The Daily Novel

Imperial College is in the news for the second time this week, because of the brutal murder of two French exchange students who were studying there, but living in the more affordable area of New Cross. Imperial College sits next to the Albert Hall in one of London’s highest rent areas. The students, including the post-graduate researchers, have to find their digs elsewhere.

This is not the fault of Imperial College.

But their decision to stop Majid Ahmed from studying there to gain his medical degree is totally their responsibility. Ahmed won a place on merit, but later on he wrote and told them that he had a criminal conviction. He had served his time and repented. He wanted to make amends by devoting his life to healing the sick.

Imperial interviewed him and decided that, although he would be quite acceptable to study any other subject, he was not suitable for a medical degree, because of the ethical standards which doctors must abide by in caring for the vulnerable.

In blunt terms Imperial College rejected the penitent sinner. They don’t seem to be aware of the several doctors, who have been un-penitent sinners. Shipman is one name that comes to mind.

Imperial College is one of the most elitist of British educational institutions. They were part of the old London University, so they had the luxury of teaching only science subjects. They did not have to confront the paradoxes and uncertainties of the arts and the social sciences. Because their students could take other courses at London University, which knew about such things.

Imperial College prospered. And it spawned some of the finest scientists and engineers this country has produced.

But today, it is a very inadequate university in its own right. It does not have the range of Arts subjects, which have give science students the opportunity to increase their knowledge of other parts of human achievement.

The new rector, Sir Roy Anderson, has come to Imperial after being the chief scientific adviser for the British Ministry of Defence. Before that he was a distinguished medical man and an expert on infectious diseases. But from 2004 he was working for the Tony Blair government which went into the war with Iraq, etc, etc.

I hope that he will reconsider the Imperial decision to reject Majid Ahmed. Elitist institutions like Imperial can give enormous help to people like Ahmed, who, on
his own account, got in with a gang of near criminals. He now wants to help other people.

That surely, Sir Roy, is what education should be about. Helping those who do not have priviledged parents, to make a decent fist of their lives.

Only the day after hundreds of young people marched through North London in protest at the knife murder of Ben Kinsinella in a favourite partying area between King’s Cross and Camden Town, there has been an even more horrific murder of two French students at New Cross in South London. Laurent Bonomo had 194 stab wounds and his colleague, Gabriel Ferez, had 47 injuries. Both students were here on an exchange programme to do post-graduate research at Imperial College.

As yet the police have no idea who killed the two French students. Kinsinella was the 17th teenager to be killed by a knife attack in London this year. His murder resulted in a spate of articles about the propensity of today’s youth’s to carry knives for their nights out. The murder of the two French students is particularly poignant, because they were both the kind of people which gives oldies like me hope for the rising generation. Both were aged 23, not using their considerable intelligence to make a fortune in the city. But, at aged 23, they were not mesmerised by the chase for wealth to buy the many seductive products of our generation. Bonomo was studying a parasite which can spread from cats to human foetuses, the kind of thing that is a danger to us all in this era of mass travel where such things can travel around the world in weeks. Ferez was working on using bacteria to create ethanol for use as fuel, doing his bit to stave off global warming.

There is clearly a problem that needs to be addressed by the new Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and the rest of us. But just how serious it is, and how much worse it is today, than it was when I first came to London in 1955, is not yet clear. The rest of this blog seeks to put it in perspective.

The scene of the Kinsinella killing is a few hundred yards from Gospel Oak where I lived for over forty years. Both of my daughters partied there, and at Camden Lock, and managed to survive, despite the presence of the drug dealers and the gangs. I also know the New Cross area, another tough inner London area where the gangs of the 1950s ruled the territory. But where Goldsmiths University, flourished and made a notable contribution in providing a very good education for thousands of students, including a large number of blacks. I have had many friends amongst the teachers and the students and some of my white middle class neighbours sent their children there without them coming to any harm.

I also taught daily for 27 years at City University, London, near the Angel. This, like King’s Cross and New Cross, was a tough inner city area, where gangs were extremely powerful. It had several pubs ruled by skin heads whose idea of a good time was beating up blacks. They mostly used their fists and boots. But what is truly remarkable is that only a tiny minority of City students came to any harm. Although City had a huge percentage of coloured students, from overseas and from the immigrant populations of the UK.

