Dyke Fingered

‘THE advice to talk softly and carry a big stick had been sexed up, down and sideways by the time it reached Greg Dyke’s ears.

BBC campaign for yet more repeats

The cover of the Guardian has a photograph of the now former director-general of the BBC delivering his parting message through a large megaphone.

There can be no more telling image of how the BBC has been castrated by the Government, Lord Hutton and its own lapses in its normally high standards than seeing the severed head of the country’s biggest broadcaster shouting in the streets.

So much for the digital revolution – broadcasting your message to the masses has gone back to basics.

Indeed, the overriding consensus of both the newspapers and staff at the BBC is that the corporation has taken a retrograde step in saying goodbye to Dyke.

“This is the BBC,” announces the Independent on its front page, in received English, “its leaders gone, its staff up in arms.”

And in those arms, the people who bring you DIY SOS, Red Cap and Mad About Alice carry signs beseeching Greg and whoever are the powers that be to “BRING BACK GREG”.

(Perhaps these creatives can make a TV series out of the event, with Paul Ross travelling the country asking TV executives if they’ve ever had plastic surgery or need a loft conversion?)

But who’s listening? Well, for starters, the common man is – Dyke was ever a populist broadcasting man.

The Telegraph says that a YouGov poll has found that 56% of us consider the Hutton Reports a “whitewash”.

More than one in two of us think Lord Hutton is a member of the Establishment and therefore too ready to sympathise with the Government.

But, then again, Hutton did blame the BBC for much apparent wrongdoing. And ask yourself this: would Paul Ross have done a better job?

And surely the Beeb is also a member of the ruling elite, one of the established forces that prop up the rest of society.

Well, it is and it might not be. It is if you consider its unique position in British life; and it might not be if you are a rival broadcaster and want a slice of the pie.

Just listen to what the Guardian says on the matter: “At the heart of it: a triangle that links Dyke to Blair to Murdoch.”

That’s Rupert Murdoch, a man who, it seems, would like to remodel the so-called Establishment with his own corporation at its head, and, quite probably, he and his wife on a throne of sorts.

And he’s just moved a little step closer to getting his way…’

Posted: 30th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

The Letters Of The Law

‘WHILE the BBC was busy making news, around 50 cannabis smokers and campaigners were making something altogether more intoxicating.

‘It’s the one after C I have trouble with’

The Guardian looked on, not daring to inhale, as Edinburgh’s Purple Haze Café flung open it doors at 4pm, making the transition from greasy spoon to private cannabis club.

Among the crowd signing up to be members at the venue, where weed is not sold, were a few men in bright yellow jackets and oversized hats with a metal lining.

They had come to spread their own message, and handed out leaflets which clarified the law.

Which is? Well, the new law on cannabis is just like the old law.

It’s pretty decent of the coppers to take time out from catching those real criminals we often hear of to remind a few stoners that C is no different to B.

For the record, E is an altogether different thing, and so too, we are informed, is H. But C and B, for all practical purposes, are one and the same.

The Telegraph clarifies things even further and says that although cannabis, or bannacis, has been demoted from a Class B drug to a Class C drug, it will not be tolerated by the police.

Greater Manchester Police explain: “At the discretion of an officer somebody may be arrested for possession of cannabis if it is being smoked in public view, if the person is a repeat offender, if there is a local policing problem linked to cannabis use, or if the possession of cannabis is close to a school or youth club.”

Any questions? Yes, you, the bopper, sorry, copper with the red eyes. Er, no I will not empty my pockets. And no, this does not mean you got a B and not a C grade on your media studies GCSE…’

Posted: 30th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

The Fat Of The Land

‘IF B can be C, then why can’t fat be thin? Of course, it can, it’s just a matter of relativity.

The dear departed

For instance, if you are fat in London, you may well just be portly in Stock-on-Tent or even svelte in Manchester.

A survey by Men’s Fitness magazine, as seen by the Guardian, has discovered that Manchester is Britain’s fattest city.

The survey took in 22 cities and included in its data collection, fat consumption, drinking habits, incidence of heart disease and number of fast-food outlets.

These evils were balanced against gym membership, number and availability of open spaces and consumption of fruit and veg.

And the result is that people living in Manchester are fatter than those in Liverpool, Belfast and even Newcastle.

Quite some shock, although we should note that this is only an average and were Victoria Beckham still living in the Manchester locale, Manchester would be a far slimmer place.

It would also have more vegetables and open spaces…’

Posted: 30th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

The White Stuff

‘IT’S somewhat fitting that on a day when much of Britain lies beneath a blanket of white snow, the Independent should lead with the word, ‘WHITEWASH?’

