The Daily Novel

David Miliband, former Foreign Secretary and the front runner in the five horse race for the Laboun Party leadership,  brought his campaign to Gospel Oak this week. He did not have far to come. His house on Primrose  Hill is less than a mile away. But in socio-economic terms, the Queen’s Crescent community centre, in the heart of the Kentish Town council estates, is at the opposite end of the class divide.

Although the leadership election has still three months to go, and it was a hot and sweaty evening, with the World Cup and Wimbledon, keeping most of the nation at home on their sofas, the room was packed.

The tone was friendly and informal. He did not stand up making a pompous speech. He sat down in a white open necked shirt, answering questions put by a friendly journalist, Steve Richards, the Independent’s political editor. He then listened carefully to the questions from his audience, answered them fully, and stayed on afterwards to chat to those who came forward speak to him.

By most criteria it was a very succesful evening. But I was left with nagging doubts as to whether he can master the art of modern leadership, whether he is up to taking on Cameron and Clegg in next time’s TV debates.

He emphasised that too much emphasis had been put on his boyhood as  the left-wing intellectual and son of the Marxist scholar, Ralph Miliband. His schooling had been in Leeds and at Haverstock School, alongside many children from the Kentish Town council estates. True. But it is also true that he is even more at home at an Oxbridge style seminar.

Would make a first rate university teacher.

And, I took several photos. But the all came out making him look like Mr Bean.

By far the outstanding sporting drama of the week was the marathon struggle on the Court 18 between John Isner, the American seeded at 23, and Nicholas Mahut, a Frenchman, seeded at 48. Neither man was a star, but they kept the crowd entranced over three days, with some outstanding tennis and above all a determination never to give up. It was the longest tennis match ever, lasting 11 hours 5 minutes and totally 183 games. Isner served 112 aces, the fastest at 143 mph. Mahut served 103 aces, the fastest at 128 mph.

In the last set Isner won 70-68. It could have been boring, because 137 games followed the same pattern, with the server winning his own service. But not easily. Each player several times came near to breaking his opponent’s serve. And the stunning aces were interspersed with long rallies, which had the crowd holding its breath, the outcome of many games in doubt until the final point.

In the final set Isner was serving first. He is a tall rangy man, looking mostly relaxed and confident. 6 ft 3 ins and representing one of the world super powers. On the other side of the net, the man from France, who have not ruled the world since Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815. Mahut is smaller, wiry rather than hefty. Intense with concentration. Frequently, looking worried. As well he might. Because he had to serve second for 69 games, knowing all the time, that if he slipped up he was out.

Several times he covered his anguish with the towell over his head. When the end game he looked stunned.

But the crowd cheered and cheered, bringing him back on to his feet. And, the Queen, paying only her second visit ever to Wimbledon, went down to say a few kind words.

Little Joe got a lesson on how not to play football from the England team.

When you get the ball make sure you pass it to a Frenchman, the ones in the white shirts.

When you have a clear view of goal from twenty yards, show all your strength and boot the ball as near as possible to the top of the stand. If you are not feeling that strong, look fierce and shoot for the middle of the goal keeper’s chest.

Don’t worry abou defence. It’s the goal keeper’s job to stop the Germans getting the ball in the net.

The final score was German 4, England 1. But Germany might easily have scored seven or eight goals, given the number of times David James was facing three white shirts, with not a red shirt anywhere near the penalty area.

To Warborough yesterday for lunch with brother-in-law at the Six Bells, where the new landlord provided a half-way decent English lunch cooked by his young Polish chef. He has only been here four years but he speaks English with a classier accent than most of those born within earshot of the traffic in Camden High Street.

And after lunch a welcome change from the hype of the World Cup and Wimbledon. Cricket as it used to be. Played by the locals on the village green.

Undisturbed by police sirens. There was not a single Midsommer murder all day. 

Not a sign of Inspector Barnaby, CBE. He must have been at home polishing his medal.

