised in dealing with celebrities - an arrangement which itself says something about society - knew, or ought to have known, that Burrell had claimed to have spoken of his acquisitions during a royal audience. Yet none of them thought it appropriate to check his claim with the Queen. At best, they were overawed at the thought of cross-examining Her Majesty. Some of them may even have imagined that she was beyond their jurisdiction. Either way, justice might well have been denied because of their obsequiousness. The problems of the hereditary monarchy result from its existence. The only solution to any of the consequent absurdities is a republic.
|
9royhattersley
| 2UK
|
Republicans are, or ought to be, against the monarchy on principle. The extravagant lifestyle of the royal family and the louche behaviour of wastrel princelings prejudice the public against the House of Windsor. But the only important argument concerns blood and birth. It is neither right nor reasonable that, at the beginning of the 21st century, heredity should determine who becomes the head of state. Elizabeth the Circumspect is as much an anachronism as her uncle Edward the Irresponsible would be today. There was a time when monarchists held the mirror image of that view. The case for the crown was, they insisted, unrelated to the character and conduct of the king or queen or the cost of the court. We used to be told that the monarch herself believed that she was the Lord's Anointed and that, orb and sceptre in hand, she had accepted God's invitation long to reign over us. A queen who imagines that she is personally ordained by the Almighty does not bother about the cost of an occasional journey by royal train. If the Queen still holds that view - rather than the suspicion that she occupies the throne on sufferance - she should tell Alan Reid, the keeper of the privy purse, about it. When the cost of the royal household was revealed last week, he defended an annual expenditure of more than 36m in language that would have been entirely appropriate to a Subaru salesman confronting a sceptical customer. "We believe this represents a value-for-money monarchy. We are not looking to provide the cheapest monarchy. We are looking at one of good value and good quality." Delete "monarchy", insert "motorcar" and the explanation could easily have been expressed on the forecourt of a suburban showroom. If this is the case for the monarchy, we are entitled to ask how many miles there are on the Queen's clock and if she is still in full working order. It is easy to argue that an expenditure of 3m a month does not amount to a "cost-effective" head of state. An elected president - without a family to support in the manner to which the Duke of York has grown accustomed - would certainly cost less. But the important aspect of the dubious claim is its lese-majesty, not its accuracy. Once the monarchy feels it necessary to justify its existence in prosaic terms, the argument for monarchy collapses. The superstition, on which the theory of hereditary succession is based, insists that the royal family is different from the rest of us. No sensible person argues that the Prince of Wales should ascend to the throne because he is an expert onarchitecture, education or any of the other subjects about which he pontificates. Indeed, it is usually accepted that his opinions are embarrassingly silly. They are reprinted for exactly the same reason that it is assumed that one day he will be king. He is said to have inherent qualities that set him apart from his future subjects. It is that, not his financial prudence, which make him heir apparent. Walter Bagehot claimed that the strength of the British monarchy lay in its ability to inspire "the feelings by which heroic kings governed their rude age" and, at the same time, experience "the feelings by which the constitutions of later Greece ruled in more refined ages". Neither of those lofty attributes encompassed the desperate desire to win the support of tabloid newspapers. Quite the opposite. Yet last week that aspiration was taken to risible extremes. The ghost of Queen Victoria will find it difficult to believe that, after the cost of the court was published, Buckingham Palace issued a detailed breakdown of the consumption patterns at royal garden parties. The 500,000 a year that the Queen spends on these occasions is, apparently, partly due to the gluttony of the guests - each of whom, on average, consumes 14 buns, bridge rolls and ice creams. A spokesman, demonstrating a grasp of arithmetic that is beyond question, pointed out that if the average is 14, some people ate even more. One of the ways of cutting the royal budget is, as Marie Antoinette failed to recognise, "let them eat less cake". Even today, a monarchy can survive being hated or despised. But being the object of ridicule is lethal. However, our laughter ought to be moderated by compassion. The royal family faces an intolerable choice. Were the Queen to say - as Queen Victoria would have said - that the royal accounts were none of the common people's business, she would be excoriated for her arrogance. Yet, when she allowed her courtiers to justify the way in which she spends her money, the myth of monarchy is destroyed. It is impossible to have a monarchy that is simultaneously regal and human. Pity their dilemma. And remember that a monarchy which is patronised with pity must, in the long run, be doomed.
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
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"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
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"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Roy Hattersley .
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Republicans are, or ought to be, against the monarchy on principle. The extravagant lifestyle of the royal family and the louche behaviour of wastrel princelings prejudice the public against the House of Windsor. But the only important argument concerns blood and birth. It is neither right nor reasonable that, at the beginning of the 21st century, heredity should determine who becomes the head of state. Elizabeth the Circumspect is as much an anachronism as her uncle Edward the Irresponsible would be today. There was a time when monarchists held the mirror image of that view. The case for the crown was, they insisted, unrelated to the character and conduct of the king or queen or the cost of the court. We used to be told that the monarch herself believed that she was the Lord's Anointed and that, orb and sceptre in hand, she had accepted God's invitation long to reign over us. A queen who imagines that she is personally ordained by the Almighty does not bother about the cost of an occasional journey by royal train. If the Queen still holds that view - rather than the suspicion that she occupies the throne on sufferance - she should tell Alan Reid, the keeper of the privy purse, about it. When the cost of the royal household was revealed last week, he defended an annual expenditure of more than 36m in language that would have been entirely appropriate to a Subaru salesman confronting a sceptical customer. "We believe this represents a value-for-money monarchy. We are not looking to provide the cheapest monarchy. We are looking at one of good value and good quality." Delete "monarchy", insert "motorcar" and the explanation could easily have been expressed on the forecourt of a suburban showroom. If this is the case for the monarchy, we are entitled to ask how many miles there are on the Queen's clock and if she is still in full working order. It is easy to argue that an expenditure of 3m a month does not amount to a "cost-effective" head of state. An elected president - without a family to support in the manner to which the Duke of York has grown accustomed - would certainly cost less. But the important aspect of the dubious claim is its lese-majesty, not its accuracy. Once the monarchy feels it necessary to justify its existence in prosaic terms, the argument for monarchy collapses. The superstition, on which the theory of hereditary succession is based, insists that the royal family is different from the rest of us. No sensible person argues that the Prince of Wales should ascend to the throne because he is an expert onarchitecture, education or any of the other subjects about which he pontificates. Indeed, it is usually accepted that his opinions are embarrassingly silly. They are reprinted for exactly the same reason that it is assumed that one day he will be king. He is said to have inherent qualities that set him apart from his future subjects. It is that, not his financial prudence, which make him heir apparent. Walter Bagehot claimed that the strength of the British monarchy lay in its ability to inspire "the feelings by which heroic kings governed their rude age" and, at the same time, experience "the feelings by which the constitutions of later Greece ruled in more refined ages". Neither of those lofty attributes encompassed the desperate desire to win the support of tabloid newspapers. Quite the opposite. Yet last week that aspiration was taken to risible extremes. The ghost of Queen Victoria will find it difficult to believe that, after the cost of the court was published, Buckingham Palace issued a detailed breakdown of the consumption patterns at royal garden parties. The 500,000 a year that the Queen spends on these occasions is, apparently, partly due to the gluttony of the guests - each of whom, on average, consumes 14 buns, bridge rolls and ice creams. A spokesman, demonstrating a grasp of arithmetic that is beyond question, pointed out that if the average is 14, some people ate even more. One of the ways of cutting the royal budget is, as Marie Antoinette failed to recognise, "let them eat less cake". Even today, a monarchy can survive being hated or despised. But being the object of ridicule is lethal. However, our laughter ought to be moderated by compassion. The royal family faces an intolerable choice. Were the Queen to say - as Queen Victoria would have said - that the royal accounts were none of the common people's business, she would be excoriated for her arrogance. Yet, when she allowed her courtiers to justify the way in which she spends her money, the myth of monarchy is destroyed. It is impossible to have a monarchy that is simultaneously regal and human. Pity their dilemma. And remember that a monarchy which is patronised with pity must, in the long run, be doomed.
|
9royhattersley
| 2UK
|
I have managed, with very little effort, to survive a year of two royal funerals and one golden jubilee without ever experiencing any of the emotions that the tabloid newspapers regarded as the mark of loyalty and patriotism. But today I feel a profound sympathy for the Princess Royal. Until yesterday, the mention of her name moved me only to resentment. I was at the Oval in 1950 when David Sheppard was so distracted by the public address system's, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a little princess", that either Ramadhin or Valentine (that year the two great West Indian spinners were interchangeable) bowled him next ball. But now Anne and I (suddenly the familiarity seems natural) are united by a passion greater even than that which I feel for cricket. Dogs. And not any old dogs. Dogs which get their owners into trouble. Legal trouble. The comparison is not exact. I was convicted under the Royal Parks Act when my Buster killed a goose. The Princess Royal remains innocent until she is proved guilty (under the Dangerous Dogs Act) of failing to prevent her Eglantyne from taking a nip at a lady who was walking in Windsor Great Park. And, as you would expect, Eglantyne is a pure English bull terrier while Buster, like me, is a mongrel. But one thing we undoubtedly have in common - our mothers' sympathy. When my mother - then aged 93 - was telephoned by the Sun with the news of my disgrace, she suggested (in Buster's defence, not mine), "It was probably a game that went wrong." The Queen's view on these matters was revealed to me by Charles Anson, Her Majesty's official spokesman and once my private secretary in the Foreign Office. We met outside Buckingham Palace on the day that my case came to court and he assured me, "Your sovereign is on your side. She prefers dogs to geese any day." I do not suggest that the Queen feels the same about the relationship between dogs and people - though, in her declining years, my mother constantly quoted Jeanne-Marie Roland, the French revolutionary: "The more I see of men, the better I like dogs." But the Queen does, I know, hold strong views about the Dangerous Dogs Act. She expressed them to me with great force and passion during the lunch that preceded the opening of the Birmingham International Convention Centre 10 years ago. I share her criticism of that silly legislation - introduced in a fit of panic by Kenneth Baker and supported by a craven House of Commons (me included). But it is important to keep its proposals in proportion. The proportions of the Princess Royal's dogs do not put them in the category that the police are entitled arbitrarily to impound and the courts empowered to have destroyed - except in the most extreme circumstances. Do not worry, Your Royal Highness. Eglantyne is safe. As Harold Wilson once told a rebellious Labour Party, "Every dog is allowed one nip." If they had any sense, the wounded Windsor walkers would agree and drop the charges. I hope that the police were as courteous to the Princess Royal as they were to me. I was accosted with a great deal of unnecessary show - lights flashing and siren wailing as the patrol car followed me down the street. But afterwards they were supportive to the point of telling me that I should not let the thought of prosecution spoil my weekend. A warning would be the worst that would happen. (Six weeks later I read in the newspapers that the police had misjudged the director of public prosecutions' intention. When the crown prosecution service telephoned to apologise for not telling me first, they explained, "There's been so much publicity, we couldn't do anything else.") Assuming that, like me, the Princess Royal is not willing to be separated from her dogs, Her Royal Highness is going to find the press attention near unbearable. It was the simple idiocy of the photographers and reporters that drove me to fury. For days they followed Buster and me around in the hope that he would once again pull his lead out of my hand and find another goose to kill. When I suggested to them that, from then on, the price of Buster was eternal vigilance, they always smiled vacuously. I hope, as well as suspect, that Princess Anne will treat her tormentors more severely. Of course, she will not go to court herself. A solicitor will appear on her behalf, as one appeared on mine. I pleaded guilty, though I did contest the prosecution's version of events. The incident had occurred while I was "picking up" - an activity involving plastic bags which is best not described in detail. As I bent down, Buster jerked the lead from my grasp and bounded off into the bushes at the Whitehall end of St James's Park. The police alleged that he was "off the lead". I insisted that we explained that Buster was never off the lead. I was. My solicitor calculated that my attempt at humour would cost me another hundred pounds. Despite the anguish of the weeks between offence and conviction - every passing policeman was assumed to carry a death warrant in his pocket - we did well out of the affair. Buster's Diaries is the only bestseller we have ever had in our family. The Princess Royal will benefit too. A nation of dog lovers will remember Eglantyne's one nip and forget her mistress's many snarls.
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Roy Hattersley .
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I have managed, with very little effort, to survive a year of two royal funerals and one golden jubilee without ever experiencing any of the emotions that the tabloid newspapers regarded as the mark of loyalty and patriotism. But today I feel a profound sympathy for the Princess Royal. Until yesterday, the mention of her name moved me only to resentment. I was at the Oval in 1950 when David Sheppard was so distracted by the public address system's, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a little princess", that either Ramadhin or Valentine (that year the two great West Indian spinners were interchangeable) bowled him next ball. But now Anne and I (suddenly the familiarity seems natural) are united by a passion greater even than that which I feel for cricket. Dogs. And not any old dogs. Dogs which get their owners into trouble. Legal trouble. The comparison is not exact. I was convicted under the Royal Parks Act when my Buster killed a goose. The Princess Royal remains innocent until she is proved guilty (under the Dangerous Dogs Act) of failing to prevent her Eglantyne from taking a nip at a lady who was walking in Windsor Great Park. And, as you would expect, Eglantyne is a pure English bull terrier while Buster, like me, is a mongrel. But one thing we undoubtedly have in common - our mothers' sympathy. When my mother - then aged 93 - was telephoned by the Sun with the news of my disgrace, she suggested (in Buster's defence, not mine), "It was probably a game that went wrong." The Queen's view on these matters was revealed to me by Charles Anson, Her Majesty's official spokesman and once my private secretary in the Foreign Office. We met outside Buckingham Palace on the day that my case came to court and he assured me, "Your sovereign is on your side. She prefers dogs to geese any day." I do not suggest that the Queen feels the same about the relationship between dogs and people - though, in her declining years, my mother constantly quoted Jeanne-Marie Roland, the French revolutionary: "The more I see of men, the better I like dogs." But the Queen does, I know, hold strong views about the Dangerous Dogs Act. She expressed them to me with great force and passion during the lunch that preceded the opening of the Birmingham International Convention Centre 10 years ago. I share her criticism of that silly legislation - introduced in a fit of panic by Kenneth Baker and supported by a craven House of Commons (me included). But it is important to keep its proposals in proportion. The proportions of the Princess Royal's dogs do not put them in the category that the police are entitled arbitrarily to impound and the courts empowered to have destroyed - except in the most extreme circumstances. Do not worry, Your Royal Highness. Eglantyne is safe. As Harold Wilson once told a rebellious Labour Party, "Every dog is allowed one nip." If they had any sense, the wounded Windsor walkers would agree and drop the charges. I hope that the police were as courteous to the Princess Royal as they were to me. I was accosted with a great deal of unnecessary show - lights flashing and siren wailing as the patrol car followed me down the street. But afterwards they were supportive to the point of telling me that I should not let the thought of prosecution spoil my weekend. A warning would be the worst that would happen. (Six weeks later I read in the newspapers that the police had misjudged the director of public prosecutions' intention. When the crown prosecution service telephoned to apologise for not telling me first, they explained, "There's been so much publicity, we couldn't do anything else.") Assuming that, like me, the Princess Royal is not willing to be separated from her dogs, Her Royal Highness is going to find the press attention near unbearable. It was the simple idiocy of the photographers and reporters that drove me to fury. For days they followed Buster and me around in the hope that he would once again pull his lead out of my hand and find another goose to kill. When I suggested to them that, from then on, the price of Buster was eternal vigilance, they always smiled vacuously. I hope, as well as suspect, that Princess Anne will treat her tormentors more severely. Of course, she will not go to court herself. A solicitor will appear on her behalf, as one appeared on mine. I pleaded guilty, though I did contest the prosecution's version of events. The incident had occurred while I was "picking up" - an activity involving plastic bags which is best not described in detail. As I bent down, Buster jerked the lead from my grasp and bounded off into the bushes at the Whitehall end of St James's Park. The police alleged that he was "off the lead". I insisted that we explained that Buster was never off the lead. I was. My solicitor calculated that my attempt at humour would cost me another hundred pounds. Despite the anguish of the weeks between offence and conviction - every passing policeman was assumed to carry a death warrant in his pocket - we did well out of the affair. Buster's Diaries is the only bestseller we have ever had in our family. The Princess Royal will benefit too. A nation of dog lovers will remember Eglantyne's one nip and forget her mistress's many snarls.