The punch-ups were not widely reported in the press. It was certainly not news in the 1980s, let alone the 1960s, that people got beaten up in pubs is such areas. Which have always attracted a criminal element, seeking to enlist newcomers to the area into prostitution or thieving. Just as it was in the time of Charles Dickens.

What is truly amazing is that all three of these areas have hosted thousands of students in the last thirty years and that mostly those students have not been mugged, or knifed. They have even managed to find the tranquillity to study. And, of course, combining that with many opportunities to let off steam by partying.

These inner city areas have been reclaimed for their law-abiding inhabitants. There are no such powerful gangs as the Kray Brothers, whose nastiness was quite equal to whoever killed the two French students. And, who despite their obvious wickedness, managed to mix socially with British ministers and friends of Winston S. Churchill, like Bob Boothby.

These areas of London are SAFER than they used to be.

Wake up early. How early I don’t know, but I cannot see any chink of light through the curtains. There are immediately two or three blogs in my head, which I want to get down on paper. But I don’t jump out of bed. The energy is there but my limbs are frozen by the voices in my head. ‘Are you getting enough sleep, Robert.’ ‘Stay in bed otherwise you will be falling asleep again by lunchtime.’

Turn on my bedside lamp. The light blinds me, so I turn it right off again. Pick up my led pocket torch which I keep on the bedside table, so that if I do wake early in pitch dark I can get out of the room without falling over something and waking my wife. It is 3.30 PM, a lot earlier than I thought. But I don’t feel at all sleepy. And since I am alone in the house I don’t have to worry about disturbing anyone. Or face worried voices at breakfast, ‘Were you up all night, Dad?’.

Free to please myself and behave in whatever way I want to behave. So instead of blinding myself again I use my torch to light the stairs and take me to the kitchen to make my first cup of tea of the day. I don’t switch on the hallway light and I don’t switch on the sitting room light. Dawn is surely near. The lights of Portland Bill are sparkling but the sky is grey not black. And when I out on to the terrace I find a light grey sky with a few small black clouds. The moon is shining in the eastern sky, but all I can see of it is the last slender curve of an old moon. Beneath it the sky is much lighter. Is that the light of the moon or is the sun already rising?

Inside the house it is still darkish, but I can see quite well enough not to need the hallway light, nor the dining room light, and when I get to the kitchen I realise that I don’t really need the kitchen light either.

By now I am into an experiment of doing something in my own personal lifestyle to help stave off global warming. I realise how much energy I am wasting by turning on all these lights and leaving them on, until I remember to turn them off again. I keep my torch on, although I can actually see quite well enough to fish a tea bag out of the tin and fill the kettle. And there is no problem in finding the milk because as soon as I open the fridge door the light comes on automatically.

I cannot remember what time sun-rise is at this time of year, but there is a newspaper on the kitchen table. It tells me that sun will rise at 4.57 A.M. in Bristol, which is the nearest place in their table to Charmouth. An hour and half to go, yet it is light enough for me to write in my notebook, and read what I have written, without any strain.

Now I am at the computer there is absolutely no need to turn on the light in the study. The screen is brighter than it is at the middle of the day and I can read the smallest print without any strain. And I can read my notebook. But it feels odd. It is still darkish and normally I would have the study light on.

Habit is the most powerful of all the rulers of human emotions. And it affects one hundred per cent of human beings, not just those who become habitual users of alcohol and the far more powerful pills that today’s teenagers seem to be able to buy on street corners.

Habit is so powerful because it helps us to be more efficient. Our unconscious minds take over and guide our actions like sleepwalkers, leaving our conscious minds free to wrestle with more important and difficult choices we have to make while getting through the day. Even now, nearly three years after my final, final retirement, when I jump on my bike in Gospel Oak I find myself riding the route to City University. To go anywhere else I have to concentrate hard on the route I am taking. How much more difficult for us all to make the radical changes in our habits, necessary if global warming is going to be turned back.

But human beings can change their habits. In my regular trips up and down the M3 since I moved to Dorset just under a year ago, I had noticed how the average motorway speed had increased. Most of the traffic was moving in two of the three lanes at between 80 and 85 miles an hour. On my last trip down it was radically different. Apart from a few impatient idiots, weaving in and out of the traffic in their urge to get somewhere as soon as possible, everyone was keeping to 70 mph or a little above. They were even obeying the 50 mph sections, even when there was no obvious evidence of any road work actually going on.