Lots of aggro in the mainstream media, about the supposed rift in Anglo-American relations. Because Obama refers to it as British Petroleum, although the present BP, is an Anglo-American company, because the  original BP, which was not a private enterprise super goliath, but a company owned  by the British goverment, for most of my life-time, merged with a US company. So it is now owned bymany Americans, and lots of other international players, as well as the Brits.

In trying to maximinse the profits of its shareholders, it has perpertrated an ecological disaster in  the Gulf of Mexcio.

But of course , BP is doing what all the international oil companies are doing, seeking to maximise their profits.

By selling more oil.

But we now know that that is a danger  to the planet. So the western democracies, have been seeking to develop other energy sources.

But meanwhile India and China are seeking to allow their citizens to own motor cars, just like all of us toffs in  the west.

So oil companies have to increase their production to meet this huge new demand. And to take risks with  safety.

And, of  course, to threaten tthe planet  because of the nasty emissions.

Two sparrows are chasing each other across the roof of the house opposite, watched by a pigeon sittting on a telegraph pole in the grey light of a cloudy dawn. A sea gull circles around, swooping down gently flapping its pure white wings. Just now two small black shapes have entered the picture. Swallows, or maybe young gulls. The silence is complete. The grand-children have not yet to greet the new day.

I am left with my thoughts.

Three hundred miles north in Cumbria, twelve families will be waking up, still stunnned by deaths  caused by the taxi-driver who went on the rampage with a rifle and a shot-gun, and killed twelve human beings, starting with his twin brother and his solicitor and a few of his mates from the taxi stand. Going on to who-ever came into his sites as he careered around the leafy lanes of the Lake District. Ending when he walked into the  dense woods near Boot, and shot himself.

Over thousand miles away on the Gaza strip, the Palestinians and their friends have just buried nine dead. What began as a peaceful attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaze, with a flotilla of boats sailing from Turkey, ended in a bloody war. The fully armed Israeli commandos shimied down ropes onto the deck of the biggest ship. The Isrealis say they were attacked by the Palestians with poles and clubs. The Palestinians say the Isrealis fired first. The Security Council has ordered an inquiry. So it will be  months before the full facts are established. Though, so far as I can glean, the dead had all been shot and they all came from the Palestinian side.

For days now these two events have dominated the media. A succession of pictures on our television screens. Thousands of words in the newspapers, reporting on, and seeking to explain, what has happened during the week of half-term holiday.

All I can do is mourn the passing of 21 human beings, whose lives were ended so abruptly

I finished my last post, which predicted Laws would resign before the weekend was out, shortly before I joined my wife and our guest  for dinner. After dinner I went in to the BBC web site to discover that he had fallen on his sword while I was eating the organic salmon. He showed great dignity in the brief statement he made to the television cameras. And he evoked a sympathetitc response from this morning’s Sunday newspapers. Even those who hate the LibDems did not dance on his grave. Hopefully, after a suitable period of penance he may even be able to retturn to this government if a suitable vacancy arrives in a year or two.

Meanwhile Cameron and Clegg have acted promptly to fill the gap before the markets open on Monday. Danny Alexander is a greenhorn as far as the City is concerned. But he has  the guts to stand up to George Osborne, his new boss. He was widely applauded by his own LibDem colleagues and the Cconservatives for his work on the team which negatiated the coalition terms. And he is not totally ignorant of matters economic. His Oxford degree was Philosophy, Politics and Economics, a degree which led many of my contempories into a succesful career in journalism and/or politics.

Alexander was known to be disappointed in the cabinet job he actually got, Scottish Secretary, which offers little hope of doing anything effective, given devolution and the power of the SNP north of the border. He is replaced by Michael Moore. Not THE Michael Moore but the 44 year old  son of an Army chaplin in Northern Ireland. He moved to Scotland at te age of 5, and went to Edinburgh University, not Oxbridge. That should help him in Scotland, but it does nothing to dilute the elitist majority of this cabinet. Most of the students I taught with a first degree from Edinburgh did not have a trace of a Scottish accent, even those born and bred in Scotland. They had as much difficulty understanding the Gorbals accents of some of  the Glasgow graduates as I did.