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9royhattersley
| 2UK
|
Allegations that the BBC is part of an international Marxist conspiracy have always seemed to me to be the feverish product of demented rightwing imagination. An organisation which cannot arrange taxis to take home Newsnight contributors is unlikely to play a significant part in a plot to take over the world. But last Wednesday night - just for a moment - I wondered if the hidden hand of anarchy had organised its coverage of the Missing Golden Jubilee Street Party Sensation. All the people who were invited to reassure an anxious country that the bunting would be put up in the nick of time were exactly the sort of characters calculated to dampen the festive spirit for ever. Prominent among them was Lord St John of Fawsley (n Norman St John-Stevas) who was introduced as a friend of the royal family. He was loquaciously supported by Nicholas Soames, the Prince of Wales's fox-hunting friend and Lord Sterling, the chairman of the P&O shipping line and the man billed as organising the days (or is it weeks?) of national rejoicing. None of them showed the slightest understanding of why enthusiasm is in such short supply. Their certainty that it would be all right on the night - and presumably during the day when the balloons are released and fish paste sandwiches handed round - was based on the conviction that Her Majesty's loyal subjects are notoriously indolent folk who, reminded of their duty by men of officer calibre, would rise to the occasion. After all, we were not prepared for war in either 1914 or 1939. But, in the end, we triumphed over adversity. There was some suggestion that the local government street party regulations were more formidable than the Wehrmacht. But, given the right leadership, Tommy Atkins and his pals would win through. The truth is that the whole idea of golden jubilee celebrations is out of date. It is part of the myth of Merrie England - cheerful cockney sparrows doing the Lambeth Walk and lads and lassies from Lancashire clog dancing. Apparently both those rituals were a feature of George V's silver jubilee in 1935, when more sensitive citizens chose to celebrate Sheffield Wednesday winning the cup. This year, the only Pearly Kings that we are likely to see will be wheeled out for foreign television reports on the quaint habits of Olde England. On the Queen's silver jubilee, that ancient country had not quite disappeared into a haze of email messages, continental holidays, designer jeans and digital television. It has now. The idea of a jubilee, in which the people carefully organise spontaneous cele brations of love and loyalty, is simply old-fashioned. The torpor which follows its every mention has, much to my regret, little or nothing to do with a sudden increase in opposition to the monarchy. Support for a grown-up constitution is growing. But there is nothing like a majority for a republic. There is, however, a general inclination to behave in a way which is consistent with 21st-century realities. Cardboard policemen's helmets, with "God Save the Queen" instead of "Kiss Me Quick" across the front went out when Channel 4 and discotheques came in. There was much to be said in favour of the lost age of innocence. Not the least of its virtues was the spirit of community that made the street parties, the recreation ground bonfires and the community association dances possible. A young mother, cross-examined on television about her failure to organise any events, explained that, since she did not know her neighbours' names, the task was beyond her. I regret the passing of the old spirit of comradeship and concern. But it has happened and Lords Fawsley and Sterling, even assisted by Mr Soames, are no more likely to recreate it for a day than they are to spend more than a fleeting photo-opportunity at a street party themselves. Frankly I resent them making the attempt - partly because the careless individualism which has taken its place has been ruthlessly promoted by their class and their political party. But my real objection is to the impertinence of their approach. The nobs telling the proles where their duty lies is always an unpleasant sight - especially when the message is to "show proper respect". There will be no more patronising display this year than the triple assurance that the working classes (although a bit slow to understand) have their hearts in the right place. I will bet my bottom euro that, when the time comes, the working classes will feel quite well disposed towards the Queen and think that she should be congratulated on 50 years of meritorious service. But, God willing, they will not perform like characters from one of those gritty industrial novels which were so popular when Her Majesty was crowned. The anachronisms can be safely left to Mr Soames and Lords Sterling and Fawsley.
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Roy Hattersley .
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Allegations that the BBC is part of an international Marxist conspiracy have always seemed to me to be the feverish product of demented rightwing imagination. An organisation which cannot arrange taxis to take home Newsnight contributors is unlikely to play a significant part in a plot to take over the world. But last Wednesday night - just for a moment - I wondered if the hidden hand of anarchy had organised its coverage of the Missing Golden Jubilee Street Party Sensation. All the people who were invited to reassure an anxious country that the bunting would be put up in the nick of time were exactly the sort of characters calculated to dampen the festive spirit for ever. Prominent among them was Lord St John of Fawsley (n Norman St John-Stevas) who was introduced as a friend of the royal family. He was loquaciously supported by Nicholas Soames, the Prince of Wales's fox-hunting friend and Lord Sterling, the chairman of the P&O shipping line and the man billed as organising the days (or is it weeks?) of national rejoicing. None of them showed the slightest understanding of why enthusiasm is in such short supply. Their certainty that it would be all right on the night - and presumably during the day when the balloons are released and fish paste sandwiches handed round - was based on the conviction that Her Majesty's loyal subjects are notoriously indolent folk who, reminded of their duty by men of officer calibre, would rise to the occasion. After all, we were not prepared for war in either 1914 or 1939. But, in the end, we triumphed over adversity. There was some suggestion that the local government street party regulations were more formidable than the Wehrmacht. But, given the right leadership, Tommy Atkins and his pals would win through. The truth is that the whole idea of golden jubilee celebrations is out of date. It is part of the myth of Merrie England - cheerful cockney sparrows doing the Lambeth Walk and lads and lassies from Lancashire clog dancing. Apparently both those rituals were a feature of George V's silver jubilee in 1935, when more sensitive citizens chose to celebrate Sheffield Wednesday winning the cup. This year, the only Pearly Kings that we are likely to see will be wheeled out for foreign television reports on the quaint habits of Olde England. On the Queen's silver jubilee, that ancient country had not quite disappeared into a haze of email messages, continental holidays, designer jeans and digital television. It has now. The idea of a jubilee, in which the people carefully organise spontaneous cele brations of love and loyalty, is simply old-fashioned. The torpor which follows its every mention has, much to my regret, little or nothing to do with a sudden increase in opposition to the monarchy. Support for a grown-up constitution is growing. But there is nothing like a majority for a republic. There is, however, a general inclination to behave in a way which is consistent with 21st-century realities. Cardboard policemen's helmets, with "God Save the Queen" instead of "Kiss Me Quick" across the front went out when Channel 4 and discotheques came in. There was much to be said in favour of the lost age of innocence. Not the least of its virtues was the spirit of community that made the street parties, the recreation ground bonfires and the community association dances possible. A young mother, cross-examined on television about her failure to organise any events, explained that, since she did not know her neighbours' names, the task was beyond her. I regret the passing of the old spirit of comradeship and concern. But it has happened and Lords Fawsley and Sterling, even assisted by Mr Soames, are no more likely to recreate it for a day than they are to spend more than a fleeting photo-opportunity at a street party themselves. Frankly I resent them making the attempt - partly because the careless individualism which has taken its place has been ruthlessly promoted by their class and their political party. But my real objection is to the impertinence of their approach. The nobs telling the proles where their duty lies is always an unpleasant sight - especially when the message is to "show proper respect". There will be no more patronising display this year than the triple assurance that the working classes (although a bit slow to understand) have their hearts in the right place. I will bet my bottom euro that, when the time comes, the working classes will feel quite well disposed towards the Queen and think that she should be congratulated on 50 years of meritorious service. But, God willing, they will not perform like characters from one of those gritty industrial novels which were so popular when Her Majesty was crowned. The anachronisms can be safely left to Mr Soames and Lords Sterling and Fawsley.
|
9royhattersley
| 2UK
|
It would be wrong to pretend that I was not pleased to join the privy council. In truth I was delighted. After "shadowing" Margaret Thatcher for three years, I had hoped to replace her at the Department of Education. But Harold Wilson, offended by a speech in which I had attacked the public schools, exiled me to the Foreign Office to do penance as minister of state. The official letter, telling me that the Queen was "minded" to make me Right Honourable, was, I thought, proof that the prime minister had forgiven me. I was wrong. Joining the privy council did, however, improve my formal status. As soon as I promised to defend the Queen against "all foreign princes, persons, prelates, states or potentates" I became Right Honourable for life. From then on every postman knew that I was (or had been) a big noise in Whitehall and Westminster. And that is the privy council's principal purpose. Membership is a medal. Old politicians wear the distinction as if it were part campaign ribbon and part wound stripe. Traditionalists and romantics still pretend that the privy council is more than a footnote to the "dignified" - that is to say outdated - part of our constitution. Harold Wilson once assured Richard Nixon that, because he was addressing ministers who had taken the privy council oath, he could speak freely about nuclear strategy. No doubt the secrets of the Pentagon remained secure. But I doubt if it was the promise "not (to) know or understand of any manner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against Her Majesty's person, honour, crown, or dignity royal" which prevented the president's audience from running out of Downing Street to phone the Soviet embassy. Quoting those words from the privy council's oath is certainly an offence and possibly treason. Members are required to "keep secret all matters committed and revealed unto you or that shall be treated secretly in council". So I should not describe the Gilbertian meeting at which I promised to "defend all jurisdictions, pre-eminences and authorities granted to Her Majesty". I can, however, reveal that, during the rehearsal which preceded the main event, the secretary to the council felt it necessary to explain why he was anxious about what was to follow. Wallace Rawling, prime minister of New Zealand, had been made Right Honourable in absentia. He would therefore be "sworn" separately. The Queen did not like the privy council to drag on. Joel Barnett (chief secretary to the Treasury) then explained that he wished to swear his oath of allegiance on an Old Testament. Brian O'Malley (minister of state at the Department of Social Services) added that he must have a Douay Bible. Shamed by their bravery into confessing my own heresy, I exercised the dissenter's right to affirm. That left a judge to perform the usual ritual in the first of five separate ceremonies. The Queen remained calm. But, as we left the audience chamber, Jim Callaghan, one of the old hands who had been on duty that day, led me towards an archbishop (I think he was York) who was about to do what is required of archbishops before they assume their archdioceses. Putting an avuncular arm round my shoulder, Jim enquired "Have you met Roy Hattersley? Her Majesty had to keep you waiting because he wouldn't swear on the Bible". In the 25 years since that fateful day, I have attended only one privy council meeting. Like most cabinet ministers I was reluctant to waste my time - though at least (unlike some of my colleagues) I was never required to travel to Balmoral for a pointless ceremony which is, at best, a convenient legal fiction built round the senior ministers, judges and archbishops who become Right Honourable as a matter of course. At worst the privy council is neither an instrument of baronial tyranny nor the last bastion of monarchist power. It is simply pointless. The usual complaint against it (normally made by Tony Benn) is that it is the institution through which orders in council are made and the royal prerogative exercised - both potential abuses of our parliamentary system. But the blame lies with ministers. The privy council only provides the flummery which camouflages their autocracy. Orders in council are often no more than the mechanism which activates secondary legislation - clauses of an act of parliament which come into force when the orders are made. The real danger to democracy is the royal prerogative. It began life as the instrument by which the monarch overruled Lords and Commons. But after the sovereignty of parliament was established, ministers, acting in the monarch's name, used the prerogative to legitimise decisions which they took without parliamentary approval. Ten years ago, a progressive chief constable - who did not wish to change the character of his police force by equipping it with CS gas - was warned that, unless he "voluntarily" accepted the Home Office's instruction, the policy would be imposed on him "under the royal prerogative". There was even some talk of John Major using the device to ratify the Maastricht Treaty if the House of Commons would not pass the necessary resolution. No government could have survived so gigantic an affront to parliamentary government. But the royal prerogative is still used to legitimise smaller acts of autocracy. In other democracies, appointments to the cabinet are ratified (or not) by the legislature and dates of elections are decided by statute. In Britain, ministers take office and parliament is dissolved under the royal prerogative. Do not blame "the Queen in council". Power lies with politicians. So does the opportunity for power's abuse. That does not mean that its judicial committee - which meets from time to time to consider cases of especial constitutional significance - is either powerless or pointless. But, like the House of Lords "acting in its judicial capacity", it is just a fancy name for a collection of senior judges. The aura of the privy council is attached to both institutions because of two peculiarly English diseases - the belief that association with the sovereign reinforces authority and the conviction that antiquity increases respect. So the privy council is not just an anachronism. It is one of those elements in our constitution which, because they have arcane rules and archaic associations, exist to prove that real power lies in places remote from everyday life. The mystery and magic of the monarchy and everything which flows from it are meant to be living proof of the distinction between them and us. The privy council is part of the deferential society. A genuinely radical government - anxious to promote the idea either of equality or meritocracy - would politely suggest to the Queen that she confirmed her desire to modernise the monarchy by announcing that she no longer needed "privy" advisers. Yet most meetings of the privy council, although shrouded in secrecy, are concerned only with trivia. The one item of business which I recall was "to appoint the chaplain of Wadham College, Oxford", a duty to which the Queen reasonably reacted by asking "Why do I do this?" Michael Foot, lord president of the privy council, was ready with an explanation. "Wadham," he began, "was my college". There followed a fascinating account of Oxford history from medieval times. We had just arrived at the Reformation when the Queen - with brilliant timing and perfect courtesy - thanked him and declared the privy council over. That is exactly the right attitude towards the whole unnecessary business. <B>Those Right Honourables</B>There are currently just over 500 members of the privy council, including all senior members of past and present governments. This "magic circle", with regency offices in Carlton Gardens near Buckingham Palace, has a staff of two dozen officials, mostly dealing with miscellaneous appeals and university matters. The Labour government's leader of the house, Margaret Beckett, has the job of organising regular meetings of privy councillors with the Queen. The members, who only ever meet in full on the monarch's death or announcement of intention to marry, include: Prince Charles Prince Philip The Archbishop of Canterbury The Archbishop of York The former Archbishop of York, the Right Rev Lord Habgood The Earl of Airlie, hereditary peer and royal lord-in-waiting Lord Ackner, former law lord Sir William Aldous, appeal judge Sir Robin Auld, appeal judge Lord Bingham, lord chief justice Sir Gordon Bisson, New Zealand appeal judge Sir Thomas Eichelbaum, lord chief justice of New Zealand Lord Ampthill, hereditary peer and deputy speaker of the Lords Sir Jeremy (Paddy) Ashdown, former Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe, former Liberal party leader James Bolger, former prime minister of New Zealand Betty Boothroyd, former Speaker of the Commons Tony Benn, former Labour minister Barbara Castle, Baroness Castle of Blackburn, former Labour minister Alun Chalfont, Lord Chalfont, former Labour minister Tony Blair, prime minister Paul Boateng, home office minister Lord Camoys, hereditary peer and lord-in-waiting Lynda Chalker, Baroness Chalker of Wallasey, former Conservative minister Edward du Cann, former Conservative minister Margaret Thatcher, former Conservative prime minister Toby Low, Lord Aldington (until his death this month) Jonathan Aitken (until his resignation after a conviction for perjury) <B>Other privy councillors include: </B>Chataway, Sir Christopher Clarke, Kenneth Cockfield, Lord Cook, Robin Cooper, Sir Frank Cowen, Sir Zelman Cradock, Sir Percy Cranborne, Viscount (also known as Lord Gascoyne-Cecil) Crawford and Balcarres, Earl of Cunningham, Jack Davies, Denzil Davies, Ronald Deedes, Lord Devonshire, Duke of Dobson, Frank Fellowes, Lord Ferrers, Earl Field, Frank Foot, Michael Fowler, Sir Norman Fox, Sir Marcus Gowrie, Earl of Gummer, John Hague, William Hailsham of St Marylebone, Lord Hale, Dame Brenda Harman, Harriet Hattersley, Lord Healey, Lord Heseltine, Michael Hoffman, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, Lord Irvine of Laing, Lord Janvrin, Sir Robin Jay of Paddington, Baroness Jowell, Tessa Kaufman, Gerald Kennedy, Charles Kinnock, Neil Lamont of Lerwick, Lord Lane, Lord Lange, David London, the Bishop of Longford, Earl of MacGregor, John Mandelson, Peter Mara, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mellor, David Merlyn-Rees, Lord Murray of Epping Forest, Lord Owen, Lord Palliser, Sir Michael Patten, Christopher Perth, Earl of Peters, Winston Pindling, Sir Lynden Portillo, Michael Prescott, John Quin, Joyce Scarman, Lord A full list of the privy council members can be read at the Privy Council Office Secretariat. <B>Useful links</B><BR>Latest ICM polls <BR>Official British monarchy website <BR>Movement Against the Monarchy <BR>Full text of the Act (from American parliament campaign)
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Roy Hattersley .
