The Daily Novel

Less than a week after the party to celebrate thirty years of journalism teaching at City University comes the best possible reason for celebration; the first appointment of an ex-student to the editor’s chair of a national newspaper. Will Lewis, who was just seven when journalism teaching began at City, has over-taken all those oldies who came to City before 1991/92, to became editor of The Daily Telegraph. Will was on the first periodical journalism course that I ran myself.

He, was, as I told him at the time, one of my more troublesome students. He did not take the delivered word of the teaching staff as unshakeable gospel truth. Though he was on the periodical course he was determined to become a newspaper journalist. Not so easy as it sounds, because although the periodical course taught much the same skills as all City print courses, it was regarded in the conventional journalism training wisdom of the times, as inferior to the flagship newspaper course. (I even had one course who used to chant, as I joined them in the pub, ‘We are the second class citizens.’)

Will, entirely through his own efforts, got himself a work attachment on the Mail on Sunday, and some freelance assignments from them, which he managed to do with also completing satisfactorily his work for the course.

The moment of truth came when Will delivered the draft of his project one Friday afternoon in early-June 1992. After I read it I told him that it needed substantial amendment if it was going to pass. Will blew his top. Much of it, he told me, had been published by the Mail on Sunday, and they loved it. I told him that to pass a City project bold assertions needed to be backed by hard evidence. He continued to argue with me that if his work was good enough for the Mail it should be could enough for the journalism course. He finally stormed out of my office.

I did not see him again until the following Friday when he came to my office at five minutes to six, the deadline for delivery of the completed project. He had a smile on his face. When I read it I found that he had done exactly what I told him was required. Which in my view was a clear demonstration that he had learnt one of the most important professional skills of the job.

After he graduated he went to work for the Mail on Sunday. But he did not stay long. He moved to the Financial Times, which was even tougher than me in demanding evidence to back assertion. He became one of their most outstanding journalists taking over the running of the American edition, where the FT has to compete with the Wall St Journal on its home territory. His success was such that he was able to put himself forward as a candidate for FT editor when Richard Lambert stepped down in 2001.

It was too big a risk for the FT to appoint an editor in his early thirties, so they opted for Andrew Gowers instead. Shortly afterwards Will moved to the Sunday Times to become their business editor. He stayed there until just over a year ago when he moved to the Daily Telegraph with the dual role of City Editor and Deputy Editor.

He will need all his talent and skills if he is going to make a success of The Daily Telegraph, whose Canary Wharf office floors are covered with blood. For the past twelve months competing newspapers have carried more column inches on the troubles at The Telegraph than on any other national newspaper. The redundancies and the leaving parties are still going on.

These troubles have reached a crescendo in the past year while the papers have been owned by the Barclay brothers. But the roots of the problem go back much farther. The Daily Telegraph established itself as the largest circulation quality broadsheet national newspaper under the long ownership of the Berry family. For most of the last half of the twentieth century it had a circulation of between 1.2 and 1.4 million, three or four times the circulation of The Times and The Guardian. It also had an excellent reputation for traditional journalistic values, with a clear separation of news and comment and it supported one of the biggest and best teams of foreign reporters covering all the major countries of the world.

Conrad Black, the Canadian newspaper proprietor, wrested control from the Berry family in 1985. For the first ten years of the Black ownership, The Daily Telegraph got better under the editorship of Max Hastings, who managed to modernise it while maintaining the high quality of its journalism. The rot began to set in under the editorship of Charles Moore, who did not have Hastings’ news sense. The really serious problems began with the increasingly odd behaviour of the proprietor, Conrad Black, which eventually landed him court accused of financial impropriety.

The new chiefs brought in by the Barclays have not so far stemmed the decline of The Daily Telegraph. The latest ABC figures show the circulation hovering around the all-time low of 897,000 while The Times is now selling 675,000. But it is not only the print circulation the Telegraph has to worry about. Like all the broadsheets the Telegraph has to come to terms with the new world of web journalism, where The Guardian has far outstripped all the other nationals attaining a web circulation of 13 million.

