Letter from Lyme Bay

Some whizz at The Guardian decided last Thursday to give readers a rest from the pages and pages of pictures of the riots that have been sweeping the country. They sent one of their regular photographers, Graeme Robertson, down to our neck of the woods. He produced this splendid photo which evokes the tranquility to be found here. People looking for 185m. fossils, long before the advent of 24-hour news. Children bathing in the sea, matched over by Golden Cap. ( Note. The Cap is only Golden when the sun  is shining on it.)

The caption, however began, ‘Visitors comb the cliffs at Lyme Regis……’. Lyme Regis is in fact  two  miles east of Charmouth, as was admitted in the correction column the next day. But the photo was taken about a mile further east. Charmouth beach has a lot more people on it in the middle of August, which I hope to show by a pic of my own below.

Meanwhile I can confirm that society is not broken around here. Dorset police reported to our Neighborhood Watch, also on Thursday, that despite the National Disorder, they had made just three arrests. For incitement to riots. The local youths apparently are reading the social media but not taking to the streets. No shops have been trashed on our streets.

I would have blogged on the riots were it not for the fact that my daughter got married on Saturday, 6 August, the day the riots took off, and I have been busy since then with visitors who stayed around because Dorset is a good place to take a holiday.

Just found a pic I took myrself in 2010 from the same spot.  It was taken in May before tthe holiday season getsr started.

This is the first blog that I have written called Letter from Lyme Bay. It is now five years since I started blogging under the banner of Xcitybob.com. I changed the name after a few weeks, because I thought Xcity was meaningless to anyone who did not know the journalism course at City University London.

The Daily Novel name came out of my ruminations about the origins of British journalism, particularly Charles Dickins, and how novels frequently tell more of the truth than much journalism.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, especially when I found that the domain name was still available. But it now seems pretentious. And worse, missleading. Because I have not been writing fiction.

I am trying the new name on for size. It will evolve alongsride  some changes in style and direction.

Rupert Murdoch and his son James appeared before the House of Commons select committee to answer the allegations of phone hacking. Continually they claimed they knew nothing about what had been taking place at the News of the World. Murdoch said that he had been let down by people he had trusted.

This from a man who was born into the newspaper industry. Hhis father  Keith Murdoch ran Australian newspapers and he was interduced to the best of popular newspapers when he went as in intern to the Daily Express tutored by Ted Pickering on Fleet Street tactics.

He worsted Robert Maxwell in 1969 in his bid for the News of the World because he convinced British opinion, including myself and my colleagues at The Times that he understood newspapers.

Then he was an unknown factor in Fleet Street. But he appealed to many because he was critical of the British establishment.  He was bidding nfor the News of the World, whose editor had delivered a disgraceful attack on Maxwell with an editorial which described the News of the world as ‘British as roast beef’.

In fact the News of the World owes its popularity to appealing to the public appetite for the juicy court reports of those cases which detailed sexual misdemeanors and the like. Rupert Murdoch carried on that tradition.

His second acquisition was quite different. The Sun was a rebadging of the Daily Herald, a celebrated Labour supporting paper. It was an attempt by Hugh Cudlipp, the Mirror newspaper boss to provide a popular newspaper similar  to the News Chronicle.

Murdoch transformed it into a down market tabloid, boosted by Page Three unclothed babes and good sports coverage. Combined with trenchant political coverage at election times.

Thus the famous front page when Neil Kninnock was fighting an election as leader of the Labour Party – ‘Will the last person leaving Britain turn off the lights.’

Subsequently Murdoch supported New Labour under Tony Blair. Since those days Murdoch has enjoyed access to whoever occupied Downing Street.

Under cross examination today Murdoch was asked by his visits to David Cameron via the Downing Street back door. He declared that he had many such visits when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister.

But both he, and his son, James, claimed they knew nothing of the phone hacking by the News of the World. They said that they had turned over to the police evidence when they found it.

Their stance was that it was the job of the police to conduct enquiries.

