Cameron and the "Swivel-Eyed Loons"

If true, it shows how badly David Cameron is out of touch, not only with grassroots, but also with some senior Conservatives who would show more savvy about who they pick as advisers and colleagues! Cameron has had this kind of situation before, and it shows that for all their acolytes praising their machiavellian cleverness and metropolitan right-on liberal sophistication, Cameron and Osborne are possibly not endowed with a political canniness in making sure they do not just simply rely on their own friends and those they are comfortable with, keeping as many shades of their side happy, (whether they even publicly agree with them or not) and making sure no mess is left on their doorsteps as a result!
But this situation also highlights a growing problem in our political society. That is of various groups within the country not listening to each other! What is the likelihood for example, of an Uber liberal Islington politico and a lifelong Tory voter from the Melton Mowbray area of Leicestershire, aged over 75 and who has never lived anywhere else, even listening to each other without negative stereotypes about each other springing to mind! I have met both those types and know them fairly well to be worthy of respect, but how many people in this country are prepared to listen to both sides and consider their reasoning's without insult! For example would you have a white van Sun-reading Tory voter from Essex and a middle class Guardian-reading Labour voter from Hampstead to really listen to each other? Or ditto a Home Counties Daily Mail reading Tory, a Daily Mirror Labour voter formerly from a mining family in the North of England? British politics has divisions that need dealing with by discussion, not doing what is easy and tempting to many of us, which is insulting and ring fencing the opposition. We cannot do this and whilst in some cases it would be wrong, even morally wrong to agree, we must listen and reflect, otherwise no political party, and that goes for Labour with UKIP voters as well, will be able to form a solid majority in a general election!

The Name of The Doctor Review - Warning. Spoilers!

Well I was right about two things that happened! A fantastic episode and well packed in given the 45 minutes, with good humour (Strax going to Glasgow for weekend fights), familar faces (River Song, Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax) and a return of an old enemy (The Great Intelligence). If the first Nine Doctors do not feature in the fiftieth anniversary then this makes it all the more forgivable. From the moment we see the 1st Doctor "borrow" a TARDIS in Gallifrey and see Clara intervene at the last minute, this episode hit the ground running and we learnt a lot about the Doctor's past, present, and future. We learnt that Clara had been saving the Doctor throughout his lives, we learnt that there is a previously unknown "Doctor", we learnt that the Doctor's real name is powerful and there are consequences if it is used, not least for the Doctor! (But that was heavily hinted at already), we saw what is likely to be the death of the Great Intelligence, but also more questions were asked and left!
How does River Song know the Doctor's name? What was the scene in The Snowmen, where Clara walks away from her friend in a graveyard, all about? How do the Doctor and Clara escape? Maybe we shall find out in the next episode. That said the 50th Anniversary is not going to be as disappointing as some anniversary specials and it will be remembered for a long while with satisfaction

A Doctor Who clip from the Peter Davison era Part II

As part of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of Doctor Who, below is a clip from the Doctor Who Twentieth Anniversary story, The Five Doctors, from the Peter Davison era
 

Russian Arms to Syria

This is disconcerting, and some will ask why? To which the answer is simple. Not only does Russia want to strengthen it's ties and influence in the Middle East, it also wants to flex it's muscles in front of the US and it's European allies. What the result will be I don't know, but what will help is for the US and others to bring forward as many allies as possible to bring as much pressure to bear on Syria as they can, which is what I am sure they are doing

Benefits and This Government!

At  this moment I have just switched on to Prime Minister's Questions and somewhat disappointed that the PM is not present for this session, but what is new!
I am especially unhappy he is not present so he can face some critical questions about the governments attitude to benefits. Notably why have Cameron, Osborne, and Iain Duncan-Smith used the Philpott case to attack the Benefits system, but both they and their departments state that they refuse to comment on individual cases no matter what the circumstances when asked about recent suicides due to benefit cuts!