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It would be wrong to pretend that I was not pleased to join the privy council. In truth I was delighted. After "shadowing" Margaret Thatcher for three years, I had hoped to replace her at the Department of Education. But Harold Wilson, offended by a speech in which I had attacked the public schools, exiled me to the Foreign Office to do penance as minister of state. The official letter, telling me that the Queen was "minded" to make me Right Honourable, was, I thought, proof that the prime minister had forgiven me. I was wrong. Joining the privy council did, however, improve my formal status. As soon as I promised to defend the Queen against "all foreign princes, persons, prelates, states or potentates" I became Right Honourable for life. From then on every postman knew that I was (or had been) a big noise in Whitehall and Westminster. And that is the privy council's principal purpose. Membership is a medal. Old politicians wear the distinction as if it were part campaign ribbon and part wound stripe. Traditionalists and romantics still pretend that the privy council is more than a footnote to the "dignified" - that is to say outdated - part of our constitution. Harold Wilson once assured Richard Nixon that, because he was addressing ministers who had taken the privy council oath, he could speak freely about nuclear strategy. No doubt the secrets of the Pentagon remained secure. But I doubt if it was the promise "not (to) know or understand of any manner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against Her Majesty's person, honour, crown, or dignity royal" which prevented the president's audience from running out of Downing Street to phone the Soviet embassy. Quoting those words from the privy council's oath is certainly an offence and possibly treason. Members are required to "keep secret all matters committed and revealed unto you or that shall be treated secretly in council". So I should not describe the Gilbertian meeting at which I promised to "defend all jurisdictions, pre-eminences and authorities granted to Her Majesty". I can, however, reveal that, during the rehearsal which preceded the main event, the secretary to the council felt it necessary to explain why he was anxious about what was to follow. Wallace Rawling, prime minister of New Zealand, had been made Right Honourable in absentia. He would therefore be "sworn" separately. The Queen did not like the privy council to drag on. Joel Barnett (chief secretary to the Treasury) then explained that he wished to swear his oath of allegiance on an Old Testament. Brian O'Malley (minister of state at the Department of Social Services) added that he must have a Douay Bible. Shamed by their bravery into confessing my own heresy, I exercised the dissenter's right to affirm. That left a judge to perform the usual ritual in the first of five separate ceremonies. The Queen remained calm. But, as we left the audience chamber, Jim Callaghan, one of the old hands who had been on duty that day, led me towards an archbishop (I think he was York) who was about to do what is required of archbishops before they assume their archdioceses. Putting an avuncular arm round my shoulder, Jim enquired "Have you met Roy Hattersley? Her Majesty had to keep you waiting because he wouldn't swear on the Bible". In the 25 years since that fateful day, I have attended only one privy council meeting. Like most cabinet ministers I was reluctant to waste my time - though at least (unlike some of my colleagues) I was never required to travel to Balmoral for a pointless ceremony which is, at best, a convenient legal fiction built round the senior ministers, judges and archbishops who become Right Honourable as a matter of course. At worst the privy council is neither an instrument of baronial tyranny nor the last bastion of monarchist power. It is simply pointless. The usual complaint against it (normally made by Tony Benn) is that it is the institution through which orders in council are made and the royal prerogative exercised - both potential abuses of our parliamentary system. But the blame lies with ministers. The privy council only provides the flummery which camouflages their autocracy. Orders in council are often no more than the mechanism which activates secondary legislation - clauses of an act of parliament which come into force when the orders are made. The real danger to democracy is the royal prerogative. It began life as the instrument by which the monarch overruled Lords and Commons. But after the sovereignty of parliament was established, ministers, acting in the monarch's name, used the prerogative to legitimise decisions which they took without parliamentary approval. Ten years ago, a progressive chief constable - who did not wish to change the character of his police force by equipping it with CS gas - was warned that, unless he "voluntarily" accepted the Home Office's instruction, the policy would be imposed on him "under the royal prerogative". There was even some talk of John Major using the device to ratify the Maastricht Treaty if the House of Commons would not pass the necessary resolution. No government could have survived so gigantic an affront to parliamentary government. But the royal prerogative is still used to legitimise smaller acts of autocracy. In other democracies, appointments to the cabinet are ratified (or not) by the legislature and dates of elections are decided by statute. In Britain, ministers take office and parliament is dissolved under the royal prerogative. Do not blame "the Queen in council". Power lies with politicians. So does the opportunity for power's abuse. That does not mean that its judicial committee - which meets from time to time to consider cases of especial constitutional significance - is either powerless or pointless. But, like the House of Lords "acting in its judicial capacity", it is just a fancy name for a collection of senior judges. The aura of the privy council is attached to both institutions because of two peculiarly English diseases - the belief that association with the sovereign reinforces authority and the conviction that antiquity increases respect. So the privy council is not just an anachronism. It is one of those elements in our constitution which, because they have arcane rules and archaic associations, exist to prove that real power lies in places remote from everyday life. The mystery and magic of the monarchy and everything which flows from it are meant to be living proof of the distinction between them and us. The privy council is part of the deferential society. A genuinely radical government - anxious to promote the idea either of equality or meritocracy - would politely suggest to the Queen that she confirmed her desire to modernise the monarchy by announcing that she no longer needed "privy" advisers. Yet most meetings of the privy council, although shrouded in secrecy, are concerned only with trivia. The one item of business which I recall was "to appoint the chaplain of Wadham College, Oxford", a duty to which the Queen reasonably reacted by asking "Why do I do this?" Michael Foot, lord president of the privy council, was ready with an explanation. "Wadham," he began, "was my college". There followed a fascinating account of Oxford history from medieval times. We had just arrived at the Reformation when the Queen - with brilliant timing and perfect courtesy - thanked him and declared the privy council over. That is exactly the right attitude towards the whole unnecessary business. <B>Those Right Honourables</B>There are currently just over 500 members of the privy council, including all senior members of past and present governments. This "magic circle", with regency offices in Carlton Gardens near Buckingham Palace, has a staff of two dozen officials, mostly dealing with miscellaneous appeals and university matters. The Labour government's leader of the house, Margaret Beckett, has the job of organising regular meetings of privy councillors with the Queen. The members, who only ever meet in full on the monarch's death or announcement of intention to marry, include: Prince Charles Prince Philip The Archbishop of Canterbury The Archbishop of York The former Archbishop of York, the Right Rev Lord Habgood The Earl of Airlie, hereditary peer and royal lord-in-waiting Lord Ackner, former law lord Sir William Aldous, appeal judge Sir Robin Auld, appeal judge Lord Bingham, lord chief justice Sir Gordon Bisson, New Zealand appeal judge Sir Thomas Eichelbaum, lord chief justice of New Zealand Lord Ampthill, hereditary peer and deputy speaker of the Lords Sir Jeremy (Paddy) Ashdown, former Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe, former Liberal party leader James Bolger, former prime minister of New Zealand Betty Boothroyd, former Speaker of the Commons Tony Benn, former Labour minister Barbara Castle, Baroness Castle of Blackburn, former Labour minister Alun Chalfont, Lord Chalfont, former Labour minister Tony Blair, prime minister Paul Boateng, home office minister Lord Camoys, hereditary peer and lord-in-waiting Lynda Chalker, Baroness Chalker of Wallasey, former Conservative minister Edward du Cann, former Conservative minister Margaret Thatcher, former Conservative prime minister Toby Low, Lord Aldington (until his death this month) Jonathan Aitken (until his resignation after a conviction for perjury) <B>Other privy councillors include: </B>Chataway, Sir Christopher Clarke, Kenneth Cockfield, Lord Cook, Robin Cooper, Sir Frank Cowen, Sir Zelman Cradock, Sir Percy Cranborne, Viscount (also known as Lord Gascoyne-Cecil) Crawford and Balcarres, Earl of Cunningham, Jack Davies, Denzil Davies, Ronald Deedes, Lord Devonshire, Duke of Dobson, Frank Fellowes, Lord Ferrers, Earl Field, Frank Foot, Michael Fowler, Sir Norman Fox, Sir Marcus Gowrie, Earl of Gummer, John Hague, William Hailsham of St Marylebone, Lord Hale, Dame Brenda Harman, Harriet Hattersley, Lord Healey, Lord Heseltine, Michael Hoffman, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, Lord Irvine of Laing, Lord Janvrin, Sir Robin Jay of Paddington, Baroness Jowell, Tessa Kaufman, Gerald Kennedy, Charles Kinnock, Neil Lamont of Lerwick, Lord Lane, Lord Lange, David London, the Bishop of Longford, Earl of MacGregor, John Mandelson, Peter Mara, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mellor, David Merlyn-Rees, Lord Murray of Epping Forest, Lord Owen, Lord Palliser, Sir Michael Patten, Christopher Perth, Earl of Peters, Winston Pindling, Sir Lynden Portillo, Michael Prescott, John Quin, Joyce Scarman, Lord A full list of the privy council members can be read at the Privy Council Office Secretariat. <B>Useful links</B><BR>Latest ICM polls <BR>Official British monarchy website <BR>Movement Against the Monarchy <BR>Full text of the Act (from American parliament campaign)
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9royhattersley
| 2UK
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It is my good fortune to spend half my life in one of the Peak District's pedestrian villages. We boast neither a car park nor a historic church. So we are spared both bikers whiling away their afternoons by revving up their engines and motorists who think that they have done their duty to culture and the countryside by driving slowly past something that was built 500 years ago. People come to our village to walk. They come all year round - teenagers with huge backpacks and bedrolls, bare-kneed geriatrics supported by exotic walking sticks, and earnest students of limestone landscape with plastic-covered maps hanging upside down from lanyards round their necks. Today, spring bank holiday Monday, the hardy annuals will be joined by seasonal reinforcements: the casual walkers for whom our village has a special significance. They stop here to change their shoes. Middle-aged ladies in twin-sets and pearls who travel together in sensible family saloons behave in exactly the same way as the courting couples in wire-wheeled sports cars who kiss before they disembark. They remove whatever is on their feet with the conscientious solemnity of a pious Muslim at the door of a mosque. There the comparison ends. For, rain or shine, they pull on expensive hiking boots in preparation for an afternoon or preprandial stroll in the best walking country in the world. WH Auden wrote that what made limestone country special was its inclination to dissolve in water. That is only part of the story. Great faults run through the substrata of rock, and during the years before we began to calculate time, the earth split open. The result was towering escarpments, which we call "edges", and horizons that are always sharp and clear against the sky. When I walk my modest four miles in the early evening, I can see halfway to eternity. The ruined barns and byres are relics of a dead civilisation as well as a more simple sort of farming. But farmers are rebuilding the dry-stone walls that have separated the fields since the enclosures. They are being recreated along exactly the lines that the rude forefathers of our hamlet accepted when their grazing rights were stolen, and they will be remade with the stones that built the original boundaries. Today's visitors will walk across living country built out of old England. We take pride in the Peaks' unyielding landscape. But the visitors who change their shoes outside my house today will walk over hills and fields that have been made to look gentle by the colours of May. In the meadows that are already mowed, pale earth shines through the paler green of the stubble. The fields where the grass still grows are speckled with buttercups, and behind them, at the foot of the hills, Queen Anne's lace and May blossom dapple the slopes with patches of dazzling white. Even the gorse at the crest of the escarpments has changed from violent yellow to modest amber. Rabbits in the hillsides sit in the entrances to their burrows like extras from Watership Down, and hares tiptoe to reconnoitre the land before racing away with the skip and jump that made our ancestors believe that they were mad. The farmer who writes agricultural notes for our parish magazine caused some surprise by asking his neighbours to accept that the foot-and-mouth epidemic - which passed us by but forced us into quarantine - was not without its blessings. Wildlife that he had not seen since he was a boy returned to his land. His reaction was unusual. But what else would you expect from a citizen of Arcadia? Let me not give the impression that there is no grief and sorrow here. Each spring morning, we have a daily sadness. Frogs, which have swum happily in one of the underground streams beneath my garden, squeeze their way through cracks in the wall above the lawn and luxuriate in the dew on the grass until the sun comes out. Then they dehydrate. Those which I cannot revive with a watering can wither into desiccated corpses that remind me of the dead in Pompeii. But next spring there will be frog spawn in the old horse trough by my garden gate. And next spring bank holiday, the walkers will be back to change their shoes. They will park in front of my house, sit on my wall and occupy the undivided attention of my dog as he lies on his window seat. As I try to work nearby, he will draw my attention to each arrival. The years of our companionship have taught me to distinguish between his various messages - welcoming, warning or suggesting (in the politest possible way) that the visitors should move on. I tell him just to rejoice. They are there because we live in the best walking country in the world.