Meanwhile the police were being interviewed by another House of Commons select committee. John Yates, the assistant commissoner whose job it was to look again at the hacking allegations, was blaming Rupert Murdoch’s men for not coming clean with what they knew.

Yates revealed that he had asked David Cameron’s chief of staff whether he should talk to the Prime Minister about these matters. The reply from the Downing Street offical was that he should not raise the matter.

So David Cameron became one of those who knew nothing.

The performance in the House of Commons has been totally transparent. The popular press will no doubt focus on the shaving foam comedian, demolished, not by the police, but by Murdoch’s third wife Wendy, who felled him with a right hook.

Perhaps she should be made chief executive of the Murdoch empire. Rupert is clearly long past retirement. James Murdoch was squirming claiming he knew nothing.

Neither is capable of managing such a large company, where control is held by the Murdoch’s though a devious arrangement whereby some shares have votes and others don’t.

A practice which should be outlawed.

Today’s performances demonstrate that the Murdoch era is over. And that the Met Police has much to answer for.

So the sooner we get a new head of the Met the better.

………but having techincal problems with his blog.

Normal service will be resumed ASAP.

Whenever that is.

He will explain a.s.a.p.

Since, I’m fixing  a jolly party

In late April or in May

In Marriott’s pad in London,

I thought I’d better tell him

To make sure he could be there.

So I rang his house in Yorkshire

In case he hadn’t yet left,

For his first ever world cruise

On oceans far and wide.

The voice that answered told me

Was sure he’d already gone

But he did not know for certain

Which ocean he was on.

But he did know, that Oliver

Had his mobile phone

In one of the huge pockets,

Of his coat, so long and thick.

I could text him, he told me

At little cost to me.

And then he told me politely,

That I had rung his number old

And my dear friend, Ollie

Now lived in the house next door.

It was of course his son-in-law

Whose wife I had first met,

When I held her in my arms,

Just outside the ward’s big door.

So I rang off in shame.

And I heard a booming voice

Inside my very head.

‘Now, surely, you must admit

You always get it wrong.

You stupid twit.’

The voice, I’m sure was Captain Bob’s

Because it was followed by a chortle,

Louder, longer and more chortle like

Than ever I had heard before.

It took me back many years

To when I had lunches three

With the disgraced tycoon and would-be MP.

Always when we parted at the door

He warmly shook my hand, and said.

‘Now, Bob, I’m sure you must agree.

You got it wrong in chasing me.’

Speechless,  I would pat

His shoulder big and broad.

A friendly pat.

‘Cause, he was quite the most amazing bloke

I had ever  met, before, or since.

I am still not sure what made him tick.

But to know the facts, you must read

The book by Bower, Tom to me.

The world will  never ever see anyone,

Just like him.

Which makes me less fearful for my grand kids two.

I could have said three, which rhymes.

But decent journalists don’t lie, even if it makes a better story.

(This is a Maxwell anecdote never told before because it happened on 23 Feb 2011. Yes, 2011.)

I rang my bank early this evening and got  through to a man, not in India.

To pass the time of day I asked him if he had heard of Robert Maxwell.

Oh yes, he said, I had to wade through a 90,000 word Ph D thesis on Maxwell’s accounting fiddles when I was at uni.

So I told him he could learn much more about Maxwell’s many and various skills, by reading Bower’s book, which he could buy for a couple of quid from Amason. No need to plough; it reads like a thriller. He would stay up all night reading it in bed.

But, I told him, that if Bower had got any vital fact wrong he would have been bankrupt years ago.

I waited while he slowly wrote down the details:

Maxwell. The Final Verdict by Tom Bower.

He checked to make sure he had got it down right.

I was so gob-smacked that my bank employed such an intelligent man, who was still to learn the possible pitfalls ahead in his trade, that I quite forgot what I had rung about.

So I told him I would have to call back in an hour or so.

His ghost has bewitched Bob Jones and made him think he is a poet. See below. Read it aloud to yourself trying to fit the metre which is a bit uneven.

A Hack’s Lament

Maxwell watchers go on watching

Til their dying day.