The Name of the Doctor - Theories

A lot is being said about the forthcoming Doctor Who story on Saturday; The Name of the Doctor. It is the last story before the Fiftieth Anniversary story and they are connected in some way, plus it is where Clara Oswald's identity is revealed. Some theories are naturally going around and given the fact it is the episode before the fiftieth anniversary one, I thought I would mention some theories of mine! I would not be surprised though if none of them turn out to be true :)

• Previous Doctors will make cameo appearances. There is debate about whether or not any of them, bar David Tennant, will be in the 50th Anniversary, but no one has said anything about this episode and Matt Smith said the fiftieth anniversary does not have to simply consist of one episode

• Clara will turn out to be a former companion of the Doctor from the Classic Series, or a Time Lady (possibly Romana), or even the Doctor's wife who doesn't have to be from Gallifrey 

• Expect the Doctor's old roadster Bessie to make an appearance (actually I have heard a rumour that is a given). Definetly nods and winks to the Classic Series 

Of course I could be wrong, but speculation about forthcoming episodes is surely part of the delights of fandom

A Doctor Who Clip from the Peter Davison era

As part of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of Doctor Who, below is a clip from the Doctor Who story, Castrovalva, from the Peter Davison era.

Comedy and Religion

Mixing the two can be a difficult business, as Mitch Benn and Paul Kerensa discuss here! But sometimes  it can be beneficial to all concerned. Certainly the mistakes and abuse of religion should be lampooned and also religion and comedy and work as a way of showing a positive side. A classic example is the sitcom Rev. which did bring some discussion and interest in Christianity, and indeed Monty Python's Life of Brian, which serves as a good reminder of how silly or crass one can be in accepting things blindly

RIP Bryan Forbes

When a British film Director comes to mind, many think of Sir Alfred Hitchcock, Ridley Scott, or Richard Attenborough, but Bryan Forbes is perhaps becoming one of the more underrated film Directors among the non film buffs. He Directed some of the best films of the 1960s and 1970s, notably, Whistle Down the Wind,  King Rat, The Wrong Box, The Stepford Wives, International Velvet, and Better Late Than Never (one of David Niven's last films)
It is saddening to think he is now no longer with us, but I also hope his films will reach new audiences and appreciation of his work is renewed. Thoughts and prayers to his family and friends

Ten Ways BBC This Week Could Be Made More Watchable!

I was rather intrigued by Iain Dale's attack on 10 O' Clock Live, not least because I share some of his concerns but feel it just needs a bit of tweaking. For example David Mitchell is a brilliant comedian with one liners, but we need someone more hardcore in dealing with the interviews and chairing debates. Letting Janet Street-Porter and Peter Stringfellow get away with their rants last Thursday is a case in point
But it set me thinking, 10 O' Clock Live is not the only political programme that attempts to combine serious news and current affairs with satire. BBC This Week is another one. Thing is, and I know I am not alone here, BBC This Week is somewhat weak and rubbish. I find it hard to explain why I find it horrible and embarrassing  but saying it lacks bite and thinks it is clever, and add that in to an image of watching your parents jive in a Disco playing Saturday Night Fever and you get the idea!
So here are my ten things that will make BBC This Week more watchable for those of us who dislike the programme

1/ Ditch the silly costumes and pantomime. Why have it? Why is it funny? No need for it? Makes a lot of decent contributors look silly

2/ Stop spoofing spoofs. Taking for example the spoof of Is This The Way To Amerillo in 2005! That was a spoof already!

3/ Blue Nun? In-Jokes have to be carefully done. Smug in-jokes are a no no, if the presenters clearly find something they are doing is funny, what are the chances that it is?

4/ The Nicknames? Not funny and somewhat primary school humour

5/ This Week claims to be punchy and irreverent, get more punchy and irreverent writers and contributors. The BBC is hardly lacking in them! Get a Charlie Brooker segment, have less of a love-in from anyone on the sofa.