This change has come about not because everyone now accepts the threat of global warming. But simply because of the surge in the petrol price which means that even the owners of modest family cars now have to take £50 from their wallets to fill their tanks.

My contact in the Henley on Thames constituency was not at all surprised the Conservatives comfortably won yesterday’s vote to replace Boris Johnson now that he has London to look after. He thinks the Conservatives acted shrewdly by picking a low profile local man, John Howell, an accountant who could not be more unlike the media-hugging bicycling blond. And he thinks the Liberal Democrats blew it, by bringing in Stephen Kearney from Plymouth to fight the seat.

Labour had no chance of winning, given the current unpopularity of Gordon Brown. The fact that they finished fifth in the poll, behind the Greens and the BNP as well as way behind the Lib Dems makes the headlines, but the more serious political story is that the Lib Dems only managed to increase their vote by 1.8 per cent, despite an energetic campaign spearheaded by their new leader, Nick Clegg, and supported by the party’s big guns.

It is the second major setback for Nick Clegg since he took over. He could not be blamed for the first one, because he inherited the mayoral candidate, Brian Paddick, the former policeman. It was not Clegg’s fault that he failed to make the transition from walking the beat to knocking on doors.

But the responsibility for last night’s disappointment rests firmly with Clegg. Many Lib Dems must be wishing when they changed their leader yet again last Autumn that they had chosen Vince Cable, who was a huge success as acting leader. Cable did far better in the House of Commons than David Cameron. His ready wit enabled him to get more laughs at Brown’s expense than Cameron. But he stood out because his speeches contained plenty of shrewd analysis of the issues.

Clegg, by contrast, has been dubbed Cameron-lite by sections of the press. That label has stuck. But unless he changes his tactics pronto he may be stuck with the even worse one of Calamity Clegg.

The only party leader who is smiling this morning is David Cameron. In retrospect the Lib Dems made a mistake in picking the candidate most like him for their new leader. The opposite strategy is to pick someone quite unlike him. In this connection it is interesting that two weeks ago there was a move to get Jack Straw to challenge Gordon Brown. The former President of the National Union of Students is now nearly old enough for a bus pass, and has the experience of several ministerial jobs in his portfolio.

My blogging has been interupted by several pressing matters, not least the arrival of the digger to sort out my driveway and hopefully make it possible to use my scooter without hazard from treacherous gravel.

The picture says it all.

At a buffet supper last night I ate my meal perched at a small circular table with two men whom I had just met. I will call them Harry and Jim. Harry and I were doing most of the talking, mostly about the joys and problems of living in the beautiful coastal village of Eype a few miles east of Charmouth, which all three of us knew and liked. But Harry had actually taken the plunge and bought a beautiful old house there. He loves it, as well he might. It is little different than it was one hundred years ago and not much different than it was two hundred years ago. It has escaped the developers. No 1930s bungalows. No glass palaces built by the seriously rich which you find up the hill in Charmouth. And, as Harry was quick to point out, he is only a short walk from the one and only pub.

Tranquillity indeed.

But for any incoming twenty-first century townie there are some practical problems. No shops. So to get any food which you don’t grow in your garden, or to buy a daily newspaper, you have to drive to Bridport. Not very far. But it can a take a long time in the season, because the lanes to the A35 are narrow, and you have to reverse to a passing place because of the tourists wanting to get in and have a few hours of this tranquillity.

Jim had said very little. I knew from what he had said that it was not because he was not interested in the subject matter, because, from what he had said, he was interested in the subject matter. Which was basically about what people do when they retire. All three of us had lived lives constrained by the economic needs of earning a living and providing for families. All three of us had decided that after retirement they would try something different. Against the advice of most of the retirement manuals, which warn people against moving away from friends and neighbourhoods they know well, to an idyllic spot of their dreams.

We were three retired folk talking about our present, but also relating it to our past. But as we explored our past we found that there was a considerable difference in our ages. Not surprisingly because I did not finally retire until I was 73, and then only reluctantly. Whereas both of my supper table friends had taken early retirement.

In the street in which I now live in Charmouth there are quite a few retired people (as there are in the street in London, from whence I came). And retired folk, as we all know, when they get together bask in shared memories of the past. That is certainly how it was in my father’s time, when nearly everyone, apart from a few company chairmen I had to interview at age 91, retired at aged 65.

Today’s world in Britain, let alone the rest of the world is radically different.