‘Cause that Czech so very bouncing

Made their lives seem quite like Hell.

Writing to Lord Thomson,

Pearson, and O’Reilly too.

Blackening their reputations.

‘Conducting their own vendettas

Obsessed and full of spite’.

But most of those Maxwell watchers

Did not hate at all.

Like Bob Clark his merchant banker

They knew Bob’s personal fate.

Exiled by the Nazis

From his native mountains so far away

To the Oxford plains where the people spoke so posh.

Bob Clark he most wanted

To reform and train the Czech

How to prosper without cheating

And reign in his nasty bullying.

Poor Bob, he failed, not once, but twice.

But if there was a more decent merchant banker

Him I did not know.

And better to have tried and failed

Than never to have tried at all.

The watchers, like the bankers, did not want

To put Bob Maxwell in to Wandsworth Jail.

They only wished to stop, his very rouguish ways.

Like stealing from the pockets

Of the Mirror workers’ fund.

All the watchers loved him

When his empire twice collapsed.

Because it got them front page headlines

And brought them passing fame.

Now he is not buried

But certainly drowned and dead

They have no longer

A vendetta to pursue.

But they want all young tycoons now living

To know that, yes, though, sometimes charming,

He really was a crook.

And if they try to use

His very clever tricks

Though they may fool the bankers.

They will have to face the watchers of today

Who are learning the journo trade

The old watchers are quite busy doing other things.

But they do have time to tell

Wikipedia.

That they must not change

What is clearly

A  tale, so very, very black

To one a lightish shade of grey,

Where the wily Czech is just  ‘alleged ‘

To have stolen five hundred million quid.

And the watchers do have time to tell

Their jolly Maxwell stories

To young journos in the pub.

With many years to learn just

How to stop, those would-be Robert Maxwell’s

Robbing pensioners today.

They’ll tell the youngsters

That they must learn to be ready for

Attacks on  characters and skills

By those super rich and holding power.

Paying thousands to PRs

To make their lies look just like facts.

If they really learn our humble trade

They’ll get some passing fame.

But better far than fame or wealth

Will be the welcome they receive

When they go into journo pubs.

Because all the blokes around them

Will know what they have done.

And though our trade is often grubby.

When we sometimes get it right.

Chaps like Richard Nixon have to

Leave that house so White.

And journos world wide over

Raise a jar to Bernstein and his buddy

And old Ben Bradlee too.

And any journo who does journalism

Even near as good as that.

Will have what is most worth having

Not praise from Rupert or Lord Rothermere

But smiles on the faces of the journos

Drinking in the pub.

Which is just what academics call.

‘The esteem of one’s colleagues’.

It does not rhyme.

Nor fit the metre.

But that’s academics, folks.

Hurrah, for journalists.

Another round, anyone?

Half-term.

Grand-children in the house.

Tearing through my study.

Running up and down.

Eating all my breakfast.

Laughing all the time.

Blogging is impossible.

Tranquility quite gone.

But would I be without them?

No.

I was like that once.

And, sometimes they delight me.

Make me laugh and smile.

So, stay my little darlings.

Enjoy your-selves all day.

But, please, please,

A little quieter.

So that I can think.

And get my act together

To write a blog today.

You think he can’t accuse us any more of conducting a personal vendetta.

But maybe Mossad rescued him, filled him with rejuvenation medicine, winged him away to a hideout in Argentina.

I can imagine him sitting there in front of 50 computers, altering web sites and emails and of course milking bank accounts.

All the time chortling and smiling that smile of his, which you all know.

They thought they’d got me. And,  they don’t even suspect I am richer than ever and and don’t have to borrow from bankers ever again.

I hope I’m joking, not suddenly possessed of telepathic powers.

Captain Bob is still up to his tricks, folks. His ghost is rewriting the first draft of history. Just look at his entry in Wikipedia. He is ‘alleged’ to have stolen money from the Daily Mirror pension fund.  Mr Justice Forbes criticised some aspects of the first Board of Trade Inquiry. No  mention of the second BoT inquiry or the Hartley Shawcross Takeover Panel. No mention of the fact that even his wife,  Betty Maxwell, in her book written after his death, admitted he was a crook.