Lewis was given the task of masterminding the Telegraph response to the digital age when he was made managing editor and also given the task of overseeing the move from Canary Wharf to the new headquarters in Victoria. It is still not clear what happens to these responsibilities now Lewis has been made editor of The Daily Telegraph. In that role Lewis committed himself on the side of those who believe that news scoops should published immediately on the web, rather than held up in the hope of boosting circulation of the printed paper the next day. Inevitably, Lewis has also taken an active part in the blood spillage.

So now he has the task of rebuilding shattered morale, restoring the journalistic reputation of the paper with a new team, and cajoling that team to work for both the web and the print version. This is a dilemma facing every editor of a serious newspaper. How do you ensure that your reporters and columnists have sufficient time to report, to reflect and to analyse, when they are also being urged to break and update their stories every minute of the day?

It is by any measure a huge challenge. But not impossible, as has been demonstrated by the success of The Guardian and BBC in riding two horses at the same time.

Both of these organisations are hate targets for many Telegraph readers. Which reminds me of the other major problem Lewis has on his hands. Does he position the Telegraph behind the new Cameron centrist policies or does he take it further to the right?

Either position is possible in terms of the history of the paper, which was founded in by one Colonel Sleigh, a right wing reformer, and is still called the Torygraph. For most of my own lifetime the Telegraph has clearly positioned itself to the right of The Times, with The Guardian as always championing the left cause. Today’s Times is so far to the right that if the Telegraph seeks to be even more rightwing it will end up wooing UKIP.

The reason the arguments around Jack Straw’s statement that he wants Muslim women who wear the niqab to lift their veil when they come to chat to him in his surgery are still being raked over is that they touch something deep in the national psyche. Despite the acres of newsprint that have already been used up on this subject there is still more to be said. There are two points which have not been made in anything I have read on the subject.

Point number one is that although the number of women adopting the niqab, which covers the whole of the face leaving only a slit for the eyes to see, and be seen, is only a small minority, there has been a much bigger increase in the number of women adopting the hijab and the chador and other Muslim dress forms. Though some male writers have suggested that this as an example of how women are dominated by the demands made by their menfolk, the evidence from the large numbers of Muslim women interviewed demonstrates overwhelmingly the choice to wear traditional dress is made by the women themselves.

They find it liberating rather than the reverse. And their attitude is a mirror image of our own cultural norms in relation to the how much female flesh is exposed in newspapers, on television and in films and to how often television time is devoted to explicit sexual acts. These changes have taken place gradually over the last forty years so that we have not noticed them, and younger people, who have not known anything different, do not think to question them.

Thus there has been serious concern in newspapers over the last few days about the increase in hard porn on the internet, which implies that an increasing number of women and children are being exploited and probably harmed by being involved in making the videos. But no-one has discussed how this growth has been facilitated by the shift in what is acceptable in our dominant norms. This is not just to do with the tabloid press and the more sensational television programmes.

Saturday’s Guardian, for instance, had two full pages on the row over the niqab. But the prime advertising spot, the back page, was devoted to a full page ad for Observer Woman. This showed two naked and handsome young people engaged in a fond embrace with the headline, ‘Why we all stopped having sex’.

This is just one example of the serious media using blatant sexual titillation in the hope of selling newspapers. (The headline was in fact quite misleading. The actual article was angled around of an American, whose views on what was happening, was based on her experience in New York. It did contain several interviews with English people, which revealed that more sex was taking place rather than less!)

This trend has been going on since the late 1960s when I interviewed Rupert Murdoch at the time he was just starting the Page Three girl and was facing a lot of flak from the serious papers for doing so. Murdoch pointed out that the first nudes in British newspapers had been published in the British qualities. He was quite right. The first was in The Times, which was an extremely titillating full page colour ad for Fison’s agricultural chemicals. The second was in The Observer arts section. (For the record you will not find the paragraph quoting this in my article for The Times, because it was cut out by a sub-editor after I had gone home. And not because I had exceeded my word length.)