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article_from_author
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} .
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{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Roy Hattersley .
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It is my good fortune to spend half my life in one of the Peak District's pedestrian villages. We boast neither a car park nor a historic church. So we are spared both bikers whiling away their afternoons by revving up their engines and motorists who think that they have done their duty to culture and the countryside by driving slowly past something that was built 500 years ago. People come to our village to walk. They come all year round - teenagers with huge backpacks and bedrolls, bare-kneed geriatrics supported by exotic walking sticks, and earnest students of limestone landscape with plastic-covered maps hanging upside down from lanyards round their necks. Today, spring bank holiday Monday, the hardy annuals will be joined by seasonal reinforcements: the casual walkers for whom our village has a special significance. They stop here to change their shoes. Middle-aged ladies in twin-sets and pearls who travel together in sensible family saloons behave in exactly the same way as the courting couples in wire-wheeled sports cars who kiss before they disembark. They remove whatever is on their feet with the conscientious solemnity of a pious Muslim at the door of a mosque. There the comparison ends. For, rain or shine, they pull on expensive hiking boots in preparation for an afternoon or preprandial stroll in the best walking country in the world. WH Auden wrote that what made limestone country special was its inclination to dissolve in water. That is only part of the story. Great faults run through the substrata of rock, and during the years before we began to calculate time, the earth split open. The result was towering escarpments, which we call "edges", and horizons that are always sharp and clear against the sky. When I walk my modest four miles in the early evening, I can see halfway to eternity. The ruined barns and byres are relics of a dead civilisation as well as a more simple sort of farming. But farmers are rebuilding the dry-stone walls that have separated the fields since the enclosures. They are being recreated along exactly the lines that the rude forefathers of our hamlet accepted when their grazing rights were stolen, and they will be remade with the stones that built the original boundaries. Today's visitors will walk across living country built out of old England. We take pride in the Peaks' unyielding landscape. But the visitors who change their shoes outside my house today will walk over hills and fields that have been made to look gentle by the colours of May. In the meadows that are already mowed, pale earth shines through the paler green of the stubble. The fields where the grass still grows are speckled with buttercups, and behind them, at the foot of the hills, Queen Anne's lace and May blossom dapple the slopes with patches of dazzling white. Even the gorse at the crest of the escarpments has changed from violent yellow to modest amber. Rabbits in the hillsides sit in the entrances to their burrows like extras from Watership Down, and hares tiptoe to reconnoitre the land before racing away with the skip and jump that made our ancestors believe that they were mad. The farmer who writes agricultural notes for our parish magazine caused some surprise by asking his neighbours to accept that the foot-and-mouth epidemic - which passed us by but forced us into quarantine - was not without its blessings. Wildlife that he had not seen since he was a boy returned to his land. His reaction was unusual. But what else would you expect from a citizen of Arcadia? Let me not give the impression that there is no grief and sorrow here. Each spring morning, we have a daily sadness. Frogs, which have swum happily in one of the underground streams beneath my garden, squeeze their way through cracks in the wall above the lawn and luxuriate in the dew on the grass until the sun comes out. Then they dehydrate. Those which I cannot revive with a watering can wither into desiccated corpses that remind me of the dead in Pompeii. But next spring there will be frog spawn in the old horse trough by my garden gate. And next spring bank holiday, the walkers will be back to change their shoes. They will park in front of my house, sit on my wall and occupy the undivided attention of my dog as he lies on his window seat. As I try to work nearby, he will draw my attention to each arrival. The years of our companionship have taught me to distinguish between his various messages - welcoming, warning or suggesting (in the politest possible way) that the visitors should move on. I tell him just to rejoice. They are there because we live in the best walking country in the world.
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12zoewilliams
| 2UK
|
To be honest, I rarely believe the Queen when she addresses the nation; the Christmas number is too much of a duty call, and when she has anything to do with parliament, she always looks slightly sour - as we all would, I'm sure, were we required to endorse absolutely everything, while still pretending to be in charge just to save trouble.When she spoke at the second world war commemoration, though, everything was spot on. You can believe in the debt she feels to the veterans' generation, and the continuing resonance its sacrifices have for her. The only jarring note was this: sandwiched between references to their "resilience" and "courage" was mention of their "sense of humour".I don't think I'm being unfair to her majesty when I say this isn't a language I'd expect her to understand, still less namecheck as a national boon. There is certainly no public record of her ever having made a joke, unless her experiment with crossing the short-legged corgi with the shorter-legged dachshund was actually done in the name of humour. There is likewise no photographic record of her laughing or smiling, apart from when Motivator won the 2005 Derby, earning the monarch ... well, I have no idea what her bet was, but even it was a fairly modest sum, that still leaves a smile related to acquisition, rather than actual mirth.This isn't just blinkered republicanism - there are royals who manifestly have a laugh. Princess Margaret was one; I fancy that Prince Andrew sometimes enjoys a joke or two, albeit of a coarse and obvious nature. I am speculating wildly, but he has the big mouth of a man who likes to laugh.The point is, though, that if you were to find anyone with a solid and expressible sense of British identity, then definitely in their top five, and probably their top two, would be the royal family and A Highly Developed Sense of Humour. There are a number of contradictions here: for a start, our figurehead lacks the one quality that we think recommends us; and the minute you start pontificating on the quality of your humour, it almost certainly rules out the possibility that you have any. But modern nationhood is a complicated business, so you'd expect anomalies.The substance of our fabled wit, as we see it, is this: first, it is much more advanced than any other country's, especially Germany. When people discuss the Blitz spirit, it is very often in terms of the cockney sparrows who lose a leg and then make a hilarious pun about getting legless. We are happy to admit that our bombing of German cities was as devastating as theirs of ours, but we are absolutely determined that it go down in the annals: whoever bombed whom to pieces, we definitely had the most fun. Oh yes. Humour is bound up with pluck and stoicism, as if its prime function were to keep our mouths so occupied with drolleries that moaning and whining were literally impossible.This is something that came out immediately after last week's bombing, a swell of pride in the age-old grit of the Londoner, another bad thing happening without denting our character. It was different to the response in Madrid. The underlying feelings - shock, mourning, sympathy, defiance - were the same, but where they took to the streets to vent them, we have been rigidly business-as-usual.That's not to say that there was an instant cache of tube-bomb jokes circulating over the net - that may happen and it may not. My feeling is that we've all lost our stomachs for the hilarity of breaking the bereavement taboo, which is why disasters such as Beslan or the tsunami spawned nothing like the one-liners they used to.But whether we ever joke about the attack itself is irrelevant. The capital, even by Thursday evening, had its sense of humour back: grim, black and muted it may have been, but the pubs were full. In other cultures, resilience is manifested in dignity and vigil, but here we manifest it exactly as the Queen said: with a sense of humour. We must be OK, because we're ready with our poor wordplay once more.I think this explains why figures such as Ken Livingstone are more welcome in bad times than Tony Blair - not because Ken is incapable of gravitas, but because we know his base register is more skittish and mischievous, closer to the normality we seek instantly to resume.The funny thing is, disasters aren't that funny. Thursday wasn't, and I'm sure the Blitz wasn't exactly a laugh. To take pride in such a response is quirky - but if even the Queen has noticed, it must be true.
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article_from_author_topic
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} on the topic of {{
[
"Politics",
"Society",
"UK",
"World",
"Books"
] [topic]
}}. |||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Zoe Williams on the topic of UK.
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To be honest, I rarely believe the Queen when she addresses the nation; the Christmas number is too much of a duty call, and when she has anything to do with parliament, she always looks slightly sour - as we all would, I'm sure, were we required to endorse absolutely everything, while still pretending to be in charge just to save trouble.When she spoke at the second world war commemoration, though, everything was spot on. You can believe in the debt she feels to the veterans' generation, and the continuing resonance its sacrifices have for her. The only jarring note was this: sandwiched between references to their "resilience" and "courage" was mention of their "sense of humour".I don't think I'm being unfair to her majesty when I say this isn't a language I'd expect her to understand, still less namecheck as a national boon. There is certainly no public record of her ever having made a joke, unless her experiment with crossing the short-legged corgi with the shorter-legged dachshund was actually done in the name of humour. There is likewise no photographic record of her laughing or smiling, apart from when Motivator won the 2005 Derby, earning the monarch ... well, I have no idea what her bet was, but even it was a fairly modest sum, that still leaves a smile related to acquisition, rather than actual mirth.This isn't just blinkered republicanism - there are royals who manifestly have a laugh. Princess Margaret was one; I fancy that Prince Andrew sometimes enjoys a joke or two, albeit of a coarse and obvious nature. I am speculating wildly, but he has the big mouth of a man who likes to laugh.The point is, though, that if you were to find anyone with a solid and expressible sense of British identity, then definitely in their top five, and probably their top two, would be the royal family and A Highly Developed Sense of Humour. There are a number of contradictions here: for a start, our figurehead lacks the one quality that we think recommends us; and the minute you start pontificating on the quality of your humour, it almost certainly rules out the possibility that you have any. But modern nationhood is a complicated business, so you'd expect anomalies.The substance of our fabled wit, as we see it, is this: first, it is much more advanced than any other country's, especially Germany. When people discuss the Blitz spirit, it is very often in terms of the cockney sparrows who lose a leg and then make a hilarious pun about getting legless. We are happy to admit that our bombing of German cities was as devastating as theirs of ours, but we are absolutely determined that it go down in the annals: whoever bombed whom to pieces, we definitely had the most fun. Oh yes. Humour is bound up with pluck and stoicism, as if its prime function were to keep our mouths so occupied with drolleries that moaning and whining were literally impossible.This is something that came out immediately after last week's bombing, a swell of pride in the age-old grit of the Londoner, another bad thing happening without denting our character. It was different to the response in Madrid. The underlying feelings - shock, mourning, sympathy, defiance - were the same, but where they took to the streets to vent them, we have been rigidly business-as-usual.That's not to say that there was an instant cache of tube-bomb jokes circulating over the net - that may happen and it may not. My feeling is that we've all lost our stomachs for the hilarity of breaking the bereavement taboo, which is why disasters such as Beslan or the tsunami spawned nothing like the one-liners they used to.But whether we ever joke about the attack itself is irrelevant. The capital, even by Thursday evening, had its sense of humour back: grim, black and muted it may have been, but the pubs were full. In other cultures, resilience is manifested in dignity and vigil, but here we manifest it exactly as the Queen said: with a sense of humour. We must be OK, because we're ready with our poor wordplay once more.I think this explains why figures such as Ken Livingstone are more welcome in bad times than Tony Blair - not because Ken is incapable of gravitas, but because we know his base register is more skittish and mischievous, closer to the normality we seek instantly to resume.The funny thing is, disasters aren't that funny. Thursday wasn't, and I'm sure the Blitz wasn't exactly a laugh. To take pride in such a response is quirky - but if even the Queen has noticed, it must be true.
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12zoewilliams
| 2UK
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Andrew Mackinlay MP tabled a question in parliament last week that only a Christian and a royalist could possibly have dreamed up: was Camilla Parker Bowles going to be added by royal warrant to the state prayers? These prayers are said in many churches (who'd have thought?), included Diana until 1996 (who knew?) and now mention only the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles. The palace responded that there were no plans to include the Duchess of Cornwall by name, though she was included "by implication, because churchgoers pray in general to the royal family" (who knew that?).It's a perfectly defensible decision by the Queen. The marriage between Charles and Camilla has any number of features that aren't particularly reputable - its genesis, for instance. Churchgoers may well object to praying for an adulteress (though they seem to be OK about praying for an adulterer). Some people would probably be upset at the insult to Diana's memory. Blah, blah and blah. They're all good reasons, but it's just not very Christian, is it?As we've seen from the myriad ambiguities of the pomp and semi-pomp surrounding this couple's union, there are no fixed rules where divorcees are concerned any more. The wife of the future king is not necessarily the future queen. The civil-ceremony nuptials of the future head of the church didn't, as it turned out, diminish his fitness for that job. The Queen can refuse to attend the ceremony, but still hold the reception.For all the dark foreboding while the pair were still just - gulp - lovers, none of this turned out to be any more far-reaching or constitutional than the kvetching of any other family about who pays for the bridesmaids' dresses. If the Queen wanted to have Camilla in the state prayers, there isn't a Diana-lover in all of England who could stop her. As it turns out, she'd rather not. Camilla has suffered so many snubs from this quirky woman she must be feeling pretty stoic, but it does make you wonder. Is a parish church the best place to vent a not-very-Christian decision, based on not-quite-forgiveness? Can't she just snub Camilla by inviting her to a cocktail party, but not to the dinner afterwards?This family doesn't just thrive on, it owes everything to, the delicately unasked question: how does it feel to be head of state with no political muscle? Does anyone get a shiver of embarrassment about being head of the church while having no obvious spiritual obligations? Is it a little bit weird to be bankrolled for foreign trips while pursuing your own business interests?Most of this refers to Prince Charles, I now realise, but doesn't a metaphorical plinth seem a bit jerry-built when, after you've been held aloft by the taxpayer, you start sniffing out tax loopholes as fervently as a cash-in-hand plasterer? More pertinent to the young princes, how would even a very intelligent youngster square an attempt to present a "modern" face with the fact that his very position is an anachronism?If the Queen thinks Camilla is too unsuitable a spouse to be named as such, why did she sanction the wedding? Ah, but she didn't - she just, you know, kind of did. That's this family all over. They don't want anything clarified. They treat contradictions like herpes - insoluble, unfortunate, but for God's sake don't mention them and, besides, didn't we all have fun getting into this mess?I had this argument once with someone who said tolerating ambiguity was the sign of a civilised society. It shut me up for a bit. But here, as in so many cases, ambiguity is just another word for bilge. Tolerating bilge is the sign of a lazy society. They're skating along on the carapace of our sloth, this family. I'm sure that's not what the divine right of kings was supposed to be about.
