Friday, May 16, 2008


Public Leaning Post

I have spent almost my entire life, believing that on the whole what the BBC reports is pretty much the way it is. I look on most accusations of bias by the Beeb as being biased themselves, seemingly just the author's own dislike of the truth. In general this is still the case. Auntie does not speculate that much - for the sake of not prejudicing legal actions, the more grisly byways of criminal happenings are reported in a simple, matter-of-fact manner so as not to wind up de judge.

However, I have noticed in recent years that the BBC news is beginning to attract a certain pinkish tinge in it's headlines and reporting, a scream of red-top sensationalism here - a bit of editorial idiocy there. It's all so saddening.

The trigger for my ire today was the rather intrusive reporting on the Chinese earthquake which seemed to involve cameras in the faces of the bereaved and long, lingering shots of body parts in the rubble. The reporter in the spot - James Reynolds - is Damien Day from Drop The Dead Donkey. I note that he has form for fake reporting as well. It's all so saddening but of course maybe it is me that has changed - it just all seems different from my early memories of TV news. Driving to work today I almost turned over from Radio 4, thinking that we would all be better off for not hearing as much about what happens in the rest of the world but that would be a cop-out. The world is rapidly returning to black and white after a brief period when it seemed that people were beginning to understand shade. Maybe this predicts the resurgence of extreme right and left in the country.

Friday, May 09, 2008


Cyclotrons And Random Possibilities.

Faithbased and failing falls a Friday fair of face and frit of widdershins, the black dog pacing lordly round the church like smoke and deals of end of life. The mourning edges of the papers tell of single deaths in screams; contrasted with not many dead, disastering in voyeurism for the masses led to deep anxiety by all the rich and famous. Civility, they say is fading and then report like sewer rats on flaws - of skin - of character - of mind - shouting out the news of latest crackings - latest hospital admissions, latest affairs of heart and business -scream out the deaths of fifty in revenge for Government decisions and ignore the indecision killing millions. Money is a god, a deity, inactive like a beloved royal, beyond the leader columns, not to be reported on in case we slow the growth of factories that pump out misery and idleness disguised as productivity, as value added, as marketing. The ideas of children taken to our baby-timer adults, a mind to shout above the rest, to flash and grate and and scratch your way ahead by always being there, watching one way, shouting back the other through the telescreens, the slow pace gone for ever in the lack of silence.

I wait for the climb of birds this spring, the lark, an old friend, in spirals, chaotic dives against the random currents put up by sun on field. And all the rest of this world swallows the distant sounds of commerce, the hum of traffic repeating the same old routes to market and to workplace. This is a call for idleness, a call for slowing growth for sake of stable minds. And all the saints make hospitals by magic, create silence for eternity, a part of universe blocked off with research and billion dollar cyclotrons. Maybe the world will disappear into this vortex, this mass of particles annihilating in the magnets we burn our coal to power. Sum over history stops all that's gone and all that is to come from being real and turns us to observers only. All that's to come runs in.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008


Psykko Rain Dance

I have just finished reading Deaf Sentence by David Lodge. As usual, this latest in the stream of books that David Lodge has written about various academics, uses a mix of styles and tenses to suggest an unconstructed narrative without actually descending into the realms of the usual heuristics of the modern novel. And yet deep down, while it seems to move towards a tidy conclusion, it ends up being just a window on a wider world. Of course (and I have to use this phrase in any review of a Lodge Novel) there is nothing outside the text so my sudden realisation of what was going on and what the conclusion would be, remained just a thought in my head for that bombshell was left undropped - indeed not mentioned again.

The Guardian Digested Read of Deaf Sentence laments the lame puns of the misunderstandings created by mishearings but I have to say that my request for "Deaf Sentence" in the bookshop resulted in a computer search for "Death Sentence" (though not on the "Death Menu") before I corrected the assistant. There is deep satisfaction in the fact that a profound and clever academic seems so able to pick out the details of modern life without seeming a distant and unavailable observer. It is possible to pick out many layers from any David Lodge book, to see a straight story, allusions to older, literary classics (Knobsticks!) and beautiful examples of deep areas of academia that us mortals can't really hope to understand fully.

Oh - and it is quite funny as well.