An officer shows how the Army managed in Iraq with no guns

To give the paper its full dues, the headline words, printed floating on the centre of a pure white page, read: ‘WHITEWASH? THE HUTTON REPORT. A SPECIAL ISSUE.’

That line about this being a special issue has a double meaning, what with the Law Lord’s report into the death of Dr David Kelly being an eagerly awaited matter of importance and the paper dedicating a massive proportion of its daily news coverage to it.

But then all the papers have masses to say about Lord Hutton and his report into whether the BBC, the Government, both or neither were complicit in the ruination of the scientist.

The actual report is blessedly not recounted in full by any of the papers, although the Times does have the transcript of Lord Hutton’s own summary of the case.

The stand-alones say much that we need to know: ‘Dr Kelly did not say the Government knew the 45 minute claim was wrong’; and ‘There’s no dishonourable…duplicitous strategy…covertly to leak Dr Kelly’s name.’

All pretty cut and dried there, then. But this case is in part an emotive issue – the death of a man can be little else but.

And while the Times’ Matthew Parris leads with a tale on the suicidal doctor (Hutton rules out foul play), talking about how when he retraced Kelly’s last steps he found the Oxfordshire countryside where Kelly’s body was found ‘heavy’ and lugubrious, the Guardian’s review is dominated by a single defining shot of the episode’s great survivor, Tony Blair.

His toothsome grin, the glint of zeal in his eyes and the perkiness of his arched eyebrows are positively maniacal.

If this is a whitewash, if there is more to this pitiful event than even the eminent Lord Hutton can or cares to discover, if blame can be attributed to more than just the BBC, Tony Blair looks clean.

The Prime Minister has been cleared of all blame, but damage has been done. How many of us really believe that he, unlike the Indy’s cover, is whiter than white?’

Posted: 29th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Carrion Scavenging

‘IF there could be an official bird for the Hutton Report, it would surely be the vulture.

‘I was told I could have Blair for breakfast’

Some might argue for a hawk or a dove, but the vulture seems ideally suited to the type of people who picked over the bones of a man hounded to his death with so much relish.

But scavengers should be careful what they eat, lest they get stuck up to their own necks in the mire and wind up sick or worse.

That’s the situation among the vultures of India and Pakistan, which have been feasting on carrion steeped in a flavour enhancer called diclofenac.

The Independent says that this pharmaceutical drug, used as an anti-inflammatory tool in humans and livestock throughout the region, is having a devastating effect on three types of vulture.

In the past ten years, up to 99 per cent of white-backed, long-billed and slender-billed volutes have gone the way of so many MoD scientists.

It’s little wonder Tom Cade, of The Peregrine Fund, which supported the research, says that he and his helpers are in a race to save the species.

And it’s some race, since Debbie Pane, of the Royal Society For The Protection of Birds, tells the Guardian how the decline in vulture numbers is steeper than that of the dodo.

So if you want to sponsor a vulture, do so today. After all how different can it be to paying taxes to the self-serving scavengers who run this fair and whitewashed land?’

Posted: 29th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Hadaway & Faeces

‘IT’S not known what effect Alastair Campbell’s swearing had on Lord Hutton. And we should not discount the notion that it might have influenced proceedings.

‘I say, old chap’

After all, Chief Inspector Dave Jackson of Northumbria Police, which oversees Newcastle, tells the Telegraph that ‘an awful lot of people find swearing intimidating and threatening’.

‘It is offensive,’ he says, ‘it’s bad for the image of the city and what sort of example does it set for our children?’

In reply to the policeman’s question, it sets a pretty poor example to the little loves in terms of courtesy, but a pretty terrific one when it comes to intimidating people and telling them off.

As such, it’s a wonder why the police don’t swear more often, or all the time.

But it is high time things changed and from now on swearers in Newcastle city centre who have been warned about their language but persist in swearing will be arrested and fined £100.

And the move should be a nice little earner for the local constabulary since the non-swearing zone will take in the boxes, terraces and even the pitch at Newcastle United’s St James’s Park stadium.

But signs are that locals are supportive of the new directive, in theory.

An engineer from Gateshead says swearing isn’t nice. A local builder says that swearing in front of children and women is just plain wrong.

And then someone else pops up to remind us, as is his right and the way with such things, that the police should not be bothering with such things.

‘They should be out there dealing with the criminals,’ he says.

But they are, since swearing has just become a criminal offence – although what words constitute swearing has not been made clear.

So in the spirit of investigative journalism (the BBC and Andrew Gilligan take note) we offer the following to the Northumbria police force: ‘The referee’s a …’

There, that should get them thinking…’

Posted: 29th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Anyone Fancy A Top-Up?

‘STEVE McQueen did it on a motorbike, but Tony Blair’s great escape was achieved by a rearguard offensive led by Gordon Brown and John Prescott.