The feminists of the late 1960s were making their own statement by deliberately adopting non-titillating dress and even avoiding the use of make-up. Today’s feminists have not entered the niqad debate and they seem to have given up their campaign to stem the trend towards serious television female journalists exposing more and more flesh.

The second point I wish to make is about the reasons many people feel threatened by the niqab and its effect on communications between human beings. First, it is threatening because it is unfamiliar. I do find myself that I am a bit intimidated by the niqad, when I encounter it on the 24 bus. Other forms of Muslim dress don’t bother me, because they are not very different from the habits of Roman Catholic nuns, who were regular travellers on the Wolverhampton number 3 bus of my boyhood.

But it is simply not true that the niqab makes it significantly more difficult to tell whether a person is lying or telling the truth. We do rely on facial expression for cues as to how people really feel. But, because of that, skilled liars become practised in controlling their facial expressions to conceal their feelings. So the student of non-verbal communications observes other non-verbal cues that are still available and which may be less under their conscious control. Posture, gesture and tone of voice, for instance.

And, of course, even with the niqab you can still see the eyes, which the poets used to call the windows of the soul. And because of the absence of other facial expression clues you pay more attention to the eyes. Fear and laughter come through very clearly. But as with all non-verbal clues it is easy to mis-interpret. Some people look shifty, not because they are lying, but because they are shy or uncomfortable.

One final point that has occurred to me in writing. The wearing of the niqab does not in any sense reduce the ability of the female to stir the loins of the rampant male. The greater the degree of coverage of the female form the more that is left to the male imagination. And, of course, the favoured sexual message of my youth was when a girl was making eyes at you. So if the mullahs are expecting the wearing of the niqab to reduce sexual activity between young Muslims I doubt they are having much success.

Had quite a social week culminating on Thursday evening with the party to celebrate thirty years of journalism at City University, at which a good time was had by most. About which I should have blogged by now. Problem is I hit a depression, partly triggered by drinking too much. So readers will have to wait.

But the experience also reminds me that I have not done very much so far in this blog in fulfilling one of the aims; explaining what life is like viewed from the perspective of a manic depressive.

Drink is a bigger problem for the manic depressive than for the rest of humanity. Some of it can be a great help. It loosens the tongue, aids initial contacts with other human beings, which stimulates and excites.

Too much of it is a disaster. It fuels the manic flow of aspirations. But it erodes the ability to fulfil those aspirations. So although my speech was still not slurred by the end of the evening and I was able to get into a taxi without stumbling, I had had rather too much for my own well-being.

Alcohol above all is a chemical depressive. Right now, on Saturday, I am still too depressed to write a decent blog. So all those ex-City students who missed the party will have to wait a day or two for my report on it.

Right now I need a rest or a change. So I am off to help my youngest daughter with her computer and her new mobile phone. Funnily enough I can deal with computers when I am depressed. In a similar way that my father still managed to do some carpentry, clock mending and do-it-yourself even when depressed.

Note for any shrinks who happen on this blog. The right kind of work can be the best therapist. Much better than locking people up.

So now we know. The foundations on which David Cameron is building the house of the new Conservative policies rests on foundations constructed by Tony Blair, who is perhaps not surprisingly, a Cameron hero, but it also rests on the foundations laid down in 1948 by Nye Bevan. Which is altogether more surprising. Because as well as being the architect of the NHS, Bevan was the leading spokesman for the Labour left. He voiced the opinions and feelings of the men from the Welsh mining valleys, who in those days still remembered Winston Churchill sending in the troops to deal with a mining strike.

He told the Conservative faithful in Brighton on Wednesday.

‘Tony Blair once explained his priority in three words: education, education, education.

NHS. ‘

It certainly has a ring to it as a slogan. Can you imagine the health service unions marching marching to Trafalgar chanting: ‘NHS, NHS, NHS’ And all in support of a Conservative leader.

