Press Freedom and Leveson

Blog 38

February 2013
Watsonworksblog.blogspot.com

James Watson

Friends and contributors

 A new look: The Watsonworks blog has been re-designed by

the Ed’s daughter Francesca in the interests of simplicity, clarity
and taste. Its particular virtue is that website and blog are linked;
how is beyond me, but it’s certainly convenient and a bit of a marvel

Thanks go to the redesigner for her fortitude and forebearance.

 Contents

Leveson: which tree are we talking about?
Quote of the Month
Notes in Passing: Battling Birgitte
Poems of Place (17) Return to Greece
The Baslow Letters (Cont.)
Picture of the Month

 Leveson: which tree are we talking about?

The article on the Leveson Report in Blog 37 prompted some interesting correspondence on aspects of press freedom and the proposals to rein in that freedom with a supervising body with legal teeth. Emails have been edited.

Dear Ed.,
Your article, rightly in many ways, argues that press freedom is a treasure to be valued – but above all other values? Surely that freedom needs to be balanced by responsibility, and yes, putting a value, a benchmark, on principles such as objectivity and balance.
We are not living in the 19^th century when the press was subjected to strict laws of censorship. Freedom of expression is what we’ve got, in the main and, considering the Internet, the diversity of means of expression eludes most efforts at censorship.
Our main point is that your article ignores the personal and family suffering caused when a rampant press, feasting on juicy headlines, makes the lives of victims, be they royalty, celebrities or members of the public suddenly in the eye of news, a misery.
In such circumstances, surely the individual has a right to seek redress without having to have recourse to expensive lawyers? Such an institution as Leveson proposes deserves to be more seriously considered than it is in your article.
Ron & Ann Murray.

Dear Watsonworks,
You too lightly dismiss the case made by the National Union of Journalists for an ‘anti-bullying’ agreement. Some of the stories of management bullying of reporting staff seem to me to demand action. Evidence to Leveson about the pressure Murdoch’s papers exert on staff to turn news into sensation is frightening. It threatens professional integrity and if it’s allowed to continue will reduce journalism to an adjunct of the criminal class.
Elaine Bennett

Dear JimBlog,
I’m all for freedom of expression. It’s a good principle at any time, whether it’s in parliament, in the media, in schools or on Facebook or Twitter. But does it mean unlimited freedom? Forget the case, often cited, of shouting ‘Fire!’ in a packed cinema, but what about the PC constraints that occur when religion is the topic of the moment? We should be free, as you seem to suggest, to express our opinions, or critiques, of what others hold dear – yes? But we should also be aware of the consequences of such free speech. Sometimes these result in riots, sometimes death (of the innocent as well as the guilty). Then where do you stand as far as free speech is concerned?
Yours, Alan Marsh.

Dear Ed.,
The press knows it’s dying. It realises that fewer people than ever before read newspapers, and that a generation has grown up, and is growing up, for whom the press is an irrelevance. Sensation is all it’s got to hang on to. Bullying editors are themselves as vulnerable to pressure as football managers. If Leveson has his way, it’ll just be another kiss of death for the press.
Sincerely, JRC.

Dear Jim,
I agree that there is already a vast amount of legislation designed to curtail freedom of expression, not just in relation to the press but in terms of what we as individuals can say or write. Cameron makes a good point that, while current authorities might handle new legislation curtailing press with moderation and good sense, it is no guarantee that tolerance will prevail in future.
Helen Arnold.

To Watsonworksblog 37
Is a million quid, of whatever Leveson and his inquiry has cost the taxpayer, worth the fuss? It’s not going to happen. The pressures of media corporations, in particular Murdoch’s empire, are too great for governments of any hue to attempt to curtail them. Every government is desperate for a supportive press (It was the Sun ‘what won it!’). In 12 months’ time Leveson will be mentioned on a TV quiz show and nobody will be able to remember who he was and what he was up to.
Never fear – Rupe will be back, and with a vengeance.
SamX.

 To Watsonworksblog,
It amazes me to hear protests about the press and politicians, the press and the police etc. How else can a reporter get the facts of a story unless he or she persuades by one means or another those with vital information to divulge it? Okay, draw the line at paying for information. There’s already a law about that anyway. It’s still in my view vital that reporters protect their sources otherwise those sources will shut their mouths for ever. Yet there are those who argue for punitive laws to force journalists to betray their contacts. In other words, transparency would risk reducing news content to official handouts.
Ben Chamberlin.

Thanks all!

 A response to respondents

We’d probably all agree that freedom of expression is never guaranteed; that to today it is not only curtailed by laws but by cultural pressures. In the final week of January Murdoch put aside his commitment to free speech when Gerald Scarfe’s Sunday Times cartoon portraying the Israeli premier plastering a wall with cement mixed with Palestinian blood and body parts. This he found ‘grotesque and offensive’ and apologised, as of course did the acting editor of the paper. Scarfe regretted the timing of the cartoon on Holocaust Day.
      What is the message here? The accusation is that the cartoon, by attacking Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, was unfairly (and tastelessly) drawing parallels with the Holocaust, which makes it anti-Semitic, in consequence deserving to be censored. Comparisons may be odious but they are unavoidable. The slaughter of the Jewish people during the 2^nd World War has no parallel in terms of scale, but surely the lessons learnt have implications for present and future. In this context it is justifiable to ask, have not the Palestinians a lengthy history of repression at the hands of Israel?
      As for the government’s proposal to create a press watchdog backed by royal charter, a justifiable thumbs-down was offered by Kate and Gerry McCann on the Andrew Marr show. Such a proposal was, in Kate’s view, ‘a compromise of a compromise’. The government claims that it wants as hands-off approach; nothing could be more hands-on than a royal charter.