Blair denies hedging his bets

Facing a catastrophic defeat in the matter of student top-up fees, Tony achieved a winning margin of just five votes.

A victory margin of just one is enough, of course, but as the Guardian reminds readers, the Government enjoys a Commons’ majority of 161 MPs.

For this reason, it is only a victory ‘of sorts’, as the paper puts it, having been achieved at considerable cost to Blair’s Teflon coating.

Not that Our Tone’s looking all that glum. If he has been in a fight – the Independent says he has, calling this student vote Round One, with Lord Hutton waiting for him in Round Two – his teeth are unscathed.

Indeed, he’s showing them off on the cover of the Guardian, positively smiling, grinning even.

The reason for Tony’s apparent happiness could be that he’s just read the Independent’s story that a leaked copy of the Hutton report claims that Downing Street is innocent of any wrongdoing.

The other reason for the beam could be that Tony is a happy kind of guy who has correctly gauged that while ‘top-up’ has entered the political lexicon, few if any of us know what the phrase means.

One who claims to have followed the sub-plot is the Times’ Simon Jenkins, who puts the facts over a number of columns.

And the conclusion: ‘The student fees argument has become a bundle of nonsense wrapped in humbug, enveloped in class prejudice.’

Although nicely put, it fails to really pin down what top-ups are.

But our research tells us that they are something to do with mobile phone credits and/or drinking gin in golf clubs.

To wit the exchange: ‘Would you like a top up, Gordon?’ ‘No thank you, Tony, I’ve had my fill already…”

Posted: 28th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

A Fair Dinkum Blue

‘THERE are few things more pleasing than watching the other team tear itself apart.

‘It’s not the same since Flick left’

If it’s not the Labour party amusing the Tories by splitting itself in two over top-up fees, it’s Manchester United rowing in the boardroom.

And now adding their own internecine squabble to the cabaret are the Australian prime minister, John Howard, and the female eunuch, Germaine Greer, as watched by the Telegraph.

Greer, who, like most Australians, lives in Britain, recently wrote an article in which she questioned the prevailing culture of her Australian kin.

‘If your ambition is to live on Ramsay Street, where nobody has even been heard to discuss a book or a movie, let alone an international event, then Australia may be the place for you,’ she said.

To us British dilettantes and daytime TV aficionados, there is little point in stating that Ramsay Street is a setting for Neighbours, a fly-on-the wall docu-soap about life in a Melbourne suburb.

And while Neighbours’ schoolteacher, Susan Kennedy, has tried to open minds, we must concur with Greer’s opinion that the emblematic show is something of a cultural wasteland.

But not so John Howard, who considers Greer’s piece to be ‘hopelessly out of date’.

He thunders: ‘I thought that was a particularly patronising, condescending and, dare I say, elitist article. I thought it was pathetic, I really did.’

But not too pathetic for him to ignore. Indeed, he’s got more to say in the Independent.

‘What she basically says is that the average Australian is too stupid to think about anything that’s the least bit philosophical or important.’

The Indy underscores that remark with: ‘He said it, not us.’

And the Telegraph says this exchange reveals how fragile Australia’s national ego is.

Although they do boast the world’s second best rugby union team…’

Posted: 28th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

No Escape

‘IT’S been a while – too long – but the Guardian has finally caught up with Cherie Blair.

Hell FM

Like you, we’ve been concerned about Cherie’s well-being ever since we received a Christmas card of her standing alongside a grinning loon.

But happily we can report that Cherie has been found alive and well and passing her time in Wandsworth jail.

No, she not in chokey for any wrongdoing, but to get on the microphone and launch the country’s newest radio station, Radio Wanno.

The station is mainly run by prisoners and aimed at the jail’s captive 1,200-strong audience.

And on day one of live transmission, who better than Cherie Blair QC to come along and greet all those pop pickers, and pickpockets, in her own inimitable style.

Unfortunately at the time of going to press, no transcript of her broadcast is available, but we are assured that DJ Cherie did better than Radio 1’s Sara Cox.’

Posted: 28th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Revolting MPs

‘TONIGHT Tony Blair faces a make-or-break vote on students’ top-up fees.

The Gnome Office

Of the group that he must convert to his enlightened way, the Independent calculates that 78 are committed rebels, while 20 more are wavering, unsure whether or not to join Tony’s flock.

It sure looks like being a close call, since the Times has done some sums of its own and found that Blair is 20 votes short of safety.

‘No Deal,’ says the Times’ headline. ‘Blair Stares Defeat Full In The Face.’

And defeat stares back via the Indy’s front page, which shows the mug-shots of all those ghastly rebels who will do for Tony.

And by virtue of the alphabet, first up is Diane Abbott, described as a ‘serial rebel’.