So in the street in which I now live I am probably the possibly the only person only finally retired until the ripe old age of 73. But amongst the people living in my street whom I have actually met, there is a an international company executive who retired aged 46, because by that time he qualified for a full pension, because he had spent much of his life working in places like the tropical rain forests, which most managers are not that keen on. And another who retired from ill health aged 45 from a fire brigade because his heart had murmured in protest as he climbed the ladders rescuing all those people from blazing buildings.

So in Britain 2008 there is a possible difference of 28 years in the ages of ‘retired folk’. More than a generation.

In my new neighbourhood I have also met people who have moved here while still raising young families. Two particularly. Both of them told me that they had moved here from metropolitan towns for ‘quality of life’ factors, much to do with their feelings about bringing up their children somewhere where they could swim in the sea and walk the hills. The wonders of computers and the internet make it entirely possible for many professionals to live in a place like Dorset, which boasts it does not have a motorway in the county, and still earn a living in the mainstream.

So the world is changing and not entirely for the worst.

Back to the supper table. When I turned my attention to Jim and asked him a question he said, ‘What did you say?’, he replied ‘What did you say?’. So I then asked if he was hard of hearing.

In his ears he had two of the latest digital hearing aides. Which were of course were quite invisible to the rest of us because, unlike the old fashioned ear trumpet, which was a signal that the person using it was deaf, the modern hearing aid conceals the disability, in contrast to the white stick and black glasses of the blind.

So I then spent some time with Jim urging him to read the latest novel by David Lodge, which I have just read because my eldest daughter got Amazon to send it to me on Father’s Day. It is quite the most insightful book I have read about being deaf that I have read. But since it is a novel it is not just about deafness. It says quite a lot about the subject of this blog; about what professional men do in our society when they grow older and realise that they can make some choices about what they do in the rest of their lives.

And though Lodge deals with two pretty heavy subjects his narrative is punctuated with his substantial wit, which raises laughs from youngish women who hear perfectly as well as oldish deaf men.

But in part two of this blog I will set out some reasons why every person who is ‘hard of hearing’ and every person who has a partner or close relative or friend who is so impaired, should read it.

While I was reading the book I wondered whether it was a work of the imagination and research. Or whether it was based on his own personal experience. I did not find the answer until after I had read the last page of the novel.

Because, contrary to usual publishing practice Lodge has put a section at the end called ‘Acknowledgments’ which according to usual publishing practice is at the beginning. The first sentence reads:

‘The narrator’s deafness and his Dad have their sources in my own experience, but the other characters in this novel are fictional creations….’

Fans of Lodge, who love his wit and humour will not be disappointed with his novel. But for those who are deaf, or who have a spouse who is deaf, this novel might transform their lives.

I will attempt to explain why in my next blog. Which will be written whenever. Because tomorrow I am due to commune with the New Zealand branch of my wife’s family on one of their much treasured visits to the home country.

Meanwhile the reference is:

Deaf Sentence. By David Lodge. Harvill Secker, London. List Price: £17.99. And worth every penny. Deaf Sentence: Part one

At a buffet supper last night I ate my meal perched at a small circular table with two men whom I had just met. I will call them Harry and Jim. Harry and I were doing most of the talking, mostly about the joys and problems of living in the beautiful coastal village of Eype a few miles east of Charmouth, which all three of us knew and liked. But Harry had actually taken the plunge and bought a beautiful old house there. He loves it, as well he might. It is little different than it was one hundred years ago and not much different than it was two hundred years ago. It has escaped the developers. No 1930s bungalows. No glass palaces built by the seriously rich which you find up the hill in Charmouth. And, as Harry was quick to point out, he is only a short walk from the one and only pub.

Tranquillity indeed.

But for any incoming twenty-first century townie there are some practical problems. No shops. So to get any food which you don’t grow in your garden, or to buy a daily newspaper, you have to drive to Bridport. Not very far. But it can a take a long time in the season, because the lanes to the A35 are narrow, and you have to reverse to a passing place because of the tourists wanting to get in and have a few hours of this tranquillity.

Jim had said very little. I knew from what he had said that it was not because he was not interested in the subject matter, because, from what he had said, he was interested in the subject matter. Which was basically about what people do when they retire. All three of us had lived lives constrained by the economic needs of earning a living and providing for families. All three of us had decided that after retirement they would try something different. Against the advice of most of the retirement manuals, which warn people against moving away from friends and neighbourhoods they know well, to an idyllic spot of their dreams.