 Quote of the month

The British press has proved time and time again over the past decades that it is incapable of regulating itself, and after recent revelations about the lengths to which tabloid newspapers will go just to sell copies, one thing is blatantly obvious: not that the freedom of the press needs to be curbed, nor that it needs to be balanced with other rights, such as the right to privacy, but that the press itself is anything but free…

As well as freedom of the press from the state, we also need freedom of the press from the market. The state remains a potential threat, of course, but corporations now have unprecedented and unaccountable power. The battle for liberty and democracy has moved on, and the definition of press freedom needs to move with it. The problem is that while the free market is the best guarantee of freedom from the state, freedom from the market can be achieved only by some intervention from the state.
Simon Dawes, ‘Protecting Press Freedom From the Market: The UK Press After the Leveson Report’, Truthout, 25 January 2013.

 Notes in passing: Battling Birgitte

The Danish political drama, Borgen, is a reminder that government by coalition is a slippery business. Within hours of an initiative being driven into shape there is fallout, backsliding, promises of cooperation put into reverse. One minute the PM, Birgitte Nyborg, is flying, the next plummeting to earth like Icarus.
      The TV series is also a reminder of global recession. There are cuts in Copenhagan, the retirement age is being ratcheted up, there’s controversy over tax handouts for private health.
What a relief, then, for Birgitte to get on a plane to Africa to fulfil the calling of statesperson rather than politician being hunted from pillar to post by Denmark’s equivalent of the tabloid press and some double-dealing colleagues and allies. Given a head of diplomatic skill and sleepless labour on the part of her staff, Birgitte pulls off a remarkable peace deal.
      The parallel with UK prime ministers cannot be accidental. Our own leaders love being abroad – anywhere but among the whingeing, ungovernable Brits. They feel their wings; no doubt command respect: this sort of thing is what they came into politics for. The difference is that Borgen is fiction. Being honest fiction it will not sustain Birgitte’s image as a canny politician for long.
      Of course TV drama of this kind speeds things up, accentuates and possibly exaggerates the stress, not the least the strain brought about by a job that mercilessly abuses personal and family life. Even when Birgitte finds time for her children, scarcely a moment goes by when she is not interrupted by calls on her mobile.
      If the writers and production team of Borgen were sat down in a phone-less room, with the doors locked against the outside world, it’s arguable that a rare coalition of agreement might emerge that modern communications technology was turning politicians into robots, responsive to routines but incapable of finding the time, the inclination or the clarity to think things through. In short, sailing by the seats of their pants in a climate of instant decision-making and interpersonal squabbling.
 This lesson for politicians is constantly implied yet more overtly moralising on the part of Borgen’s production team is the collision between the public and the personal. Birgitte learns there’s a 50 week national health waiting list for treatment of her seriously ill daughter.
 She goes private, prompts a storm of accusations from the tabloid press, but then does a very singular thing. She does not resign as PM in order to care for her daughter; she steps aside for her deputy, with every intention of returning to her post when her daughter’s health improves – a solution as wise as it is rare. News has it that in the next series that wisdom rarely prevails over conflict for very long.

Poems of Place (17)

RETURN TO GREECE

As for the Acropolis,

I wondered whether I was suffering
From a case of seen-it-before;
Though the Parthenon stirred me
Despite the scaffolding, the crowds
And the hint of drizzle in the air.
     Yet to be frank
     I didn’t feel a poem coming on.

As for the Archeology Museum

I experienced nothing but delight
Whether I gazed on Cycladic or Classical Severe,
Votive reliefs in Boetian stone
Or the Lady of Kalimnos fished from the sea.
      Yet to be completely honest,
      I didn’t feel a poem coming on.

As for Delphi, mystic sanctuary,

I had better expectations, for here
Some of my own history lay
In pieces like the treasures of Attica
Amidst the radiance of flowers.

In lieu of a poem coming on

I issued a heartfelt invitation
To one among those myriad spirits
That wait beneath the temple stones
For the Oracle to keep its promises,
To meet me again under the olives
Stroll beside me once more
Circling with me hand in hand
The Tholos of Athene, just like then,
Help me write a better line
Than any I can compose alone.

Or if you prefer, considering the day too hot,

Let’s rest beneath these stupendous rocks,
Watch the lizard bask on marble steps,
And live again the moment when
A donkey’s hooves tapped out our evening walk
And an old lady gave you a sprig of rosemary,
Bid us ‘Kalispera’, leaving us a poem
As lasting as these monuments to hope.

The Baslow Letters (cont)
Readers have been enquiring by phone and email about the availability of tickets for the Wickerstaff-cum-Fernhaven Grand Arts Festival to be held in August. Though initially a modest enterprise, the organising committee’s ambition to give the festival an international feel has had a number of confirmations from some notable celebrities that they will be willing to contribute their talents, at a modest fee plus complimentary tickets for friends and family. Among such notables is the artist Billy Blake who has been in touch with Planning Committee Secretary Ned Baslow about scenery painting for Mig Cervantes’ epic musical, The Visions of Don Quixote.