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article_from_author_topic
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} on the topic of {{
[
"Politics",
"Society",
"UK",
"World",
"Books"
] [topic]
}}. |||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Zoe Williams on the topic of UK.
|
Andrew Mackinlay MP tabled a question in parliament last week that only a Christian and a royalist could possibly have dreamed up: was Camilla Parker Bowles going to be added by royal warrant to the state prayers? These prayers are said in many churches (who'd have thought?), included Diana until 1996 (who knew?) and now mention only the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles. The palace responded that there were no plans to include the Duchess of Cornwall by name, though she was included "by implication, because churchgoers pray in general to the royal family" (who knew that?).It's a perfectly defensible decision by the Queen. The marriage between Charles and Camilla has any number of features that aren't particularly reputable - its genesis, for instance. Churchgoers may well object to praying for an adulteress (though they seem to be OK about praying for an adulterer). Some people would probably be upset at the insult to Diana's memory. Blah, blah and blah. They're all good reasons, but it's just not very Christian, is it?As we've seen from the myriad ambiguities of the pomp and semi-pomp surrounding this couple's union, there are no fixed rules where divorcees are concerned any more. The wife of the future king is not necessarily the future queen. The civil-ceremony nuptials of the future head of the church didn't, as it turned out, diminish his fitness for that job. The Queen can refuse to attend the ceremony, but still hold the reception.For all the dark foreboding while the pair were still just - gulp - lovers, none of this turned out to be any more far-reaching or constitutional than the kvetching of any other family about who pays for the bridesmaids' dresses. If the Queen wanted to have Camilla in the state prayers, there isn't a Diana-lover in all of England who could stop her. As it turns out, she'd rather not. Camilla has suffered so many snubs from this quirky woman she must be feeling pretty stoic, but it does make you wonder. Is a parish church the best place to vent a not-very-Christian decision, based on not-quite-forgiveness? Can't she just snub Camilla by inviting her to a cocktail party, but not to the dinner afterwards?This family doesn't just thrive on, it owes everything to, the delicately unasked question: how does it feel to be head of state with no political muscle? Does anyone get a shiver of embarrassment about being head of the church while having no obvious spiritual obligations? Is it a little bit weird to be bankrolled for foreign trips while pursuing your own business interests?Most of this refers to Prince Charles, I now realise, but doesn't a metaphorical plinth seem a bit jerry-built when, after you've been held aloft by the taxpayer, you start sniffing out tax loopholes as fervently as a cash-in-hand plasterer? More pertinent to the young princes, how would even a very intelligent youngster square an attempt to present a "modern" face with the fact that his very position is an anachronism?If the Queen thinks Camilla is too unsuitable a spouse to be named as such, why did she sanction the wedding? Ah, but she didn't - she just, you know, kind of did. That's this family all over. They don't want anything clarified. They treat contradictions like herpes - insoluble, unfortunate, but for God's sake don't mention them and, besides, didn't we all have fun getting into this mess?I had this argument once with someone who said tolerating ambiguity was the sign of a civilised society. It shut me up for a bit. But here, as in so many cases, ambiguity is just another word for bilge. Tolerating bilge is the sign of a lazy society. They're skating along on the carapace of our sloth, this family. I'm sure that's not what the divine right of kings was supposed to be about.
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12zoewilliams
| 2UK
|
It's a tough call for the policemen in charge of royal protection on the occasion of the family's big shindig. On the one hand, if the amiable hippies in charge of Glastonbury can get their heads around a ticket-only entry system, law enforcement officers of far more advanced jobsworth tendencies should have been able to prevent the gatecrash coup of a comedian dressed as a well-known terrorist. And yet, on the other hand, imagine the conversation - "I have a man here, sarge, dressed as Osama bin Laden." "That's no good. Where's the fun in that?" "Well, given that the right-thinking individual doesn't find terrorism in any way amusing, I imagine the joke is that Johnny Foreigner is a funny fellow." "Oh, I see, well you'd better let him in, then. That's the theme of the party." "Is that what Out of Africa means?" "Yup. Pretty much." In a craven attempt to get some goods on William's sex life, certain newspapers have decided that his fancy dress idea derives from the hots he harbours for Jessica Craig. According to the Sunday Times, she is a 21-year-old member of "Kenya's white elite", though whether you can ascend into this white elite just by being white, or whether you have to be loaded as well, remains unclear (lest there be any doubt, however, she is also loaded). The historian Andrew Roberts considers the theme as part of the wider family's relationship with the African continent. "There is an inverse proportion between the amount of time the Windsors spend in Africa and the amount of power they have there. After decolonisation, they went more and more." I suppose the message there is that this is a very nice family which just gets along much better with people it is not actively oppressing. The party theme is therefore a loud hello to celebrate the end of a pernicious empire. But really, to interpret this as either a romantic or a political gesture is to back away from the glaring truth that this is party theming as devised by a complete arse. First, although no reports have been exhaustive on the subject of Will's guest list, all the people who have been mentioned seem to have names that start with Second Earl of ... I wouldn't want to embarrass the palace by checking, but I am prepared to bet that the only black people at the party were members of the band. While nobody can force a young Botswana-travelled royal to have African acquaintances who are not members of its "white elite", the act of making his whitey friends dress up in feathers rather tastelessly underlines the fact. After all, you probably wouldn't have an American-themed party if you had Americans you wanted to invite. They would turn up in their regular clothes, for one thing, and besides, might experience feelings of miffedness. Imagine if someone in Africa had an English-themed party. There would be a lot of top hats and fans; some Jane Austen wear for people prepared to make the effort; a few wags might arrive with fake 12-bores and try to subjugate the rest of the party (with hilarious results); a costume of an animal commonly associated with our island (in all probability, a pig) might make an appearance. The japes would be many and varied, but from our point of view, pretty insulting, having fallen back on the keystone cliches of Englishness - that we are starchy, uptight, brutal and we like bacon sandwiches. Any attempt to represent a nation with its dress is bound to be reductive and therefore dehumanising. It stresses the otherness of foreigners, and rejects the global truth that most people, the world over, dress more or less the same, apart from the ones who can't afford a telly. Furthermore, if you look at the individual costumes chosen, you get an even stronger tang of - well, not wishing to bandy the "racism" word around too freely, let's call it "look at the funny natives-ism". There was a lot of leopard print and snakeskin which (on the basis of only one visit to Africa, granted), I'd say was a closer approximation of a Streatham singles night than an African style statement. Many of the older gentlemen dressed up in safari suits, which is like going to a Spanish-themed party with a beer, a burger and some vivid red sunburn (sure, there are English people in every country, and they tend to look funny, but you wouldn't say they defined that country's aesthetic). Fergie wore a long silver wig and whatever the message behind that, I'm sure, even if I knew, I would find it very offensive. And finally, there is something unsettling about the ongoing (I believe unrequited) love that the posh have for Africa. It does not focus on the realities of its countries in their modern form, but rather is shot through with a plangent nostalgia. And honestly, the subtext of any nostalgia about this continent has to be that it was better when we still owned it. All told, these are some very murky messages for a 21-year-old to be encouraging. It must be hard to get things right, living perpetually in the public eye. But he could afford to be a lot more dudelike, without getting any less regal.
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article_from_author_topic
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Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} on the topic of {{
[
"Politics",
"Society",
"UK",
"World",
"Books"
] [topic]
}}. |||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Zoe Williams on the topic of UK.
|
It's a tough call for the policemen in charge of royal protection on the occasion of the family's big shindig. On the one hand, if the amiable hippies in charge of Glastonbury can get their heads around a ticket-only entry system, law enforcement officers of far more advanced jobsworth tendencies should have been able to prevent the gatecrash coup of a comedian dressed as a well-known terrorist. And yet, on the other hand, imagine the conversation - "I have a man here, sarge, dressed as Osama bin Laden." "That's no good. Where's the fun in that?" "Well, given that the right-thinking individual doesn't find terrorism in any way amusing, I imagine the joke is that Johnny Foreigner is a funny fellow." "Oh, I see, well you'd better let him in, then. That's the theme of the party." "Is that what Out of Africa means?" "Yup. Pretty much." In a craven attempt to get some goods on William's sex life, certain newspapers have decided that his fancy dress idea derives from the hots he harbours for Jessica Craig. According to the Sunday Times, she is a 21-year-old member of "Kenya's white elite", though whether you can ascend into this white elite just by being white, or whether you have to be loaded as well, remains unclear (lest there be any doubt, however, she is also loaded). The historian Andrew Roberts considers the theme as part of the wider family's relationship with the African continent. "There is an inverse proportion between the amount of time the Windsors spend in Africa and the amount of power they have there. After decolonisation, they went more and more." I suppose the message there is that this is a very nice family which just gets along much better with people it is not actively oppressing. The party theme is therefore a loud hello to celebrate the end of a pernicious empire. But really, to interpret this as either a romantic or a political gesture is to back away from the glaring truth that this is party theming as devised by a complete arse. First, although no reports have been exhaustive on the subject of Will's guest list, all the people who have been mentioned seem to have names that start with Second Earl of ... I wouldn't want to embarrass the palace by checking, but I am prepared to bet that the only black people at the party were members of the band. While nobody can force a young Botswana-travelled royal to have African acquaintances who are not members of its "white elite", the act of making his whitey friends dress up in feathers rather tastelessly underlines the fact. After all, you probably wouldn't have an American-themed party if you had Americans you wanted to invite. They would turn up in their regular clothes, for one thing, and besides, might experience feelings of miffedness. Imagine if someone in Africa had an English-themed party. There would be a lot of top hats and fans; some Jane Austen wear for people prepared to make the effort; a few wags might arrive with fake 12-bores and try to subjugate the rest of the party (with hilarious results); a costume of an animal commonly associated with our island (in all probability, a pig) might make an appearance. The japes would be many and varied, but from our point of view, pretty insulting, having fallen back on the keystone cliches of Englishness - that we are starchy, uptight, brutal and we like bacon sandwiches. Any attempt to represent a nation with its dress is bound to be reductive and therefore dehumanising. It stresses the otherness of foreigners, and rejects the global truth that most people, the world over, dress more or less the same, apart from the ones who can't afford a telly. Furthermore, if you look at the individual costumes chosen, you get an even stronger tang of - well, not wishing to bandy the "racism" word around too freely, let's call it "look at the funny natives-ism". There was a lot of leopard print and snakeskin which (on the basis of only one visit to Africa, granted), I'd say was a closer approximation of a Streatham singles night than an African style statement. Many of the older gentlemen dressed up in safari suits, which is like going to a Spanish-themed party with a beer, a burger and some vivid red sunburn (sure, there are English people in every country, and they tend to look funny, but you wouldn't say they defined that country's aesthetic). Fergie wore a long silver wig and whatever the message behind that, I'm sure, even if I knew, I would find it very offensive. And finally, there is something unsettling about the ongoing (I believe unrequited) love that the posh have for Africa. It does not focus on the realities of its countries in their modern form, but rather is shot through with a plangent nostalgia. And honestly, the subtext of any nostalgia about this continent has to be that it was better when we still owned it. All told, these are some very murky messages for a 21-year-old to be encouraging. It must be hard to get things right, living perpetually in the public eye. But he could afford to be a lot more dudelike, without getting any less regal.
|
12zoewilliams
| 2UK
|
When the slings and arrows of the lottery deliver up a fortune that is truly outrageous, as onlookers we immediately try to wrestle it into a narrative. Without a narrative, it is just a wonderful stroke of life-changing luck that happened to some other people and didn't happen to us. That's just nauseating you can't live with that, not even for half an hour. One way to overcome it is to make out that the luck is cursed: the Times yesterday ran with a "tale of two lottery winners", in which the super-lout Michael Carroll had his myriad flaws adumbrated yet again, the number of cars he's crashed given yet again, his ludicrous poetry quoted yet again, to ram home the reassuring message that you can get as lucky as you like, but unless you have some laudable interior qualities you will not stay lucky. This message was reinforced by the contrasting case of Pat Griffiths, a winner so ascetic, so hard-working and unmaterialistic, that although she gave up her job editing the local paper, she hasn't stopped working, hasn't moved house and hasn't spent much more than she (probably) could have borrowed from a bank. "Why would we want to move?" she asks, rhetorically, to underline her deserving nature. "We already live in paradise on earth." Ah, Bisto. I feel better already. The Daily Mail, today, took a more gnomic stab at making sense of the luck. The married winners, sharing between them 45.5m, are from Newport. Wait, wait, there's more Newport is in Gwent, and Gwent has been home to seven winners (of, er, 8,000). This luck isn't wild! It's Jackpot Valley, it was preordained by the gods overseeing the intersection of good fortune and geomorphology. Of course, there are people who aren't superstitious, and aren't persuaded that Carroll and Griffiths represent the very reaches of good and evil; there are subtler ways we can kid ourselves that life is fair. The Fabian Society did some research a couple of months ago on perceptions of the super-rich and the underclass, and found that, in our urge to believe that money obeys the laws of the moral universe, we ascribe qualities to people, based on their income, for which we have absolutely no evidence. Respondents would freely assume that bankers, for instance, worked incredibly hard and/or had trained for a long time, or that people on working families' tax credit were lazy and had an unusual number of vices. Lottery winners rob us of these false assumptions: none of these people worked or trained their way to wealth. So it has to be a rags-to-riches tale. And you notice that the Liverpool syndicate who won the other half of the money are already being called "call centre workers" to make them sound skint, ground-down and depressed, even though they were mostly in management. Don't blame yourself. It's all useful salve on the suppurating sore of envy. I personally like to tell myself that they'll all blow their cash on drugs and petty property disputes with their new super-rich neighbours.
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article_from_author_topic
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} on the topic of {{
[
"Politics",
"Society",
"UK",
"World",
"Books"
] [topic]
}}. |||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Zoe Williams on the topic of UK.
|
When the slings and arrows of the lottery deliver up a fortune that is truly outrageous, as onlookers we immediately try to wrestle it into a narrative. Without a narrative, it is just a wonderful stroke of life-changing luck that happened to some other people and didn't happen to us. That's just nauseating you can't live with that, not even for half an hour. One way to overcome it is to make out that the luck is cursed: the Times yesterday ran with a "tale of two lottery winners", in which the super-lout Michael Carroll had his myriad flaws adumbrated yet again, the number of cars he's crashed given yet again, his ludicrous poetry quoted yet again, to ram home the reassuring message that you can get as lucky as you like, but unless you have some laudable interior qualities you will not stay lucky. This message was reinforced by the contrasting case of Pat Griffiths, a winner so ascetic, so hard-working and unmaterialistic, that although she gave up her job editing the local paper, she hasn't stopped working, hasn't moved house and hasn't spent much more than she (probably) could have borrowed from a bank. "Why would we want to move?" she asks, rhetorically, to underline her deserving nature. "We already live in paradise on earth." Ah, Bisto. I feel better already. The Daily Mail, today, took a more gnomic stab at making sense of the luck. The married winners, sharing between them 45.5m, are from Newport. Wait, wait, there's more Newport is in Gwent, and Gwent has been home to seven winners (of, er, 8,000). This luck isn't wild! It's Jackpot Valley, it was preordained by the gods overseeing the intersection of good fortune and geomorphology. Of course, there are people who aren't superstitious, and aren't persuaded that Carroll and Griffiths represent the very reaches of good and evil; there are subtler ways we can kid ourselves that life is fair. The Fabian Society did some research a couple of months ago on perceptions of the super-rich and the underclass, and found that, in our urge to believe that money obeys the laws of the moral universe, we ascribe qualities to people, based on their income, for which we have absolutely no evidence. Respondents would freely assume that bankers, for instance, worked incredibly hard and/or had trained for a long time, or that people on working families' tax credit were lazy and had an unusual number of vices. Lottery winners rob us of these false assumptions: none of these people worked or trained their way to wealth. So it has to be a rags-to-riches tale. And you notice that the Liverpool syndicate who won the other half of the money are already being called "call centre workers" to make them sound skint, ground-down and depressed, even though they were mostly in management. Don't blame yourself. It's all useful salve on the suppurating sore of envy. I personally like to tell myself that they'll all blow their cash on drugs and petty property disputes with their new super-rich neighbours.