We were three retired folk talking about our present, but also relating it to our past. But as we explored our past we found that there was a considerable difference in our ages. Not surprisingly because I did not finally retire until I was 73, and then only reluctantly. Whereas both of my supper table friends had taken early retirement.

In the street in which I now live in Charmouth there are quite a few retired people (as there are in the street in London, from whence I came). And retired folk, as we all know, when they get together bask in shared memories of the past. That is certainly how it was in my father’s time, when nearly everyone, apart from a few company chairmen I had to interview at age 91, retired at aged 65.

Today’s world in Britain, let alone the rest of the world is radically different.

So in the street in which I now live I am probably the possibly the only person only finally retired until the ripe old age of 73. But amongst the people living in my street whom I have actually met, there is a an international company executive who retired aged 46, because by that time he qualified for a full pension, because he had spent much of his life working in places like the tropical rain forests, which most managers are not that keen on. And another who retired from ill health aged 45 from a fire brigade because his heart had murmured in protest as he climbed the ladders rescuing all those people from blazing buildings.

So in Britain 2008 there is a possible difference of 28 years in the ages of ‘retired folk’. More than a generation.

In my new neighbourhood I have also met people who have moved here while still raising young families. Two particularly. Both of them told me that they had moved here from metropolitan towns for ‘quality of life’ factors, much to do with their feelings about bringing up their children somewhere where they could swim in the sea and walk the hills. The wonders of computers and the internet make it entirely possible for many professionals to live in a place like Dorset, which boasts it does not have a motorway in the county, and still earn a living in the mainstream.

So the world is changing and not entirely for the worst.

Back to the supper table. When I turned my attention to Jim and asked him a question he said, ‘What did you say?’, he replied ‘What did you say?’. So I then asked if he was hard of hearing.

In his ears he had two of the latest digital hearing aides. Which were of course were quite invisible to the rest of us because, unlike the old fashioned ear trumpet, which was a signal that the person using it was deaf, the modern hearing aid conceals the disability, in contrast to the white stick and black glasses of the blind.

So I then spent some time with Jim urging him to read the latest novel by David Lodge, which I have just read because my eldest daughter got Amazon to send it to me on Father’s Day. It is quite the most insightful book I have read about being deaf that I have read. But since it is a novel it is not just about deafness. It says quite a lot about the subject of this blog; about what professional men do in our society when they grow older and realise that they can make some choices about what they do in the rest of their lives.

And though Lodge deals with two pretty heavy subjects his narrative is punctuated with his substantial wit, which raises laughs from youngish women who hear perfectly as well as oldish deaf men.

But in part two of this blog I will set out some reasons why every person who is ‘hard of hearing’ and every person who has a partner or close relative or friend who is so impaired, should read it.

While I was reading the book I wondered whether it was a work of the imagination and research. Or whether it was based on his own personal experience. I did not find the answer until after I had read the last page of the novel.

Because, contrary to usual publishing practice Lodge has put a section at the end called ‘Acknowledgments’ which according to usual publishing practice is at the beginning. The first sentence reads:

‘The narrator’s deafness and his Dad have their sources in my own experience, but the other characters in this novel are fictional creations….’

Fans of Lodge, who love his wit and humour will not be disappointed with his novel. But for those who are deaf, or who have a spouse who is deaf, this novel might transform their lives.

I will attempt to explain why in my next blog. Which will be written whenever. Because tomorrow I am due to commune with the New Zealand branch of my wife’s family on one of their much treasured visits to the home country.

Meanwhile the reference is:

Deaf Sentence. By David Lodge. Harvill Secker, London. List Price: £17.99. And worth every penny.

I shall be singing and dancing in the rain later today, not on the streets of Paris, but on the terrace of my house on Lyme Bay. The rain, forecast by the weather men for the last two days will be here shortly. I can see it advancing across the sea from Chesil Beach.

The Texan dancer, Cyd Charisse, who has just died aged 87, is remembered by some for her million dollar legs. But I remember her for the zest and fun she showed in her dance with Gene Kelly in the 1952 movie, Singin’in the Rain.

The memory of it still cheers me when the rain comes down when I am walking the coastal path. Me, and probably millions of others.

Thank you Cyd and Gene.