It is worth reading Cameron’s speech in full. Because it shows a different kind of human being than the one portrayed by many of the political commentators, who portray him as the master of spin, referring to his previous job as a public relations man.

Below is a long extract from what he said about the NHS.

‘I believe that the creation of the NHS is one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century.

And I want them to be safe there.’

This has the ring of personal conviction about it. He is speaking, with the voice of a father, of his own direct experience of the NHS. He is equally passionate about green policies, the environment and the need for urgent action on climate change.

He is also honest about what he likes about Blairite policies. He approves of what Blair has done in education and implicitly promises the electorate more of the same. He approves of Blair’s policies on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and against terror, with one or two minor exceptions, like identity cards. This is not a cynical bid for the middle ground. The opinion polls show that the Iraq war is distinctly unpopular with the electorate.

On the domestic front the situation is even more clear. The workers in the NHS, whom Cameron praises so highly, are upset because of the increasing privatisation of health care provision, and the emphasis on introducing criteria based on profit and managerial power. The workers in the educational sector are upset for similar reasons. They don’t think trust schools, open to bidding by all-powerful multi-national companies, like Microsoft, are good for education. In the university sector, teachers fear that the new managerialism and the emphasis on profit and private fund-raising is threatening the quality of a university system which is the envy of the world and a substantial earner of foreign exchange.

So the important questions remain. Just how is Cameron going to achieve improvements in these public services? And how is he going to do something about climate change?

There is one sentence in his speech which I have not seen highlighted elsewhere. Listing his priorities he includes:

‘Deregulate our employers and wealth-creators.’

The accelerating pace of climate change cannot be prevented by the action of individual human beings. It requires more regulation, not less regulation, of the employers and wealth-creators. Not because multi-national companies are wicked, but because they are legal entities mandated to make the biggest profit for their shareholders. No director of Esso could recommend sealing up their oil wells and going into the wind turbine business.

Individual action is by comparison puny and in many cases impossible. Even Boris Johnson can only take one child on the back of his bike. For many single parent mothers with three kids (for whom Cameron shows great sympathy) the only viable option for getting the kids to school is a car.

There is one section of Cameron’s speech which shows a refreshing change from Blairism.

‘For too long, the big political decisions in this country have been made in the wrong place.

Not a President.’

Like most of the rest of what Cameron says I think this comes from personal conviction.

But it does pose real problems for him. His policies will have to take into account the quite strong views of his colleagues into account. And they include people like Oliver Letwin, whose views I know very well because he used to canvas my own street when it was part of the old St Pancras North constituency. And behind them he will have to take into account the views of those who fund the Conservative Party.

I wish him well. But I do think he has got an even more difficult job than the next leader of the Labour Party.

‘Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.’

When I put this question to my shaving mirror this morning, the answer came loud and clear. Xcitybob must end his holiday forthwith. And write a serious political blog. According to the leaks to the media David Cameron for his big speech to the Conservative Party annual conference on Wednesday is going to steal my favourite lines from one of the two best American Presidents of my life-time, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

There is still time for him to have second thoughts. So to save him from making this dreadful mistake, I am rushing out a blog to help him in his declared aim of building up his policies. Because, despite the fact that he is an Old Etonian and a Conservative, David Cameron does not seem to be a bad bloke. And although he would not get my vote for Prime Minister, I think he would be much better as leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition than anyone else visible in the present Conservative Party.

I also have some sympathy for the way in which Cameron is going about his task of saving the Conservative Party from itself. He is, as he says, building his policies as he goes along, like building a house. But the first thing you need in building a house is firm foundations. Cameron is presently building his house on a swamp of confusion.

Main confusion. JFK’s American Democrat values are quite the wrong foundation for the British Conservative Party. JFK, like the other American President I most admire, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was the leader of the American Democratic Party. British politicians, on the left as well as on the right, often misunderstand the American Democrats, as does Cameron. They know it is not Marxist. But they often fail to take into account that it is the party of the trade unions. Both its power and its policies reflect this fact.