How Tony must be buoyed by this news! Abbott, who lambasted fee-paying schools and then promptly sent her son to one, can be relied upon to do pretty much the exact opposite of what she promises.

So that’s just 19 votes needed. And in among the possible converts to Tony’s way, the Times spots a whole host of former ministers.

If former chancellor Denis Healey was once savaged by a dead sheep in the human form of his successor Geoffrey Howe, Tony’s about to be mauled to death by a garden ornament (Robin Cook), one of Santa’s helpers (Frank Dobson), and Clare Short, who probably thinks the entire thing is an Israeli plot.

With enemies of such a low calibre, Tony might yet be saved. At least until 12:30 tomorrow when, the Telegraph reports, Lord Hutton will deliver his verdict on the death of Dr David Kelly.

After that, we’ll know more about what lies in store for Tony, and, perhaps, for those who go against him…’

Posted: 27th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Macaw Blimey

‘IF only there were more people like Tessa Jowell, Estelle Morris and Margaret Hodge around Tony Blair, instead of those who show signs of thinking for themselves.

N’Kisi has more words than John Prescott, but fewer cars

If Tony survives this testing period of his reign, he’ll surely look to bolster his party with more of the kind of people who can be relied upon to toe the line.

Which makes N’Kisi a front-runner for front-line politics. Indeed, so ideal would the African grey macaw be that in readiness for office he’s mastered almost 1,000 words and has a working knowledge of basis grammar and sentence construction.

And before you can says ‘future education secretary’, the Times produces a short transcript of an interview with N’Kisi in which he shows that he could be yet more.

In the course of the chat with his personal assistant Aimee Morgan, N’Kisi talks about his love of cars. ‘Wanna go in a car right now?’ he asks.

Aimee tells him that no car is available.

N’Kisi: ‘Why can’t I go in car now?’

Aimee: ‘Because we don’t have one.’

N’Kisi: ‘Let’s get a car.’

Aimee: ‘No, Kisi, we can’t get a car now.’

N’Kisi: ‘I want a car!’

Yes, we too can hear John Prescott squeaking uneasily on his car mats.

This is surely the biggest challenge to his power as the Cabinet’s designated driver since Euan Blair passed his test…’

Posted: 27th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

True Grit

‘OF course, how much better things would be for Tony if he could find a way of not so much winning the vote on student top-up fees as not letting it take place at all.

‘Okay, who loaded it with ballbearings instead?’

A quick pre-emptive strike on a few of his political enemies within the Labour party would be just.

But political massacres are rarely if ever the done thing and, in any case, we’ve looked over the local munitions supply and can’t find a working gun or any weapon of mass destruction.

Alternatively, Tony could license George Bush and his team to count the votes, or even get Saddam Hussein’s former aides involved.

This way Tony could either poll less than half the vote and still win (a la George Dubya), or get all 110% (a la Saddam).

But, perhaps, better simply to prevent the rebel MPs from getting to Westminster to cast their votes.

And for this means to a noble end, Tony, like us, can take heart from the Guardian’s news that the artic weather is well and truly on its way.

But while Tony prays hard for a plague of snow and black ice, Brian Dobson sits in his bright yellow gritting lorry.

Brain oversees 784 miles of road and motorway in the Yorkshire and Humber area, including the bleak 372-metre Pennine summit of Windy Hill, Britain’s highest stretch of motorway.

But if someone were to lose Brain’s keys, then Labour rebels like Hull North MP Kevin McNamara might find that they cannot get to London in time to vote.

And if the clutch of other rebel Labour MPs who operate in the North East – Nick Brown, Jim Cousins, Doug Henderson (all Newcastle Upon Tyne), Gerry Steinberg (City of Durham) and Bill Etherington (Sunderland) – can’t make it, then Tony is just 13 votes short of winning the day (remember Diane Abbott).

And then consider the effect the surprise cold weather in winter will have on London-based rebels.

A cold snap freezes the Tube track, plunging the system below the minimum temperature for being surly – as laid down by Health and Safety Executive – and leads to a mass walk-out of rail workers.

The buses grind to a halt in sympathy, and the pavement can only be negotiated by Torvill and Dean. Result: 12 more rebel MPs fail to make it in to Westminster to vote.

Which leaves a tie. And the casting vote to be made by…well, what money on Gordon Brown?’

Posted: 27th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Snout To Worry About

‘ANOTHER creature misunderstood by the world at large is the wild boar.

If Gordon Ramsay made swill…

The Independent says that many of us view the ugly, hairy pigs as disease-carrying, crop-munching vermin.

But they are so much more. In the paper’s opinion, boars are “charismatic” animals that have made a welcome return to the British social scene.

After a number of daring escapes from boar farms, the countryside is now chock-a-block with the darling beasties.