6/ Ditch the silly shirts! This is meant to be punchy and irreverent, not some ill-thought out cabaret night in a little used nightclub in Soho!

7/ Get the tone right. Occasional events like the Arab Spring do not warrant a Citizen Smith like mickey take coverage! Admittedly though, This Week sometimes do, the Whitehaven tragedy being an example

8/ This is the crux. Politicians, political journalists doing humour needs careful balance. It is to do with public perception. Otherwise it looks silly and like watching your parents/teachers/any other role model drunk at some party. Some find that funny, many do not!Ask yourself for example why Lembit Opik lost his seat! A few get the balance right, take Have I Got News For You for example, or Mock The Week! You can have politics and political journalists but it needs to be within a particular format!

9/ Have touched on this alreay but ill-tought out cabaret and political humour make a sound like someone playing the violin for the first time!

10/ There are things that can work. For This Week and 10 O'Clock Live, you need a good mix of ideas, and we need an hour long current affairs programme that mixes well serious topics and irrevent humour. In other words something like That Was The Week That Was. Perhaps a programme that has Charlie Brooker and David Mitchell, with Brooker doing monologues, Andrew Neil hosting a debate, contributions from people as varied as Ian Hislop, Iain Dale, Jo Brand, Clive Anderson, Reginald D. Hunter, Frank Skinner, Mark Steel, Giles Brandreth, Victoria Coren, John Sargeant, Clare Balding, Miranda Hart, John O'Farrell, and having guest appearances from MP's such as Tom Harris, Jo Swinson, and Douglas Carswell. You get the picture

Doctor Who: The Fourth Regeneration

As part of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of Doctor Who, Mars Hill will be looking at each Doctor each month. This month therefore we will be looking at Peter Davison. Below is the scene where the Fourth Doctor regenerated into the Fifth

Fisking Toby Young Fisking Martin Kettle!

I saw this a few days ago and felt that, as rare but does happen, the fisker needed a fisking!
Put basically Toby Young got riled for Martin Young comparing newspaper abuses with Trade Union abuses in the 1970s, but a no of press victims, not least the more vulnerable such as Millie Dowler's family may well feel differently. I felt this needed addressing, so here goes. The first para on each fisk is from Martin Kettle. Young's comments are in bold:

For 20 torrid years, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, "Who governs?" – parliament or trade unions – was the central issue in domestic politics. In 1969 Harold Wilson's Labour government tried, in Barbara Castle's In Place of Strife white paper, to bring the unions within the law. The unions, and a significant part of the Labour party, fought off the attempt.

See where he's going with this? Trade unions = the press, In Place of Strife = The Leveson Report and the Labour Party = the Conservative Party. Who governs Britain today? Why, the press, of course. Bizarre.

And your point is? Do you need to be reminded of every press abuse over the past  three decades! Politicians over that time have watched their policies and their development for fear of press reaction! Have you not seen what happened when Major, to a certain extent Blair, and then Brown got a mauling!

Ted Heath's Tory government tried again in the 1970s, and was driven from office. Jim Callaghan's Labour government ceded the unions a share of power, but he fell because of the unions too. Margaret Thatcher succeeded where Heath had failed, at traumatic cost to the unions – partly self-inflicted – that persists to this day. Yet for the past quarter-century, the "Who governs?" question has had its answer – the right one: parliament governs, through the law.

Kettle gets a bit bogged down here because his torturous historical analogy commits him to praising Margaret Thatcher, who brought the unions to heel. So he tosses in the phrase "traumatic cost" to let his readers know that he disapproved of Thatcher's methods.

