Welcome to Scotland: Now Go Home

Posted on July 27, 2011 by davidsberry

I have taken some flak down the years for having been a regular reader of the Economist. But far from being another tub-thumping, jingoistic right-wing rag à la Torygraph, it has always provided me with a more balanced international perspective than governments manage. This week, it raises some serious questions regarding tourism and how effective countries are, both at making a success of it and at fleecing the maximum amounts from those who do visit—not necessarily the same thing.

According to VisitBritain “the UK ranks 5th out of 50 in the world in terms of a ‘Tourism’ brand.  Our strongest ‘Tourism’ dimensions relate to being ‘rich in historic buildings and monuments’ and for our ‘vibrant city life and urban attractions’, in each case ranked 4th in the world.” Certainly all parts of the UK have advanced considerably from the greasy cafe/dingy pub image of half a century ago, but are we matching peoples’ ever-higher expectations, especially those of visitors from abroad?

This evening I attended a team talk at our local Seabird Centre after three trips as a guide on their Bass Rock trips today. In two hours, nobody mentioned foreign visitors or their languages. In my three trips, I had had over 75% foreigners: Poles; Germans; Dutch; Israeli; Malaysian. Nobody mentioned customer relations, let alone language, training. It may be unfair to criticise a successful visitor attraction for this because very few other visitor-oriented establishments from First ScotRail to the council’s putting green staff seem to understand that they are in the front line of visitor experience.

Britain—and especially Scotland—may have scenery, history and monuments to die for but we still seem content to let them sell themselves. Leave aside that parking wardens ticket clueless visitors with glee, we actually miss a huge trick in persuading those visitors who do come to part with their hard-earned dosh. People having a good time normally do this with gusto but consider these spend statistics from the Economist:

Receipts per Tourist in US$ by Country

Even allowing that many of those countries are distant and therefore receive longer visits per visitor, this hardly applies to Sweden or Switzerland. The figure for Britain in $935 per head from 29.6m overseas visitors in 2010. Scotland did marginally better with $1,017 per head from our 2.3m visitors. But look at those stats. It means that Scotland attracted proportionally fewer foreign visitors than England did. AND we did much worse than Slovakia at persuading them that this was THE place to spend their money.

It’s all about service, about understanding, anticipating and—especially—fulfilling visitor needs. Most of our better restaurants ‘get’ it. But too many third-rate places staffed by gormless, obviously untrained teenagers will greet hungry customers with “we stopped serving lunch at Two” when it’s 2:10pm. Edinburgh is Britain’s ‘second-top tourist destination’. Yet, stand in Waverley’s teeming concourse and show me where you get information on local buses, let alone buy a joint city transport ticket that is standard elsewhere. And good luck finding & dragging your suitcases up to Tourist Information.

Despite it being Scotland’s No 1 business, we are simply not yet professional enough  to succeed in 21st century tourism. And that requires more than getting past assuming everyone should speak English. It’s about the decorum of dealing with Muslim women; that Germans like their tea weaker and coffee stronger than we do; that Americans like being spoken to by locals for no good reason; that the surname comes first in Chinese names. So, go out there and adopt a tourist; do your bit; don’t gripe if they block the pavement or don’t understand queues.

These people have had the good taste to visit and appreciate why we all like living here.

Posted in Commerce, Education | Tagged | 1 Comment

Nomenklatura O’ the Clachan

Posted on July 25, 2011 by davidsberry

“Nomenklatura” referred to the Communist party’s authority to make appointments to key positions throughout the governmental system.  —Wikipedia

You have to hand it to Burdzeyeview. While often disagreeing with the line she takes, it is always cogently argued and this time I think she’s put her finger on what keeps us Scots, to paraphrase Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia, “A little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous and cruel”. This week she shines a spotlight on a dingy corner “The Public Sector Carousel”, highlighting Scottish Government economic adviser Andrew Gouldie’s smooth transition to a professorship in Government & Public Policy at Strathclyde.

