I have long thought that Martin Kettle was the doyen of the Grauniad's salaried columnists, the one with the best understanding of the new reality post the 2008 crash. In today's paper, under the headline "Austerity is here to stay", he writes, "We may have come out of recession again, but the idea that Britain, let alone the countries of the eurozone, can expect to see any resumption of the kind of growth rates to which we have all been accustomed since the second world war, is increasingly fanciful. We are living through not a downturn but an epochal change, and we need to make a more consistent effort to understand what this implies."
This is a long way from the Graun's usual take on things, which you might summarise as "If only the bankers hadn't been so greedy everything would have been OK". And if you read the comments on Kettle's article on the Graun's website it's clear that it's a long way from the views of the readership. But actually the bankers were only trying to find new and more imaginative ways of enabling the West to carry on borrowing. That they were lining their pockets at the same time doesn't make them any more attractive, but we shouldn't lose sight of the activity which enabled them to do so. If anything, the bankers helped the consumer party to carry on longer than it would have done, and otherwise we would have been facing these problems somewhat sooner.
I'm not sure Kettle fully understands the consequences of perpetual austerity however. "Although the 20th century social democratic project may have stalled amid economic decline", he says, "the financial crisis has undoubtedly opened up a fresh opportunity to redefine the terms on which the rich and poor can coexist in times of greater scarcity". This may be true up to a point, but what might any new definition look like? The problem with the rich is that although they are conspicuous, there aren't many of them. If you tax them till the pips squeak you still won't raise a fraction of the sums needed to carry on paying Britain's welfare bills. Austerity has not so much opened up a fresh opportunity as driven a stake through the social democratic project's heart. For the project depended on huge amounts of government spending, and as Liam Byrne famously admitted, there's no money left.
Amidst th' encircling gloom I am heartened to see in the same edition of the Graun a story to the effect that Michael Gove is going to change the current official definition of poverty. Presently this utilises the median income as a benchmark. I have been railing against it for years, because it means that in a rich country like Monaco there are people with a BMW on the drive and a yacht down at the marina who are officially poor, and people in a poor country like Bangladesh existing on a dollar a day who aren't. What kind of definition is that?
Well, one which has been revealed in all its uselessness by the fall in the median income post 2008. As the most common salary level in Britain has fallen, thousands of people have been removed from offical poverty. You couldn't make it up. Fatuous, and the sooner the definition reflects absolute poverty the better.
Thursday 15 November 2012
Tuesday 13 November 2012
Abu Qatada and burning the poppy
Just when you thought it was safe to go and walk the streets of Britain again, it turns out that Abu Qatada has been let out on bail - with a 16 hour curfew - by a senior immigration judge. Cue much frothing of the mouth in the Torygraph, which reports that it is going to cost the UK £5 million a year to monitor his activities.
I have no time for Mr Qatada and his ridiculous views - he reminds me of an Islamic (and more sinister) version of Sir Roderick Spode, P.G. Wodehouse's fabled leader of the Blackshorts - and clearly this country would be better off without him. The sooner he is on a plane the safer we will all be.
But there is one snag, namely the rule of law. If you believe in the rule of law, you have to accept that it protects people you don't like as well as those you do. It grates that Mr Qatada, who doesn't believe in democracy or the rights of the individual, should take advantage of liberties the kind of society he wants to construct would not extend to you and me; but that's the rule of law for you. It doesn't discriminate between one person's value and another; in fact it recognises that discriminating will always be subjective. And subjectivity reduces the law to a whim.
Actually we should be grateful for good laws which protect the likes of Qatada, because it is becoming increasingly clear that there are some very bad ones which don't. In Kent yesterday some idiot has been arrested for posting a picture of a burning poppy online, with the caption "How about that you squadey (sic) ****s". This is the latest in a long line of incidents where the police have arrested and sometimes tried individuals under the Malicious Communications Act 1988 for posting messages or images which are "grossly offensive".