|
12zoewilliams
| 2UK
|
Prince Philip has done something unprecedented. He has denied, in the strongest possible terms, that he ever called Princess Di a trollop or a harlot in any of his letters to her. This is not very regal behaviour, entering into a media mudfight, but apparently his hands were tied - Prince William had given him an ultimatum, and we can all imagine how shattering that was ("Deny these words, or I'll never look at you shyly from beneath my bambi hair ever again!" he probably said). Clearly, this kind of nonsense shouldn't detain us for a second, whether true or not. The facts of the matter are in no doubt - the people's princess was doing the nasty with someone other than her husband for some time before their separation. Therefore, to anyone capable of using words like "trollop" and "harlot" without laughing, that makes her a trollop. It may never be known whether Prince Philip said as much to her face, but since he gets such timeless joy from saying things like "Gosh, you're very black, aren't you? How hilarious!" to the faces of black people, it seems unlikely that he curbed himself in the face of the harlot. Anyway, in a case where one person's dead and the other one's cuckoo, it doesn't matter terribly who said what; it only matters that the extant one is behaving rather unusually. Devout royal watchers will have noticed that Philip made the news twice at the weekend - the other time, it was a brief mention of the fact that he was spotted ostentatiously leashing his Labrador while out walking, in tacit reference to Princess Anne's recent fine under the Dangerous Dogs Act. Obviously, he was making some kind of humorous statement, here: Labradors are charmless hulks of goodwill, they'd never maul anyone. Perhaps he was saying, "You crazy members of the public, I suppose you'll want me to leash my Labrador next!", or perhaps he was saying something else altogether. But the juxtaposition of the two stories does remind us that Princess Anne's case was also unprecedented. She isn't the first royal to own a dangerous dog, and she isn't the first to cause needless harm to her subjects by failing to do something that anyone with half a brain would have done, but she's certainly the first to be successfully prosecuted under the Dangerous Dogs Act. The Queen, normally a stickler for boring old precedent, also behaved somewhat innovatively during the trial of Paul Burrell. There's certainly no precedent in living memory for a queen to give evidence against herself in a case she really needn't have brought to court, if she'd known she was going to do that (I wonder if she can now prosecute herself for wasting her own time). All families have to break with tradition at some point, but there is a problem when the royals do it. Not because we set higher standards for them than we do for each other, since we're all perfectly aware how only-human they are. No, it's because precedent is all they've got. Precedent is all that's standing between them and the rest of busted-flush aristocracy; more importantly, from their point of view, it's all that's standing between them and proper income tax. It is an undisputed fact that nobody accords the royals any constitutional importance whatsoever. Of 101 Labour MPs questioned by BBC1's On the Record, 80% said the Queen should be stripped of all constitutional powers. These people are supposed to be in charge! Why don't they just put their votes where their views are? Because of convention. Why does Tony Blair waste all that time chatting to the Queen, when he has no intention of doing what she says, and she's not going to say anything anyway? Because that's how it's done. Why do we submit to being subjects rather than citizens? Because that's the way it's always been. If you spend one minute examining their role in the context of logic, rather than tradition, you cannot see the point of them. Even the staunchest monarchists, pressed on this family's purpose, can only come up with one of two things. Either, it's a tourist attraction (which I'd contest - or, better still, offset by building another London Eye). Or, they ask, "What do we put in their place?" - well, what indeed? A freely elected president? A toothless but benign head of state? Some kittens? It doesn't matter, so long as it's been given serious thought; so long as the final decision is reached in accordance with the principles of modern democracy; basically, so long as there is some idea behind it other than "Let's do what we did last year." Now, I'm not necessarily advocating the overthrow of the royal family, since on this issue, more than any other, I feel profoundly indifferent. I merely suggest that they should be a lot more careful, the next time they're tempted to wade imperiously into an issue, thinking to halt our tabloid chattering with one absolute assertion or denial. Every time they do something they've never done before, however tedious it is, they're clawing through their own safety nets. There may not be much dignity in silence, but there's always a chance we'll forget they're there.
|
article_from_author_topic
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} on the topic of {{
[
"Politics",
"Society",
"UK",
"World",
"Books"
] [topic]
}}. |||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Zoe Williams on the topic of UK.
|
Prince Philip has done something unprecedented. He has denied, in the strongest possible terms, that he ever called Princess Di a trollop or a harlot in any of his letters to her. This is not very regal behaviour, entering into a media mudfight, but apparently his hands were tied - Prince William had given him an ultimatum, and we can all imagine how shattering that was ("Deny these words, or I'll never look at you shyly from beneath my bambi hair ever again!" he probably said). Clearly, this kind of nonsense shouldn't detain us for a second, whether true or not. The facts of the matter are in no doubt - the people's princess was doing the nasty with someone other than her husband for some time before their separation. Therefore, to anyone capable of using words like "trollop" and "harlot" without laughing, that makes her a trollop. It may never be known whether Prince Philip said as much to her face, but since he gets such timeless joy from saying things like "Gosh, you're very black, aren't you? How hilarious!" to the faces of black people, it seems unlikely that he curbed himself in the face of the harlot. Anyway, in a case where one person's dead and the other one's cuckoo, it doesn't matter terribly who said what; it only matters that the extant one is behaving rather unusually. Devout royal watchers will have noticed that Philip made the news twice at the weekend - the other time, it was a brief mention of the fact that he was spotted ostentatiously leashing his Labrador while out walking, in tacit reference to Princess Anne's recent fine under the Dangerous Dogs Act. Obviously, he was making some kind of humorous statement, here: Labradors are charmless hulks of goodwill, they'd never maul anyone. Perhaps he was saying, "You crazy members of the public, I suppose you'll want me to leash my Labrador next!", or perhaps he was saying something else altogether. But the juxtaposition of the two stories does remind us that Princess Anne's case was also unprecedented. She isn't the first royal to own a dangerous dog, and she isn't the first to cause needless harm to her subjects by failing to do something that anyone with half a brain would have done, but she's certainly the first to be successfully prosecuted under the Dangerous Dogs Act. The Queen, normally a stickler for boring old precedent, also behaved somewhat innovatively during the trial of Paul Burrell. There's certainly no precedent in living memory for a queen to give evidence against herself in a case she really needn't have brought to court, if she'd known she was going to do that (I wonder if she can now prosecute herself for wasting her own time). All families have to break with tradition at some point, but there is a problem when the royals do it. Not because we set higher standards for them than we do for each other, since we're all perfectly aware how only-human they are. No, it's because precedent is all they've got. Precedent is all that's standing between them and the rest of busted-flush aristocracy; more importantly, from their point of view, it's all that's standing between them and proper income tax. It is an undisputed fact that nobody accords the royals any constitutional importance whatsoever. Of 101 Labour MPs questioned by BBC1's On the Record, 80% said the Queen should be stripped of all constitutional powers. These people are supposed to be in charge! Why don't they just put their votes where their views are? Because of convention. Why does Tony Blair waste all that time chatting to the Queen, when he has no intention of doing what she says, and she's not going to say anything anyway? Because that's how it's done. Why do we submit to being subjects rather than citizens? Because that's the way it's always been. If you spend one minute examining their role in the context of logic, rather than tradition, you cannot see the point of them. Even the staunchest monarchists, pressed on this family's purpose, can only come up with one of two things. Either, it's a tourist attraction (which I'd contest - or, better still, offset by building another London Eye). Or, they ask, "What do we put in their place?" - well, what indeed? A freely elected president? A toothless but benign head of state? Some kittens? It doesn't matter, so long as it's been given serious thought; so long as the final decision is reached in accordance with the principles of modern democracy; basically, so long as there is some idea behind it other than "Let's do what we did last year." Now, I'm not necessarily advocating the overthrow of the royal family, since on this issue, more than any other, I feel profoundly indifferent. I merely suggest that they should be a lot more careful, the next time they're tempted to wade imperiously into an issue, thinking to halt our tabloid chattering with one absolute assertion or denial. Every time they do something they've never done before, however tedious it is, they're clawing through their own safety nets. There may not be much dignity in silence, but there's always a chance we'll forget they're there.
|
12zoewilliams
| 2UK
|
It's Prince Harry's birth-month; he's 21, you know. One time, when he was younger, he drank quite a lot, and his father made some noises about putting him in rehab. Now we're talking about it, I can't remember whether or not he did go to rehab, but I remember thinking it was the most ludicrous thing I'd ever heard, putting someone in rehab over a couple of Smirnoff Ices; you might just as well put someone in Broadmoor for killing a squirrel.He once went to a fancy-dress party disguised as a Nazi. He thought this was funny; a lot of people called it controversial. I found it impossible to determine why it would be either funny or controversial. (Really, unless it's the pelt of a creature you care about, who could care less what aristos wear to parties?) I know that he regrets wearing the outfit sincerely, according to some interview he gave to a TV company, which wasn't the BBC, whom he snubbed with his seminal coming-of-age message. He likes motorbikes, and has been photographed by Mario Testino with some grime on his face, looking like a young Marlon Brando, except in the respect of having any charisma, or beauty, or sex appeal. He used the word "arse", apropos of his time at Sandhurst. And, er, that's it.Contrary to popular wisdom, there is a much more serious image crisis in the younger generation of this family than there is in the older. However much the Queen or Prince Charles might be accused of being "out of date", starchy, slightly ridiculous, overfond of pets, they can get away with it, since they belong to a reticent generation. The young ones, however, are required to be accessible yet special. Having no special talents, their speciality must be something basically impossible - a classless version of aristocratic superiority; a faith-free version of divine right.They have been hailed as the great white hope, this generation, free from the tang of the seamy love hexagons that beset their parents, bringing with them a new informality and a new approachability, but it's those very qualities that make them even less viable than their forebears. Make your minds up, chums - do you want to be just like one of us, mucking in with your Sandhurst minions and swearing with the best of them, or do you want to be a breed apart? And if you're not the second, on what possible grounds would we laud you as the first?Politely aware of this tricksy business, our media construct certain fictions around these people to keep them afloat. The first is that they are beautiful. Everyone from Zara Phillips through Princess Beatrice to Prince William has been credited with some physical loveliness, on the basis that beauty is a perfectly comprehensible, modern thing to be celebrated for. Of course, it's wholly bogus; none of them is ever going to put the squeeze on Kate Moss. The second fiction is that their lifestyles are rarefied and unusual for reasons beyond the fact that they spend a lot of money on them. Again, patently bogus. The third is that they occupy an indispensable place in the nation's culture; in fact it is this lie of indispensability that has screwed them, since if they had been allowed to fade quietly into the background, slowly replacing "engagements" with actual "jobs", and "apartments" with actual "flats", they would be well on the way to moneyed normality by now.No such luck for young Harry, who has also exclusively revealed that he "likes to have a laugh". Our expectations of this family are not real, but that won't stop us making a fuss when they let us down; they couldn't fulfil them even if they were real. Nobody, come to that, is sure what these expectations are, but we'll know, next time a prince goes to a party dressed as a member of the Ba'ath party, what they aren't. It's a thorny, inconsistent business that seems to preclude almost all kinds of laugh. Would it not be easier just to pay tax?
|
article_from_author_topic
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} on the topic of {{
[
"Politics",
"Society",
"UK",
"World",
"Books"
] [topic]
}}. |||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Zoe Williams on the topic of UK.
|
It's Prince Harry's birth-month; he's 21, you know. One time, when he was younger, he drank quite a lot, and his father made some noises about putting him in rehab. Now we're talking about it, I can't remember whether or not he did go to rehab, but I remember thinking it was the most ludicrous thing I'd ever heard, putting someone in rehab over a couple of Smirnoff Ices; you might just as well put someone in Broadmoor for killing a squirrel.He once went to a fancy-dress party disguised as a Nazi. He thought this was funny; a lot of people called it controversial. I found it impossible to determine why it would be either funny or controversial. (Really, unless it's the pelt of a creature you care about, who could care less what aristos wear to parties?) I know that he regrets wearing the outfit sincerely, according to some interview he gave to a TV company, which wasn't the BBC, whom he snubbed with his seminal coming-of-age message. He likes motorbikes, and has been photographed by Mario Testino with some grime on his face, looking like a young Marlon Brando, except in the respect of having any charisma, or beauty, or sex appeal. He used the word "arse", apropos of his time at Sandhurst. And, er, that's it.Contrary to popular wisdom, there is a much more serious image crisis in the younger generation of this family than there is in the older. However much the Queen or Prince Charles might be accused of being "out of date", starchy, slightly ridiculous, overfond of pets, they can get away with it, since they belong to a reticent generation. The young ones, however, are required to be accessible yet special. Having no special talents, their speciality must be something basically impossible - a classless version of aristocratic superiority; a faith-free version of divine right.They have been hailed as the great white hope, this generation, free from the tang of the seamy love hexagons that beset their parents, bringing with them a new informality and a new approachability, but it's those very qualities that make them even less viable than their forebears. Make your minds up, chums - do you want to be just like one of us, mucking in with your Sandhurst minions and swearing with the best of them, or do you want to be a breed apart? And if you're not the second, on what possible grounds would we laud you as the first?Politely aware of this tricksy business, our media construct certain fictions around these people to keep them afloat. The first is that they are beautiful. Everyone from Zara Phillips through Princess Beatrice to Prince William has been credited with some physical loveliness, on the basis that beauty is a perfectly comprehensible, modern thing to be celebrated for. Of course, it's wholly bogus; none of them is ever going to put the squeeze on Kate Moss. The second fiction is that their lifestyles are rarefied and unusual for reasons beyond the fact that they spend a lot of money on them. Again, patently bogus. The third is that they occupy an indispensable place in the nation's culture; in fact it is this lie of indispensability that has screwed them, since if they had been allowed to fade quietly into the background, slowly replacing "engagements" with actual "jobs", and "apartments" with actual "flats", they would be well on the way to moneyed normality by now.No such luck for young Harry, who has also exclusively revealed that he "likes to have a laugh". Our expectations of this family are not real, but that won't stop us making a fuss when they let us down; they couldn't fulfil them even if they were real. Nobody, come to that, is sure what these expectations are, but we'll know, next time a prince goes to a party dressed as a member of the Ba'ath party, what they aren't. It's a thorny, inconsistent business that seems to preclude almost all kinds of laugh. Would it not be easier just to pay tax?