Let me say—as she does—that this has nothing to do with envy, still less with objecting to careers and the ambition that drives them. But names shift around top posts in Scotland in such a way as to give nepotism a good name by comparison. Time was—fifty years ago—that this was also true. But, under Supermac, Scotland was a loosely controlled, very small political village dominated by Edinburgh private school old boys who still practiced noblesse oblige; where power was available, they generally wielded it impartially.

Then came the politicisation of Scottish local politics, given a huge boost by the creation of regions in 1976. Over the next two decades, resistance to Tory domination in London flowed from Strathclyde and its ilk, so that the growing number of public posts became a measure of political control, depending of who filled them. Because of local dominance, Labour won that fight. This was underscored post 1997 when first Westminster, then Holyrood fell under Labour control. As a result, our quangocracy, be it SPT, police boards, HIE, CoSLA, SEPA, NHS Trusts, MacBraynes, Scottish Water, SNH, Historic Scotland, etc.—even the Ombudsman and the Accounts Commission—grew a political presence, however passive, in much of the machinery of state. The ‘hands-off’ principle of noblesse oblige looked increasingly threadbare.

By the time the political pendulum swung against Labour, as it did over 2007, 2010 and 2011, their presence throughout the clachan-scale Scottish establishment was substantial. This is not to say it was egregiously unfair—if you hold most of the elected posts (MPs, MSPs, councillors) why wouldn’t you dominate the appointments? But, after the political tide turned against Labour, they stayed blessed: the Tory party was a shell of its former self, Lib-Dems were decimated to 5 MSPs and 7% of the vote and the SNP, frankly, has yet to care about, let alone understand, the scale and importance of nomenklatura.

So, under the noses of new political regimes, this carousel revolves largely undisturbed. Senior appointments can be widely advertised—and often are. But, by the time SOLACE or whatever advisory body is involved, the gulf between Scottish and other practice laid on the table, inevitable personal connections within the clachan acknowledged, it takes little selective myopia on the part of the selection panel to come to the ‘right’ choice. Over 90% of Council Chief Executives were appointed from within Scottish local government. Can the English/Welsh/Irish really be that unlucky/incompetent?

To pick on Andrew Gouldie’s appointment is unfair. The entire Senior Management Team of Scottish Enterprise was selected from internal appointments: yet no nomenklatura can explain what good the £600m in public money SE hose around each year does for the economy, let alone the punters. Our quangocracy is like any other self-interested body: they lay low, avoid attention but keep close to whoever holds the purse strings in the hope that the gravy train will rumble steadily on through boom and bust.

So far, it has.

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment

We Are ALL Norwegians

Posted on July 24, 2011 by davidsberry

My little blog is no place to rehearse the details of this weekend’s tragedy in and around Oslo that killed 93 innocent people, mostly teenagers, and wounded another 100. Even after Anders Breivik goes on trial for what he did, I am sure many of us will remain uncomprehending as to his motivation. I still recall my chill revulsion on seeing Bogdanovitch’s Moving Targets in the ’70’s but never thought I would experience anything like it, especially so far from Texas.

But what I do need to remark on is the unflappable bravery of the Norwegian people from Prime Minister to police chief to passers-by who came on camera. Each asserted—in flawless English—that this would change nothing, that the principles of openness, of toleration, of international participation would not change. The Norwegians may not have had all the apparatus and preparation to deal with such premeditated evil but they did recover fast,  organising a moving memorial service for the victims within 24 hours.

And that service itself was a statement of undaunted openness: Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, King Harald V, his family and sundry dignitaries walked through their people who then gathered densely around them in shared grief. More than just moving, this was demonstration that, small country though it is, Norway will not be stampeded into paranoia and police over-reaction. King, commoner and—I have no doubt—more than a few republicans bowed their heads together, as if vowing their society and their values were not so fragile, that they could withstand outrageous abuse and maintain the dignified, inclusive trajectory of civilisation in which Norway has led the world for the last century.