The MCA started life as a worthy piece of legislation intended to deal with threatening or poison pen letters, but it was amended by Labour in 2001 to cover electronic communications, and here's where the trouble originates. I read somewhere that just about any idea worth stating will at some point have been grossly offensive to someone - it's not hard to see that if Darwin had published The Origin of Species online he could have been prosecuted under the MCA. Actually there will be people somewhere in Britain today who find Darwin's theory grossly offensive, and that is rather the point.
The MCA as amended assumes that people have a right not to be grossly offended. They don't; or at least they shouldn't have. Because if they do, it forces us to decide what is grossly offensive and what isn't. And that is a matter of opinion, of the police in the first instance and ultimately of judges and juries. As soon as you make opinion the foundation of law you have chucked away freedom. As I said, subjectivity reduces the law to a whim.
So much bad jurisprudence arises out of failure to apply existing laws sensibly. John Terry and Anton Ferdinand should both have been prosecuted under the Public Order Act. The POA, a statute that has been around in one form or another for over a century, makes it an offence to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour likely to cause violence. If the young toe-rag had burned a poppy at a Remembrance Day parade, the POA could have been used against him. Online, the State needs to grow up and amend the MCA.
I have no time for Mr Qatada and his ridiculous views - he reminds me of an Islamic (and more sinister) version of Sir Roderick Spode, P.G. Wodehouse's fabled leader of the Blackshorts - and clearly this country would be better off without him. The sooner he is on a plane the safer we will all be.
But there is one snag, namely the rule of law. If you believe in the rule of law, you have to accept that it protects people you don't like as well as those you do. It grates that Mr Qatada, who doesn't believe in democracy or the rights of the individual, should take advantage of liberties the kind of society he wants to construct would not extend to you and me; but that's the rule of law for you. It doesn't discriminate between one person's value and another; in fact it recognises that discriminating will always be subjective. And subjectivity reduces the law to a whim.
Actually we should be grateful for good laws which protect the likes of Qatada, because it is becoming increasingly clear that there are some very bad ones which don't. In Kent yesterday some idiot has been arrested for posting a picture of a burning poppy online, with the caption "How about that you squadey (sic) ****s". This is the latest in a long line of incidents where the police have arrested and sometimes tried individuals under the Malicious Communications Act 1988 for posting messages or images which are "grossly offensive".
The MCA started life as a worthy piece of legislation intended to deal with threatening or poison pen letters, but it was amended by Labour in 2001 to cover electronic communications, and here's where the trouble originates. I read somewhere that just about any idea worth stating will at some point have been grossly offensive to someone - it's not hard to see that if Darwin had published The Origin of Species online he could have been prosecuted under the MCA. Actually there will be people somewhere in Britain today who find Darwin's theory grossly offensive, and that is rather the point.
The MCA as amended assumes that people have a right not to be grossly offended. They don't; or at least they shouldn't have. Because if they do, it forces us to decide what is grossly offensive and what isn't. And that is a matter of opinion, of the police in the first instance and ultimately of judges and juries. As soon as you make opinion the foundation of law you have chucked away freedom. As I said, subjectivity reduces the law to a whim.
So much bad jurisprudence arises out of failure to apply existing laws sensibly. John Terry and Anton Ferdinand should both have been prosecuted under the Public Order Act. The POA, a statute that has been around in one form or another for over a century, makes it an offence to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour likely to cause violence. If the young toe-rag had burned a poppy at a Remembrance Day parade, the POA could have been used against him. Online, the State needs to grow up and amend the MCA.
Monday 12 November 2012
George Entwhistle's Dutch Uncle
The Dutch have a nice saying. In its slightly sanitised version, it goes, "If my Aunty had a beard, she'd be my Uncle". I have been reminded of this in the wake of the surprise resignation of BBC Director General George Entwhistle.
Amongst everyone else, his mother, and Uncle Tom Cobley, veteran presenter David Dimbleby has been putting himself about in the media on the subject of the Entwhistle resignation, appearing on the Today programme this morning and writing an article in the Torygraph. I always thought of Dimbleby as an archetypal paternalistic Corporation Man, but apparently not. "The trouble is", he writes, "that the BBC in recent years has throttled itself with its own bureaucracy . . . It is over managed and badly managed so that no one knows how or where decisions are taken . . . George was a product of that bureaucracy - had risen speaking its language - and that language was his downfall".