This is one of the saddest blogs I have written. David Laws is undoubtedly one of the most intelligent and able members of the new coalition cabinet. As the number two to George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer he was nobly shouldering the principal responsibility for introducing the unpopular cuts in public expenditure which are necessary to deal with the financial crisis. But following the revelations about his expense claims in today’s Daily Telegraph and his own subsequent admissions,  his position is clearly untenable, and I expect his resignation letter to be on David Cameron’s desk before the weekend is out. And I would expect David Cameron to accept it.

Although it provides a major headache for the new coalition, of which Laws was one of the principal archiitects as the LibDem leader of the negotiating team. David Cameron and Nick Clegg this weekend will have  to find some other very capable person, with the right economic experience and political skills to take this hottest of hot seats in the cabinet. And that person should ideally be a Lib Dem to preserve the agreed balance of the coalition between the two parties. Who will have to learn the ropes quickly enough to take part in the budget preparation.

And for Laws himself it is a terrible personal tragedy. His political career has bit the dust, just at the time it was taking off.

So what did he do wrong?

The essential facts are agreed between the Daily Telegraph and Laws.

Between 2004 and 2009 Laws paid rent of £40,000 to James Lundie. Initially the payment was for a room in a flat in Kennington, which Lundie sold for a capital profit of £193,000 in 2007. Then he bought a house and Laws rented the second bedroom for £950 a month and paid almost as much as a contribution to utilities, services, etc. Which adds up to over £20,000 a year. Quite a lot for a room, even in Kennington.

Since 2006 parliamentary rules have banned MP’s from claiming for rent paid to partners or family members. And, as he nows admits, Lundie has been his partner since 2001. As Laws points out himself, he could have claimed the £40,000 he has now agreed to pay back, quite legitemately, if he had declared that Lunde was his partner.

He did not want to do this, because he wished to protect the privacy of himself and his partner. Apparently he had told any of his family or his friends of his gay orientation, despite the fact that they have been living together in Kennington and at Laws’ house in Yeovil, throughout.

So what did he do wrong?  He was not seeking to maximise his financial gains. He was not making extravagont claims for moats around his castle.

But he was breaking the 2006 rules by concealing the fact that Lundie was his partner. Ironically for a man called Laws, he was making his own laws. Which is a form of hubris.

He says today that it is an relief to finally declare his sexuality. And hopefully his family and friends will think none the worse for him on that score. He may find that most of them  guessed as much years ago.

But in career terms he is paying a very heavy price for one mistake. But that mistake is at the heart of our present democratic concerns. MP’s and particularly ministers, who make our laws, must not be caught out breaking them. If he stays how can Cameron and Clegg still go on claiming to be the clean up government they want to be.

(Photo from The Guardian)

Halfway through tonight’s concert at the Bridport Arts Centre I decided to call upon all the manic depressive/bi-polar crowd to rise up and start calling themselves melancholics. If we have to have  a label melancholic has a more dignnified ring about it. And it jolts  the thinking away from the contemporary practice of treating depression as a mental illness, which is best treated by doctors and shrinks, using drugs or specially trained psychotherapists. The idea was given wings by the music, and it soared during one of episode of deeply melancholic music, led for a time by the trumpeter, Byron Wallen, a young black, in what was otherwise an all-white, all-male band.

From the applause,  I guess, that most of the audience liked the accent on the  negative, the long drawn out notes conveying pain, suffering and very gloomy feelings. We go out to concerts, or turn on the tele to be taken out of ourselves, to be cheered up after a hard day’s work. Or a hard day of not being able to work. We are not looking for more gloom, but when a performance, like this one, puts us in touch with our deeper sadness inside, the effect is hugely positive.

Tragedies can cheer us up more than funniest comedies.

Which is one reason, why I think it is more useful to regard manic depressives as people with a non-average temparament, which needs to be managed differently, rather than sick people, who should be cured.