It was their 9/11 and, choked with tears as they were, they met it magnificently. Today I wish to stand with them in support, to call myself a Norwegian. I hope you feel as I do.

King Harald and Queen Sonya are greeted at Oslo Cathederal. (Photo Wolfgang Rattay, Reuters)

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Real News vs. Scandal Fixation

Posted on July 21, 2011 by davidsberry

I am normally a fan of Newsnicht. Gordon Brewer, Isabel Fraser, Glenn Campbell et al hold incisive discussions relevant to Scotland without resorting to the Paxman sneer. But last night, the four MPs asked to comment on the latest twists of Hackgate stood in weak comparison to the preceding Newnight piece on the Eurocrisis. My own MP, Fiona O’Donnell was on her worst apparatchik/rentaquote setting, looking off-screen as if reading a teleprompter from John Smith House how Milliband was knocking ‘em dead with his Coulson witch hunt down at the Palace of Westminster.

Personally, I think Milliband would have been far better letting Tom Watson continue taking his verbal chainsaw to Cameron’s defences but that is to miss the point of asking why Newsnicht should be obsessed as any red-top by this juicy scandal when its London sibling had raised its eyes from such mire and even had Ed Balls saying sensible things about Greek default.

For, immersed as it is in collective outrage at indiscriminate phone hacking and pies being thrown—both physically and figuratively—at the once dreaded Darth Vader of world press, all our media—English or Scots; print or TV—spent this last week of parliament ignoring two major stories that may combine, like storms into a tornado supercell, in as little as two weeks from now. But good luck finding reportage outside anorak organs like the Economist or the WSJ. The Tweetosphere was thick with Kuenssberg or Reid chopping the same hackgate story into a hail of soundbites.

The most urgent story is of Merkel and the European Central Bank putting more elastoplasts on the brain haemorrhage called Greek National Debt. On the heels of their ‘stress test’ for banks comes a wheeze to levy €30bn eurozone bank levy, likely to weaken said banks. If the last rescue package for Greece has failed (see “Let Them Eat Baklava”) what likelihood is there that another €115bn will make the spendthrift Greeks mend their evil ways? If it all unravels, we’re talking about defaults on a major scale and a huge spanner jammed into financial machinery. Britain may stand outside the Euro but half our exports are to the Eurozone: we’re in it up to our necks.

This would be apocalyptic in itself. But on the other side of the pond, we have the Standoff at the Capitol Corral as Tea Party (=low-tax) Republicans eyeball Obama’s ‘free-spending’ Democrats. The US hoped to export its way out of the crisis. But they are net importers from BRIC (i.e. growing) countries and the previous paragraph explains what little hope Europe offers. With a budget stalemate continuing and time growing short, House Republicans are pushing their plan to cut spending, rule out tax increases and amend the Constitution to forbid government spending more than it takes in. Such a plan will fail: in the Democratic-controlled Senate or under a veto by the President. If a budget is not agreed by August 2nd, then the US government moves into the unknown. Soldiers may not get paid and a drop from AAA bond ratings—not to mention recession and/or market collapse—could well follow.

However unaware we are in Scotland, these storms are gathering. Either of them would hit us badly. Both together would trigger a recession making 2008-10 look like the good times. Because many middle-class people had their normal short-term expedient of putting expenditure on credit cards blocked by reluctance to issue new cards and draconian limits on cards already out, their maneuver room is small. And, if recession returns, the inevitable rise in interest rates will catch another tranche of those pegged in mortgage payment ability or who took out variable-rate loans to cover expenditure. These third and fourth horseman of our fiscal apocalypse would ride out to join their foreign kindred.

Famine and pestilence may not sweep the land as a result. But, unless some of our more able minds stop fixating on tabloid trivia and deal with the repercussions of and antidotes to such a doomsday scenario, the opprobrium heaped on News Corp will be as nothing compared to what those at the helm will receive if this destructive fiscal supercell does form. Take your earphones out, the better to hear the sound of gigantic hooves approaching.