As such, the Government is wondering what to do about them all. Should they be shot or simply slow-roasted over a pit of burning sheep?

It’s all a matter of taste. Like it is for the boar’s shorter, pinker cousin, the pig, which, as the Guardian reports, is part of a new experiment in farming.

In place of antibiotics and steroids in their feed, biologists at Leeds University are going to feed the porcine ones living at the university’s Yorkshire farms swill enhanced with thyme, garlic, aniseed and a soupcon of cinnamon.

The aim is to find sustainable alternatives to the man-made drugs. And if the beast can be pre-seasoned before it reaches the pot, so much the better…’

Posted: 26th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Mars Attacks!

‘HAVING discovered that King George III was not really mad and that boars make wonderful dinner companions, we take a trip to the Scottish town of Cowie Harbour.

Scottish scientists discover why the dinosaurs really died out

To many of a low brow, this is the town that gave the world the deep-fried Mars bar, that heart-attack inducing lump of fat-coated confectionary.

But the Times wants us to look on the place again, and if we can aim our collective gaze towards a smear in a rock, so much the better.

For there, we can see, as the Times does, a small indentation less than a centimetre long that marks the final resting place of a millipede that lived and died 420 million years ago.

This is the fossil of the earliest known living creature to have survived on dry land. As such, Cowie Harbour is the veritable cradle of life on Earth.

It’s the place where you can trace the full timeline of the miracle of life, from its first tentative steps all those millions of years ago to its final pitiful stagger from the pub into the chippie.’

kittychesterz

Posted: 26th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

George Of The Jungle

‘NO celebrity wants to be seen as a bad person. For starters, bad people tend to attract the ire and fire of George Bush. They get hate mail. And if they’ve been bad in a TV soap opera, they get accosted in the street.

The voices told Charles to never trust a begonia

To be seen as being good is a very important thing. To this end, celebrities descend on a neat jungle clearing in a former British colony ready to eat cockroaches and bathe in rats’ urine in the hope that the watching public will realise how good and noble the real them is.

But what if you’re dead? Worry not. This is not an insurmountable problem, since an historian will often come along to reinvent you as a largely misunderstood figure that wasn’t all that bad – not really.

For instance, if King George III has been around today, he’d have been less mad and more madcap, more in the manner of a Big Brother hopeful who steps before his camcorder, drops his hose and says, “I’m mad, me!”.

But King George is dead. He might have been Britain’s longest-serving King, but he still died way back in 1820.

However, even if he’s not around to retrieve lumps of cheese from a vat of maggots, he has a champion.

So step forward Britain’s longest reigning-king-in-waiting, Prince Charles, historian, plant talker and all round terrific bloke.

In a new made-for-TV documentary, Charles asks us to reconsider his predecessor.

The Independent has it that Chas believes that if the Americans had only known of George’s “energy”, there would have been no need for revolution in the colonies.

“I’ve read the doctor’s report and the King’s correspondence,” says Charles, “and I concluded that yes he was ill but he was not insane.”

He goes on: ”If a royal tour could have been a conceivable undertaking in the 18th century, perhaps the leaders of the colonies might have understood the mother country better.

“It’s possible that his energetic, down-to-earth presence might have changed their minds.”

How a meet-the-people would have altered the fact that King George was running a sophisticated protection racket with high taxation is not investigated by Charles in any depth.

But rather than that, does anyone else think that Charles has seen less a chance to review history and more a kindred spirit?

The Indy does, and lists Charles’s achievements alongside those of his hero.

Under mental state, the line about George runs: “Illness now recognised as porphyria.” For Charles, the paper concludes: “Often caricatured as eccentric.”

But nothing a walkabout in a remote part of Australia with an electric eel in his trousers couldn’t cure…’

Posted: 26th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

The Howard League

‘IF, and it is not a very big if, Tony Blair loses next week’s vote on top-up tuition fees, the following scenarios become more likely.

Be afraid, be very afraid

The first is that up to a dozen universities may have to close or merge because of the ensuing cash crisis, while others will look to attract more students from overseas.

A survey by the Independent also found that courses such as science and engineering could be cut because they are expensive to run but don’t attract many students.

And one vice-chancellor warned that members of the Russell Group (which represents the top 19 research institutions) would pull out of the state university system altogether and go private.

Not quite the result that the 100 or so rebel Labour MPs are after, one suspects – but at least they can parade their spotless consciences in front of their constituents at the next General Election.

However, it may not be the perfect result for Michael Howard and his Tory party.

Sure, defeating top-up fees would hasten the privatisation of universities, which is the Tories’ preferred option anyway.

But another scenario that could result from a Government defeat is the demise of Prime Minister Tony Blair and the accession to the throne of Chancellor Gordon Brown.