Now, if David Cameron wants to remodel the Conservative Party as the party trade unionists should support, he might actually catch a few floating voters. But I doubt he will win the support of those who supply Conservative Party funds. And he clearly has not given much thought about how to get the trade union vote, because he did not bother to turn up at the Trade Union Congress in Brighton, nor send any of his star team.

Brief American History. Roosevelt saved the world from the depression caused by the Hoover Republican policies, by adopting the policies advocated by the British economist, John Maynard Keynes. Public spending fuelled the world recovery and also alleviated the plight of the poor.

JFK modernised the Democratic Party in 1960. By tackling the racist policies of the American Democratic southern wing. By tackling the bad trade unionists, like the corrupt leader of the Teamsters’ Union, Jimmy Hoffa, who was demolished by JFK’s brother, Bobby Kennedy. By engaging the hearts of minds of America’s youth, which still inspires those Americans today, who instead of going all out for earning big money, work for all the many non-governmental organisations which are trying to help the world’s poor.

Cameron does have a shrewd political instinct. He recognises that Tony Blair has lost the hearts of a lot of his own supporters. What he does not realise is that this is because Tony Blair is stuck in time warp. Blair mistakes the present trade union movement for the hate figures of his political youth, like King Arthur Scargill. That is almost as bad as measuring American trade unionism by the likes of Jimmy Hoffa.

The Conservatives can never become the party of the trade unionists. Far too many trade unionists distrust them. In terms of his own survival, I must also point out, that the majority of those who finance the Conservative Party are those who are in favour of non-unionised work forces. Like the dominant Republican Christian right in the US.

So my suggestion to David Cameron is that he should take time out from helping with the washing up to bone up on his own party’s history. And to build his new house on the firm foundations of successful Conservative leaders of the past. I offer him two models.

Benjamin Disraeli. He revitalised the Conservative Party and introduced measures which led to free education for all. Thereby making it possible for young working class lads to rise by working hard, but with skills they would not otherwise have had. He was in favour of what today is called the meritocracy.

Second model, Harold Macmillan. Who made the Conservatives electable again after the debacle of Eden’s Suez blunder. And, of course, Macmillan had an excellent relationship with JFK. Not at all sycophantic, although Macmillan knew the realities of American power. JFK listened to him, because he talked sense.

Both of these Conservative leaders epitomised the essence of British Toryism. It’s ability to adapt to the demands of the times, by adjusting its policies, while remaining firm to its traditions and principles.

Still time to tear up that prepared speech, David. And build your new house on solid foundations.

The dolphins are silvery and glistening in the sun and engaged in a circular dance with each other. They fill me with awe and excitement, not like those rather dull grey specimens I saw in Gwnt Bay on Thursday. The dolphins are somehow connected with The Times. How do I know this for certain? It is the logic of dreams. And this is only one remembered fragment of a series of dreams last night.

In another fragment I am in a tall building in New York, about halfway up. Some workmen have removed some of the glass and are perched precariously outside doing some kind of repair work. I feel a bit shivery because of the cold air coming in. But the room is full of the chatter of the party a big commercial firm in the building is giving.

I know that all the Laurence Stern fellows have been invited to this party but the only one I recognise in the crowd is David Leigh of The Guardian. I ask him where he is living and he tells me Park Avenue West. I explain to him how New York has radicalised me. The discovery of the extremes of wealth in the United States, nowhere better illustrated than in New York, where the plush apartments on Park Avenue are a few blocks away from run-down rent-controlled tenements, where the baths are so small, that I can only sit down in them. And some don’t even have a shower.

Rationally this seems like a load of nonsense. But these are only a few remembered fragments. My growing belief is that dreams are the theatre of the mind. Every night when we dream we are writing plays, poems, novels, symphonies. Some of us are painting pictures.

And perhaps the dreaming mind recognises an affinity with other living creatures that is different in kind from the understanding of the reasoning mind. The scientists tell us that we are descended from the creatures of the watery world and that the dolphins are amongst the most intelligent of them.

But it is only in dreams that we get to dance with dolphins.