This particular concert came from the manic idea of a journalist, and jazz-lover, Paul Lashmar, who got together a local band, to re-enact  the Miles Davies Concert (now a CD), Kind of Blue, performed in NewYork in 1959. The climax was the deeply melancholic final number on the CD. But the encore, sending the audience out into the chilly night, was the manic So Long, in which the drummer, Matt Fishwick,  thumped the drums with more exhuberance than skill.

Earlier in the programme, he had given one of the finest performances of the evening, which came out of the improvisation, that makes a live jazz performance so much more exhilirating than a CD. Fishwick was probably the youngest member of the band. To me he looked about 18 but he must be older. His moment came when responding to a nod from the leader, he went into an inspired virtuoso battery of drum bashing, quite amazing in its dexterity.

All jazz musicians are not manic depressives (sorry, melancholics). But perhaps all mainc depressives should be offered offered jazz tuition as an alternative to Prozac and shrinks. Who knows, it might even get a lift from David Cameron’s Big Society, with that most notorious old rascal and jazz fiend, Ken Clarke, being made Minister of Jazz, as well as Business Secretary.

It has taken me nearly a week  to calm down sufficiently to write about the entrapment by the Mail on Sunday of David Triesman, the chairman of the Football Association. My first impression was one of disbelief, that even the Mail could stoop so low, could score a new low in standards of decent journalism. The Mail, which purports to stand for everything that is good and decent in middle England, should put the boot in on a 66-year-old man AND on England’s 2018 World Cup bid.

If that’s Patriotism, folks, it should be sold with warning notice in large black print.

THIS PRODUCT SERIOUSLY DAMAGES THE NATIONAL HEALTH

It has driven out of public life a 66-year-old man, David Triesman, who has given quite exceptional public service in his four careers. He was General Secretary of the Association of University Teachers, where he skilfully directed the energies of the membership to fighting the savage cuts of Thatcherism and Blairism, which threatened the quality of British higher education. He made sure the moderate majority forces were present in the conference chamber to stop the union’s left wing, succeeding in their campaign for an academic boycott of Israel. 

Instead of resting on his laurels he took on, aged 58,  an even more difficult job – General Secretary of the Labour Party, at a time when morale was low and the membership dwindling. He did that job so well that he was brought into the Labour government  as a junior  minister two years later.

In January 2008,  the year he collected his free bus pass, he took on another challenging job. He became the first independent chairman of the Football Association, a job he expected to enjoy, because he is a fanatical football fan and Spurs supporter. He went into this job with a boyish enthusiasm, still fuelled by all his happy memories of those Saturday afternoons on the terraces.

Thanks to the Mail on Sunday exposure, his last dream job has ended in tears.

Judged by one journalistic standard this was a major triumph. The Mail scoop made headlines in the national and international media and forced the immediate resignation of the target figure. Triesman was exposed as a sexual predator, a married man who had taken advantage of a young woman employee. And as an rash leader who had made allegations of bribery against European football leaders.

Judged by another journalistic standard the story was a disgrace.

The young woman, Melissa Jacobs, was actually 39. She was not courted by Triesman until he was no longer her boss. Then he took her out to dinner a few times. The proof of his immoral yearnings comes from the publication of his private emails to her, which show that he was behaving like a lovesick teenager.

But ‘old man besotted with younger woman’ does not exactly make front page news, even in the Mail.

But, when you examine it, the second prong of the story, is even more of a disgrace. The Mail, according to The Guardian, paid £75,000 for this story, via the publicist, Max Clifford. At their final dinner together Jacobs was wired up with a hidden microphone. During the dinner Triesman confided to the civil servant who had worked for him when he was a government minister, that he suspected bribes were being offered by some of the Europeans.

Now this is an important story, worthy of serious journalistic enquiry. Had the Mail  followed that up and done a proper investigation into the truth of these rumours, I would be singing its praises.

In the event they chose to put two quite different stories together in order to ‘convict’ Triesman.

By so doing they commited the worst of all journalistic sins.

They missed the real story.