Booker rampant - by Richard... Sunday, January 16, 2011

Booker rampant - by Richard... Sunday, January 16, 2011

Three stories today in the Booker column, with the lead on stolen children - another ghastly story. It really is about time other media got involved, together with some input from politicians. But, as always, "solitary furrow" comes to mind.

The rest is two global warming stories, the first on the Australian floods. It might be that the theme is a little bit familiar to you. Yet it is the first airing in the British MSM, as far as I know – although the issues are being discussed elsewhere. Then there is a dig at electric cars, again a familiar theme. Online, there is another story tucked in on censorship and The Guardian.

So far, the trolls have been contained, and a trawl for items about Australia and climate change has yielded dividends. Battle will resume later today.

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In days to come - by Richard... Saturday, January 15, 2011

A striking feature ... has been the unpopularity of the regimes combined with their depressing ability to stay in power. Most have found ways of preventing revolutions or military coup d'etats through ferocious security services protecting rickety state machines that mainly function as a source of jobs and patronage.

This is Patrick Cockburn writing in The Independent. He is referring to the Middle East, and specifically Tunisia - or thinks he is. The Middle East, he says, still has a reputation for coups but a striking feature of the region since the early 1970s is how few of the regimes have changed.

He adds: "The forces behind the Tunisian events are not radically new but they are all the more potent for being so long suppressed" (my emphasis), then telling us: "Western governments have been caught on the hop because explosions of social and economic frustration have been long predicted but have never happened".

There but for the grace of God go they, one might think. But they are not very good at joining the dots. The odd thing is, though, in years gone by, we used to look at such scenes and think ourselves lucky that we lived in a stable country and could avoid the turmoil. But these days, such events are more likely to invoke the question: "why can't we do this?".

The wish is the father of the thought, they say, but with the caution, "be careful what you wish for". On the other hand, if we wish to avoid "explosions of social and economic frustration" can we merely avoid talking about the possibility in the hope that they will never happen?

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The madness of green - by Richard...

In the 18th century the fastest means of travel and communication was the same as in Roman Britain 2000 years before - a man on a galloping horse. For larger numbers of travellers there were coaches, but these were infrequent, slow, uncomfortable and expensive. In 1750 a coach took 16 days to travel the 400 miles from London to Edinburgh and 2 days to do the 50 miles from London to Cambridge.

What changed all this was Macadamized roads. They permitted travel at speeds thought impossible a generation before and by the 1830s improved road surfaces and better-designed coaches reduced the London-Edinburgh time to 2 days and London-Cambridge to 7 hours.

However, fares were expensive. At a time when a labourer earned 50p a week, a ticket from Norwich to London cost £1.50. Travel was for the rich. Nevertheless, in 1740 one coach a week travelled from Birmingham to London and by 1783 there were 30 a week and by 1829 34 a day. But the coaching era was short-lived. The growth of railways in the 1840s emptied the roads until the motor car arrived after 1900.

Then came the electric car. Said the BBC, there are hopes that the electric car will capture the imagination of British motorists this year. Thus did the BBC's Brian Milligan take up a challenge to drive from London to Edinburgh in an electric car. It might sound easy, we were told, but under the rules, he was only allowed to charge the car's battery at public points.

In between driving he read a lot of books because charging took 10 hours. In all, from London to Edinburgh, it took four days it took to complete the journey – twice as long as it had taken in the 1830s, with the stage coach. That is progress, greenie-style.

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MSM on the ropes? - by Richard... Friday, January 14, 2011

England Expects has picked up the latest Press Gazette circulation figures for the MSM. The Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Times, Observer and Scotland on Sunday all posted average circulation figures more than 10 percent lower than the same month a year ago. Not a single title gained sales.

One is particularly taken with The Daily Telegraph figures. It does not seem that long ago when the daily circulation was just over the million. Now it comes in as 631,280 copies, a fall of 10.23 percent.

Two of the titles which come out best are The Mail on Sunday, on 1,951,783 and the Financial Times on 390,121 copies. Both have lost circulation, but only -2.43 and -2.67 percent, respectively. The relatively modest losses may reflect their strong commitment to news and "added value" in that department. Perhaps, if The Daily Telegraph and the other titles upped their game, they might see the rate in the decline of their sales arrested.