|
10simonhoggart
| 2UK
|
Up early to go to Belfast for the historic first meeting of the new Northern Ireland executive. Peter Mandelson is on the radio, sounding historic. He asks us to reflect on the "enormity" of what has happened this week. I check it in the OED: "enormity - a monstrous wickedness, a crime or monstrous offence." Another word lost to the language. Belfast is as I remember it - permanently wet. The taxi roars up to Stormont, past the triumphalist Carson statue - how long can that survive? - to the massive parliament building, an edifice of a size and grandeur which would be appropriate if its denizens governed the Hapsburg empire, but which in this small, outlying province looks merely ridiculous. It was here 30 years ago that I heard Brian Faulkner, the last Unionist prime minister, offer places in government to nationalist politicians - a deal not unlike the one which has just been agreed. But that was in the earliest days of the troubles; they would get much worse, 3,000 dead worse, and Faulkner's offer was as pointless as sticking a traffic cone in front of a tank. You can tell how historic an event is deemed to be by the number of satellite TV trucks parked outside. Today I can see 13 - good news for history fans since that implies the story could make the Associated Press top twenty of the year's historic news events, somewhere between the Indian elections and the fall of Jeffrey Archer. Inside the building we wait for the new executive to turn up. William Hague came in the morning, but no one seems to have noticed. Finally a Sinn Fein party walked down the great staircase, past the statue of Lord Carnarvon, and addressed us, looking as they generally do, sour but historic. Gerry Adams spoke in Irish, then in English, but it didn't make any difference, since his words were lost, bouncing off the vast marble walls, the carved stone, the lavish brasswork, the painted ceiling and the massive chandeliers. Lord Carnarvon would have considered this lot Fenian bogtrotters. The sight of them standing in the midst of that splendour - "a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people" as it was called - might have made his statue crumble, but it was still upright when the party went back up, affording us the chance to notice that Gerry Adams climbs stairs rather like Groucho Marx, which is something you don't see on TV. The executive met for the first time at 3pm. I followed up the stairs to hear the Rev Ian Paisley, whose DUP is refusing to sit in the executive along with Sinn Fein, but whose ministers will take part in government and committees. Paisley is an unchanging constant, and you could measure the progress of the troubles by the whitening of his hair. "I have been told this is a daybreak - but there is no daybreak for the children of Northern Ireland!" He claimed - Paisley always has a scoop - that Bairbre de Brun, the Sinn Fein health minister, was demanding to know the religious affiliation of civil servants, so that she could sack the Protestants. Paisley's enduring appeal to his electorate is that he treats the Unionists as if they were the oppressed minority. On and on he roared. "You, the press, have told wicked lies! This is no new daybreak. It is a new night, and we do not know what midnight will bring!" I would have written more, but my Pentel which writes letters of fire had run out. As he ploughed on, the DUP assemblymen around him looked first embarrassed and then bored. Their evident ennui near their leader may be a hopeful sign. Messrs Trimble and Mallon emerged from the historic first meeting to report historically good progress. They were heckled. "What about those who were murdered?" shouted someone, who could have come from either side. In the crush I found myself jammed up against Martin McGuinness, the former IRA chief of staff who is now education minister. He is a big man, and was wearing a well-cut suit, with neatly trimmed hair and highly polished shoes. He looked like a minister, not a terrorist. Why was I just faintly reminded of the last chapter of Animal Farm?
|
article_from_author_topic
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} on the topic of {{
[
"Politics",
"Society",
"UK",
"World",
"Books"
] [topic]
}}. |||
{{article}}
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Generate an article based on the writing style of Simon Hoggart on the topic of UK.
|
Up early to go to Belfast for the historic first meeting of the new Northern Ireland executive. Peter Mandelson is on the radio, sounding historic. He asks us to reflect on the "enormity" of what has happened this week. I check it in the OED: "enormity - a monstrous wickedness, a crime or monstrous offence." Another word lost to the language. Belfast is as I remember it - permanently wet. The taxi roars up to Stormont, past the triumphalist Carson statue - how long can that survive? - to the massive parliament building, an edifice of a size and grandeur which would be appropriate if its denizens governed the Hapsburg empire, but which in this small, outlying province looks merely ridiculous. It was here 30 years ago that I heard Brian Faulkner, the last Unionist prime minister, offer places in government to nationalist politicians - a deal not unlike the one which has just been agreed. But that was in the earliest days of the troubles; they would get much worse, 3,000 dead worse, and Faulkner's offer was as pointless as sticking a traffic cone in front of a tank. You can tell how historic an event is deemed to be by the number of satellite TV trucks parked outside. Today I can see 13 - good news for history fans since that implies the story could make the Associated Press top twenty of the year's historic news events, somewhere between the Indian elections and the fall of Jeffrey Archer. Inside the building we wait for the new executive to turn up. William Hague came in the morning, but no one seems to have noticed. Finally a Sinn Fein party walked down the great staircase, past the statue of Lord Carnarvon, and addressed us, looking as they generally do, sour but historic. Gerry Adams spoke in Irish, then in English, but it didn't make any difference, since his words were lost, bouncing off the vast marble walls, the carved stone, the lavish brasswork, the painted ceiling and the massive chandeliers. Lord Carnarvon would have considered this lot Fenian bogtrotters. The sight of them standing in the midst of that splendour - "a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people" as it was called - might have made his statue crumble, but it was still upright when the party went back up, affording us the chance to notice that Gerry Adams climbs stairs rather like Groucho Marx, which is something you don't see on TV. The executive met for the first time at 3pm. I followed up the stairs to hear the Rev Ian Paisley, whose DUP is refusing to sit in the executive along with Sinn Fein, but whose ministers will take part in government and committees. Paisley is an unchanging constant, and you could measure the progress of the troubles by the whitening of his hair. "I have been told this is a daybreak - but there is no daybreak for the children of Northern Ireland!" He claimed - Paisley always has a scoop - that Bairbre de Brun, the Sinn Fein health minister, was demanding to know the religious affiliation of civil servants, so that she could sack the Protestants. Paisley's enduring appeal to his electorate is that he treats the Unionists as if they were the oppressed minority. On and on he roared. "You, the press, have told wicked lies! This is no new daybreak. It is a new night, and we do not know what midnight will bring!" I would have written more, but my Pentel which writes letters of fire had run out. As he ploughed on, the DUP assemblymen around him looked first embarrassed and then bored. Their evident ennui near their leader may be a hopeful sign. Messrs Trimble and Mallon emerged from the historic first meeting to report historically good progress. They were heckled. "What about those who were murdered?" shouted someone, who could have come from either side. In the crush I found myself jammed up against Martin McGuinness, the former IRA chief of staff who is now education minister. He is a big man, and was wearing a well-cut suit, with neatly trimmed hair and highly polished shoes. He looked like a minister, not a terrorist. Why was I just faintly reminded of the last chapter of Animal Farm?
|
10simonhoggart
| 2UK
|
Gordon Brown arrived on the front bench in the Commons, laughing and joking with Tony Blair. Laughing and joking? With Tony Blair? Things must be desperate. The prime minister was about to shaft him. And so he did. Shortly after that he told us to expect a referendum on membership of the euro within - he implied - two years of the election. The chancellor himself would prefer it some time after a giant meteor has wiped out all life on earth. At least that way he'd know the result in advance. Step back with me two hours in time, to 1pm yesterday. I was at the Channel 4 Political Awards, to be shown at 8pm on Saturday. It'll be a funny show, so catch it if you can, though it goes out at the same time as Casualty. You might find it hard to tell the difference. ("This man's career is hanging by a thread! We need oxygen, a blood transfusion, and a heart transplant!" "But doctor, look, the Mandelson case file says 'do not resuscitate!'") At my table was Lembit Opik, the LibDem MP who has spent the last few years telling us that the meteor could strike at any time. I asked if we wouldn't have a few weeks' warning, to send up a nuclear device up to smash the rock before it hits us. He said we might get two minutes. What a cheery companion he proved to be. Jon Snow, the presenter, made a joke about Michael Meacher "only stopping by to pick up the rent". That got a big laugh. Lembit Opik appeared on camera talking about Gordon Prentice, a keen opponent of fox-hunting. He, Lembit, had suggested to him that it should remain legal, but there should be a regulatory agency called "Off-fox". Mr Prentice had replied "using the same words, but in the reverse order". There were some queeny "whoo, whoos" from the assembled pols and hacks, but Gordon Brown looked much amused. Stephen Pound, the Labour MP for Ealing, was briefly fooled on air by a phone call from Tony Blair - actually a member of Radio 4's Dead Ringers team. The prime minister would like to visit his constituency. "I can promise you no tomatoes," said Mr Pound, "but a few kiwi fruits and aubergines, perhaps..." The next winner was the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley, for his book about New Labour and their general contempt for the voters. It is said that Gordon Brown was a source for this work, but now regrets telling the author whatever it was he said. As the oeuvre was being praised, the chancellor looked thunderous. Margaret Beckett, two seats away, smiled a tight little smile. Mr Rawnsley praised his wife for all her help. "She is my rock, my comfort and my joy," he said. The chancellor's jaw literally hung open. He hugged himself, like someone signalling the maitre d' to bring a strait jacket. Then Mr Brown himself won the top award of all, for "the MP who has been the most outstanding figure in the House". They showed short clips of people praising him. He looked delighted. Who wouldn't be? Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews declared on the monitors: "He is an absolutely typical Lowland Scot. He believes in the virtues of toil, and plunder." Back in the Commons, Mr Blair was replying to William Hague. Did an early referendum on the euro mean within two years of the next parliament? (The Tory leader seems to have given up any hope of winning.) "Early in the next parliament would, of course, be within two years," Mr Blair replied. Mr Brown scowled. Win some, lose some. But he seems to win nearly all the time, so I don't suppose he'll mind too much.
|
article_from_author_topic
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} on the topic of {{
[
"Politics",
"Society",
"UK",
"World",
"Books"
] [topic]
}}. |||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Simon Hoggart on the topic of UK.
|
Gordon Brown arrived on the front bench in the Commons, laughing and joking with Tony Blair. Laughing and joking? With Tony Blair? Things must be desperate. The prime minister was about to shaft him. And so he did. Shortly after that he told us to expect a referendum on membership of the euro within - he implied - two years of the election. The chancellor himself would prefer it some time after a giant meteor has wiped out all life on earth. At least that way he'd know the result in advance. Step back with me two hours in time, to 1pm yesterday. I was at the Channel 4 Political Awards, to be shown at 8pm on Saturday. It'll be a funny show, so catch it if you can, though it goes out at the same time as Casualty. You might find it hard to tell the difference. ("This man's career is hanging by a thread! We need oxygen, a blood transfusion, and a heart transplant!" "But doctor, look, the Mandelson case file says 'do not resuscitate!'") At my table was Lembit Opik, the LibDem MP who has spent the last few years telling us that the meteor could strike at any time. I asked if we wouldn't have a few weeks' warning, to send up a nuclear device up to smash the rock before it hits us. He said we might get two minutes. What a cheery companion he proved to be. Jon Snow, the presenter, made a joke about Michael Meacher "only stopping by to pick up the rent". That got a big laugh. Lembit Opik appeared on camera talking about Gordon Prentice, a keen opponent of fox-hunting. He, Lembit, had suggested to him that it should remain legal, but there should be a regulatory agency called "Off-fox". Mr Prentice had replied "using the same words, but in the reverse order". There were some queeny "whoo, whoos" from the assembled pols and hacks, but Gordon Brown looked much amused. Stephen Pound, the Labour MP for Ealing, was briefly fooled on air by a phone call from Tony Blair - actually a member of Radio 4's Dead Ringers team. The prime minister would like to visit his constituency. "I can promise you no tomatoes," said Mr Pound, "but a few kiwi fruits and aubergines, perhaps..." The next winner was the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley, for his book about New Labour and their general contempt for the voters. It is said that Gordon Brown was a source for this work, but now regrets telling the author whatever it was he said. As the oeuvre was being praised, the chancellor looked thunderous. Margaret Beckett, two seats away, smiled a tight little smile. Mr Rawnsley praised his wife for all her help. "She is my rock, my comfort and my joy," he said. The chancellor's jaw literally hung open. He hugged himself, like someone signalling the maitre d' to bring a strait jacket. Then Mr Brown himself won the top award of all, for "the MP who has been the most outstanding figure in the House". They showed short clips of people praising him. He looked delighted. Who wouldn't be? Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews declared on the monitors: "He is an absolutely typical Lowland Scot. He believes in the virtues of toil, and plunder." Back in the Commons, Mr Blair was replying to William Hague. Did an early referendum on the euro mean within two years of the next parliament? (The Tory leader seems to have given up any hope of winning.) "Early in the next parliament would, of course, be within two years," Mr Blair replied. Mr Brown scowled. Win some, lose some. But he seems to win nearly all the time, so I don't suppose he'll mind too much.
|
10simonhoggart
| 2UK
|
The House discussed the leaking of the Stephen Lawrence report yesterday. Here was a crucially important document whose contents go to the roots of our national malaise. So naturally, it was the opportunity for a gigantic festival of hypocrisy, an orgy of cant, a saturnalia of double-speak. We heard a government minister actually suggest that he had tried to stamp on the early publication of the report 'out of respect for this House and its procedures.' Even some Labour MPs seemed taken aback. Respect for the House? The Government regards MPs much as a pharaoh looked on the slaves building his pyramid. He was glad to see them at work, and some tiny corner of him might even be grateful, but he would never dream of taking them on one side to discuss the plans. Jack Straw, previously the recipient of the kindest epithet any politician can give another 'a safe pair of hands' was in deep trouble. The mess over the injunctions had made him look foolish. The claim that he had acted in the interests of Parliament made him look weaselly as well. Then he alleged that his real motive was to avoid 'distress to the Lawrence family' whom, it turned out, he had not consulted on the matter. This was a desperate throw, an attempt to imply that anyone who criticised Jack Straw was actually trampling over people who have suffered agonies for more than six years. But the slaves behind him were well-drilled, having felt the knotted rope on their backs too often. They cheered all his assertions, even the most ridiculous, and when Norman Fowler said that he felt 'the strongest sympathy for the family' they actually yelled 'No!' Of course the shadow home secretary went over the top. The Tories always do. Perhaps they think no one will pay attention unless they froth with rabid fury. 'Humiliating climbdown' he said. 'Defies belief . . . defiance of parliamentary democracy . . . a shabby episode that shows this government at its worst.' Although, as Gerald Kaufman pointed out a few moments later, Mr Fowler's party had pursued Sarah Tisdall into jail, had tried to put Clive Ponting into jail, and had pursued the Spycatcher case all the way to Australia. So which was worse, a Tory claiming to be valiant for the freedom of the press, or a Labour backbencher implying that a problem does not exist if the last government got it wrong too? Mr Fowler had admitted that he was a director of a newspaper company, so Mr Straw startlingly accused him of 'speaking as a newspaper executive and not as an MP.' 'Cheap little man!' Mr Fowler muttered at this daft allegation. Tories demanded that he withdraw. Betty Boothroyd said she had been distracted and had not heard what Mr Straw had said. (Who could blame her? If I were Speaker I would have a miniature TV fitted to my arm rest, so that I could catch Captain Pugwash instead.) Mr Straw repeated the charge. 'Bullseye!' yelled some ridiculous Labour sycophant. Betty gently called on Jack to withdraw. 'I withdraw the remark,' he muttered. 'Apologise!' the Tories screamed. 'I apologise,' he mumbled at his chest, in the way which makes every parent yell: 'Say it as if you meant it!' There was a difference, he said, between a judicial inquiry and a 'run-of-the-mill government publication.' The implication of this, that the Government could leak what it liked when it liked, raised the Tories to new levels of ersatz anger. David Winnick, Keith Vaz and Diane Abbott tightened the hysterical atmosphere by, in effect, accusing the Conservatives of racism and contempt for the Lawrence family. 'I am disgusted . . . they did nothing about race and racism when they were in power!' said Mr Vaz, as if that had any bearing on Mr Straw's misjudgment. The House at its very worst, as we old Commons hands say.