Dear Mr. Blake,
I am very sorry to hear of the trouble you’ve been having with the management of the British Museum with regard to your Nebuchadnezzar painting (the one with him scrabbling crazily and shamelessly on all fours, with his hair growing out of all parts), and that it has proved bad for business.
      That the British Museum should be reluctant to, in their words, ‘rush in’ to altering the title of the painting before it can do further damage to Nebuchadnezzar’s image leaves me and my wife Betty (who’s presently doing an Open University degree in the arts) breathless at their pig-headed bureaucracy, but I can say with confidence that such disrespect for genius is not a characteristic to be associated with the Wickerstaff-cum-Fairhaven International Festival of the Arts.
     As our chairman Councillor Gilbert Stokoe OBE (Lord Gilbert as we affectionately call him), has said, ‘Our mission is to raise up artists of all kinds presently down on their luck’. To this end we have engaged the musical talents of the composer W.A. Mozart, of Eine Kleine Nacht Music fame who at this moment is putting Senior Cervantes’ epic story, Don Quixote to music, with the support of Spexsaver’s Opticians (midland branch).
     Which brings us to the good news that the festival committee is happy to consider your ideas for a backdrop of windmills, preferably white and any sketches you may have to hand of ruined castles and the squalid interior of inns etc.
  Naturally Lord Gilbert has insisted that your designs  ‘be kept within the bounds of decorum’ considering that our audience will be made up of the elderly, the young and impressionable as well as the fox-hunting fraternity. The main thing is to avoid depressing images, in particular no reference should be made to the current parlous state of Spain.
   As soon as you confirm this offer, I will send further details, including the  measurements of the stage at St. Olaf’s. This is rather on the cramped side though it can look bigger than it is with a careful application of perspective.
Yours etc.
Ned Baslow,
Secretary,
Wickerstaff-cum-Fernhaven Panto and Light Opera Society
In association with the Wickerstaff Indoor Bowls Club
In association with Gilbert Stokoe Enterprises
Sponsors: Cradle to the Grave Fish and Chip Restaurant; Parthenon
Greek Takeaway; St. Olaf’s Mixed Voice Choir; The Lord Cromwell Bowls and
 Darts Club, Fernhaven Sewing, Tapestry & Church Cushion Society etc.

CONTRIBUTIONS INVITED

Email the Editor: Watsonworks@hotmail.co.uk

Picture of the Month
Derry: where are they now?

 

************************************************

Leveson is barking up the wrong tree

Blog 37

January 2013

 

CONTENTS

Feature: Kill the Red Spot! Was Leveson

Barking up the wrong tree?

NewsScan: Walmart’s winning ways

Quote of the Month

Poems of Place: Urbino nocturne

Recommended reading: Instant Messages

by Laura Solomon

The Baslow Letters (continued): Dear Señor

Cervantes

 

 

KILL THE RED SPOT!

Was Leveson barking up the wrong tree?

 

Leveson seems to have forgotten that press freedom was not lightly won; that it took several centuries of defying censorship and establishment repression to achieve what we have now; that the word was always at risk of the blue pencil, or in the case of the 19th century in Britain – the red spot.

Leveson’s suggestion of a kite mark for a legitimised press is of course couched in the language of moderation, but it rather gives the game away. What was the red spot? It was the obligatory sign to be printed on licensed newspapers of the 19th century.

The spot confirmed that a newspaper had paid for permission to print. It differentiated the ‘respectable’, the establishment press, from the radicals. Its intention was to outlaw and silence papers edited by William Cobbett, Richard Carlile, Henry Hetherington, Bronterre O’Brien, Earnest Jones, George Julian Harney and Feargus O’Connor who demanded reform of parliament, democracy and a free press.

 

Invitation to the great and the good

No one would argue today that a kite mark might constitute a tax on knowledge as the red spot certainly was. It would ‘merely’ be a symbol of a press that did not abuse celebrities and members of the public, did not lie, and was accountable for its sins, honouring such journalistic principles as truth, objectivity and impartiality (assuming society could achieve a consensus on their definition). What Leveson says the modern press requires, seemingly with the wholehearted backing of Ed Miliband, J.K.Rowling, Hugh Grant and  the Hacked Off movement is a regulatory body that would be the custodian of such principles.

Alas one person’s objectivity is another’s prejudice and, as with the task of recruiting all committees, commissions and inquiries, the nature of that recruitment instantly breeds suspicion: who appoints the judges and according to what criteria? What is rarely considered in the selection of the great and the good is you and me; the florist at the corner, the Mum with her kids waiting for the Number 9 bus or anybody at the Darby and Joan Club autumn bazaar (much less the readers of the old News of the World).

No, the names to regulate whatever is deemed regulateable will be selected in the age-old manner – as Judge Leveson was, exercising narrow criteria not a little to do with being distinguished, part of the establishment – and ‘safe’. It does not take three guesses to envisage the constitution of a body to regulate the press. A few moments’ deliberation might lead to the conclusion that as far as regulation is concerned we have been here before, many times in many different forms, but always with the same intent – control.

 

Elephants in the newsroom

Writing in the UK edition of the Huffington Post (3 December, 2012), James Alan Anslow states that ‘in many ways the Leveson Report is an impressive piece of work; it is a detailed, political and expedient response to’ (here Anslow suspends his approval) ‘an absurdly amorphous and poorly considered brief’. He cites what he considers Leveson’s ‘two showstopping misjudgements: two ignored elephants in the newsroom’.

First, Leveson ‘neglects, almost to the point of dismissing its significance, the Internet, deeming it a “moral vacuum”. It is almost as if the power and reach of the Internet did not exist, scarcely impinging on the present and future of the traditional press’.

Yet in the UK, the US ‘and most other parts of the developed world,’ says Anslow, the Internet ‘is responsible for the irreversibly accelerating demise of print newspapers’. It is both the elephant in the room and, for mass communication via print, the enemy at the door.

Anslow considers that Leveson fundamentally misunderstands the nature of news journalism. He states:

 

Journalism operates in society's borderlands – it is liminal; that is to say it can only fulfil its function if it can move between structures, without being in thrall to any of them (including media moguls). For example, journalists must find operational space within which to conduct off-the-record conversations with contacts be they police officers or politicians; good hacks have always plied their trade by being less than straightforward.