It's that last point which rings a bell. If you have an organisation which dedicates itself to management speak, to becoming a blue-skies-thinking producer-choice best-practice human-resources kind of organisation, inevitably the people who rise to its top are the kind of people who thrive in that environment. They must be willing not just to go along with all the balderdash - that's not enough - they must believe in it. Entwhistle evidently believed, and that's one of the reasons why he got to be D-G.
But almost by definition someone who believes can't really lead, because leadership is often the antithesis of this touchy-feely let's-have-a-brainstorming-session-in-a-country-house-hotel way of management; and that's why, at the first sign of trouble, Entwhistle has been found out.
As Dimbleby says, Entwhistle shouldn't have resigned. He should have pointed out that he didn't make the Newsnight programme, or put in place the regime under which it was made. He should have pointed out that Newsnight staff were simply guilty of bad journalism. He should have got the culprits into his office, locked the door, banged their heads together, given them the hairdryer and sent them out a quarter of an hour later mute and shattered with a boot up the backside. Told to do better or else.
Had Entwhistle been this kind of person of course, he wouldn't have got the D-G's job. "If my Aunty had a beard, she'd be my Uncle". And there's the rub. People who adhere to the Alex Ferguson school of management do not, I suspect, prosper at the BBC. And of course had he actually done what I've suggested, the programme makers would have filed a complaint against him, resigned, sued for constructive dismissal and then been compensated handsomely.
And funnily enough, that's exactly what has happened to Entwhistle. He has been given a year's salary - £450,000 - to cheer him on his way.
Just think of the programmes you could make with that.
Amongst everyone else, his mother, and Uncle Tom Cobley, veteran presenter David Dimbleby has been putting himself about in the media on the subject of the Entwhistle resignation, appearing on the Today programme this morning and writing an article in the Torygraph. I always thought of Dimbleby as an archetypal paternalistic Corporation Man, but apparently not. "The trouble is", he writes, "that the BBC in recent years has throttled itself with its own bureaucracy . . . It is over managed and badly managed so that no one knows how or where decisions are taken . . . George was a product of that bureaucracy - had risen speaking its language - and that language was his downfall".
It's that last point which rings a bell. If you have an organisation which dedicates itself to management speak, to becoming a blue-skies-thinking producer-choice best-practice human-resources kind of organisation, inevitably the people who rise to its top are the kind of people who thrive in that environment. They must be willing not just to go along with all the balderdash - that's not enough - they must believe in it. Entwhistle evidently believed, and that's one of the reasons why he got to be D-G.
But almost by definition someone who believes can't really lead, because leadership is often the antithesis of this touchy-feely let's-have-a-brainstorming-session-in-a-country-house-hotel way of management; and that's why, at the first sign of trouble, Entwhistle has been found out.
As Dimbleby says, Entwhistle shouldn't have resigned. He should have pointed out that he didn't make the Newsnight programme, or put in place the regime under which it was made. He should have pointed out that Newsnight staff were simply guilty of bad journalism. He should have got the culprits into his office, locked the door, banged their heads together, given them the hairdryer and sent them out a quarter of an hour later mute and shattered with a boot up the backside. Told to do better or else.
Had Entwhistle been this kind of person of course, he wouldn't have got the D-G's job. "If my Aunty had a beard, she'd be my Uncle". And there's the rub. People who adhere to the Alex Ferguson school of management do not, I suspect, prosper at the BBC. And of course had he actually done what I've suggested, the programme makers would have filed a complaint against him, resigned, sued for constructive dismissal and then been compensated handsomely.
And funnily enough, that's exactly what has happened to Entwhistle. He has been given a year's salary - £450,000 - to cheer him on his way.
Just think of the programmes you could make with that.
Wednesday 7 November 2012
Clive Dunn - meet Elliott Carter
Following the recent news that Elliott Carter has died aged 103, it's sad to hear Dad's Army actor Clive Dunn has today joined the composer beyond the Pearly Gates.