At the moment, Blair is hated by half of his party and his approval ratings in the country at large are rooted in negative territory – minus 14% at last count.

Brown, by contrast, is much more popular both within the Labour Party and in the country at large, although it remains to be seen whether this would translate into votes at an election.

However, Howard would surely prefer the devil he knows in Blair, especially as a YouGov poll in today’s Telegraph shows the Tories with a five-point lead over Labour.

The party has hit the magic 40% barrier for the first time since Black Wednesday in 1992, the day Britain was forcibly ejected from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

As the paper admits, two other polls this week have shown Labour still in the lead, but it claims its internet poll is the more accurate.

But even this morning’s figures might not be enough for the Tories – to be certain of winning power, the paper says, they need to secure at least 42% of the popular vote.

Alternatively, they could just follow the example of George Bush and declare themselves the winner, whatever the outcome of the vote.’

Posted: 23rd, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Tonge Wagging

‘IT is a sad fact of British life that Michael Howard’s chances of becoming Prime Minister are diminished by the fact that he is Jewish.

Dr Jenny Tonge

There are plenty of reasons not to vote for the 62-year-old architect of the poll tax – but being Jewish is not one of them.

However, a poll for the Jewish Chronicle (republished in this morning’s Guardian) finds that 18% of those questioned think a Jewish PM less acceptable than a member of any other faith.

A similar number think that Jews have too much influence, 20% disagreed that Jewish people make a positive contribution to the political, social and cultural life of the country, and 15% thought that the scale of the Nazi Holocaust had been exaggerated.

We don’t know if Liberal Democrat MP Jenny Tonge was one of the 1,007 people questioned for the poll, but she is hardly the Jewish Chronicle’s pin-up MP at the moment.

Dr Tonge has been summoned by her party whip after she told a meeting of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign on Wednesday that she would think of becoming a suicide bomber if she lived in the Palestinian territories.

‘Many, many people criticise,’ she said, ‘many, many people say it just another form of terrorism, but I can understand and I am a fairly emotional person and I am a mother and a grandmother.

‘I think if I had to live in that situation, and I say this advisedly, I might just consider becoming one myself. And that is a terrible thing to say.’

For once, we can all agree on that last bit.’

Posted: 23rd, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Shakespeare Lite

‘FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLDS sitting the Shakespeare paper as part of their English test will next year have to deal with a new element – the Bard himself.

‘For 50% of the total mark, who is this?’

The Telegraph reports that the QCA, the Government’s curriculum adviser, has decided to reverse a policy to downgrade the role of Stratford’s favourite son in the paper.

Last year, for instance, pupils were asked questions that did not require them to have any knowledge of Shakey’s plays or poetry.

The preamble to one question read: ‘In Twelfth Night, what the characters wear and how they look affects the way other characters react to them.’

Pupils were then asked to write an article for a teenage magazine about fashion and body image.

Teachers welcomed the move, which will see pupils given a comprehension question on one of three plays.

‘This is a much more sensible way of finding out what students know about the Bard,’ said Mark Bousted of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.

The changes, however, have come too late for this year’s exam, so pupils can expect questions like…

‘In Titus Andronicus, Titus makes a pie out of Tamora’s sons Chiron and Demetrius and serves it to their mother. Suggest a recipe that he might have used to make the pie.’

‘The three witches in Macbeth make a soup out of, among other things, eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, tongue of dog. What other ingredients might they have used?’

And ‘Hamlet and Falstaff are both characters in Shakespeare plays and names of types of cigar. What other names of cigars would make good Shakespearean characters?’

The QCA is now believed to be studying plans to reintroduce numbers into maths exams.’

Posted: 23rd, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Taking Pot Shots

‘GIVEN the amount of time we spend discussing the legalisation or otherwise of cannabis and the abolition or otherwise of fox-hunting, a visitor to this country might be forgiven for assuming that we spent all our time smoking spliffs and chasing animals round fields.

The green, green grass of home

This, as we all know, is not the case. The most extreme form of munchies most of us get can easily be satisfied by a trip to the corner shop and the purchase of a packet of crisps.

Only in extreme cases do we resort to chasing animals to satisfy our hunger – and even then the more sensible among us tend to pick on cows because they provide more meat and can’t run as fast as foxes.

But politicians like nothing better than to argue over the minutiae of social policy while the world around them is going to rack and ruin.

It is known as the Nero approach, the art of fiddling while Rome burns.

So, with only a week to go before the Government’s decision to downgrade cannabis from a Class B drug to a Class C drug, Tory leader Michael Howard is already promising to reverse the policy.

“After thinking about this very carefully,” he tells this morning’s Independent, “we have come to the view that the Government’s decision is completely misconceived and, when we return to office, we will reclassify cannabis back to Class B.”