 

In other words, subversion is both natural to the trade and inescapable. The publication of news is, says Anslow, ‘always, to one extent or another, "loaded" and provocative…There will always be times that journalism tests and even breaks the law: whether to expose corrupt MPs by buying stolen data or to unveil royal hypocrisy by procuring a transcript of an adulterous phone conversation’.

 

‘Quicksand of moral  relativity’

Like many other Leveson-doubters Anslow believes that there are already in Britain criminal laws in place to deal with press abuse if ‘those laws are applied with vigour and probity’. Invoking ‘public interest defence or mitigation invariably plunges the process into the quicksand of moral relativity so beloved of expensive lawyers’.

What we need in the opinion of journalist Mick Hume is more freedom, not less. Author of There is No Such Thing As a Free Press…and we need one more than ever (Societas, 2012), Hume believes that freedom is no exemplar of order but ‘an unruly mess’. He writes:

 

We should defend press freedom and freedom of expression as a bedrock liberty of a civilised society – and defend the right of a free press to be an unruly mess. That some abuse press freedom, as in the phone-hacking scandal, is no excuse for others to encroach upon it. Press freedom is not a gift to be handed down like charity only to those deemed deserving. It is an indivisible liberty for all or none at all.

 

Calculated gain

It was to be expected that commitments to such liberty, expressed by politicians including prime minister David Cameron, would be seen by many as calculated to curry favour with the press. After all, Leveson and the public learnt much about the cosying-up between government ministers (and those of the previous, Labour government) and high-fliers in the Murdoch empire such as former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks (affectionately referred to as ‘Country Suppers’). Cameron had actually appointed ex-News of the World Andy Coulson his press secretary until revelations about phone-hacking forced Coulson’s exit from Downing Street.

Two QCs, Ben Emmerson and Hugh Tomlinson in a UK Guardian article ‘No threat to freedom’ (4 December 2012) conceded that ‘The politicians who oppose Leveson will be able to rely on the support of the media in future’, adding, ‘The whole point of Leveson was to expose this sort of patronage, and bring it to an end’.

Even so, forgetting for a moment where the comment is coming from, Cameron’s doubts about regulation are valid. His swiftly-expressed view was that ‘We should, I believe, be wary of any legislation which has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press’. He went on:

 

The danger is that this would create a vehicle for politicians, whether today or some time in the future, to impose regulation and obligations on the press, something Lord Justice Leveson himself wishes to avoid.

 

Cameron’s position would be worthy of support if it were not for the fact that his government was concurrently launching draconian plans to put Internet communications under further legal surveillance.

 

Point missed

That many British newspapers have a dire record of abusing the responsibilities of a free press is not in doubt as Leveson illustrates in telling and often distressing detail. Such practices are evident from day to day and obvious to all, but there seems to be scant analysis of why. Writing in the Guardian former Times editor Harold Evans, while believing Leveson ‘deserves support’, points out a serious weakness: ‘The biggest disappointment…is how far he [Leveson] skates over the crucial issue of ownership’.

Evans refers to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s sidelining of the law of competition in 1982 in ‘a secret deal’ by which Times Newspapers came under News International control:

 

All Leveson’s fine language about the need for future transparency is justified by the vaguest of references to what made it necessary in the first place. It surely matters a great deal that the greatest concentration of the British press was achieved by a backroom deal that gave News International such sway over British public life.

 

Culture of the bully

The issue is ‘structure’, the nature of the landscape of newspapers dominated by the usual suspects, the corporations; News International being only the most dominant in a pool of corporate sharks. That landscape in recent years has been characterised by the closure of many good newspapers or the switch from daily to weekly, especially in the provinces (a situation dramatically echoed in America).

Competition has always been fierce, but the advent of the Internet has transformed traditional rivalries into a battleground where all values take second place to naked profit. The pawns in this battle are journalists, many of them forced into reportorial conduct that permits them no option: get the story, do the dirty, tap the phones, or make way for somebody who will. In short, as the National Union of Journalists emphasise in their journal and stressed in their evidence to Leveson, it is a culture of bullying.

What meets with sympathy in the Leveson Report is the case made by the NUJ for a journalist’s ‘conscience clause’. Leveson was struck ‘by the evidence of journalists who felt they might be put under pressure to do things that were unethical’.

The solution, ‘a whistle-blowing hotline’ for journalists to report bullying does, however, sound naïve if not laughable. Until the structural circumstances – the centralisation of media ownership into fewer and fewer hands – are acted upon in the name of plurality little will change, except the inexorable decline of the paper press.

 

In the wake of Brian

After unparalleled publicity over many months, the Leveson Inquiry will sink beneath the waves of consciousness and memory; perhaps most importantly because it set out to ask the wrong question.

What’s regrettable is that the main issue concerning the media – the nature of ownership and control – remains unaddressed. There is nothing in practice or in the stars that will in future bar the Murdoch empire from fulfilling its ambition to own the whole of BSkyB and thus rule the roost of British broadcasting.

 Scandal has only delayed the process. Meanwhile, though the News of the World arguably suffered harshly as a sacrificial victim, what do we have, as the current cliché has it, going forward? Why, the Sun on Sunday. Plus ça change and happy country suppers!

 

NewsScan:

Walmart’s winning ways

By Alison Prince

Walmart, currently facing down a massive strike, is America’s largest private employer. In 2011 it enjoyed a profit of 16.4 billion dollars, by the simple wheeze of paying their staff so little that the state has to make up their wages. It’s not illegal. The US federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. That’s dollars, mind, not pounds. If you work in a restaurant or anywhere that might provide tips, the federal minimum wage is just $2.13 an hour, against which the value of meals provided by the employer can be deducted.

