There are many shorthand measures used by newspapers to indicate size: Wales for geographical area, Wembley for crowds, swimming pools for volume, Nelson’s column for height, double-decker buses for dinosaurs (a rather specialised subset). There seems to also be one newspaper measure for showing just how big a problem a politician has got himself into: the Poll Tax.
Gordon Brown had fewer Poll Tax moments - perhaps he just had less time to stumble into them, although Polly Toynbee was worried that it might be the Tube.
How young do you have to be before the Poll Tax ceases to be meaningful as something which happened during your political lifetime and becomes something that has to be set into context – in the same way that I had to have Suez explained when it was the standard measure for British humiliations in world affairs (I grew up in the 1970s, there were LOTS of those).
The Poll Tax riot was in 1990. Thousands of people who voted in the general election weren’t born when it kicked off. Does it mean anything to them or is it time for the hacks to stop being lazy?
I hadn’t really bothered about the 40th birthday of Page 3 this month, other than to notice the irony that it shares its anniversary week with the anti-Miss World demo at the Albert Hall. Then I was roused to tooth-grinding fury by, of all things, the Guardian media podcast which carried an item about how much of a non-issue Page 3 is these days. Explaining why, the (female) contributor commented “we’re so immune to pictures that are worse, that Page 3 becomes quite tame and quite funny… the fact that it’s so ubiquitous …you become immune to things you see on such a regular basis. Familiarity breeds, umm, in this case, lethargy”
Well, no. Contempt. That’s what familiarity traditionally breeds. Contempt. Which is what Page 3 does. And, pardon me for pointing it out, but it was to try and prevent the “worse” images that Clare Short and others tried to ban Page 3 in the first place.
Page 3 – not uniquely, but it’s a useful general signifier for porn-lite – is a means of portraying women as objects. It sends a message that we are the sum of our cup size; that we are perpetually available and up for a laugh (and if we don’t get the joke we must be repressed,ugly killjoys); that we might not be too bright, but it’s OK if we can fill out a g-string; that we’re fulfilled as the recipients of a male gaze. It’s indicative of an attitude to women that makes (some) men feel at liberty to harass us in the street, and (s0me) women argue that they are “empowered” by appearing naked in public. That’s not empowerment, ladies, that’s Stockholm Syndrome.
I don’t know any women who don’t have stories to tell about being shouted at, leered over, groped and worse by men in public places. Some stories are frightening, some are just ridiculous. My friend Laura was once approached by a complete stranger at a railway station who asked her for a date, his eyes never leaving her chest. She had to point out to him the 9-months pregnant bump that was nestling beneath it.
One of the great blessings of the cloak of invisibility that drops over you when you reach about 35, is that men don’t shout at you in the street any more. I no longer have to go out of my way to avoid walking past building sites and I miss it not one bit. So I was really saddened when I was walking Rebecca home from a friend’s house the other night and we were cat-called. I say “we”. Neither of us believed for a moment it was aimed at me. She’s 12. She was as angry, puzzled and embarrassed as I always was when it happened to me. I have no idea what to tell her to do about it, other than try to laugh it off. And start a campaign to ban Page 3.
The Daily Mail’s usually pitch-perfect sense of what its audience wants to hear hit a bum note a while ago with an article about middle class workers who used to earn £80k+ and are now wondering where the next set of school fees is going to come from. The Guardian did the same thing a few weeks earlier with a similar piece looking at couples wondering how they can manage the child care and pay the au pair as they look forward to a future without a decent pension. In both cases the comment threads were full of people pointing out that reality for most people doesn’t involve school fees, multiple foreign holidays or domestic help; that no-one has a good pension these days and that our correspondents should just get over themselves.
If you read the papers regularly you could be forgiven for thinking that “middle class” in this county covers people on incomes between about £30,000 and, say £100,000. It’s no doubt coloured by journalists – who tend to be well paid – assuming that they represent the hard-working norm. For the record, the Office for National Statistics reckons that median pay for a man in 2009 was a smidge over £25k; for a woman, a whisker above £22k. Despite what the Daily Mail says, the real middle class is not going to worry about having a cap of £50k put on its pension contributions.
Who the middle classes are – and what they earn – is now a matter of serious debate , as the government changes child benefit, university tuition fees and pensions (I note that outrage about cuts to housing benefit has been more muted, presumably because lots of journalists get child benefit while few need help with the rent). It’s making me wonder, again, about how we define class in this country (why it matters – if it does – is another post entirely). Is it based on earnings and does it change as disposable income waxes and wanes?
As I sail, seemingly unstoppably, towards the ranks of the new poor (Christmas may be coming, but this goose ain’t getting fat), do I still count as middle class because of my degree, the careers I’ve pursued, the food I eat and the fact that I don’t hold my knife like a pencil to eat it? Or am I now one of the undeserving poor? Should I have known this was going to happen before I so recklessly had my children? Should I be worried that Jeremy Hunt might try to re-possess them?
New readers wanting to catch up with a story of political double-crossing, conspiracy theories about religious fundamentalism, suspicions of electoral fraud and backroom deals in smokefree rooms can start here. Those with a taste for a more analytical take on it all can pick it up here.
With such rich source material a local TV station broadcasting news about the area should be a hit – there’s a news programme /soap opera combo just begging to be produced already. But, even in Tower Hamlets, I fail to see local TV of the type Jeremy Hunt was proposing on the Today programme this morning taking off.
As he explains it, the market has failed to give us a truly plural local media so he proposes to stimulate the market by relaxing ownership restrictions and allowing media companies to start hyper-local TV services to fill the gap.
He gave some examples of where local interest might be strong enough to make programming worthwhile. It won’t fill a schedule, but, yes, football fans in Bolton may well want coverage of their team’s performance against Man Utd (as long as ESPN/Sky/MUTV are prepared to share the rights – and Wanderers fans don’t already have access to the BBC, the internet or a newspaper). People in Middlesborough may want to see their Mayoral debates televised – a bit more of a stretch this one, but I can see the public interest argument for giving them the chance; but it’s hardly going to be stripped through a week’s programming at 7pm – and if there isn’t a regular local channel for people to go to, how will they find it when it’s on?
It may be a massive failure of imagination on my part, but I can’t see where the audience demand is for these services, or what the business model for a local TV service might be. The obvious conclusion is that creative use of the internet is the best way to achieve the kind of services that Jeremy Hunt has in mind – a conclusion he seems to be reaching himself, if this speech is anything to go by. Odd that he didn’t try to share this with us on Today.
Turned the Today programme off, violently, at ten past eight this morning, but not before shouting things at James Naughtie that, had they been picked up on Sky, I would certainly have had to apologise for.
I lost it when Naughtie said that, by agreeing to the leaders’ debates, Gordon Brown made the election camapaign into a personality contest so must accept it when his personality becomes the story of the day. The idea that the media have been diligently following policy issues for years until being forced to talk about personalities by the sight of politicians debating in public is as hilarious as it’s infuriating. The papers have been desperate for something like this to happen to liven things up. They’ve finally got the gaffe they’ve been waiting for. Watch them make the most of it.
Trying to remember the last time I read a local newspaper. The headline in the local paper the day we moved in was Poplar Gang in Meatcleaver Bloodbath - which you’d think would be enticing enough to make me take out a lifetime subscription. But I don’t think I’ve looked at the Advertiser since. There are lots of reasons why. I live in the East End, but generally work and socialise elsewhere, and as I didn’t grow up round here my sense of belonging to a local community is pretty shaky. (As a side issue, I wonder if I’m unusual in not being locally engaged? And, if I’m not, does this make community action as a way of running public services look particularly flaky in London and other big cities?)
A lack of information becomes an issue when there are local elections being fought. I’ve seen no campaigning going on round here apart from a Respect battlebus which occasionally thunders along the Mile End Road. I haven’t been canvassed by anyone, there are few leaflets for the general election never mind the local one. There are lots of don’t-vote-for-Gordon-Brown-he’s-got-a-silly-grin posters, but they don’t help with local issues. There’s a referendum going on in Tower Hamlets to install a directly elected mayor that I didn’t even know was happening.
I’ll accept that my ignorance is my own fault, but having realised the problem I’m at a loss to know how to put it right. I can follow Tim Donovan’s BBC London blog, but he’s really writing about how national policy from the big three parties will affect London. The same is true for the Standard. London’s too big and too complex for even the BBC to get down to really local detail. Which is why I looked at today’s East London Advertiser and found, well, not much. There is – shiver me timbers! – a pirate standing at the general election, but nothing about the local poll. It’s completely unfair to judge the paper on one edition, but it’s hard not to think of Nick Davies‘ warning of the decline of local newspapers and the sense that as they decline so does local democracy. The local papers are also under attack from local authority freesheets pumped out by councils wanting to show what a good job they do. So, I suppose I do see a local paper every week – East End Life - where the idea of great headline is something like Council Achieves Record Levels of Satisfaction. I’m just not sure I want to base my vote on it.
2. Not only does Cleggmania put a spanner in the Tories’ works (just feel the outrage fizzing off the Mail’s presses – someone was stupid enough to let David Cameron prove that that he’s second rate. Heads must roll!) But just as satisfying, it could also really upset Rupert Murdoch
3. Spring is sprung, the grass is ris, and you can hear the birds in the back garden
The McKinsey NHS story might be an illustration of what a surprisingly tin ear many very smart people have when it comes to basic politics. Or it could just show how very simplistic political debate has become. Cutting 10% of NHS staff maybe an intellectually brilliant way of dealing with a funding problem in the health service (personally I don’t think it is, but let’s give McKinsey’s bright young things the benefit of the doubt). However it would be so politically damaging, so completely devastating to any governing party’s claims to be trustworthy custodians of a public health service, as to be impossible to enact. The press coverage I’ve seen is all focused on this element of the report and the condemnation is pretty universal. However, if you look at the Health Service Journal’s summary of the story, McKinsey recommend much more than just taking an axe to staff numbers. A lot of what is being floated seems unpalatable but possibly unavoidable if the NHS is to survive – we should at least be talking about the options honestly. Instead the government have instantly disowned the document , the opposition are scoring cheap political points, and everyone gets to vent some rage about the use of consultants in the public sector. Thanks chaps.
Read over someone’s shoulder on the tube an ad in Metro for today’s Daily Mail: “What to do when your daughter is obsessed with her weight - AT JUST SEVEN?” . And I think we can all agree that poor body image, an obsession with weight and diet and an unhealthy fixation on being thin are a curse affecting women from an increasingly young age.
Can I suggest that one answer for the writer of the article is “don’t ever let her look at the Daily Mail”? Yesterday’s Metro (seen the same way, I never actually pick the damn thing up) carried an ad for the Mail crowing: “The brilliant article all women should read – what’s YOUR fat age?” Apparently Carol Vorderman is really 48 but has a fat age of 50 – evidently got some work to do, eh Carol? I looked at the site to get the link and saw that the top picture on the home page is of actress Kirstie Alley (or “bloated yo-yo dieter Kirstie Alley” as they describe her) grimly promising to get back into her bikini.
Why any woman should read the Mail – far less write for it – is a mystery to me. It hates us for being too fat and too thin; for worrying too much about our weight and for not caring enough; for going out to work thus neglecting our children and for staying at home and wasting our potential. It thinks we dress too young for our age and too frumpily, and is constantly on guard to warn us about the horrible diseases of mind and body that we poor weak creatures are prone too.
The Mail is so successful among women that we must really like this stuff. Perhaps the female equivalent of Englishmen who like to be spanked is women who like to be told by Paul Dacre that they are rubbish. I remember reading an interview by Irma Kurtz, who used to write the agony column for Cosmo in the UK and US edition. She said that the big difference between the two sets of readers was that while an American would ask “why on earth is my boyfriend treating me like this?” the Brits would ask “what did I do wrong to make my boyfriend treat me like this?” But at least the Mail is always on hand to point out our errors. As it said in my favourite Mail headline of all time, last summer “Why single women who say they’re happy are lying“ (trying to find the link I put “single women who think” into the Mail search engine and the page crashed…)
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