Posted in Commerce, Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

Hall of Shame

Posted on July 19, 2011 by davidsberry

Research for my previous post (Oxter Award) exposed some pretty dubious council fauna in dark corners, especially in and around wur Dear Green Place. The broad range of accusations makes some form of ranking necessary and so I have awarded ‘black marks’. NOTE: those exonerated by either the courts or Audit Scotland (an astonishing 15 each in Glasgow and South Lanarkshire by the latter) are zero-rated.

  1. ☁ Apparent lack of judgement or momentary lapse deserving admonition only
  2. ☁☁ Abusive behaviour or systemic incompetence but little moral turpitude
  3. ☁☁☁ Dishonesty for minor personal gain or non-moral conviction (e.g DUI)
  4. ☁☁☁☁ Substantial or systemic abuse of position or dishonesty conviction
  5. ☁☁☁☁☁ Wholesale corruption or court conviction involving jury trial

Within our present system, 1-3 black marks do not result in automatic disqualification from holding office as a councillor; 4 or 5 do. As these ‘grades’ are all my own invention, I deducted a black mark for those with the grace to admit their error publicly and resign altogether. Few did. I do subscribe to the principle that there is no moral latitude when it comes to representing the public. Nonetheless, just as punishment should fit the crime, the scale of moral turpitude does have a place in considering the seriousness of any lapse of judgement leading to betrayal of public trust. Those inducted and their classes are:

☁
The pretty mixed bag in this category were all explicable as human error or political harassment and not considered worth detailing, especially as they came from all corners of the country, representing the spectrum of political parties.
☁☁
☁☁☁
☁☁☁☁
More reading: Paisley Daily Express Oct 20th 2010

p.s. Not to be confused, despite appearances, with Dinsdale Pirana.

☁☁☁☁☁
It was with some relief that I could find none to place in this category, not least because I’d rather not fund the ensuing legal action if I did. Nonetheless, such wholesale abuse of public trust has occurred elsewhere and vigilance against it—not least by all of us taking the more ‘minor’ categories seriously—is our principal defence against erosion of public trust, without which councillors have no legitimacy.
Taken over all, 2010 especially tarnished the probity of Scottish councillors. Whether behaviour of the baker’s dozen inductees above were material in May’s landslide election result, I leave the reader to decide. Jack did:
“We had many successes in government, but on too many occasions, I have been embarrassed by our conduct. The greed of individuals, party centralisation and inconsistent policy on the hoof have been damaging, and at times indefensible. And we failed to adapt to the new political landscape of Britain.”
     —Jack McConnell, former First Minister, The Scotsman, 8th September 2010
Posted in Community, Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

This Month’s Oxter Award

Posted on July 18, 2011 by davidsberry

Such has the scale of disconnect between the public and their elected representatives become that it is time to acknowledge those in service of the public who have clearly lost sight of that basic fact with an award. This month’s thoroughly deserving case, leading what may become a catalogue of ignominy, was brought to us courtesy of the Daily Mail.

Our very first Oxter Award winner (l); Blind victim sworn at for being unable to see her (r)

TalkSPORT political editor Sean Dilley was walking with his golden retriever guide dog
in a corridor towards Portcullis House in Westminster. A clearly stressed Lyn Brown, MP for West Ham and Labour Whip bulldozed into the back of him before overtaking and shouting back at him: “For ****’s sake, move out of my ******* way.”

The journalist asked her to be more careful as he did not want to crash into his guide dog, Chip. “You are such a rude ******* man, you just walked right in front of me.” she retorted. Mr Dilley replied, not unreasonably: “I’m blind, you stupid woman.” When he asked  Miss Brown’s name, as he could not see who had bumped into him, Miss Brown replied: ‘I’m not giving it to  you: **** off!”