Oh great! We can’t wait for yet more posturing about this most unimportant of issues.

So, in the interest of serious political debate, can we at Anorak humbly suggest the following solution?

When politicians are minded to add yet another substance or activity to the banned list, they should simultaneously have to unban something of similar weight.

Ban fox-hunting? Okay, but you have to legalise joy-riding. Make smoking in public places illegal? Okay, but give the thumbs-up to al fresco sex.

Ban Kilroy? Okay, but give us The Abu Hamza Show.’

Posted: 22nd, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

The Free Degrees

‘IN the 1980s, the rule was ‘if it moves, privatise it’; in the 1990s, this was extended to things that didn’t move, like the trains on Britain’s dilapidated rail network.

All roads lead to Hull

Since Labour got into power in 1997, the emphasis has changed. Now it’s a question of ‘If it moves, privatise half of it; if it doesn’t, privatise the other half’.

But privatisation is still a dirty word in many circles and this morning’s report in the Guardian that the Tories are planning to privatise universities will no doubt help Labour whips rally recalcitrant MPs to its cause over top-up tuition fees.

Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Labour rebels earlier this week that the choice was between “progressive politics” and a Tory government that would do little to help poorer students.

There is, however, a third way, which was pioneered by the University of Humberside.

It is under investigation by police, the Times says, after raising millions of pounds by selling bogus degrees in education or business administration.

Teachers, police, army officers and senior civil servants were among 5,500 people who paid for fictitious qualifications from the university, which had campus branches in 26 different countries.

“Anywhere that was big enough to hold a desk and a chair, including in one case a petrol station, became a branch of the University of Humberside,” said Yehuda Maman, a spokesman for the Israeli police who have already arrested four managers at the university’s operation in that country.

The paper says up to 350 teachers face suspension or dismissal for obtaining bogus BA or MA degrees, while other Government employees who have used fake qualifications to get pay rises must repay the money or face jail.

Dr John Prescott MA(Hons) MSc PhD is MP for Hull.’

Posted: 22nd, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

A Dead End

‘“IF so-and-so told you to jump off the edge of a cliff, would you?”

‘I’ll be a happy man when John Prescott builds the new bypass’

The retort of parents up and down the country at children being led astray by their peers.

But a leading climbing magazine is testing the loyalty of its readers by encouraging them to do just that.

The Telegraph says the magazine has mistakenly published an escape route from the top of Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest peak, which would lead mountaineers over a 1,000ft cliff.

A missing sentence in the article meant that climbers were sent towards a sheer drop known as Gardyloo Gully and their certain death.

“If anyone takes that advice, it will definitely put their life at risk,” says Roger Wild, of the Mountaineering Council of Scotland. “It is very unfortunate.”

Guy Proctor, editor of Trail (which is read by 37,500 climbing enthusiasts), said that the mistake was caused by a production error and promised a correction in the March issue.

By which time, the circulation of the magazine might, like many of its readers, have taken a rather severe drop.’

Posted: 22nd, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Money, Money, Money

‘CATHERINE Zeta Jones famously told a court last year that a million pounds was not a lot of money to her and her husband Michael Douglas.

Decorating advice for cells and student bedsits

But you imagine that she would notice if someone stuck a hand into the change pocket of her purse and relieved her of such a sum.

A million pounds is clearly not a lot of money to Scott Mead, a former managing director of Goldman Sachs, either.

It apparently took him almost four months to notice when £2.25m was taken out of his account in a single transaction – money allegedly stolen by secretary Joyti De-Laurey.

The 35-year-old is charged with stealing more than £4m from Mead and her two previous bosses, Jennifer Moses and Ron Beller, to finance a massive spending spree – a charge she denies.

According to a report in this morning’s Telegraph, she spent the money on several properties (including a £700,000 villa in Cyprus), several cars (including the deposit on a £175,000 Aston Martin V12 Vanquish) and £300,000 of Cartier jewellery.

The prosecution says De-Laurey was planning to move to Cyprus permanently just before her arrest – ‘but her plans were halted by Mr Mead’s discovery that about £3.3m had disappeared from his personal account’.

Sharing front-page space with Mrs De-Laurey in the Telegraph is Martha Stewart, America’s interior decorating queen, who is also on trial in front of 12 of her peers.

She faces 30 years in jail and a fine of more than $1m if found guilty of fraud and obstructing justice, relating to claims that she lied about a share sale.

At least, if convicted, she would have the best decorated cell in prison – even if she didn’t have much opportunity to spend a personal net worth estimated at $400m.

All of which conspicuous displays of excessive wealth and alleged greed are not designed to make students, at odds with the Government over university top-up fees, feel good about life.

And nor is the story, also in this morning’s Telegraph, that students are leaving college with debts of £8,000 – even before the introduction of top-up fees.