A recent study by University College Berkeley found that Walmart’s low wages are costing the state of California alone $86 million a year to provide public assistance like food stamps. The state spends nearly $2,000 every single year on each Walmart employee who can’t afford basic essentials like housing, food, and healthcare. The tax-payer has to fork out more than $2.6 billion every single year to enable Walmart workers to live. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Walmart has just adopted a new healthcare policy that will deny insurance for any employees working fewer than 30 hours a week. And guess what - hardly any of them are now employed for more than 30 hours a week.

So who exactly are the benefit scroungers? Not the wretched workers struggling to stay alive, but their wealthy employers (owners of the British chain, ASDA, by the way) who are clawing money in from the state in order to foot their own wages bill. Talk about bah, humbug - it makes Scrooge look like the Angel Gabriel.

First published in the January 2013 edition of the Voice of Arran newsletter.

 

Quote of the Month:

If, in fact, torture is a crime (a mortal sin, if you will) - a signal of a nation's descent into depravity - then it doesn't matter whether it "works" or not. Zero Dark Thirty condones torture. Not a single character involved in "The Greatest Manhunt in History" expresses any regret about the CIA's use of torture. Maya/Chastain gets her man (code named "Geronimo!") and that's all that counts. The end justifies the vicious means.

David Clellan, ‘And the Academy Award for the Promotion of Torture Goes to…’ (truthout, USA, 9 January 2013).

 

Poems of Place (16)

 

URBINO: NOCTURNE

 

If you sleep deeply enough,

You believe in Urbino’s ducal

Silence; if like a prisoner

In the dungeon of San Leo

Another life commands wakefulness:

You hear the baying of frightened dogs.

 

With the dawn the sorry animals

No longer yelp and bark, comfortless

Across the stillness of their masters’ neglect.

 

Strangely, too, and unexpectedly

Fears of the night have left

The dawn chorus in shock, unless

The season of killing long ago filled

The skies of Montefeltro

With the quietude of exploded feathers.

 

 

Recommended reading…

INSTANT MESSAGES

By Laura Solomon

Proverse, Hong Kong

Joint Winner of the Proverse Prize

Kindle edition (2010)

 

A teen read full of insight and humour

Fifteen year old Olivia (Livvy) Best has problems. On Christmas Day her Mum walks out on the family to live with her lesbian lover; her twin sister Mel, though a talented musician, is thieving, drinking and self-harming; her Dad is jobless, wrapped up in his first novel, and there is a gang of school thugs who are determined to make her life a misery.

Is Livvy downhearted; in despair? Is Laura Solomon’s book about to pitch the reader into a pit full of teenage angst? Mercifully not, for it soon turns out that Livvy is the only really grown-up person in her household, honest about her feelings, but in charge of them. Throughout this highly readable, first-person narrative, Olivia remains cheerful, optimistic, witty and unfazed.

 

GF (Green Frog)

Okay, she is upset by her Mum’s abandonment of the family and unimpressed by her then taking up with a teenage lover. Livvy is also deeply concerned about her sister’s manic behaviour. Yet she opts for tolerance, understanding and support, with the aid of her soft-toy pal, GF (Green Frog) who ‘has thoughts and feelings’: ‘Would you,’ she asks the reader, ‘think I was crazy if I told you we held conversations?’ admitting that she can see how such interaction ‘between a stuffed animal and adolescent girl might be construed as insane’.

    As GF shows perception and good sense throughout the novel we accept him rather as an exemplar of sanity; until, that is, Livvy’s own maturation frees her from such dependency.

  

Bevan: no picture book

Set in London in quite clearly a period earlier than the current recession, Instant Images  throughout portrays a life that brings its problems but at the same time never shrinks from opportunities. It’s also a tale about how people shift over time and through experience from antipathy to tolerance, to affection. Livvy’s fellow pupil Bevan is initially in the story unwashed, uncared for and violently bullied by his brother. Worse, he smells. He’s impossible.

Gradually, an appealing human emerges from the stereotype and Livvy is instrumental in bringing about that change; a change that culminates in love. Such a story could have submerged itself in dark shadows. Instead it is funny and optimistic, a reminder to the young reader that parents rarely make convincing role-models and occasionally let their own interests and passions come in the way of their responsibilities.

That, Livvy Best would argue, is not a reason for rejecting or disowning them. Laura Solomon has produced here a lively, funny, touching and engrossing novel about a time not so long ago when the life of a teenager probably held more promise than it does today.

 

CORRESPONDENCE

Continuing the Baslow Letters

Plans for the production of DON QUIXOTE: THE MUSICAL are, we are delighted to learn, well under way. Here Ned Baslow has information to cheer up the author.

 

Dear Señor Cervantes

Good news! It looks as though we’ve found a decent composer/arranger to put our script of your masterpiece Don Quixote to music and delight the good people of Wickerstaff and beyond. It has been to our advantage that Herr Mozart (Wolfie to his friends and sponsors) and his family have fallen on hard times along with the rest of the Euro population, it seems. He is not only prepared to compose a number of areas for Lord Gilbert who plays the loony knight and a couple of duets to be sung by Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panzer, but he has ideas for lively pieces of Spanish fandango for the intervals.

I’m afraid we still haven’t resolved our differences over sponsorship. Spexsavers have been very generous in the past supporting our light operas and pantos, but there’s no such thing as a free meal and their PR people have made it clear to us that they’ll want a bit of a return for their money – meaning, in our case, putting it out, in publicity and to the audience, that Don Quixote’s bizarre behaviour in attacking windmills thinking they’re giants, is down to his poor eyesight, a factor that is to be remedied, in the opera’s grand finale, with his discovery of contact lenses.

We do understand your concerns with regard to rewriting the script of Don Quixote, but it’s important to understand that we are producing your work, without fee, in the 21st century when anything written prior to the Internet is considered old-hat by audiences.

Never fear, Lord Gilbert will do the melancholy knight proud, especially as we are hoping to engage a local author from Bakewell –  Lord G’s second cousin – to gee up the text with a few well-placed jokes. Rest assured that the current political and economic problems of your country will not be mentioned.

Further, you’ll be delighted to know that the committee has approached the famous British artist, illustrator and visionary poet Billy Blake (Jerusalem etc.) to design the sets. He owes us as we put him right concerning his famous portrait of a horrible hairy creature on his hands and knees, wrongly identifying him as Nebuchadnezzar instead of the true varlet and worshipper of false gods, Nabonidos.

 

Yours in good spirit and happy anticipation.

 

  Ned Baslow

 Secretary and Treasurer,  Wickerstaff Panto and Light Opera Society

  In association with the Wickerstaff Indoor Bowls Club

  In association with Gilbert Stokoe Enterprises

  Local Sponsor: Cradle to the Grave Fish and Chip Restaurant.

 

Programmes of the Festival will be available shortly. Tickets to all events will go on sale at the beginning of April. Londoners and those resident below a line between Luton and Watford, are advised to make early phone bookings with any of the following institutions: The National Theatre, The Old Vic, the Royal Opera House and the London Zoo.

 

Thanks for reading Blog 37. Submissions, factual or fictional are welcome at Watsonworks@hotmail.co. Next: mid-February 2013.

 

e-reading

James Watson books.

Five originally paper-print novels are available

from Amazon Kindle:

THE FREEDOM TREE (£1.03), set during the Spanish

Civil War, reaching its climax with the bombing of Guernica.

TALKING IN WHISPERS (£2.01). Chile during the tyrannical

rule of the generals.

TICKET TO PRAGUE (£1.63). Tale of a friendship between Amy,

a teenage rebel, and Josef, an elderly Czech poet who had lost

the will to write; until she reads him The Good Soldier Sveck.

JUSTICE OF THE DAGGER (£2.03). Earthmovers, the Yellow Giants,

advance on the rainforest of East Timor. The people have only

arrows and courage to resist them.

FAIR GAME: THE STEPS OF ODESSA (£5.15). Uneven playing fields

in Ukraine: with the ball at her feet Natasha shows talent,

resolution and the will to win. Her quest is to discover whether

these qualities translate into life.

 

********************************

 

 

Arts funding - squeezing out the little guy

Blog 36

December 2013

 

                          Picture of the Month: furl all flags?

 

CONTENTS

Editorial
Quote of the month Mick Hume on Leveson
Issue: Arts funding: a worrying trend
Poems of Place 13: Paradise of Pignut
Contribution: ‘An Almighty Lesson’ by Bron O’Brien
Correspondence: a summary

Editorial

Lauren gets the Bull
This month (December) Brooklyn-based author LAUREN OLIVER received the top German prize for young adult fiction, the BUXTEHUDER BULLE for her second novel, Delirium described by the Sunday Times as ‘convincingly terrifying as the North American of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale’.

   The Bulle prize was launched by a local bookseller Winfried Ziemann in 1971, the aim to prompt young people to take ‘an active and in-depth  interest in reading’, further to ‘promote the widespread publication of good books for young people’.

   Worth 5000 euro, the Buxtehuder Bull is judged by an equal number of young readers and adults. Congratulations, Lauren; and well done Buxtehude for sponsoring the prize down the years. As a mark of its commitment, this picturesque town an hour from Hamburg created, in June 2011, a BULLEvard  in the town centre surfaced with copper plaques bearing the names of the award-winners and the titles of their books.

Plus ça change?

Leveson has reported. Such was the publicity the Leveson Inquiry received down the months since its inception in 2011, such was the clamour of headlines on 30 November when the report was published that, for a moment, one might have been forgiven for thinking that overnight and for ever things would change.

   Within days the Leveson balloon began to shrink. Within a week it was in a state of shrivel, the attention of politicians, press and public well on the way to forgetfulness.

   Still, there was the sight of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson trekking to the Westminster magistrates’ court to identify themselves prior to a trial (next September!) on corrupt payment charges. The shame of it!

   And yet…in the blink of an eye Miss Brooks and her husband were occupying the Royal Box at Newbury races, along with Cilla Black, Liz Hurley, Lord Lloyd-Webber and Labour supporter Geoffrey Robertson QC, to watch the Hennessy Gold Cup.

   It is not known whether phone hacking, allegations of bribery, the suffering of victims that had been targeted, pillaried and stalked over many years by the press were discussed. Maybe the topic of conversation was ‘country suppers’. What is known is that Beks got a £10m pay-off from Rupe.

 Quote of the month Mick Hume on Leveson

The truth is… that the British press is far from free or open enough, even before a new regulator is appointed to teach it a lesson. Press freedom and openness is already constrained by more than 50 different laws, and by a conformist culture of You Can’t Say That. We need to begin from the position that our society needs greater freedom of expression, not more formal and informal constraints on what can be said or read. From ‘Ditch Leveson – let’s get back to first principles’, published in Spiked!       13 December, 2012. Mick is author of There is No Such Thing as a Free Press…And We Need One More Than Ever (Societa, 2012).

ARTS FUNDING: SQUEEZING OUT THE LITTLE GUY?