Miss Brown was unavailable for comment. Certainly, we’re speechless.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2015202/MP-letter-blast-blind-man-Out-way-Labour-whip-shouts-reporter.html#ixzz1SUsskinW

Posted in Politics | Tagged | 1 Comment

Dead Fish Swim with the Stream

Posted on July 18, 2011 by davidsberry

Captain Jimmy Buchan pilots Amity II, Star of BBC's Trawlermen out of harbour

Ever since I overcame my mother’s Blitz-begotten mistrust of the Germans, I have been a Europhile. But sometimes, they really don’t make it easy. Their latest unpalatable tranche of Eurotrash was served up this week by Maria Damanaki in her role as EU Fisheries Commissioner. Her thesis is that the EU Common Fisheries Policy is flawed and urgently needs revision. With 50% of catches being regularly returned dead to the sea as discards to comply with EU quotas and stocks at 10% of post-war levels, that’s a no-brainer.

But, in an apparent rush to swap frying pan for fire, her new proposals, while ending the insanity of 100,000 tonnes of discards each year, also propose that quotas can be traded. Eilidh Whiteford, MP for the core of Scotland’s fleet said: “the Commission is advocating an expansion in the international trading of fishing quotas. Selling quota to Europe’s highest bidders will erode Scotland’s historic rights which in turn could spell doom for our fragile fishing.”

Right on, sister. The limited quota sales of the last thirty years have halved the Scottish deep sea fleet from 800 to 400 (out of our total of 2,800 boats, most of the rest being inshore). Spain, on the other hand now operates 17,000 boats, 8,700 from Galicia and 1,300 out of Basque ports. Many are ocean-going 165-ton boats which work Scottish waters with such gusto.

Scottish Territorial Waters: All EU countries may fish, plus Iceland/Faroes/Norway

Greenpeace fingered them in a damning piece of research last year entitled “The Destructive Practices of  Spain’s Fishing Armada”. That armada has been boosted over the last two decades by buying-up of Scottish fishing quotas while their government subsidised ship building (€1m each for 27 boats between 2000 and 2005 at a time when EU policy was to reduce fleets). Over that same time, Spain received 46% of all EU fishing subsidies—€1.6bn—while Scotland’s fleet got under 2% (€65m), much of it for de-commissioning boats! In the same period (Spanish fishermen were given access to the North Sea only after 2003), cod, haddock and whiting stocks went through the floor, even as Scots chafed under CFP draconian actions “to maintain stocks”.

Several captains have been prosecuted for flouting CFP quotas, with HM Customs and Fisheries Protection nabbing UK miscreants. But no Spanish boat has suffered such ignominy. They eke several loads from one trip by landing in different Scottish ports like Lerwick or Kinlochbervie, loading the catch onto waiting freezer artics that then get the goods to Spain faster than they could be sailed there. Then out to fish again.

On the EU Council, Spain wields 8 points of clout: Scotland clamours for some share of the indifferent UK’s 10 points. Landlocked Austria, Hungary and Luxembourg each have a say. Countries with coast but no fleet (Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Belgium, Bulgaria, Rumania) also have a say. Scotland has none. Little wonder, then, that our fishermen, from  Amity II Skipper Jimmy Buchan, through every fisherman’s federation up to Fisheries Minister Richard Lochhead are aghast at what Ms Demanaki’s proposes.

Just as Scottish fishing was stitched up post-1979 when national control was extended to 200 miles and the UK traded fishing rights away, so a cosy côterie of Mediterranean and non-fishing countries will happily swap Spain their fishing interest for support for Greek debt or a wine lake good only for shriveling head lice. We’ll be dead fish, swept away by this stream if we don’t swim hard against it.

In the last century, the Scots have been repeatedly foolish over fish. In the twenties, we fished out the huge North Sea herring stocks. In the seventies, we did the same to the West Coast herring shoals. Since then, we have gone from landing a million tons of pelagic (cod, haddock, whiting, etc) to barely 150,000 tons each year, now worth £55m. If we let this happen a third time, especially if we allow another country to reap the benefit while thumbing their noses at the rules by which we hamstrung ourselves, then we’ll need a robust sense of humour to see the irony in such tragedy.

Posted in Commerce, Environment | Tagged | Leave a comment

Puffin Farewell Party

Posted on July 16, 2011 by davidsberry

Puffins Socialise on the May, framing Bass Rock & Berwick Law

I had originally intended to simply post the photo above to show how serene and restful the May was yesterday with many of their 45,000 inhabitants out socialising, as they do. With their ‘pufflings’ now grown and departing daily, this scene will soon be rare as the adults head out to sea for the winter.

But Scotland on Sunday today carries an article on ‘puffin therapy’ where visitors to Dervaig on Mull can be landed on one of the Treshnish Isles to commune with the 3,000 puffins there. As Dr Nick Baylis, a consultant psychologist and wellbeing expert, says: “As animals ourselves, we have a born need to be in the wild and if we don’t spend time in nature, it can make us ill. Communing with birds like puffins, is as important as sunshine or sleep or vitamin C. Puffin therapy is a great way to get that fix.”

Speaking from experience, I can thoroughly recommend a couple of hours among them—but you don’t need to trek over to Mull. Fifteen times as many of these utterly charming and comical locals live on the May, plus three times more on Craigleith, both served from North Berwick. But the short season is ending, so you’d better get on your bike/boat.

Puffin Productions present a scene from the film "Zulu"—WWII Radar Station above Holyman's Road, Isle of May

Posted in Education, Environment | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Furth of Forth

Posted on July 15, 2011 by davidsberry

The other sea-boot dropped today as UK Transport Minister Philip Hammond re-thought draconian plans to cut 18 coastguard stations to 3. The revision restores both Stornoway and Lerwick to the roster, along with Aberdeen and has caused much relief and no small celebration in the isles. But, whatever advantages technology undoubtedly offers through radar, depth sounders, GPS, etc, there is no substitute for professional local knowledge. Given that the total coastline of the Northern and Western Isles exceeds that of England & Wales where there are to be 7 stations retained (out of 13), this seems only sensible.

On the down side, we lost Tynemouth, Oban and Pentland in 2001 and now both Clyde (at Greenock) and Forth (at Fife Ness) stations are to be “phased out by 2015” i.e. closed. This is a real loss—and not just for local jobs. There are over a dozen lifeboat stations in Forth’s patch alone; together they handled 40% of all rescue callouts in 2010. The Forth is Scotland’s busiest waterway with tankers, cruise ships, ferries and RN ships and sundry bulk coal and container ships. The number of inshore fishing boats landing shellfish is growing each season. Then there are seasonal boat trips and a burgeoning number of recreational sailors, divers, surfers, jet-skis and general plouterers-about.

Admiralty Chart—Firth of Forth, Inchkeith to May Island. The blue (shallow) bits contain many submerged rocks

Everyone accepts that new technology has made marine traffic safer. But we’ve had light-houses, powered ships, foghorns and professional mariners for 200 years already. In that time, we have accumulated over 200 wrecks around the Forth alone. That we haven’t had many recently might be because HMC Fife Ness has been doing a bang-up job.

Our most recent wreck was the work of professionals who should have known better. HM Fishery Protection Vessel Switha miscalculated the shoals south of Inchkeith  in January 1980 and rammed Little Herwit Rock so hard the wreck was visible for the next quarter century. But when Fife Ness closes, the Forth will be handled from Aberdeen (the next station south is at Bridlington). Whether they’ve ever heard of Little Herwit Rock is a moot point. Local names are unknown 100 miles away and most inshore fishermen don’t know a Northing from a fishhead. How long will a loon o’ Aiberdeen need to get a map grid reference from a crackly radio that “a boat’s in trouble in-bye the Lattie Doocot”?

