I have been a few times to Russia and found the place to be a mix of glory and hopelessness. People would moan about their circumstances on the one hand but on the other find happiness in far more interesting pastimes than we have here. With Russians you can talk about everything. They are intelligent, educated (mostly) and very welcoming people. But they just have one main flaw. They never question their leadership, even when that dipsomaniac Yeltsin was there. The foreign policy of Russia was holy to them - their politicians blindly revered and their actions always cheered. Russians will not see anything wrong in their government's recent behaviour towards Estonia, Ukraine or Georgia. They are, after all, Mother Russia, the centre of the earth and the only real country that matters. The Soviet Union might be dead, but the territories around it are still claimed by its people, especially those living there.
Stalin had a policy to keep the USSR together forever. One strand of that policy was to deport people to different parts of the USSR in an effort to bind the people to each other. There were Georgians in Siberia, Kazaks in Lithuania and Armenians in Moscow. But in the late 20th century and even more so now, it has made the ethnic groups more polarised than ever. What is the most striking point about it all is that most Russians do not bother to learn the language of the sovereign state they now find themselves in. A sizeable population of Russians can be found in the Baltic states, and they argue for the reconstitution of those independent nations to Russia, or the establishment of Russian as an official language.
Another strand of Stalin's policy was to make the manufacture of products more intra-national. So as soon as the USSR broke up, it became almost impossible even to build a television set there. The screen might be manufactured in Tadjikistan, the knobs and connections in Latvia, the internal parts in Uzbekistan and the frame in Novosibirsk before being put together in an assembly unit in Kaluga.
This blind-leading-the blind (or leading-the-blinded) attitude has caused untold ethnic problems in the Russian mindset, to the extent that they seem to blame Western Europe, NATO and the US for their isolation today. It has never occurred to them that in fact the EU has been trying to bring them closer, that NATO wants co-operation and the US would like to make Russia a main trading partner. Nor does it occur to them that they could have a far bigger and better say in world politics if they would stop acting so hurt by surrounding countries' alignment to the EU and similar bodies.
To cry wolf over Georgia was one thing. To then do it to Ukraine smacked of sour grapes, but Estonia, a fully paid-up member of the EU, was childish and spiteful. All over the repositioning of a Soviet war memorial. Estonia does not want to be reminded of its oppressed past. Its people are forward-thinking and independent-minded. But now the Russians are getting on a major EU, NATO, UN and Commonwealth country, Britain. The repercussions are enormous. I hope nothing too dramatic comes of the latest Russian toy-throwing rant, and I don't think it will. Everyone has too much to lose, but serious consequences could follow. Russia may have put its reliability as a provider of energy back ten years. Countries will think twice before importing gas, preferring to go to a less volatile supplier. Would Korea stop supplying cars to your country if its government was upset by something your leader did? Or even said?
As for the British government, it used to be quite resolute on these matters under Prime Ministers from Margaret Thatcher and back. Since then there has been a half-hearted response to diplomacy. But in this case you get the feeling that someone is going to stand up to the belligerence. Gordon Brown seems like the type of PM who won't take fools lightly. And David Miliband is a straight-talking Foreign Minister with a great deal of substance and resolve. Listening to him on BBC this weekend he never avoided a question with long-winded rhetoric, the tradition of the past. The Gordon Brown government has shown itself to be inspirational, capable and no-nonsense. I cannot see it rolling over to get its tummy tickled. And with the Germans suffering a similar incident this week, Russia has the ball in its court. However the Germans don't want to rock the boat because they're in too deeply with Russia already. France, meanwhile, has stuck its neck out and told them a thing or two about etiquette. Vive la France!
Furthermore, the Russians have delayed their reaction already 36 hours (at the time of writing) since a UK newspaper revealed that Mr Berezovsky was victim of an attempted assassination in the last few weeks. Boy, they must be feeling a little bruised...
And what will this response be? Either the Russians will totally close off their embassy in London which will mean it will be hard for UK nationals to go there and vice-versa, or they are right now going around all the Russian companies telling them to pull out of the UK or they will be classed as traitors.
UPDATE THURSDAY 19th JULY:
So the Russians' response is to expel four British diplomats... Come on Vlad, show us your nasty side - you know you want to ;-)
Tuesday 17 July 2007
Tuesday 10 July 2007
Sports mad Brits do it again
The UK is arguably the epicentre of sport spectatorship, but this weekend it took a giant leap towards being true. The men's final of Wimbledon, the Formula 1 Grand Prix at Silverstone and that annual anabolic carousel, the Tour de France, all took place in the country over the same weekend. An estimated four million people lined the streets of London and Kent as the cyclists flashed through at lightning speed, past the street parties, garden tea gatherings, village fêtes and town centre carnivals. Once they had all gone through (don't blink, or you'll miss it), people went back to their celebrations thinking "what was that all about?" But still, the longest annual sporting event had passed through their place. It was the best attended and most enthusiastically greeted "Grand Départ" ever according to the world press. Ken Livingstone said it would definitely come back to the UK within the next few years, and as it went so well he didn't think they'd have to lobby very hard. Imagine, even the race organiser was lost for words. It took a lot of courage for him to declare London the start of the 2007 race so soon after Paris lost the 2012 Olympic bid, and my hat goes off to him for doing it.
Up at Silverstone, the deafening noise of the cars was drowned out by the earth-shattering sounds of spectators' horns greeting the Finnish Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen. Another quarter-million people in and around the place going mad over yet another podium finish for Lewis Hamilton, F1's brightest young star.
Deep in London's leafy suburb of Wimbledon, the usually tepid crowd is whooping like Texans at a barbecue because a Brit, Jamie Murray, has won the mixed doubles with his Slavic partner Jelena Jankovic. It is the last game to be played there this year in the weird-looking roofless Centre Court.
That was just this weekend. But all through the summer Brits take to the stands at cricket matches, golf tournaments, rowing regattas, athletics meetings, even darts competitions. It seems that the British number one hobby is spectating at sports events. And who can blame them? They organise them so well. Take the London Marathon. Not only is it the most watched city marathon of the year, it is also the most oversubscribed. For the simple reason that Brits have a penchant for being a little mad. You see, they don't only take part in it to say they've run 26 miles or indeed because they want to keep fit. The British love to raise money for good causes. They dress up in Roman soldier outfits or as a camel with two people in the same suit, or they play a musical instrument as they run round London collecting sponsorship money for all types of charities, from leukaemia to a damaged church roof. And the locals come out to cheer these eccentric runners on. Marvellous.