Wikipedia says the share price of his company collapsed after his death. Implication that it was because the brilliant Maxwell was no longer at the helm.

No mention of the FACT that the share price collapsed on the second day because there was no money left to repay the huge loans to the bankers. And worse there was no money to repay the £500 million borrowed from the Daily Mirror pension fund.

Then the conspiracy theories. Was he pushed off his yacht by the one of the secret services?

Reading this you would never realise that there is absolutely no doubt that Maxwell was one of the biggest swindlers in British financial history.

And sadly no mention of the facts uncovered over the years by a few journalists. We were not a conspiracy.

I was first on the trail, driven by curiosity. When I first met him in 1964, I thought he was brilliant and was writing what I expected to be a profile of new star of publishing. I followed him for about seven years, then went into teaching.

Before that I wrote my first really big story on him in 1966, when I was working for a weekly, called The Statist, I had been doing some quiet digging and realised I was dealing with an unusual and possibly dangerous. So I rang my deputy on The Statist, who had moved to the Sunday Times, who I was the only man I knew, who I could trust to join with me on this story.

We ventured out together, one Saturday afternoon to face the Captain in his lair, in the by far the biggest council house, near Oxford Town.

The result was a long profile by me in The Statist on the Friday. And a shorter crisp story by story by Oliver, which, contained some rather interesting facts, which even Maxwell had great difficulty in explaining.

Shortly after that the story was picked up in a big way by Godfrey Hodgson and Bruce Page of the Sunday Times Insight team with a team of forty scouring the globe.

Between us, we did a pretty good job. But it the reason he fell so heavily in 1967, was that he had run out of tricks, to disguise the emptiness in his house of cards.

We all thought that after the devastating report of the BoT enquiry he would never again be trusted with a public company.

But in a few years he was the boss of an even bigger empire.  In those years the only journalist following him was Tom Bower, an ex-BBC man who first met Maxwell when he was doing a Panorama profile. In the final phase Andreas Whittam Smith and Jeremy Warner at The Independent joined in. And in the final weeks just before his death a young woman from The Financial Times joined in. (probably Bronwen Maddox). She did some notable digging.

All of us were experienced business journalists. For another view of Maxwell turn to Stephen Bates, Guardian journalist, who has made his name mostly by writing about religion and the Royal Family.  There is a very funny and revealing story by him on  the gentlemanranters website. It is about the day he was sent in his first job, as a cub reporter on the Oxford Mail, to interview Maxwell.

The biggest omission on the Wikipedia web site, is a paragraph referring readers to the latest edition of Bower’s book, Maxwell: The Final Verdict. It tells the full story of Maxwell is can be bought from Amazon for peanuts.

Oh, gosh, horrible thought, perhaps the big man will be after me from the grave. Is their any lawyer out there who can tell me whether ghosts can sue for libel!

Captain Bob is still up to his tricks, folks. His ghost is rewriting the first draft of history. Just look at his entry in Wikipedia. He is ‘alleged’ to have stolen money from the Daily Mirror pension fund.  Mr Justice Forbes criticised some aspects of the first Board of Trade Inquiry. No  mention of the second BoT inquiry or the Hartley Shawcross Takeover Panel. No mention of the fact that even his wife,  Betty Maxwell, in her book written after his death, admitted he was a crook.

Wikipedia says the share price of his company collapsed after his death. Implication that it was because the brilliant Maxwell was no longer at the helm.

No mention of the FACT that the share price collapsed on the second day because there was no money left to repay the huge loans to the bankers. And worse there was no money to repay the £500 million borrowed from the Daily Mirror pension fund.

Then the conspiracy theories. Was he pushed off his yacht by the one of the secret services?

Reading this you would never realise that there is absolutely no doubt that Maxwell was one of the biggest swindlers in British financial history.