The picture is from AP.

Al Gore’s emphatic endorsement of Barack Obama is the clearest sign yet that the leading Democrats of the Clinton era are lining up behind him. Since his defeat by a few votes in Florida seven years ago, the former vice president has taken the lead by focussing attention at home and abroad on the need for the US to do far more than it has done for climate change. His experience in this area will help Obama, particularly when he begins to launch himself on the world stage, with a visit soon to Iraq, Afghanistan and Europe.

Most of the media commentators say that Obama is weak on foreign policy and has little hands on experience of the rest of the world. But thanks to the images which have been flashing on to the world’s television screens he already has a following in places he has never been. Last week one of my ex-colleagues emailed me with the news that Bareelona, which he has just visited, is engulfed in Obamamania.

He may find his visit to Europe a doddle compared with Iraq and Afghanistan. The troops are more likely to be be keen on John McCain, and Obama will have to walk a tight rope between demonstrating that he is tough enough to run a war. And showing that he is capable of bringing a fresh initiavies seeking to find polical solutions to the chaos and complex enemnities in both reasons.

George Bush concluded his two-day visit to London by praising Gordon Brown to the hilt. It won’t help him. The demonstrations on the street, and the opinion polls, showed that neither man is popular with the electorate. This visit is definitely the symbolic end of the Buhs era and his ’special relationship’ with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The chances of Brown surviving another two years are not high. And he may even be gone before Bush leaves the White House in November.

At times of change like this, although the leaders take centre stage, most of the important work of sorting out how to deal with Afghanistan and Iraq is done by ministers and the civil servants on both sides of the pond.

The Queen is probably looking forward to a change. She has always got well with black Afican leaders. Let’s hope she is still up to spin around the dance floor if Barack Obama is her visitor next year.

David Davis’s attempt to provoke a national debate about the erosion of Britain’s civil liberties using the way Prime Minister Gordon Brown steered his controversial 42-day-detension bill through the House of Commons, turned to farce today. Downing Street has been telling journalists that Labour will follow the Liberal Democrats, who have already announced that they will not fight the by-election, which Davis has provoked by his resignation.

But Rupert Murdoch, the Australian, turned American citizen, has decided that the interests of British democracy are best served if Davis does get the fight he is looking forward. He is encouraging his own champion to stand and put the case for the 42-day-detension bill.

He is sending into battle one of his most trusted men, Kelvin MacKenzie, who was editor of The Sun, when in the days when it established a new high in British daily newspaper circulations and a new low in British popular journalism standards. MacKenzie later went on to adapt his popular journalism to television, introducing the much-ridiculed news bunny.

It is a quite astonishing development which demonstrates the old saw, ‘you couldn’t make it up. Since MacKenzie has declared his intentions on the BBC Radio Four Today programme there is no doubt that the story is not journalistic invention. Sun journalists have been known to invent quotes, when they could not find real people to voice the opinions they were seeking.

But MacKenzie in this instance was the news.

I still doubt, however, whether Rupert Murdoch will follow this one through. For Britain’s most powerful media tycoon to fund a parliamentary candidate in this way is gift to all those who question whether the free press in Britain is served by so much media control in the hands of one family.

And think how this will play in the US, which is gearing up for the Presidential election. This week Fox News, Murdoch’s US television channel, was forced to suspend one of their lead presenters because of offensive racist jokes about Barack Obama. Murdoch now also owns the Wall Street Journalism, which is traditionally Republican. But the New York Post, the leading popular newspaper in New York City, now owned by Murdoch, is traditionally Democrat.

Recently, as reported here, Murdoch lavished praise on Obama, though stopping short of endorsing him. His daughter, Elisabeth, hosted a fund-raising dinner in London last month for Obama.

But now that the Presidential battle is a straight fight between Obama and McCain, Murdoch must be seriously worried about his left-wing sympathies. McCain’s personal views are much closer to Murdoch’s. But, temperamentally, Murdoch, although he is now an old man, tends to prefer the young thrusters.

My view remains that if Murdoch thinks Obama is going to win, he will offer his support, as he did so often with Blair, in the hope that he can influence him in the direction of his own business interests and political preferences.

And I think, that he may well have second thoughts about funding his former editor as a candidate in a British election. That is not going to do his credibility in the US any good at all.

Indeed it might cause Americans to start crusading against media barons with ‘power without responsibisty’