As I explained in an earlier post, our sea rescue service is a hybrid, with all-volunteer RNLI in the front line. With HM Coastguard as rescue co-ordinater to RAF Boulmer (Northumberland) and/or HMS Gannet (Ayrshire) for Sea King ASR lift and transport, it has worked seamlessly. It is the local knowledge of the HMC officers that knows to call out a RIB to effect rescue in shallow waters or hold off a helicopter from a yacht now hard against vertical SW cliffs of the May. The joint work among all four organisations relies on HMC’s hard-won local insight as much as their professional training.

Expecting Aberdeen to understand the complex rip tides that run through the Sound of Vatersay was always unreasonable. But is it any more reasonable to expect them to know one almost as bad that runs past the South Dog of Fidra, then over Brigs so shallow and jagged they’ll take the bottom out of anything but a RIB? In 2015, most people will not miss Fife Coastguard. But in the summer of 2016—guaranteed—someone in peril on the Forth will regret a local knowledgeable presence was ‘rationalised’ out of existence.

Posted in Community | Tagged | 1 Comment

The Press—Trusted;Investigative;Profitable: Pick Two

Posted on July 14, 2011 by davidsberry

A boatload of pious claptrap has been written and broadcast over the last few weeks as the rest of the media has been circling the wounded News Corp like sharks homing in on an enfeebled killer whale. I am no fan of Murdoch, his protegée, or any of their collective works but the number of people now clambered aboard this particular bandwagon makes me wonder how it can roll along so happily. It reminds me of playground games among seven-year-olds where everyone’s a cowboy and nobody wants to be the hapless indians.

Elbowing even the rest of the media aside is the UK Parliament where Miliband has finally found a statesman voice to outmaneuver Cameron. All parties are falling over one another to agree on something for the first time in living memory. Everyone knows phone hacking is wrong—whether illegal or not—and especially distasteful when it comes to people who, courtesy of the fickle finger of fate, are in the public eye and therefore of media interest.

But why were we so quick to condemn the News of the World when, by pushing investigative journalism into realms where others feared to tread, they had built a publication bought by millions. Despicable as their tactics might have become, was all they did so different from the paparazzi who intrude on ‘celebrities’ lives, or a flock of hacks flashing cameras into prison van windows as they arrive at court? Pick the average magazine out of the cacophony of colours on any news stand and it doesn’t have to be Hello or OK to boast of exclusives or secrets or intrusions into somebody’s life. Vile though it may have been, by the sleazy standards that we lay down our money for, NoW was the trendsetter, the top of the heap, even secretly admired.

Fifty years ago, in the button-down fifties, sex didn’t exist. At least, as far as the media was concerned, it deserved no mention and the trial over Lady Chatterley’s Lover was the scandal of the age. A dozen years before that, the heavily censored press printed just about whatever patriotic guff the government wanted (“carrots are good for eyesight” or “snoek and whalemeat are nutritious”) and yet we trusted the press then. Now, in an age where information is at overload, we have developed cynicism to a refined level. We are not alone with our red-tops: Bild Zeitung provides a very similar service in Germany. But our prurient, selective amnesia between morals and a good scandal make us stand out in our lack of trust in the very media we rely on for unbiased commentary.

This is not an exclusively European phenomenon: 60% of Americans do not trust their press but, because they have such a fragmented, provincial set of titles, that varies greatly around the country. Indians display a similar skepticism, although that may be hangover from the days when the British Raj ran the show. But the British still top the charts.

So are our press subcreatures of the moral universe and the NoW et al hacking scandal indicative of their morals? No. There are principled journalists out there who will get the story the old-fashioned way: through persistence, research, shoe leather and a little luck. But every editor from tin-pot county press to the Grauniad pushes them to look for the ‘angle’. Long gone are the deferential pieces from Victorian times when the press was both trusted and profitable. Setting speculative hares running is no longer frowned on. “Getting the dirt” is what it’s all about. “It is easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission” has become our press watchword.

And, since we buy the results by the bushel, who can we blame but ourselves?

Posted in Commerce | Tagged | Leave a comment