And sadly no mention of the facts uncovered over the years by a few journalists. We were not a conspiracy.

I was first on the trail, driven by curiosity. When I first met him in 1964, I thought he was brilliant and was writing what I expected to be a profile of new star of publishing. I followed him for about seven years, then went into teaching. Godfrey Hodgson and Bruce Page of the Sunday Times Insight team joined in on that phase. And then went on to other things.

We all thought that after the devastating report of the BoT enquiry he would never again be trusted with a public company.

But in a few years he was the boss of an even bigger empire.  In those years the only journalist following him was Tom Bower, an ex-BBC man who first met Maxwell when he was doing a Panorama profile. In the final phase Andreas Whittam Smith and his men at The Independent joined in. And in the final weeks just before his death a young woman from The Financial Times joined in. (probably Bronwen Maddox). She did some notable digging.

All of us were experienced business journalists. For another view of Maxwell turn to Stephen Bates, Guardian journalist, who has made his name mostly by writing about religion and the Royal Family.  There is a very funny and revealing story by him on  the gentlemanranters website. It is about the day he was sent in his first job, as a cub reporter on the Oxford Mail, to interview Maxwell.

The biggest omission on the Wikipedia web site, is a paragraph referring readers to the latest edition of Bower’s book, Maxwell: The Final Verdict. It tells the full story of Maxwell is can be bought from Amazon for peanuts.

Oh, gosh, horrible thought, perhaps the big man will be after me from the grave. Is their any lawyer out there who can tell me whether ghosts can sue for libel!

Captain Bob is still up to his tricks, folks. His ghost is rewriting the first draft of history. Just look at his entry in Wikipedia. He is ‘alleged’ to have stolen money from the Daily Mirror pension fund.  Mr Justice Forbes criticised some aspects of the first Board of Trade Inquiry. No  mention of the second BoT inquiry or the Hartley Shawcross Takeover Panel. No mention of the fact that even his wife,  Betty Maxwell, in her book written after his death, admitted he was a crook.

Wikipedia says the share price of his company collapsed after his death. Implication that it was because the brilliant Maxwell was no longer at the helm.

No mention of the FACT that the share price collapsed on the second day because there was no money left to repay the huge loans to the bankers. And worse there was no money to repay the £500 million borrowed from the Daily Mirror pension fund.

Then the conspiracy theories. Was he pushed off his yacht by the one of the secret services?

Reading this you would never realise that there is absolutely no doubt that Maxwell was one of the biggest swindlers in British financial history.

And sadly no mention of the facts uncovered over the years by a few journalists. We were not a conspiracy.

I was first on the trail, driven by curiosity. When I first met him in 1964, I thought he was brilliant and was writing what I expected to be a profile of new star of publishing. I followed him for about seven years, then went into teaching. Godfrey Hodgson and Bruce Page of the Sunday Times Insight team joined in on that phase. And then went on to other things.

We all thought that after the devastating report of the BoT enquiry he would never again be trusted with a public company.

But in a few years he was the boss of an even bigger empire.  In those years the only journalist following him was Tom Bower, an ex-BBC man who first met Maxwell when he was doing a Panorama profile. In the final phase Andreas Whittam Smith and his men at The Independent joined in. And in the final weeks just before his death a young woman from The Financial Times joined in. (probably Bronwen Maddox). She did some notable digging.

All of us were experienced business journalists. For another view of Maxwell turn to Stephen Bates, Guardian journalist, who has made his name mostly by writing about religion and the Royal Family.  There is a very funny and revealing story by him on  the gentlemanranters website. It is about the day he was sent in his first job, as a cub reporter on the Oxford Mail, to interview Maxwell.

The biggest omission on the Wikipedia web site, is a paragraph referring readers to the latest edition of Bower’s book, Maxwell: The Final Verdict. It tells the full story of Maxwell is can be bought from Amazon for peanuts.

Oh, gosh, horrible thought, perhaps the big man will be after me from the grave. Is their any lawyer out there who can tell me whether ghosts can sue for libel!