In Belgium there is something called the "Dodentocht", or "March of the Dead" which takes place every year from Bornem. The aim is to go 100 kilometres around Flanders in 24 hours. Nice idea, except that many just do it for the hell of it. If it was in the UK, they would feel ashamed if they didn't do it for charity.
In the Summer Olympic Games over the last decade and a half, the highest amount of non-local spectators was British. This was one of the deciding factors in awarding the 2012 Games to London. And it deserves them. London was made for sport and sport was made for London. I for one can't wait for 2012, where I will make a prediction: the largest gathering of people in Europe was an estimated 5 million for the Pope's funeral in April 2005. Second was Princess Diana's funeral in 1997, which attracted 3 million. The largest gathering of people in a European city for a non-political event or a funeral was the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2003, with an estimated 1.5 million people on the streets. The most amount of tickets sold for an Olympic Games ever was 8.3 million in Atlanta in 1996. I am convinced these records will all be broken in 2012.
Up at Silverstone, the deafening noise of the cars was drowned out by the earth-shattering sounds of spectators' horns greeting the Finnish Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen. Another quarter-million people in and around the place going mad over yet another podium finish for Lewis Hamilton, F1's brightest young star.
Deep in London's leafy suburb of Wimbledon, the usually tepid crowd is whooping like Texans at a barbecue because a Brit, Jamie Murray, has won the mixed doubles with his Slavic partner Jelena Jankovic. It is the last game to be played there this year in the weird-looking roofless Centre Court.
That was just this weekend. But all through the summer Brits take to the stands at cricket matches, golf tournaments, rowing regattas, athletics meetings, even darts competitions. It seems that the British number one hobby is spectating at sports events. And who can blame them? They organise them so well. Take the London Marathon. Not only is it the most watched city marathon of the year, it is also the most oversubscribed. For the simple reason that Brits have a penchant for being a little mad. You see, they don't only take part in it to say they've run 26 miles or indeed because they want to keep fit. The British love to raise money for good causes. They dress up in Roman soldier outfits or as a camel with two people in the same suit, or they play a musical instrument as they run round London collecting sponsorship money for all types of charities, from leukaemia to a damaged church roof. And the locals come out to cheer these eccentric runners on. Marvellous.
In Belgium there is something called the "Dodentocht", or "March of the Dead" which takes place every year from Bornem. The aim is to go 100 kilometres around Flanders in 24 hours. Nice idea, except that many just do it for the hell of it. If it was in the UK, they would feel ashamed if they didn't do it for charity.
In the Summer Olympic Games over the last decade and a half, the highest amount of non-local spectators was British. This was one of the deciding factors in awarding the 2012 Games to London. And it deserves them. London was made for sport and sport was made for London. I for one can't wait for 2012, where I will make a prediction: the largest gathering of people in Europe was an estimated 5 million for the Pope's funeral in April 2005. Second was Princess Diana's funeral in 1997, which attracted 3 million. The largest gathering of people in a European city for a non-political event or a funeral was the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2003, with an estimated 1.5 million people on the streets. The most amount of tickets sold for an Olympic Games ever was 8.3 million in Atlanta in 1996. I am convinced these records will all be broken in 2012.
Thursday 5 July 2007
Is religion dying?
When a powerful thing is losing control, it usually acts out of character, like the Soviet Union. Or it gets more aggressive, like the National Union of Mineworkers under Mrs Thatcher. Or it simply looks out of place, like the Conservative Party of the late nineties. Religion seems to be all these at the moment.
For a start, many of its teachings are obsolete in the 21st Century, like eating pork. It was well known that the consumption of pork was a bad thing two or three thousand years ago because it carried a bacterium which gave humans ringworm, tapeworm or other nasty viruses. These days pork is safer than lamb, chicken or beef (which of the four farm animals mentioned has had least scandal-hit headlines recently?) but that doesn't seem to matter to some. They blindly carry on avoiding pork because it was written millennia ago by someone who did a good impression of being hotlined to the Almighty.
But considering we are living in realistic times where we have enough evidence to disprove all theories of "intelligent design", certain areas of the world insist on their theory being the only true fact. Consider for a moment that we were put here by an intelligent deity. Where did the deity come from? Who created the deity? The chicken and the egg question comes racing to mind. If we look at the facts as they stand, we live in a world where we can still marvel at the natural beauty around us. But how did it get there is the fundamental question we are still trying to answer. We have done well. In 60 years, we have gone from warmongering, argumentative politics through an unprecedented age of discovery and invention, to a position now where we can take a look at the flower pots in our garden from satellite photos on the Internet.
Throughout our history, technology was developed due to wars, but in the last 20 years we have left that behind and moved to a higher plane. We no longer need to advance our bellicose ambitions and research and development is carried out mainly by anoraks, geeks and techies in offices, labs and garages, in the hope a new vaccine, a new piece of software, or a new gadget can take the world by storm. A total change from the days of Von Braun and Einstein. But some have missed the point. We have unfortunately got rid of our own wars for them to be replaced by oppressive fear of attack from the disaffected fringes of one of the principle religions of history. And it is a shame because we should be living side-by-side. Instead we have allowed certain members of the human race to think we are against them and their religion.
On the opposite side of this, we have the wacky world of fundamental christianity. A recent article in the press reported that an edited version of the film "The Queen" was made specifically for airlines because three passengers complained about the use of the phrase "God bless you", which in their opinion was blasphemy. In Poland, some schools and universities are being singled out for not being catholic enough, because they haven't downgraded Darwin in favour of the Creation.
No wonder many young and dynamic Poles are packing up and moving to Germany, Britain or Ireland. Religion is trying to be noticed because it realises it is losing the debate. But it is doing it in the wrong way, from the contraception debate to abortion to exploding bombs to the censuring of innocent film scripts. Religion has played a part in keeping us controlled over the years, from retaining Latin as the sole language of the Church, to the Spanish Inquisition, to propaganda about contraception in developing countries.