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article_from_author_topic
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} on the topic of {{
[
"Politics",
"Society",
"UK",
"World",
"Books"
] [topic]
}}. |||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Simon Hoggart on the topic of UK.
|
The House discussed the leaking of the Stephen Lawrence report yesterday. Here was a crucially important document whose contents go to the roots of our national malaise. So naturally, it was the opportunity for a gigantic festival of hypocrisy, an orgy of cant, a saturnalia of double-speak. We heard a government minister actually suggest that he had tried to stamp on the early publication of the report 'out of respect for this House and its procedures.' Even some Labour MPs seemed taken aback. Respect for the House? The Government regards MPs much as a pharaoh looked on the slaves building his pyramid. He was glad to see them at work, and some tiny corner of him might even be grateful, but he would never dream of taking them on one side to discuss the plans. Jack Straw, previously the recipient of the kindest epithet any politician can give another 'a safe pair of hands' was in deep trouble. The mess over the injunctions had made him look foolish. The claim that he had acted in the interests of Parliament made him look weaselly as well. Then he alleged that his real motive was to avoid 'distress to the Lawrence family' whom, it turned out, he had not consulted on the matter. This was a desperate throw, an attempt to imply that anyone who criticised Jack Straw was actually trampling over people who have suffered agonies for more than six years. But the slaves behind him were well-drilled, having felt the knotted rope on their backs too often. They cheered all his assertions, even the most ridiculous, and when Norman Fowler said that he felt 'the strongest sympathy for the family' they actually yelled 'No!' Of course the shadow home secretary went over the top. The Tories always do. Perhaps they think no one will pay attention unless they froth with rabid fury. 'Humiliating climbdown' he said. 'Defies belief . . . defiance of parliamentary democracy . . . a shabby episode that shows this government at its worst.' Although, as Gerald Kaufman pointed out a few moments later, Mr Fowler's party had pursued Sarah Tisdall into jail, had tried to put Clive Ponting into jail, and had pursued the Spycatcher case all the way to Australia. So which was worse, a Tory claiming to be valiant for the freedom of the press, or a Labour backbencher implying that a problem does not exist if the last government got it wrong too? Mr Fowler had admitted that he was a director of a newspaper company, so Mr Straw startlingly accused him of 'speaking as a newspaper executive and not as an MP.' 'Cheap little man!' Mr Fowler muttered at this daft allegation. Tories demanded that he withdraw. Betty Boothroyd said she had been distracted and had not heard what Mr Straw had said. (Who could blame her? If I were Speaker I would have a miniature TV fitted to my arm rest, so that I could catch Captain Pugwash instead.) Mr Straw repeated the charge. 'Bullseye!' yelled some ridiculous Labour sycophant. Betty gently called on Jack to withdraw. 'I withdraw the remark,' he muttered. 'Apologise!' the Tories screamed. 'I apologise,' he mumbled at his chest, in the way which makes every parent yell: 'Say it as if you meant it!' There was a difference, he said, between a judicial inquiry and a 'run-of-the-mill government publication.' The implication of this, that the Government could leak what it liked when it liked, raised the Tories to new levels of ersatz anger. David Winnick, Keith Vaz and Diane Abbott tightened the hysterical atmosphere by, in effect, accusing the Conservatives of racism and contempt for the Lawrence family. 'I am disgusted . . . they did nothing about race and racism when they were in power!' said Mr Vaz, as if that had any bearing on Mr Straw's misjudgment. The House at its very worst, as we old Commons hands say.
|
10simonhoggart
| 2UK
|
This week I was asked to write a chapter for a book about journalism, and I jokily emailed to say my fee would be £10,000. The commissioning editor wrote back to say that was a relief; the publishers had feared I might demand £10,000 per word.But I suspect something like that must have happened when Jonathan Ross's agent contacted the BBC. "Tell you, what, Jonno, we'll have a laugh, we'll ask for six mill a year, and settle for what? £500k? Twice what you're worth, mate, but no harm in trying, right?" Then the word comes back from Broadcasting House: "Yes, of course, six million is eminently reasonable. We'll send the contract over ..." Mr Ross's salary has now become the great symbol of BBC profligacy and financial incontinence, and there was much talk of it at the bash to celebrate 50 years of the Today programme this week. John Humphrys said in his speech he was sorry Jonathan Ross couldn't be with us: "He's at Buckingham Palace giving the king of Saudi Arabia advice about what to do with his money." It's the kind of thing that creates a boiling and roiling resentment in every other person who works for the BBC, especially in radio, where the fees are famously limp.The fact is that the BBC has such range, such clout, and so many outlets that it can create its own stars. It doesn't need to pay vast sums to bring in established people from outside (Graham Norton) and it doesn't need to beggar itself by holding on to those who are offered ridiculous sums elsewhere. You only need to look at Hancock and Morecambe and Wise to see what can happen to those who follow the cash.<b></b> There was much talk of great Today programme fiascos, such as the time Jack de Manio couldn't conduct an interview because he was locked in the toilet. Or the occasion at the start of the Iraq war when Tony Benn appeared to pronounce anathemas on all concerned. But instead of him, they accidentally played a tape of Mongolian throat music. "So, Mr Benn, what's your view?" "Wurghhh, urggh ..." I'd have enjoyed that. Ming Campbell was there looking happy and relaxed. We got on to the subject of lawyers who are also politicians, and he told a story about the late John Smith. He'd been defending a man accused of attempted murder with a knife. The fellow was convicted, so Smith paid the customary visit to the cells to commiserate and apologise. "Not to worry, Mr Smith," he said cheerfully, "you were so good I was believing you myself!"<b></b> It is my habit, when I pass near the ancient wine merchants of Berry Bros and Rudd in St James, London, to pop in and gaze at their fine wine room. Last time I looked the second most expensive wine on sale was a Chateau Petrus 1990 at £3,600 - per bottle. The priciest of the lot was the 1990 Chateau Le Pin, which now retails at £3,800. The grapes are not trodden by horny-footed peasants.People sometimes ask if it's worth it, and the answer is obviously no, except to folk who use such wine to demonstrate their enormous wealth. Absurd to imagine that it is a hundred times better than a fine claret from a less famous name, or even a thousand times better than Sainsbury's rouge.But wine pricing is a weird business. This week I went to the launch of the 1998 vintage of Pol Roger's prestige line, Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill. It is, as you would imagine, very delicious. And it costs £100 a bottle. But a tiny amount is made, and they are desperately anxious not to get the bling, rock stars and Russian millionaires image. So they refuse to provide it to people who they fear might sell it on to certain West End nightclubs or restaurants. Their long-term image is more important than the immediate profits.They told me darkly that there is a new breed of PR person whose job it is to reduce sales. Companies like Burberry have been horrified to see yobs wearing their design, and some champagne houses are similarly afflicted. So they employ people to discourage the wrong sort of customer. I wonder how they work? "Nah, mate, you don't want this stuff. Now, Woolworth's fiver-a-bottle bubbly, you'll love that ..."Next day I went to a tasting of vintage Hine cognacs (these events tend to come in clusters). We were taken through nine brandies, including the 1944, which was fabulous, by Bernard Hine. He is an outgoing, elderly chap with faultless English and a majestic white moustache. Among the terms bandied about to describe the brandies were "figs, crystallised fruit, gingerbread, honey, apricots, flowers, quince, toast, vanilla, cloves, mushrooms, orange peel, truffles and jasmine" - one of those corporate Christmas hampers in a bottle.At one point a guest said he thought he detected fuel. M Hine looked like a Bateman colonel. His eyes bulged and his nostrils dilated. "Fee-you-ell?" he shouted. "Fee-you-ell? I do not like that word!" I thought he was a little unfair - the greatest Rieslings, for example, often have a touch of kerosene, and believe me, it all adds to the flavour.<b></b> To a literary lunch in Cambridge, to plug my book of sketches, The Hands Of History, and the two round-robin books, now collected in paperback as The Christmas Letters. (Incidentally I'll be doing the annual round-up in January next year; all contributions very gratefully received.) I was slightly alarmed to see that I had been placed next to Princess Michael of Kent, whose image in the press has not always been entirely favourable. To my surprise, she turned out to be extremely friendly, unpretentious, and very chatty about all sorts of topics. For example, she does a lot of work with wildlife preservation, and she told me that baby elephants have ears as thin as the skin on a crispy duck. If they're orphaned they lack the shade of a parent. This means that sun cream has to be applied to their ears. Not many people know that.<b></b> Last week I said that Sir Geoffrey Bindman had, at the knighthood ceremony, stepped on to the kneeling stool and walked up next to the Queen. His son, Dan, tells me that this is untrue - instead he hopped straight on to the dais. I am glad to correct the record, and apologise for any inconvenience caused.
|
article_from_author_topic
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of {{
[
"Catherine Bennett",
"George Monbiot",
"Hugo Young",
"Jonathan Freedland",
"Martin Kettle",
"Mary Riddell",
"Nick Cohen",
"Peter Preston",
"Polly Toynbee",
"Roy Hattersley",
"Simon Hoggart",
"Will Hutton",
"Zoe Williams"
] [author]
}} on the topic of {{
[
"Politics",
"Society",
"UK",
"World",
"Books"
] [topic]
}}. |||
{{article}}
|
Generate an article based on the writing style of Simon Hoggart on the topic of UK.
|
This week I was asked to write a chapter for a book about journalism, and I jokily emailed to say my fee would be £10,000. The commissioning editor wrote back to say that was a relief; the publishers had feared I might demand £10,000 per word.But I suspect something like that must have happened when Jonathan Ross's agent contacted the BBC. "Tell you, what, Jonno, we'll have a laugh, we'll ask for six mill a year, and settle for what? £500k? Twice what you're worth, mate, but no harm in trying, right?" Then the word comes back from Broadcasting House: "Yes, of course, six million is eminently reasonable. We'll send the contract over ..." Mr Ross's salary has now become the great symbol of BBC profligacy and financial incontinence, and there was much talk of it at the bash to celebrate 50 years of the Today programme this week. John Humphrys said in his speech he was sorry Jonathan Ross couldn't be with us: "He's at Buckingham Palace giving the king of Saudi Arabia advice about what to do with his money." It's the kind of thing that creates a boiling and roiling resentment in every other person who works for the BBC, especially in radio, where the fees are famously limp.The fact is that the BBC has such range, such clout, and so many outlets that it can create its own stars. It doesn't need to pay vast sums to bring in established people from outside (Graham Norton) and it doesn't need to beggar itself by holding on to those who are offered ridiculous sums elsewhere. You only need to look at Hancock and Morecambe and Wise to see what can happen to those who follow the cash.<b></b> There was much talk of great Today programme fiascos, such as the time Jack de Manio couldn't conduct an interview because he was locked in the toilet. Or the occasion at the start of the Iraq war when Tony Benn appeared to pronounce anathemas on all concerned. But instead of him, they accidentally played a tape of Mongolian throat music. "So, Mr Benn, what's your view?" "Wurghhh, urggh ..." I'd have enjoyed that. Ming Campbell was there looking happy and relaxed. We got on to the subject of lawyers who are also politicians, and he told a story about the late John Smith. He'd been defending a man accused of attempted murder with a knife. The fellow was convicted, so Smith paid the customary visit to the cells to commiserate and apologise. "Not to worry, Mr Smith," he said cheerfully, "you were so good I was believing you myself!"<b></b> It is my habit, when I pass near the ancient wine merchants of Berry Bros and Rudd in St James, London, to pop in and gaze at their fine wine room. Last time I looked the second most expensive wine on sale was a Chateau Petrus 1990 at £3,600 - per bottle. The priciest of the lot was the 1990 Chateau Le Pin, which now retails at £3,800. The grapes are not trodden by horny-footed peasants.People sometimes ask if it's worth it, and the answer is obviously no, except to folk who use such wine to demonstrate their enormous wealth. Absurd to imagine that it is a hundred times better than a fine claret from a less famous name, or even a thousand times better than Sainsbury's rouge.But wine pricing is a weird business. This week I went to the launch of the 1998 vintage of Pol Roger's prestige line, Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill. It is, as you would imagine, very delicious. And it costs £100 a bottle. But a tiny amount is made, and they are desperately anxious not to get the bling, rock stars and Russian millionaires image. So they refuse to provide it to people who they fear might sell it on to certain West End nightclubs or restaurants. Their long-term image is more important than the immediate profits.They told me darkly that there is a new breed of PR person whose job it is to reduce sales. Companies like Burberry have been horrified to see yobs wearing their design, and some champagne houses are similarly afflicted. So they employ people to discourage the wrong sort of customer. I wonder how they work? "Nah, mate, you don't want this stuff. Now, Woolworth's fiver-a-bottle bubbly, you'll love that ..."Next day I went to a tasting of vintage Hine cognacs (these events tend to come in clusters). We were taken through nine brandies, including the 1944, which was fabulous, by Bernard Hine. He is an outgoing, elderly chap with faultless English and a majestic white moustache. Among the terms bandied about to describe the brandies were "figs, crystallised fruit, gingerbread, honey, apricots, flowers, quince, toast, vanilla, cloves, mushrooms, orange peel, truffles and jasmine" - one of those corporate Christmas hampers in a bottle.At one point a guest said he thought he detected fuel. M Hine looked like a Bateman colonel. His eyes bulged and his nostrils dilated. "Fee-you-ell?" he shouted. "Fee-you-ell? I do not like that word!" I thought he was a little unfair - the greatest Rieslings, for example, often have a touch of kerosene, and believe me, it all adds to the flavour.<b></b> To a literary lunch in Cambridge, to plug my book of sketches, The Hands Of History, and the two round-robin books, now collected in paperback as The Christmas Letters. (Incidentally I'll be doing the annual round-up in January next year; all contributions very gratefully received.) I was slightly alarmed to see that I had been placed next to Princess Michael of Kent, whose image in the press has not always been entirely favourable. To my surprise, she turned out to be extremely friendly, unpretentious, and very chatty about all sorts of topics. For example, she does a lot of work with wildlife preservation, and she told me that baby elephants have ears as thin as the skin on a crispy duck. If they're orphaned they lack the shade of a parent. This means that sun cream has to be applied to their ears. Not many people know that.<b></b> Last week I said that Sir Geoffrey Bindman had, at the knighthood ceremony, stepped on to the kneeling stool and walked up next to the Queen. His son, Dan, tells me that this is untrue - instead he hopped straight on to the dais. I am glad to correct the record, and apologise for any inconvenience caused.
|
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