It won't surprise followers of this blog, if any, that I am not a fan of Carter's music. Too much of it just sounded like a big racket to me, though I once heard Nicholas Daniel playing his Oboe Concerto, a late work which I thought was just about the best that high modernism could possibly be considering that it managed without triadic harmony, regular rhythm or recognisable repetition. You couldn't hum it, but it was the best argument I've ever heard for the proposition that it was possible to write listenable squeaky gate music. It made Boulez sound like an amateur.
The Guardian's obituarist noted that in mid-career Carter "made use of a highly systematised harmonic system, involving tables of all possible permutations of a given set of intervals. Manipulating these systems involved immense labour and copious sheaves of preliminary sketches (well over a thousand pages for A Symphony of Three Orchestras)".
Reader, I must confess that I too once wasted time and trees in the same fashion.
"But from the 80s", the obit continues, "Carter increasingly composed free-style, by ear".
Hence the Oboe Concerto. For me the moment of revelation came when I actually succeeded in getting one of my laboriously composed behemoths performed by a professional orchestra. I returned from the first rehearsal devastated. The small part of me which feared the result might be unlistenable was thumpingly vindicated. Not long after when I began to write my first symphony I simply sat down at the piano and forced myself to write whatever came into my head. I have never looked back.
To turn to another popular entertainer, Clive Dunn was made famous by his role as Corporal Jones in Dad's Army. I can't think of any programme which has introduced more catch-phrases into the English language. "Stupid boy Pike" was Captain Mainwaring, of course, and "We're all doomed" Private Frazer. But "Don't panic!", "They don't like it up 'em!" and "Permission to speak" were all Corporal Jones. Just thinking about them makes me laugh.
Clive Dunn also had a sideline as a singer. If he and Elliott Carter should meet Upstairs, I like to think that Dunn will treat the composer to a rendition of his 1970 hit "Grandad". Now that would be an event almost worth dying to witness.
It won't surprise followers of this blog, if any, that I am not a fan of Carter's music. Too much of it just sounded like a big racket to me, though I once heard Nicholas Daniel playing his Oboe Concerto, a late work which I thought was just about the best that high modernism could possibly be considering that it managed without triadic harmony, regular rhythm or recognisable repetition. You couldn't hum it, but it was the best argument I've ever heard for the proposition that it was possible to write listenable squeaky gate music. It made Boulez sound like an amateur.
The Guardian's obituarist noted that in mid-career Carter "made use of a highly systematised harmonic system, involving tables of all possible permutations of a given set of intervals. Manipulating these systems involved immense labour and copious sheaves of preliminary sketches (well over a thousand pages for A Symphony of Three Orchestras)".
Reader, I must confess that I too once wasted time and trees in the same fashion.
"But from the 80s", the obit continues, "Carter increasingly composed free-style, by ear".
Hence the Oboe Concerto. For me the moment of revelation came when I actually succeeded in getting one of my laboriously composed behemoths performed by a professional orchestra. I returned from the first rehearsal devastated. The small part of me which feared the result might be unlistenable was thumpingly vindicated. Not long after when I began to write my first symphony I simply sat down at the piano and forced myself to write whatever came into my head. I have never looked back.
To turn to another popular entertainer, Clive Dunn was made famous by his role as Corporal Jones in Dad's Army. I can't think of any programme which has introduced more catch-phrases into the English language. "Stupid boy Pike" was Captain Mainwaring, of course, and "We're all doomed" Private Frazer. But "Don't panic!", "They don't like it up 'em!" and "Permission to speak" were all Corporal Jones. Just thinking about them makes me laugh.
Clive Dunn also had a sideline as a singer. If he and Elliott Carter should meet Upstairs, I like to think that Dunn will treat the composer to a rendition of his 1970 hit "Grandad". Now that would be an event almost worth dying to witness.
Monday 22 October 2012
Jimmy Savile and the BBC - believe in better
I feel slightly sorry for the BBC over all the shenanigans over Jimmy Savile. After all, plenty of other organisations - hospitals, charities - fell for the cigar-toting kiddy-fiddler and facilitated his sordid gropings on their premises; but they aren't being lacerated in the public prints in quite the same way.
Having said that there is a case to answer, and whilst it may be true that nothing was known for certain about Savile's various exploitations, there was an easy way to make sure they didn't carry on - stop employing him. It would have been good if that obvious way out had been taken, and that might end up being the BBC's biggest mistake.
It's hard to imagine any commercial organisation beating its breast via the hair shirt as the BBC is doing now. Credit to it. I suppose you could argue that the Corporation has an obligation to try and do the right thing that Sky, for example, wouldn't have, because we, the licence-fee payers, don't have any choice but to carry on funding it, paedophile employees or no, whereas if Murdoch and his men had done something similar we could always take our subs elsewhere.
Which brings me to the thing which must humiliate the BBC the most. Of all the indignities forced on staff, there can be few more galling than the appointment to the chair of one of its Savile inquiries than a former head of Sky News. It's come to something when someone who used to work for one of Rupert Murdoch's organisations is regarded as more trustworthy than one of the Corporation's own.
Believe in better? Believe in bitter.
Having said that there is a case to answer, and whilst it may be true that nothing was known for certain about Savile's various exploitations, there was an easy way to make sure they didn't carry on - stop employing him. It would have been good if that obvious way out had been taken, and that might end up being the BBC's biggest mistake.
It's hard to imagine any commercial organisation beating its breast via the hair shirt as the BBC is doing now. Credit to it. I suppose you could argue that the Corporation has an obligation to try and do the right thing that Sky, for example, wouldn't have, because we, the licence-fee payers, don't have any choice but to carry on funding it, paedophile employees or no, whereas if Murdoch and his men had done something similar we could always take our subs elsewhere.
Which brings me to the thing which must humiliate the BBC the most. Of all the indignities forced on staff, there can be few more galling than the appointment to the chair of one of its Savile inquiries than a former head of Sky News. It's come to something when someone who used to work for one of Rupert Murdoch's organisations is regarded as more trustworthy than one of the Corporation's own.
Believe in better? Believe in bitter.
Friday 19 October 2012
Andrew Mitchell cops it at last
A few weeks ago I pointed out how strange it was that the media wanted to us to judge Tory Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell's row with Downing Street Police in the light of the public service and self-sacrifice of the officers murdered in East Manchester. This at a time when news stories distinctly less flattering to the police were freely available for comparison, not the least being the revelation that the police lied repeatedly over the Hillsborough tragedy. Since then there have been others, for instance the unedifying spectacle of an officer recorded in the back of a police car telling a suspect, "You will always be a nigger".
However the press have finally got their man. On the Radio 4 news tonight - Andrew Mitchell finally resigns.
The next story? About a murder investigation abandoned because of a mistake by a police officer rendering crucial evidence inadmissable.
Yes, the police are corrupt, racist, incompetent, violent and dishonest. Except when it comes to monstering the Chief Whip. Then they are paragons of public service.
However the press have finally got their man. On the Radio 4 news tonight - Andrew Mitchell finally resigns.
The next story? About a murder investigation abandoned because of a mistake by a police officer rendering crucial evidence inadmissable.
Yes, the police are corrupt, racist, incompetent, violent and dishonest. Except when it comes to monstering the Chief Whip. Then they are paragons of public service.
Thursday 18 October 2012
The bell tolls, but not just for the Guardian
A story in the Torygraph yesterday reports that senior figures at the Guardian "are seriously discussing a move to an entirely online operation". It's well known that the Graun has been losing money hand over fist for years, and that the paper is only propped up by revenue from Auto Trader, but it was news to me that a situation which clearly couldn't go on indefinitely might be coming to an end sometime soon.
I am of course too grown up to believe everything I read in the Torygraph, and their story, which seems to have originated in a blog called More About Advertising, was swiftly rubbished by Graun media writer / stooge Roy Greenslade on the paper's website. "The truth is", he wrote, " that the Guardian isn't about to do any such thing".
When you pick at this a little, it starts to come apart. The Torygraph story said senior figures were "seriously discussing" closing the print edition, whereas Greenslade denied something rather different - he denied that the print edition was going to be closed. He didn't deny they were discussing closing it.
A lawyer's point, you may say; but one of the things a law degree taught me is to read carefully what people write. Moreover, as someone on the website commented, "the steps are like this: it is impossible for us to do this; it is possible, but we are not going to consider doing it; we have considered doing it, but that doesn't mean we will do it; we always said we were going to do this". It seems to me that at the moment the Graun is probably at the third stage.
I have been reading the Guardian for about thirty years. The era during which I saw myself as a Guardian-reader in the technical sense probably began to fade at about the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It seemed obvious to me that the choice facing the Blair government then was not between one thing which was self-evidently bad (war) and another self-evidently good (no war), but between two things self-evidently bad - war on the one hand, and more Saddam Hussein on the other. Not only was the real nature of this dilemma not reflected in the paper's comment (which was virulently against the invasion), but the self-righteous and self-congratulatory tone of its staff and readership as reflected in the paper seemed to me to show a total lack of awareness of its agonising nature. That George W Bush was the architect of the scheme seemed to them enough, whereas to me this was an object lesson in the principle that just because you don't like the person making an argument that doesn't mean they are necessarily wrong.
This opened up a chink between the Graun and me which widened over the rest of the decade as it began to occur, about 2004-5, that Gordon Brown's economic miracle was a chimera. Our prosperity was based on unsustainable debt, I thought, Brown's public spending was unaffordable, and when the era of easy credit was over, we would have to start paying it back. Blind to the mortal blow this struck at the heart of Social Democracy, the Graun was hailing Brown's skill and arguing that public spending should be higher still.
It didn't help that at this time the only columnists for whom reality seemed to have dawned were the great Frank Field and the paper's economics correspondent, Larry Elliott. However the paper kept Elliott well away from the leader page, where economic matters were dealt with by Martin Kettle and Adity Chakrabortty, the latter a thorough clown whom I have spent some time rubbishing on this blog. Elsewhere Polly Toynbee railed against privilege, despite being levered into Oxbridge with one A Level by virtue of her father's contacts, and despite being very nicely off with a holiday home in Tuscany.
The paper endorsed the Lib Dems at the last election, outraging much of its readership and staff, and then threw its hands up in horror when the party, which any fool knows has quite a significant right-of-centre element, promptly joined forces with the Tories.
The Guardian shows very few signs of joining the real world five years on from the Credit Crunch. Despite the economic virus sweeping through Europe in the form of the single currency, the double dip recession is all George Osborne's fault; whereas just a little more stimulus, borrowed from the evil money markets or taxed from the greedy fat cats, would set us back on the road to prosperity again. Tax avoiders are wicked, except when it is Guardian Media Group itself which wants to use Channel Island tax provisions to acquire Emap. Freedom of speech is an unalloyed good, just as long as you don't say anything the moderators on the paper's website don't like.
Nowhere in the Guardian's Weltanschauung is there the slightest flicker of acknowledgement that the spending supporting British living standards has to be earned, and if that spending is to continue, we have to compete on world markets. That this notion carries overtones of a grocer's daughter from Grantham causes me as much distress as it does anyone else, but once again the fact that I didn't like Maggie Thatcher (and I didn't) does not (pace George W Bush) mean that she was wrong.
Funnily enough, we still get the Guardian delivered, and still read it at a mind-crushingly early hour of the morning with a cup of tea. I could get another newspaper instead, but the Times is desperately boring, and if I suggested the Torygraph my wife would crush me like an insect. So in the broader sense I am still a Guardian reader after all. And while I can't suppress a touch of schadenfreude at the prospect of the loss of the liberal left's house magazine, part of me would die with it. And the bell would not just be tolling for the Graun, but for the print media generally. Anyone who loves newspapers, as I do, should be very wary of premature celebration.
I am of course too grown up to believe everything I read in the Torygraph, and their story, which seems to have originated in a blog called More About Advertising, was swiftly rubbished by Graun media writer / stooge Roy Greenslade on the paper's website. "The truth is", he wrote, " that the Guardian isn't about to do any such thing".
When you pick at this a little, it starts to come apart. The Torygraph story said senior figures were "seriously discussing" closing the print edition, whereas Greenslade denied something rather different - he denied that the print edition was going to be closed. He didn't deny they were discussing closing it.
A lawyer's point, you may say; but one of the things a law degree taught me is to read carefully what people write. Moreover, as someone on the website commented, "the steps are like this: it is impossible for us to do this; it is possible, but we are not going to consider doing it; we have considered doing it, but that doesn't mean we will do it; we always said we were going to do this". It seems to me that at the moment the Graun is probably at the third stage.
I have been reading the Guardian for about thirty years. The era during which I saw myself as a Guardian-reader in the technical sense probably began to fade at about the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It seemed obvious to me that the choice facing the Blair government then was not between one thing which was self-evidently bad (war) and another self-evidently good (no war), but between two things self-evidently bad - war on the one hand, and more Saddam Hussein on the other. Not only was the real nature of this dilemma not reflected in the paper's comment (which was virulently against the invasion), but the self-righteous and self-congratulatory tone of its staff and readership as reflected in the paper seemed to me to show a total lack of awareness of its agonising nature. That George W Bush was the architect of the scheme seemed to them enough, whereas to me this was an object lesson in the principle that just because you don't like the person making an argument that doesn't mean they are necessarily wrong.
This opened up a chink between the Graun and me which widened over the rest of the decade as it began to occur, about 2004-5, that Gordon Brown's economic miracle was a chimera. Our prosperity was based on unsustainable debt, I thought, Brown's public spending was unaffordable, and when the era of easy credit was over, we would have to start paying it back. Blind to the mortal blow this struck at the heart of Social Democracy, the Graun was hailing Brown's skill and arguing that public spending should be higher still.
It didn't help that at this time the only columnists for whom reality seemed to have dawned were the great Frank Field and the paper's economics correspondent, Larry Elliott. However the paper kept Elliott well away from the leader page, where economic matters were dealt with by Martin Kettle and Adity Chakrabortty, the latter a thorough clown whom I have spent some time rubbishing on this blog. Elsewhere Polly Toynbee railed against privilege, despite being levered into Oxbridge with one A Level by virtue of her father's contacts, and despite being very nicely off with a holiday home in Tuscany.
The paper endorsed the Lib Dems at the last election, outraging much of its readership and staff, and then threw its hands up in horror when the party, which any fool knows has quite a significant right-of-centre element, promptly joined forces with the Tories.
The Guardian shows very few signs of joining the real world five years on from the Credit Crunch. Despite the economic virus sweeping through Europe in the form of the single currency, the double dip recession is all George Osborne's fault; whereas just a little more stimulus, borrowed from the evil money markets or taxed from the greedy fat cats, would set us back on the road to prosperity again. Tax avoiders are wicked, except when it is Guardian Media Group itself which wants to use Channel Island tax provisions to acquire Emap. Freedom of speech is an unalloyed good, just as long as you don't say anything the moderators on the paper's website don't like.
Nowhere in the Guardian's Weltanschauung is there the slightest flicker of acknowledgement that the spending supporting British living standards has to be earned, and if that spending is to continue, we have to compete on world markets. That this notion carries overtones of a grocer's daughter from Grantham causes me as much distress as it does anyone else, but once again the fact that I didn't like Maggie Thatcher (and I didn't) does not (pace George W Bush) mean that she was wrong.
Funnily enough, we still get the Guardian delivered, and still read it at a mind-crushingly early hour of the morning with a cup of tea. I could get another newspaper instead, but the Times is desperately boring, and if I suggested the Torygraph my wife would crush me like an insect. So in the broader sense I am still a Guardian reader after all. And while I can't suppress a touch of schadenfreude at the prospect of the loss of the liberal left's house magazine, part of me would die with it. And the bell would not just be tolling for the Graun, but for the print media generally. Anyone who loves newspapers, as I do, should be very wary of premature celebration.
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