We have trod a very rocky path to keep these religious people happy. We have bent over backwards to encourage them to play an active part in our society, but it seems that they prefer to stick with their own kind, they think they are the only ones who can be right and they take offence at being told others might just have a point. And that goes for conflicts the world over too, from Northern Ireland to Iraq to Vietnam to Afghanistan to Palestine/Israel: most wars are about ideology. It doesn't matter what ideology you have, but about winning. That's why technology used to favour religion, until the secular society took it off their hands in the late twentieth century.
If we look carefully at the facts though, we will see that even in the Bible Belt churches, young people there have a better sense of duty, a better mental state and a more stable life environment than ordinary non-believers. So we do need to weigh up the facts. The only thing people of religion need to remember is that the Abrahamic religions worship the same God, but their ideology is different. They need to take a step back from their urges to enforce hegemony and say with one voice, "I might not agree with you, but I will die with my boots on to protect your right to believe that."
They won't though, because they all think they're right!
For a start, many of its teachings are obsolete in the 21st Century, like eating pork. It was well known that the consumption of pork was a bad thing two or three thousand years ago because it carried a bacterium which gave humans ringworm, tapeworm or other nasty viruses. These days pork is safer than lamb, chicken or beef (which of the four farm animals mentioned has had least scandal-hit headlines recently?) but that doesn't seem to matter to some. They blindly carry on avoiding pork because it was written millennia ago by someone who did a good impression of being hotlined to the Almighty.
But considering we are living in realistic times where we have enough evidence to disprove all theories of "intelligent design", certain areas of the world insist on their theory being the only true fact. Consider for a moment that we were put here by an intelligent deity. Where did the deity come from? Who created the deity? The chicken and the egg question comes racing to mind. If we look at the facts as they stand, we live in a world where we can still marvel at the natural beauty around us. But how did it get there is the fundamental question we are still trying to answer. We have done well. In 60 years, we have gone from warmongering, argumentative politics through an unprecedented age of discovery and invention, to a position now where we can take a look at the flower pots in our garden from satellite photos on the Internet.
Throughout our history, technology was developed due to wars, but in the last 20 years we have left that behind and moved to a higher plane. We no longer need to advance our bellicose ambitions and research and development is carried out mainly by anoraks, geeks and techies in offices, labs and garages, in the hope a new vaccine, a new piece of software, or a new gadget can take the world by storm. A total change from the days of Von Braun and Einstein. But some have missed the point. We have unfortunately got rid of our own wars for them to be replaced by oppressive fear of attack from the disaffected fringes of one of the principle religions of history. And it is a shame because we should be living side-by-side. Instead we have allowed certain members of the human race to think we are against them and their religion.
On the opposite side of this, we have the wacky world of fundamental christianity. A recent article in the press reported that an edited version of the film "The Queen" was made specifically for airlines because three passengers complained about the use of the phrase "God bless you", which in their opinion was blasphemy. In Poland, some schools and universities are being singled out for not being catholic enough, because they haven't downgraded Darwin in favour of the Creation.
No wonder many young and dynamic Poles are packing up and moving to Germany, Britain or Ireland. Religion is trying to be noticed because it realises it is losing the debate. But it is doing it in the wrong way, from the contraception debate to abortion to exploding bombs to the censuring of innocent film scripts. Religion has played a part in keeping us controlled over the years, from retaining Latin as the sole language of the Church, to the Spanish Inquisition, to propaganda about contraception in developing countries.
We have trod a very rocky path to keep these religious people happy. We have bent over backwards to encourage them to play an active part in our society, but it seems that they prefer to stick with their own kind, they think they are the only ones who can be right and they take offence at being told others might just have a point. And that goes for conflicts the world over too, from Northern Ireland to Iraq to Vietnam to Afghanistan to Palestine/Israel: most wars are about ideology. It doesn't matter what ideology you have, but about winning. That's why technology used to favour religion, until the secular society took it off their hands in the late twentieth century.
If we look carefully at the facts though, we will see that even in the Bible Belt churches, young people there have a better sense of duty, a better mental state and a more stable life environment than ordinary non-believers. So we do need to weigh up the facts. The only thing people of religion need to remember is that the Abrahamic religions worship the same God, but their ideology is different. They need to take a step back from their urges to enforce hegemony and say with one voice, "I might not agree with you, but I will die with my boots on to protect your right to believe that."
They won't though, because they all think they're right!
Wednesday 4 July 2007
Ten reasons to love the BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation has been a part of the national fabric for many years now, and since her inception has withstood not only the test of time, but has carried out her duties with magnificence and ultra-professionalism. She is the broadcaster many national television companies try to emulate. The one which comes closest, in my opinion, is the VRT of the Dutch-speaking Belgian community. So what has the BBC given us?
- She was the number one morale booster in the Second World War, providing radio broadcasts to the Allied Forces overseas as well as assuring Charles De Gaulle could send radio messages back to France from his HQ in London. She remained on air all through the dark days of the Blitz while all around was being bombed, and she (probably) was the main reason why Londoners kept their spirits high, providing entertaining shows as well as important radio transmissions on the situation as it stood. But she turned disastrous events like the Dunkirk withdrawal into spectacular acts of bravery by stressing the audacity of the shippers who crossed into enemy territory to collect the defeated men.
- She actually started experimental TV broadcasting before the Second World War but stopped at the outbreak of war as it was feared the transmissions would interfere with other signals and make it easier for the enemy to use the signal as a guide. A Mickey Mouse special was on at the time the signal was abandoned and one of the first programmes to be transmitted when TV was resumed in June 1946 was that very same feature. But first up came Jasmine Bligh, who apparently said, "Good afternoon everybody, do you remember me?" Another show a little later in that period featured an announcer, Leslie Mitchell, who, referring to the war, said, "As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted..."
- Discovery, development and execution of young talent has always been the main reason the BBC has stayed in touch with the modern world and yet it has some of the oldest traditions the the media world, for example the BBC Proms season, the largest classical music festival in the world. As for young talent, she has never ceased to let the most up-to-date screenwriters, playwrights, comedians, radio broadcasters and TV presenters have a free hand in their airtime. One of the earliest, and most celebrated, would be the Goon Show which ran for nine years from 1951. It was even exported to NBC in the USA. From that one show, fifty years of comedy was born which tried to copy it, outdo it, or evolve from it. Michael Bentine, Harry Secombe, Peter Sellars and Spike Milligan were the comedians behind the Goon Show and the successors to that show would be Monty Python, the Pink Panther, Not The Nine O'Clock News, and many others.
- Bringing great events to our homes is a talent only the BBC knows how to do. When I watch coverage of historical occasions, sports tournaments or breaking news on other channels, there is often that little something missing: continuity. On the BBC, it seems to glide from one place to the next as though it was an effortless act of logic. But in fact, it is simply because of the meticulous planning done by the backroom staff. Some of the most memorable events have been shown live on the BBC over the years, for which we don't give enough thanks: the BBC was the first broadcaster in Afghanistan after the recapturing of Kabul; the Queen's coronation was the first major live broadcast anywhere; and guess who refused to leave Belgrade when the Kosovo war broke out?
- Major sporting events have been the greatest pull over the years, none more so than the popularisation of previously obscure sports like snooker, golf and darts. The BBC has been at every Olympic Games since they were first reported on; she has been at Wimbledon every year without fail; she has been the champion of the smaller event too, bringing us rowing, curling, decathlon and making household names out of Sir Steve Redgrave, Rhona Martin and Daley Thompson.
- She has played a part in the intrigue of modern politics, never afraid to ask difficult questions, never avoiding to interrogate politicians until they succumbed. On one famous occasion just before the general election of 1997, Jeremy Paxman, also known as The Rottweiler, asked the then prisons minister Michael Howard the same question thirteen times on TV, each time receiving an evasive reply. The BBC has been known to get on the nerves of US presidents, who are often quizzed politely by American press and television journalists. However, the fundamental reason behind it all is that she assures us that the questions the general public would most like answered are put to the interviewee.
- She has supported some untried talent and given it airtime, like allowing John Peel to play unknown music on his radio show http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peel and bringing some of the Edinburgh Festival discoveries to wider audiences. Some of those are: Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Steve Coogan and Emma Thompson. Many performers are found through the Cambridge University Footlights - probably the greatest talent factory in the world. To name but a few, Sir David Frost, Clive James, Ben Miller, Eric Idle and Griff Rhys Jones, and most on the list above from the Edinburgh Fringe.
- She is paid for by, and solely by, the British people, through a licence fee which costs about £120 per year. That's TEN POUNDS A MONTH! And people still complain... But complaints are also aired on the BBC. Points of View, a weekly programme airing people's grievances, gives us an insight into the kind of letters and emails she receives from her viewers and listeners.
- She runs the most visited website in the world which is not a search engine or an online email provider. The ones above her are Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft affiliates. In fact, she has TWO entries in the top ten - her news website and her homepage. And what a website it is. You can listen to radio on there and see the news, like any other serious broadcaster. But you can also learn languages, read about history, gardening, astronomy, travel, literature, finance, sport, weather, education, science, health, technology and anything else you can think of.
- Her efforts over the years have brought us some of the most memorable television. I could name them all, but here are a few:
BBC Wildlife: The BBC has the largest collection of wildlife and nature footage at her offices in Bristol, and along with the unforgettable voice of Sir David Attenborough, has made us delight in the habits of the meerkats, shed a tear for the solitude of the polar bear, wonder at the meticulousness of the bird of paradise and bring into our homes the phenomena of our planet.
BBC News: Every hour of the day someone somewhere is working on an article for BBC News online, filming for a news report or editing a documentary. She has more reporters worldwide than any other broadcaster and is to be found in more homes and hotel rooms than all the rest.
BBC Films: Billy Elliot, Wild About Harry, My Summer Of Love, Match Point, Mrs Henderson Presents... Need I say more???
BBC Drama: Silent Witness, Life On Mars, Jane Eyre, Rome, Spooks, Pride and Prejudice, Bleak House, Doctor Who?, The Virgin Queen, Waking The Dead... ditto.
BBC Personalities: John Motson (football commentator), Gary Lineker (broadcaster and ex-footballer), Terry Wogan (broadcaster, radio DJ, Eurovision presenter), John Simpson (news reporter), Alan Johnston (news correspondent recently released from Gaza), Daniel Craig (now James Bond), James Nesbitt (accomplished actor) Dame Judi Dench (Oscar-winning actress), Catherine Tate (comedian), Anne Robinson (dangerous primetime quiz redhead), and I'm sure I could sit here until morning writing more but I won't.
Simply because if you don't know the BBC, you simply haven't lived!
Monday 2 July 2007
Should Rome have a monopoly on beatification?
Yesterday Princess Diana would have become 46 years of age but for the tragic events of 31st August 1997, which brought speechlessness to usually stoic BBC newsreaders, a lump to the throat of the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, a silent response from the Royal Family and a mass outpouring of grief from the general public. Ordinary people flew around the world to be at her funeral, world leaders sat among charity workers and hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets in an unprecedented (and unrepeatable) act of togetherness which made London the temporary epicentre of the world.
I was there too. All night. How could I miss such an event if I was only half an hour away by train?
I remember it well, and I don't regret one sleepless second of it. I met two friends of mine, Marketa from the Czech Republic and Anne from France and together we had a hot drink at one of the plethora of cafés which stayed open to feed the world the night before. It was one of the only times in history where London was crimeless, apart from the odd pickpocket and shameless flower peddlar. By midnight the streets looked like Disney had recreated a life-size sellout car-free London themepark - in London itself. We walked around bewondering the immensity of it all, the sheer numbers camping out along the streets, in the parks, in doorways of offices.
A little after, we found ourselves outside the HQ itself: Buckingham Palace. It was here that we chose to spend the remainder of the night. When we arrived there were relatively few people, and we chose to sit beside a musician strumming ballads on his guitar. Let us not forget, that week had been a week where most people in the city had not really gone to work. They mostly couldn't face it. But there were more people in the capital that night than at any time of the working week. But here we were quite alone at the Victoria Memorial. As the playing went on, more and more people came to join, sing along, sway, hold hands or simply listen. By about 2, we must have numbered sixty or more. The pagans celebrate the circle as a symbol of protection, a forcefield against the outside evil forces. And there we were on the greatest circle of them all, emotionally vulnerable but as a group indestructable. We all shared our food and drink together like some new form of communion. I brought a bottle of Becherovka to keep the chill away, Marketa had some sandwiches with her and Anne had a neat little picnic. I had some tortilla española, Polish vodka, North African unleavened bread and Hungarian salami from the assorted members of the human race who, just for that night, were together as they would never be again.
We sang "Candle In The Wind" and other soulful songs when the music stopped for a second. Someone (it might even have been me) recommended singing the National Anthem. If I remember rightly, there was no hesitation. Someone started us off and then the lot of us rose to our feet and belted it out twice. I was impressed how many foreigners knew the words. As we were nearing the end of the Anthem, a light came on in the Palace. I will never forget that moment. It felt as if Her Majesty the Queen herself were saying, "Don't worry, I'm here." Of course, it might have just been a security guard checking the rooms or the Queen Mother getting up to adjust her colostomy bag, or the Duke of Edinburgh looking for his shotgun, but at the time it felt like She was giving us her blessing.
The time passed quickly and the sun soon started to make its arrival imminent. It was going to be a glorious high summer morning. The puddles from recent rain had vanished and the constant sound of all of London's humanity murmuring had reduced to a dawn lull. It was then that we headed off to Hyde Park, where we wanted to watch the funeral on the large screens the BBC had, in her time-honoured fashion, selflessly placed in various open spaces around the city. I have so much to thank the BBC for over the years, but that is for a future article. The three of us, who had been unusually quiet overnight, headed off hurriedly to acquire a good position somewhere near the biggest screen in London.
I thought we would be too late, but we alloted ourselves a prime place a hundred metres back from the screen, and BBC News had already started broadcasting there to keep us occupied while we awaited what I would quite rationally and realistically call the world's greatest funeral since Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi. And maybe including his too. People from the sixties talk about the Kennedy Moment (that everyone knows what they were doing when they heard JFK was assassinated), well I'm sure the Diana Moment surpassed even that. This was a woman who was even known by some remote tribes of the rain forests, who even got airtime on North Korean television (North Korean TV is well known for providing news rather belatedly, and showed a thirty-minute highlights programme of the Football World Cup in 1998 two months after the event - if the BBC did that there would be a lot of letters!).
We sat there around the other people sharing more food out watching coverage of the early morning events, pundits and correspondents telling us what others were doing around the world, famous people reminiscing about their moments with Diana, or charity workers talking about her visits, presenters informing us of the schedule. We watched as the gentry filed into Westminster Abbey and the world's leaders arrived with their escorts and bodyguards. At exactly the right time, the soldiers opened the gates and out came the gun carriage, normally associated with great war leaders, like Churchill, Nelson or Wellington, this time paradoxically for a princess of peace.
Behind her came the royal accompaniment. Brave boys William and Harry looking like men far before their time, bemused, bewildered, betrayed; her brother Earl Spencer hardly able to walk, dignified with his head held high; Prince Charles looking like a startled fish out of water; the Duke of Edinburgh completing the lineup. It was like an identification parade at a police station. Which one of these three men was the perpetrator? Apparently Prince Charles had spent the week roaming around the hills of Scotland feeling full of guilt and self-recrimination. The two boys had been obviously protected from the press because they had not been seen all week. Earl Spencer had occupied himself with the banalities of the administration.
As they entered into the London streets, a small group of hysterical individuals started wailing and throwing rose petals at the coffin. We started to wonder if that was going to be the precedent, but fortunately the rest passed off with dignity. As they progressed along towards Hyde Park, the thousands of people in the vicinity of the southern side of the space rushed towards the roadside to catch a glimpse of her passing. We three followed the wave towards the road barriers, the only empty area of streetside barricades until we arrived en masse. This was the only, rarest and strangest moment of excitement we had had in the fifteen hours we had been in London. We were all, without exception, there to see her. The only time I saw the Princess of Wales was in a coffin. I barely looked at the others, transfixed by her alone, even after death. The feeling of seeing her was enough fulfillment and we all processed back to our abandoned picnic places, rucksacks and foldable chairs, which were, of course, all still there, untouched. That was a day when even the thieves took a day off.
As she approached the final part of her journey to the Abbey, the bell of the tower was rung a pre-calculated number of times. Precisely upon the final stroke of the bell, the military stopped at the entrance. It was one of a string of impressive events of that day. Not least what was to happen next. The music which accompanied her up the aisle of the Abbey was so impressive, repressive, oppressive, that it was the moment even the stoniest of hearts let their tears flow. I was losing litres through my eyes and was not ashamed. Most of the funeral was a blur of hypocritical religious mumbo-jumbo which the princess would have had to accept simply because it was her funeral.
Then Sir Elton John stepped up to the piano and sang "Candle In The Wind", a song originally dedicated to Marilyn Monroe but rather controversially re-worded for Diana. Most people thought "Your Song" to be more appropriate, including the proxy-assassins at the tabloid newspapers, as that was genuinely one of her favourite songs and the reason why Sir Elton was there at all.
Earl Spencer climbed the stairs of the pulpit and began his eulogy, perhaps in time seen as the defining moment of the day and which made the shortlist of the Guardian's Great Speeches of the Twentieth Century, where he joins a line-up of great men and women like Sir Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King and Jawaharlal Nehru.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatspeeches/story/0,,2060134,00.html
As his pained words flowed out, rising above his shaken voice, the world sat transfixed at the eloquence, simplicity and raw power of his speech. He did not hold in his grief. He spoke for everyone and did not revert to hidden messages. And then people were no longer sitting. They were standing all over London, applauding. The growing applause dopplered its way towards the doors of the Abbey and then inside that formal, stuffy sanctum where it brought dignitaries out of protocol, also clapping probably embarrassed to be seen not to, just how Diana would have liked it. Although the rest of the funeral was a typical royal ceremony, those moments were unforgettable. As the service finished, people drifted back to normality, back to the pubs, cafés and railway stations. Reality set in, paradoxically bringing the solidarity shown before crashing to the ground as cars, buses, even white vans, reclaimed their positions as the city's chief noisemakers.
By early afternoon, reality had hit hardest on my own energy levels, artificially pumped up for that most surreal night and saddest of mornings. We three went our separate ways and I took one of the extra trains provided to carry British citizens out of London, dawdled aimlessly in a homeward direction and collapsed in my bed, despite the raging sunshine outside. I slept in a way I had not been able to all week - finally in the most peaceful of circumstances.
You are now wondering why I chose that title. It was playing on my mind yesterday while watching the concert for Diana at Wembley Stadium, the home of modern folklore. Despite the film "The Queen", which did no favours to Diana and virtually turned her into a manic depressive, manipulative little maid, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. She surely became depressed and fairly unpopular in The House due to how she was treated, although I don't think she did herself many favours. I am sure she was tricked into marrying Charles, whom she loved dearly despite his lack of amorous advances. Once she had produced an heir, a handsome successor, she was surplus to requirements, although she could have been a much more admired figure in the royal household if she had Played The Game. But that wasn't her style. She hated all the formalities and protocols. When she went on holiday to Klosters with Sarah Ferguson and the four children once, the tabloid press lambasted her and especially "Fergie" for "giggling like schoolgirls" and behaving like ordinary people, not super-royals. What did they expect? That they would ski in golden boots and go to bed at nine?
And for this reason I believe we have seen exactly how a Messiah could have been manufactured for us 2000 years ago. When you see the photos of Diana shaking hands with leprosy sufferers, AIDS patients, terminally ill children; when she walks in landmine clearance zones, visits youth theatres, takes her boys to a theme park and makes them queue up with the rest, this rings a very familiar bell. It is now, in her death, that she is the humble member of the royalty who was one of the people. All the television documentary witnesses, like the parents of terminally ill patients, right up to ex-presidents, queued up to tell of how she touched their lives so readily, how she was the true divinity which saved their hospital from closing, or which got crucial publicity for their plight in the media, or which lit up the face of a dying boy. Didn't some Jewish man do similar things two thousand years before?
For People's Princess read King of the Jews, for Queen of Hearts, read Lamb of God. We are getting ourselves a secular saint. Would this be the example of how the story of Jesus Christ was purveyed, embellished with a few miracles and urban myths? Don't forget, in those days, in order to Big Someone Up, they had to have performed some mighty things. That meant even if they were bending reality, like being able to walk on water, knowing where a huge shoal of fish was and performing life-saving surgery on your friend's daughter, this meant the person was great.
I see nothing wrong in making legends out of mere mortals, but I see a great moral corruption in turning the tabloid press (who never gave her a moment's peace) into the pharisees, the royal biographers as the Gospel writers, Britain into Judea, and the individuals she met into the Lazaruses, lepers and disciples. But this seems to be what is happening. A new phase in the rehabilitation, a beatification from the masses. I truly believe there are individuals who deserve special status in our respect, who we should try to emulate, but we are also in danger of allowing ourselves to be thrust back into a new religion just as we are finally rejecting them.
I was there too. All night. How could I miss such an event if I was only half an hour away by train?
I remember it well, and I don't regret one sleepless second of it. I met two friends of mine, Marketa from the Czech Republic and Anne from France and together we had a hot drink at one of the plethora of cafés which stayed open to feed the world the night before. It was one of the only times in history where London was crimeless, apart from the odd pickpocket and shameless flower peddlar. By midnight the streets looked like Disney had recreated a life-size sellout car-free London themepark - in London itself. We walked around bewondering the immensity of it all, the sheer numbers camping out along the streets, in the parks, in doorways of offices.
A little after, we found ourselves outside the HQ itself: Buckingham Palace. It was here that we chose to spend the remainder of the night. When we arrived there were relatively few people, and we chose to sit beside a musician strumming ballads on his guitar. Let us not forget, that week had been a week where most people in the city had not really gone to work. They mostly couldn't face it. But there were more people in the capital that night than at any time of the working week. But here we were quite alone at the Victoria Memorial. As the playing went on, more and more people came to join, sing along, sway, hold hands or simply listen. By about 2, we must have numbered sixty or more. The pagans celebrate the circle as a symbol of protection, a forcefield against the outside evil forces. And there we were on the greatest circle of them all, emotionally vulnerable but as a group indestructable. We all shared our food and drink together like some new form of communion. I brought a bottle of Becherovka to keep the chill away, Marketa had some sandwiches with her and Anne had a neat little picnic. I had some tortilla española, Polish vodka, North African unleavened bread and Hungarian salami from the assorted members of the human race who, just for that night, were together as they would never be again.
We sang "Candle In The Wind" and other soulful songs when the music stopped for a second. Someone (it might even have been me) recommended singing the National Anthem. If I remember rightly, there was no hesitation. Someone started us off and then the lot of us rose to our feet and belted it out twice. I was impressed how many foreigners knew the words. As we were nearing the end of the Anthem, a light came on in the Palace. I will never forget that moment. It felt as if Her Majesty the Queen herself were saying, "Don't worry, I'm here." Of course, it might have just been a security guard checking the rooms or the Queen Mother getting up to adjust her colostomy bag, or the Duke of Edinburgh looking for his shotgun, but at the time it felt like She was giving us her blessing.
The time passed quickly and the sun soon started to make its arrival imminent. It was going to be a glorious high summer morning. The puddles from recent rain had vanished and the constant sound of all of London's humanity murmuring had reduced to a dawn lull. It was then that we headed off to Hyde Park, where we wanted to watch the funeral on the large screens the BBC had, in her time-honoured fashion, selflessly placed in various open spaces around the city. I have so much to thank the BBC for over the years, but that is for a future article. The three of us, who had been unusually quiet overnight, headed off hurriedly to acquire a good position somewhere near the biggest screen in London.
I thought we would be too late, but we alloted ourselves a prime place a hundred metres back from the screen, and BBC News had already started broadcasting there to keep us occupied while we awaited what I would quite rationally and realistically call the world's greatest funeral since Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi. And maybe including his too. People from the sixties talk about the Kennedy Moment (that everyone knows what they were doing when they heard JFK was assassinated), well I'm sure the Diana Moment surpassed even that. This was a woman who was even known by some remote tribes of the rain forests, who even got airtime on North Korean television (North Korean TV is well known for providing news rather belatedly, and showed a thirty-minute highlights programme of the Football World Cup in 1998 two months after the event - if the BBC did that there would be a lot of letters!).
We sat there around the other people sharing more food out watching coverage of the early morning events, pundits and correspondents telling us what others were doing around the world, famous people reminiscing about their moments with Diana, or charity workers talking about her visits, presenters informing us of the schedule. We watched as the gentry filed into Westminster Abbey and the world's leaders arrived with their escorts and bodyguards. At exactly the right time, the soldiers opened the gates and out came the gun carriage, normally associated with great war leaders, like Churchill, Nelson or Wellington, this time paradoxically for a princess of peace.
Behind her came the royal accompaniment. Brave boys William and Harry looking like men far before their time, bemused, bewildered, betrayed; her brother Earl Spencer hardly able to walk, dignified with his head held high; Prince Charles looking like a startled fish out of water; the Duke of Edinburgh completing the lineup. It was like an identification parade at a police station. Which one of these three men was the perpetrator? Apparently Prince Charles had spent the week roaming around the hills of Scotland feeling full of guilt and self-recrimination. The two boys had been obviously protected from the press because they had not been seen all week. Earl Spencer had occupied himself with the banalities of the administration.
As they entered into the London streets, a small group of hysterical individuals started wailing and throwing rose petals at the coffin. We started to wonder if that was going to be the precedent, but fortunately the rest passed off with dignity. As they progressed along towards Hyde Park, the thousands of people in the vicinity of the southern side of the space rushed towards the roadside to catch a glimpse of her passing. We three followed the wave towards the road barriers, the only empty area of streetside barricades until we arrived en masse. This was the only, rarest and strangest moment of excitement we had had in the fifteen hours we had been in London. We were all, without exception, there to see her. The only time I saw the Princess of Wales was in a coffin. I barely looked at the others, transfixed by her alone, even after death. The feeling of seeing her was enough fulfillment and we all processed back to our abandoned picnic places, rucksacks and foldable chairs, which were, of course, all still there, untouched. That was a day when even the thieves took a day off.
As she approached the final part of her journey to the Abbey, the bell of the tower was rung a pre-calculated number of times. Precisely upon the final stroke of the bell, the military stopped at the entrance. It was one of a string of impressive events of that day. Not least what was to happen next. The music which accompanied her up the aisle of the Abbey was so impressive, repressive, oppressive, that it was the moment even the stoniest of hearts let their tears flow. I was losing litres through my eyes and was not ashamed. Most of the funeral was a blur of hypocritical religious mumbo-jumbo which the princess would have had to accept simply because it was her funeral.
Then Sir Elton John stepped up to the piano and sang "Candle In The Wind", a song originally dedicated to Marilyn Monroe but rather controversially re-worded for Diana. Most people thought "Your Song" to be more appropriate, including the proxy-assassins at the tabloid newspapers, as that was genuinely one of her favourite songs and the reason why Sir Elton was there at all.
Earl Spencer climbed the stairs of the pulpit and began his eulogy, perhaps in time seen as the defining moment of the day and which made the shortlist of the Guardian's Great Speeches of the Twentieth Century, where he joins a line-up of great men and women like Sir Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King and Jawaharlal Nehru.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatspeeches/story/0,,2060134,00.html
As his pained words flowed out, rising above his shaken voice, the world sat transfixed at the eloquence, simplicity and raw power of his speech. He did not hold in his grief. He spoke for everyone and did not revert to hidden messages. And then people were no longer sitting. They were standing all over London, applauding. The growing applause dopplered its way towards the doors of the Abbey and then inside that formal, stuffy sanctum where it brought dignitaries out of protocol, also clapping probably embarrassed to be seen not to, just how Diana would have liked it. Although the rest of the funeral was a typical royal ceremony, those moments were unforgettable. As the service finished, people drifted back to normality, back to the pubs, cafés and railway stations. Reality set in, paradoxically bringing the solidarity shown before crashing to the ground as cars, buses, even white vans, reclaimed their positions as the city's chief noisemakers.
By early afternoon, reality had hit hardest on my own energy levels, artificially pumped up for that most surreal night and saddest of mornings. We three went our separate ways and I took one of the extra trains provided to carry British citizens out of London, dawdled aimlessly in a homeward direction and collapsed in my bed, despite the raging sunshine outside. I slept in a way I had not been able to all week - finally in the most peaceful of circumstances.
You are now wondering why I chose that title. It was playing on my mind yesterday while watching the concert for Diana at Wembley Stadium, the home of modern folklore. Despite the film "The Queen", which did no favours to Diana and virtually turned her into a manic depressive, manipulative little maid, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. She surely became depressed and fairly unpopular in The House due to how she was treated, although I don't think she did herself many favours. I am sure she was tricked into marrying Charles, whom she loved dearly despite his lack of amorous advances. Once she had produced an heir, a handsome successor, she was surplus to requirements, although she could have been a much more admired figure in the royal household if she had Played The Game. But that wasn't her style. She hated all the formalities and protocols. When she went on holiday to Klosters with Sarah Ferguson and the four children once, the tabloid press lambasted her and especially "Fergie" for "giggling like schoolgirls" and behaving like ordinary people, not super-royals. What did they expect? That they would ski in golden boots and go to bed at nine?
And for this reason I believe we have seen exactly how a Messiah could have been manufactured for us 2000 years ago. When you see the photos of Diana shaking hands with leprosy sufferers, AIDS patients, terminally ill children; when she walks in landmine clearance zones, visits youth theatres, takes her boys to a theme park and makes them queue up with the rest, this rings a very familiar bell. It is now, in her death, that she is the humble member of the royalty who was one of the people. All the television documentary witnesses, like the parents of terminally ill patients, right up to ex-presidents, queued up to tell of how she touched their lives so readily, how she was the true divinity which saved their hospital from closing, or which got crucial publicity for their plight in the media, or which lit up the face of a dying boy. Didn't some Jewish man do similar things two thousand years before?
For People's Princess read King of the Jews, for Queen of Hearts, read Lamb of God. We are getting ourselves a secular saint. Would this be the example of how the story of Jesus Christ was purveyed, embellished with a few miracles and urban myths? Don't forget, in those days, in order to Big Someone Up, they had to have performed some mighty things. That meant even if they were bending reality, like being able to walk on water, knowing where a huge shoal of fish was and performing life-saving surgery on your friend's daughter, this meant the person was great.
I see nothing wrong in making legends out of mere mortals, but I see a great moral corruption in turning the tabloid press (who never gave her a moment's peace) into the pharisees, the royal biographers as the Gospel writers, Britain into Judea, and the individuals she met into the Lazaruses, lepers and disciples. But this seems to be what is happening. A new phase in the rehabilitation, a beatification from the masses. I truly believe there are individuals who deserve special status in our respect, who we should try to emulate, but we are also in danger of allowing ourselves to be thrust back into a new religion just as we are finally rejecting them.
Sunday 1 July 2007
The British tabloid press: 50 years of mediocrity
It will be no surprise to read that British tabloid news is getting dumber. And dumber.
Recent evidence shows that one paper (I refuse to add the prefix "news") has devoted more webspace to Big Brother than to the recent terrorist events in London and Glasgow. Maybe they're right - slamming a burning car into a provincial airport is not the height of professional terrorism, but it seems to me a trifle more important than whether Attention Seeking Clown No 1 has succeeded in beating Attention Seeking Clown No 2 in the "bedding" of Annoyingly Unsophisticated Airhead No 1.
However, journalists will try any kind of questioning to get a sensational article printed. Take Wimbledon, for instance. The finest tournament in tennis seems to be suffering from over-excited middle-aged pervo-papas looking for the Ultimate Article On Underwear. I read in the Guardian that after Justine Hénin had won her match on Centre Court against Ms Vesnina, she was asked "apart from tennis, do you have any special talents or party tricks when you're not on court?" She must have been utterly flummoxed! Could you imagine, you go to Paris where they ask about your skills and flair. Florida, where they bring up your ranking, your future plans and your ability to stay in the top positions. Melbourne, where they ask intelligent questions on your style. Then you land in London and you're asked in the press conference whether you're quizzed on whether you can sing Donna Summer tunes at karaoke or walk with 5 tennis balls between your legs.
And poor Tatiana Golovin, asked ten times about her underwear. She only got twelve questions. One journalist even said he'd like a pair. Do these mercenaries know no shame? I have always found tennis players to be far more courteous, more down-to-earth than the average footballer or singer, but these savages who have been given the privilege of asking questions for a nation seem to feel they can bully tennis players into notoriety by seeking a reaction. What did they hope? That is easy to answer. If the tennis player cracked and got upset, there would be a national vilification and even scandalisation including bringing up past misdemeanours, usually about the time they threw their racquet away in despair (a sure sign of a loose wire), and if the tennis player replied politely yet confusedly to the question, they would appear the next day as the New Kournikova on the back pages, depending on what Thierry Henry was doing.
This is by no means a new thing. The catalogue of missed chances and lack of scruples by the tabloid press has been around for decades, but just a lot bigger now that competition is so deadly. Why question a famous person on the sensitive subjects when answering the question for them in a roundabout way can deliver so much more juicy headlines? Why make a fuss over them when you can tear their career apart? A soft approach has always worked far better than an embarrassing torrent of low-grade interrogation ever will.
Take Sir David Frost, who has interviewed just about everyone who ever mattered. He is still on speaking terms with most of them despite being a ruthless questioner. Why? Because he knows how to get information from people. Take his recent Al Jazeera interview with Tony Blair. He even made the former PM admit Iraq was a failure. Simply by being an intelligent, polite and erudite speaker. The only way the tabloids get this type of info is by paying extraordinary amounts of money. Otherwise they would be out of ideas.
A recommendation to tabloid editors: raise your intelligence levels, or you risk being blamed for normalising taboos and reducing intelligent debate to its lowest form - bigoted, self-righteous and totally lacking in morals.
Recent evidence shows that one paper (I refuse to add the prefix "news") has devoted more webspace to Big Brother than to the recent terrorist events in London and Glasgow. Maybe they're right - slamming a burning car into a provincial airport is not the height of professional terrorism, but it seems to me a trifle more important than whether Attention Seeking Clown No 1 has succeeded in beating Attention Seeking Clown No 2 in the "bedding" of Annoyingly Unsophisticated Airhead No 1.
However, journalists will try any kind of questioning to get a sensational article printed. Take Wimbledon, for instance. The finest tournament in tennis seems to be suffering from over-excited middle-aged pervo-papas looking for the Ultimate Article On Underwear. I read in the Guardian that after Justine Hénin had won her match on Centre Court against Ms Vesnina, she was asked "apart from tennis, do you have any special talents or party tricks when you're not on court?" She must have been utterly flummoxed! Could you imagine, you go to Paris where they ask about your skills and flair. Florida, where they bring up your ranking, your future plans and your ability to stay in the top positions. Melbourne, where they ask intelligent questions on your style. Then you land in London and you're asked in the press conference whether you're quizzed on whether you can sing Donna Summer tunes at karaoke or walk with 5 tennis balls between your legs.
And poor Tatiana Golovin, asked ten times about her underwear. She only got twelve questions. One journalist even said he'd like a pair. Do these mercenaries know no shame? I have always found tennis players to be far more courteous, more down-to-earth than the average footballer or singer, but these savages who have been given the privilege of asking questions for a nation seem to feel they can bully tennis players into notoriety by seeking a reaction. What did they hope? That is easy to answer. If the tennis player cracked and got upset, there would be a national vilification and even scandalisation including bringing up past misdemeanours, usually about the time they threw their racquet away in despair (a sure sign of a loose wire), and if the tennis player replied politely yet confusedly to the question, they would appear the next day as the New Kournikova on the back pages, depending on what Thierry Henry was doing.
This is by no means a new thing. The catalogue of missed chances and lack of scruples by the tabloid press has been around for decades, but just a lot bigger now that competition is so deadly. Why question a famous person on the sensitive subjects when answering the question for them in a roundabout way can deliver so much more juicy headlines? Why make a fuss over them when you can tear their career apart? A soft approach has always worked far better than an embarrassing torrent of low-grade interrogation ever will.
Take Sir David Frost, who has interviewed just about everyone who ever mattered. He is still on speaking terms with most of them despite being a ruthless questioner. Why? Because he knows how to get information from people. Take his recent Al Jazeera interview with Tony Blair. He even made the former PM admit Iraq was a failure. Simply by being an intelligent, polite and erudite speaker. The only way the tabloids get this type of info is by paying extraordinary amounts of money. Otherwise they would be out of ideas.
A recommendation to tabloid editors: raise your intelligence levels, or you risk being blamed for normalising taboos and reducing intelligent debate to its lowest form - bigoted, self-righteous and totally lacking in morals.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)