Arran-based writer ALISON PRINCE questions the direction of arts funding in Scotland. Her article prompts fears that the marginalisation of individual artists and small arts groups may be happening in the rest of Britain.
    The rumpus about Creative Scotland has perplexed many people. Just what is going on? As a professional writer, I have something of an overview. I was a member of the Scottish Arts Council’s Literature Committee for some time, and knew the nitty-gritty of grant applications from the inside. As a recipient, I had earlier been helped immensely by an occasional travel or research grant that enabled a book to be completed.
    In those days the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) operated modestly from a couple of converted Haymarket houses, and its function was clear-cut. As well as supporting the big enterprises such as Scottish Opera, it provided vital sums of money – often quite small – that could make the difference between surviving and not surviving in the choppy waters of freelance creative work.
    But everything changed. Perhaps in a wave of euphoria following the construction of the Parliament building in Edinburgh, a mixture of ambition and spin swept over Scotland like a tidal wave.

Favouring the big guys

Grubby little artists were out; the big art business was in. The SAC morphed, slowly, painfully and expensively, into Creative Scotland. It designed a numbingly dull logo at dizzying cost and moved into a glass palace behind Waverley station, a prime Edinburgh site.
    Individual artists began to realise that they no longer mattered. Those who ventured to seek support for a new project were told they should raise a first thousand from elsewhere, then Matched Funding might be available. For those already struggling to survive, as artists commonly do, that was not helpful.
    A lot of potentially good work died before it was born. Depression grew. Artists tend not to be business people. They are prepared to live on next to nothing because of the absolute imperative to pursue and develop a creative idea, and even when successful, they seldom swim happily in the world of form-filling and accountancy.

Counter-attack

As Creative Scotland sailed on, an unhappy silence set in, which did nothing to convey the dismay felt by countless working artists. It was the established leaders of the profession, secure enough not to care what the new organisation thought or did, who opened a counter-attack. Don Paterson, one of Scotland’s leading poets, wrote a strongly critical letter that hit the headlines, and since then, Creative Scotland has been blasted by a communication from 400 of the country’s most eminent writers, musicians and artists, demanding a rethink.
    Sir Sandy Crombie, Chairman of the Creative Scotland board (formerly chief executive of Standard Life, which is hardly arts-related) said the board had been ‘taken aback’ by the intensity of criticism. He offered the excuse of ‘limitations and expectations’ imposed by the Government and Lottery on how their funds should be used, but that is exactly what must be tackled.
Artists not executives
The truth is, artists do not constitute a corporate Art Business. Like cats, they are difficult to herd and highly individual. The old SAC’s system of flexible funding understood this and embodied a hands-on working relationship with artists all over Scotland. In its place we have a glass monolith with a massive desire for self-publicity.
    It serves the abstract concept of Scottish Art, but has lost connection with the people who make art happen. The fact that the board admits to being ‘surprised’ by the strength of feeling expressed in the letter from the 400 leading artists tells its own story.
    Why were they surprised? Such blindness is a matter of national concern. Something has to change, and not in terms of adjustment to the window-dressing. Creative Scotland must listen to those who do the creating.
Alison’s article was originally published under the title Creative Scotland nibbles at the bullet in the Isle of Arran’s impressive newsletter Voice for Arran (info@voiceforarran.com), November 2012, published monthly.

POEMS OF PLACE (13)
THE PARADISE OF PIGNUT

In one year in one month in Mountfield churchyard

An unnamed anthologist listed a century of plants
Among lichen-enamelled tombstones:
Yarrow, ransome, Lady’s smock, kingsweed,
Wood anemone (my favourite), rocksfoot and violet,
Primrose (Auntie Muriel’s dearest), hairy bitter cress,
Nipplewort, common cat’s ear, willow herb,
Bed nettleweed (how’s that?), smooth hawkbit, ribwort,
Good Friday grass, herb Robert, barren strawberry,
Goat willow, birdsfoot trefoil and hogweed,
Plantain, prickly sowwhistle (so pigs whistle as well as fly),
Hairy tare, cleavers, common mouse-ear, bush vetch
And so on, accounted for in faded type held
Recited by Perdita, enfolded Ophelia in watery grave.
 And with each name, a story, a remedy, a caution,
Most of all, a sermon on life and death,
For with what reverence drove our historian
To tease out from tuft and cranny
This breeze-brushed registry of short lives,
Each a poem in word or phrase, a masterwork
Of shape and pattern, colour and scent.

Doubtless our sorrel scribe, our ox-eye archivist
Now feeds the willow herb. I would like to think
There is a will somewhere that declares
‘My body I bestow to the eternal sustenance
Of saxifraga and shepherd‘s purse, periwinkle and celandine;
In return for one summons of bugle at dawn,
One vista of bluebells at dusk; with this codicil,
To the grim reaper astride a Honda mowing machine;
My children from puritans and lawns!’
    
AN ALMIGHTY LESSON
By Bron O’Brien

In the beginning, God was happy. Mankind was happy. The world was happy. But Serpent was not happy. One day Serpent said, ‘God, life is boring.’

God replied, ‘Why is that?’
‘There are no weekends,’ said Serpent.
God was pleased to grant humanity weekends, but asked, ‘How shall weekends be different?’
‘For five days,’ replied Serpent, ‘people will work, for two days, they will play.’
God was puzzled on two counts, first why Serpent wished for the bliss of heavenly weeks to be reduced by two days, and second He was confused by the reference to work.
Sure it had been seven days of hard work to create the world, but now there was no need for anyone to lift a finger.
Serpent explained, ‘If people do not work, they will have nothing to spend…which brings me to a further request.’
God scratched His head in puzzlement. ‘But I have provided for us all, for ever. I am satisfied, Man is satisfied, the world is satisfied.’
At this moment Serpent sprang his surprise: he reached into a fiery bush and drew out Woman by the hand. ‘I took the liberty,’ he said, ‘of fashioning a complement and helpmeet for Man.’
‘Well I’ll Adam-and-Eve it!’ exclaimed God. ‘What is her purpose?’
‘You will see,’ responded Serpent. ‘Look into my crystal ball. It is a vision of the future.’
‘I see,’ commented God, ‘that the man and woman –‘
‘Indeed,’ interrupted Serpent, ‘they are wearing clothes.’
‘Clothes?’
‘Garments to cover up their nakedness.’
‘But why? I granted them unblemished skin and nakedness, and here in Paradise it is neither too cold not too hot for man and womankind to cover themselves up.’
‘They call it style O Wondrous One. And with style comes quality and with quality comes aspiration and with aspiration…’ Serpent paused. ‘…comes cost, or to put it more simply – money.’
‘I notice,’ said God, ‘that Man and Woman are not only wearing garments, they are shod like horses.’
‘Shoes, Almighty.’
God’s all-seeing eyes cast a wider glance. ‘But I notice not all my subjects are wearing them.’
‘It’s the system, Lord. Style makes for difference and difference makes for style.’
‘These are words unfamiliar to me, Serpent.’
‘We are all individuals these days, Almighty One. It’s the rage. Even you. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, you could do with smartening up. A suit, perhaps, shirt, a tie, some transport…You see, Lord, people are way ahead of you. Oh, and aftershave. Beards are definitely out. No style.’
‘Who decides these things?’
‘The ladies, of course,’ joked Serpent, meaning every word.
So God shaved off his beard, acquired a suit from a bespoke tailor recommended by Serpent; inched himself into shoes and gazed once more on the World of Difference as Serpent described it.
Serpent saw God in a state of confusion and bewilderment. ‘Everything,’ confessed God, ‘seems to have become so complicated.’
Serpent had a ready answer. ‘What we need, Lord, is some rules, the kind that keep people in line, contented with little, ever-grateful to our good selves.’
The Almighty felt himself on safer ground now they were not talking about style and difference. ‘Since the beginning I have always respected  the freedom of my subjects, so long as that freedom does not harm others.’
‘Freedom butters no parsnips, Lord.’
‘I’m not sure I understand you.’
‘Well, if everything was free, Lord, if people could just walk into shops and take what they wanted there’d be chaos.’
‘Shops?’
‘Didn’t I tell you? A little innovation of mine: places of convenience where people spend their money.’
‘That’s twice you’ve mentioned money. Just what is it?’
Serpent controlled his impatience. ‘You buy things with it, Lord.’
‘But my subjects can have whatever they want, whenever they want it, according to their need.’
‘Not any longer, Lord. There’s no profit in giving stuff away.’
Shamed by his ignorance of all these new words, God held his tongue, resolving to watch and see what this thing called money did.
But he was not happy. He was not sure his subjects were happy. He was longer sure the world was happy.
Perhaps Serpent knew best. He nodded when Serpent said, ‘Leave it all to me, Lord. I’ll scribble down a few rules and regulations, do a bit of order, separate the better from the lesser sort, and by morning you’ll have a brave new Paradise; only in this case there’ll be money in it for both of us.’
Still only half-persuaded, God went off to bed carrying the latest Argos catalogue, given him by Serpent. ‘Rest your eyes on that, Lord. It’s got everything humanity will ever need.’
The very next day God sent off for another pair of shoes. They were never delivered, so he asked Serpent for an explanation. ‘No cash, Lord, no shoes.’
‘Then spare me some cash.’
Serpent seized his chance. ‘What I recommend is a pay-day loan. Subject to interest, of course.’
‘Thinking of his new shoes, covetous of those shoes with a luminous flash on the side and heels thick enough to enhance his height, God replied. ‘Don’t doubt my interest, Serpent.’
‘These days we call them trainers. Often people riot in order to obtain them. This particular pair is state of the art. Five hundred per cent interest, per week, Lord.’
Unaware of how out of his depth he had become, God smiled. ‘I’ve a thousand per cent interest in those shoes.’
Serpent smiled: ‘I’m glad that makes you happy, Lord.’ He tapped God’s catalogue. ‘Anything else you fancy while we’re at it? A sack of fertiliser for the Garden of Eden? A Samsung Galaxy, thirty quid off? Designer shades to protect you from the Light of the World? Available while stocks last. I might be able to fix you up with two for the price of one. Seeing it’s you, I could make it a trinity.’
God was engrossed. ‘I’ll see what else interests me.’
Serpent was happy.

We introduced Bron’s work to A Writers’ Notebook in Blog 34 (October 2012) – Two Dialogues (A* and E-). Many thanks, Bron. We look forward to publishing more of your work.

 

CORRESPONDENCE: a summary

Our postbag was set a-bulging following NED BASLOW’S letter to hard-up composer WAM affectionately known as Wolfie. This was divided between those angered by what one correspondent described as ‘speechless arrogance’ on the part of Ned when he took issue with the compositions of John Cage or Gage, and a number who generously offered food tins and second hand toys for WAM and his family.

   The good news is that Ned reports plenty of early bookings for the Wickerstaff-cum-Fernhaven Arts Festival and it looks as though Wolfie will be writing a dozen arias for Lord Gilbert’s opening recital to which members of the royal family have been cordially invited.

   We were hoping to publish Ned’s next letter in his publicity campaign but this will have to wait till the January edition as Ned and his wife Betty will be occupied, night and day, throughout the Christmas period running the recently-introduced soup kitchens in Wickerstaff and Fernhaven. Contributions of tinned soups, veg, fruit, corned beef, spam and Ardennes paté would be welcome if delivered to the Watsonworksblog office. No bric-à-brac, please.

 

Season’s Greetings!