A Mori poll today shows that student debt has risen by 74% in four years – an indication either that students are more comfortable with higher levels of debt or that the price of soap and text-books has been rising much faster than inflation.’

Posted: 21st, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Unmanned Craft

‘IT has started. Fellow men (and, in this instance, we mean men), our role here on Earth is gradually but inexorably being phased out.

Another redundant man

The Independent reports that Suzi Leather, head of Britain’s fertility regulator (Ofsperm?), is calling for a revolution in the law governing IVF treatment to end the requirement that women must find a man to act as father for her child.

‘It would give the green light to single women and lesbians to seek treatment on equal terms with heterosexual couples,’ the paper says.

‘But the downgrading of the father’s role in child-rearing is likely to be portrayed as an attack on the traditional family.’

Anorak obviously welcomes any move that will send the Daily Mail into an apoplectic rage, but we worry that this may be a step too far.

Step-ladders and better kitchen design have already made men’s role in getting things down off high shelves largely redundant. There are devices to loosen those hard-to-get-off jar tops.

Contraptions ranging from The Rabbit to The Lightest Touch, a female orgasmatron that is apparently taking the United States by storm, have replaced the male’s drunken fumblings in bed.

And now it seems we are not really needed in the procreation process.

All of which would be fine if we could take refuge in a pink gin and the company of similarly disenfranchised members of the unwanted sex in the bar of the local golf club.

But even that is no longer safe, with the Telegraph reporting on how the cracks are starting to appear at that bastion of chauvinism, the Royal & Ancient Golf Club at St Andrews.

In a move timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the world’s most famous golf club, women will be allowed to sit on any of the club’s three rule-making committees.

Apparently, they do have a woman already on one rules committee, but – you will be relieved to learn – she can’t vote.

Like old-fashioned methods of procreation, it was an arrangement that has served us all well for hundreds of years…’

Posted: 21st, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Call Me Al

‘NONE of the papers could be bothered to wait up to hear President Bush’s third – and, we hope, final – State Of The Union address last night.

‘What’s one plus one, Mr President?’

But they were not the only ones treating themselves to a good night’s sleep because Bush is apparently not going to lose any shut-eye over John Kerry’s victory in the first Democratic primary in Iowa.

That is the verdict of the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland, who says Kerry has ‘a bad case of the Al Gore syndrome’. In other words, he is dull.

Bush, meanwhile, intends to present himself as the man who stood strong after the 9/11 attacks – ironic, you might argue given that his first response was to run very fast in the opposite direction.

‘Add the images of Saddam in captivity and Bush serving Thanksgiving turkey to the troops,’ Freedland says, ‘plus a plan to turn illegal immigrants into voters and a dream of another moon landing, and you have a man who will be very hard to beat.’

Not to mention the President’s plan announced last night to set aside $120m to help Americans gain the skills to find good jobs in our new economy’.

Having presided over the loss of 2.3m jobs in only three years, Bush’s generosity equates to just under £30 a person.

That should easily be enough to train someone to flip burgers for a living…’

Posted: 21st, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Public Figures

‘IT is a fair bet that when White House speechwriters are putting the finishing touches to President Bush’s State Of The Union address today, they won’t be looking to this morning’s Independent for inspiration.

1 – Number of pages Bush read of Presidency For Dummies

Inspired perhaps by a similar editorial in last month’s Vanity Fair magazine, the paper presents ‘the real state of the Union’, a report card of Bush’s first term in office.

And, although the words ‘could try harder’ do not appear, it is clear that Bush will not be leaving the White House summa cum laude either.

Among the significant figures picked out by the Independent, we choose to highlight but a few.

2.4 million – Number of Americans who have lost their jobs in the first three years of the Bush administration.

$42,228 – Median household income in the USA in 2001; $42,000 average savings that members of Bush’s cabinet are expected to enjoy this year as a result of tax cuts.

$300 million – Amount cut from the federal programme that provides subsidies so that the poorest people can heat their homes.

58 million – The number of acres of public land Bush has opened up to road building, logging and drilling.

0 – The number of pretzels the President can safely eat while attempting to watch a game of college football on TV.

However, it is not all bad. President Bush can also come to the front of the class and collect his prize for coming first in the following categories.

As governor of Texas, Bush executed more prisoners (152) than any other governor on modern US history.

He became the first President in 40 years to order the execution of a federal prisoner.

Under the Bush administration, in 2002 the record for the most bankruptcies filed in a single year (1.57m) was set.

The Bush administration is well on its way to becoming the first since 1929 to preside over an overall loss of jobs in its first term of office.

In addition, this year’s deficit is on course to be the biggest in US history.

And still 54% of American think the President is doing a good job. Go figure…’

Posted: 20th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment