Little news - by Richard... Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Little news - by Richard... Wednesday, October 13, 2010

There's big news, as in earth-shaking events (sometimes literally), and then there's "little" news, things that happen to ordinary people and normally don't make the media – but which very often have a vastly greater impact on the people involved. Richard Littlejohn is doing the latter in this article - rather appropriate, given his name.

The first story concerns a brush with the police, all too familiar these days – leading to the observation that "the police wonder why Middle Britain’s faith in the forces of law and order is at an all-time low". Actually, I don't think they do. My general experience is that they don't give a shit what "Middle Britain" thinks of them – otherwise they wouldn't be doing what they do, in the way that they do it.

And this is not just theoretical. We now have Kit Malthouse, London's deputy mayor with responsibility for policing and crime, saying officers from Britain's largest force are living in villages in Surrey and Hertfordshire partly because of concerns over living in London.

He said there is a "growing divide between the police and the public, which is not yet at dangerous levels but may well become so". Speaking to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, he said: "Police officers now, certainly Metropolitan Police officers, often want to live in police ghettos, villages in Surrey and Hertfordshire, which are disproportionately over-populated with police officers because they like to live together."

The chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority said the growing divide between police and the public could be seen "in all sorts of ways". Officers and police community support officers (PCSOs) "now don't like to travel in uniform because they don't want to be identified", he said.

This was a reference to an incident in Croydon two years ago in which two officers were attacked by "a baying mob" after confronting two young girls over dropping litter. "No one came to their aid, quite the opposite," he said. "The public feels as it they have less and less investment in the police service. That sense of investment, and that sense of ownership of the police, has somehow deteriorated."

And the guy featured in the Littlejohn story is yet another one who would probably no longer cross the street to help the police, even if they were on fire. And that is not so very far from being there to pour the petrol. As they sow, so shall they reap. It may take time – but it happens eventually. And it's the "little" news that gets the crowds going.

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Look in the archives Mr Johnston - by Richard... Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Philip Johnson – a journalist for whom I once had some time – is in his usual comment spot in The Daily Telegraph. This time he is whingeing about the EU budget, telling us that "MPs can't block the EU budget – but they could at least register a protest."

To put it bluntly, though, who gives a tinker's cuss whether that deadweight dross in Parliament registers anything? As Philip so neatly states, "For good or ill, we are in the EU and no mainstream political party is proposing that we leave." And he also tells us that, "Along with several other countries Britain argued unsuccessfully for a freeze in the budget but was outvoted at an EU summit a few weeks ago."

Put two and two together and all you have left is a bunch of expensive and impotent timewasters – along with Mr Johnston and his media friends, whose own inadequacies are far too numerous to mention.

But, if we stay with the print media, of which Johnston is part, a scan of today's paper with a critical eye immediately tells you the problem. As I noted with The Sunday Times recently, we are being (and have been for some time) short-changed. Typically, in The Telegraph, a page will give you three, or maybe four stories, a large picture and an advert. And, as so many of the stories are lightweight dross, a whole newspaper can contain no more than two or three (being generous) stories of interest and substance.

Compare and contrast the edition of The Yorkshire Post for 1 October 1940. You will see over 20 substantive stories on just the front page. The publishers are rationed to just six pages (something for our green "friends" to think about) but in those there is more information than you will get in a week's supply of the current newspaper.

So we return to Mr Johnston, who bleats from his sadly depleted corner, that the EU's spending "must be subject to the same rigorous scrutiny that we expect from domestic governments."

Apart from the fact that it is a waste of time scrutinising that over which we have no control, the point that Johnston misses is that the media should play a huge part in the scrutiny process. But there is no adequate scrutiny even of domestic governments, as newspapers cut down their journalistic input and devote more and more of their space to tat. It is hardly likely, therefore, that the EU will get, or can get, sufficient attention.

That, of course, is where the blogs come in. A carefully selected range of well-written and informative blogs will give you far better coverage of events, with wider and more thought-provoking comment than the whole of the MSM.

No wonder Mr Marr is so vitriolic. He knows when he has been outclassed. But, for Mr Johnston, the answer to his "scrutiny" issue lies in the archives. When newspapers start looking like newspapers again, we might possibly be able to claw back some of the lost ground. It won't be sufficient, but it is probably necessary. In the meantime, the blogs have it and Marr can return his head to its rightful (and usual) place – up his own rear end ... and Johnston can carry on his ineffectual bleating.

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Christmas comes early - by Richard...

I discovered a new database yesterday which, for a relatively modest fee, gives me the wartime editions of the Daily Express, the Daily Mirror and The Yorkshire Post. As you can imagine, for me it is like Christmas came early, and I spent most of yesterday "unwrapping" my presents.

Actually, it was a crap day. There are some nights when, for no apparent reason, you cannot sleep. With an early start to give a BBC interview, I sort of dozed off by four in the morning and was up at seven. At my brightest I was not, so mechanical tasks was about it.

Perhaps being semi-comatose was just as well, which meant that the comments by that slimeAndrew Marr about blogging almost floated by – almost, but not quite. What a seriously low-grade shit that man is.

Anyhow, yesterday was a day to forget. Today's another day ... and the treadmill awaits, as I daub my pimples, rub my cauliflower nose , inhale the damp in my mother's basement and contemplate the view that "... the so-called citizen journalism is the spewings and rantings of very drunk people late at night"

What a total schmuck he really, really is. But at least I had my database to play with.

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