And your point is? It is possible, believe it or not, to hold to Social Democratic principles and agree with some of what Thatcher did. It would be impossible not to. We are human, our politics, well those of us on the Centre ground, are not so ideologically rigid to the point of thinking everything one's opponent did was bad! But Kettle is being consistent, you cannot support In Place of Strife without approving of some of what Margaret Thatcher did, but you can be sure that in the same breath you can say she went too far and too hard. If Toby, you were to look at this with a more open mind, you'd see that Kettle is defending the press. Accept the terms offered now before the feral tabloid pack go to far and make the resultant backlash intolerable for everyone!

The question still matters in Britain today. It matters in a different context, yet the terms are strikingly familiar. Do the elected government and parliament govern? Or are we governed instead by those who also believe, as a matter of fundamental principle and as the unions also once believed, that the law should not apply to them?

Straw man alert! No one's arguing that the press should be above the law. Indeed, one of the main arguments of those opposed to statutory regulation of the press is that nearly all the things Hacked Off and its allies want to prohibit, such as phone hacking, are already prohibited by the law. All we need do to solve the problems that led to the Leveson Inquiry is enforce the law.

Just answer this two questions! Why wasn't the law enforced beforehand? Answer that one and you see a whole putrid mess under the surface that needs tough measures.  No. 2, Why did the Press Complaints Commission not be able to do a sterling job for twenty years to the point where it will be wound up at the earliest opportunity!


The issue is not whether the law in general should apply to the press but whether Parliament should be able to pass laws that are specifically designed to clip the wings of the press. This is what's forbidden by the First Amendment of the American Constitution: "Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…"

Which newspapers would fall foul of this ruling though! Not the more decent newspapers that's for sure! Including your own which did a sterling job on the MP's expenses scandal! But we are not talking Woodward and Bernsteen here are we! We are talking about abuse from the sort of papers that spend more time hacking phones of ordinary people, who incidentally turn out to be innocent, and intruding into the lives of celebrities who are hardly Richard Nixon!

The second group is the British press, with its collective interest in weak government. All these groups have in their time been referred to as barons: trade union barons, boardroom barons and press barons. Barons ultimately believe in their own unrestricted power – though they call it freedom.

Owners of newspapers are sometimes referred to as "barons", barons believe in their own unrestricted power, ergo newspaper owners believe in their own unrestricted power. That's not an argument. It's name-calling.

As you referred to this as name-calling, perhaps we can hear your argument as to why Martin Kettle is wrong?

Unless something improbably statesmanlike happens in the next few weeks, it is increasingly clear that the press has now defeated parliament's two-year attempt to bring it within the rule of law. The Leveson report, published last November amid so much hope for much needed change following the phone-hacking scandal and much else, has failed. Its 2,000 pages are history.

This is where Kettle really goes off the deep end. The alternative Royal Charter proposed by the newspaper industry embodies almost every single one of Leveson's proposals. The only difference is, it wouldn't be underpinned by statute and, therefore, wouldn't be vulnerable to political interference.

And how can we tell it will be acted on. The same way the PCC was?

The fisking goes on and Young repeats himself. I agree, some genuine concerns about press freedom and press freedom is important, but the situation has come where a light regulation is needed. Kettle has nothing to fear, otherwise he wouldn't be supporting it, ditto over broadsheet journalists who have supported Leveson. But the last bit goes to the heart of the matter!

The truth is, Hugh Grant, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg will do everything in their power to obstruct the efforts of the newspaper industry to set up an independent regulator that isn't subject to political control and, judging by their success so far, they might well prevail. But if they fail, it won't be because it's the press that governs Britain rather than Parliament. It will be because Parliament isn't prepared to go one step further and pass a law making membership of the official regulatory body compulsory rather than voluntary. That will constitute fully-fledged state licensing of the press for the first time in 317 years and is a step that no one who believes in the principles of liberal democracy should ever take.

To which I ask again. The Press Complaints Commission was voluntary, and based on similar lines. Why has it failed? I will happily defend the Woodward and Bernsteens, the Hemingways, the Orwells, of the media world. I would never willingly or happily defend the gutter and seamier side of journalism and will happily assist in it's destruction!