The Daily Novel

Ever since I moved onward and upward to the wonderful new version of the WordPress program the type size of my posts has become so minute that I need a magnifying glass to read it myself. Under the version I could control the type size in several ways, but I am now in a new ballgame. Readers will have noticed that I have been trying to rectify this, with the help of my very good friend trial and error.

I managed to increase the size. But it made all the posts I had made before the change look like those big type books for the old folks you see so much of today. Which means that even before they have read what I have to say it seems that I am shouting at the readers.

In the midst of all these unwanted technical work a message popped up on screen telling me that my Registry needed updating. Now I am not really sure what the registry is, but I do know that it does something very important and that it is nothing to do with marriage.

I thought in my innocence that it was Bill Gates’ lot helping me to keep my computer in good shape. So I pressed the buttons and had my Registry scanned. I gazed in horror as the the cursor sped across the screen with an ever-increasing number of errors in my Registry that needed fixing. The final total was 1647 errors. So I pressed the next button to have them dealt.

Only then did I realise that this was not part of the service you get in return for the high prices you pay for Microsoft products. It was another company who had found its way on to my computer and calls itself, Advanced Registry Optimiser. They want me to pay £19.95 to fix it, on a bargain trial offer.

No thinks. There probably is a way of cleaning it up with a Microsoft program already on my computer. Tedious. But I will look for it as a matter of urgency.

As soon as I have got the type size right, so that people can read this and further installments of my gripes about how companies treat us.

Got my telephone bill from BT. It’s £12.75, but it should be £11.75, because I pay Sky Talk for my telephone calls, but I still have to pay the BT line rental, because Sky does not own any telephone lines.

The extra pound was the BT Answer 1571 charge, which is applied ‘if you don’t make more than 2 calls with BT per month.’

No further comment necessary.

Down to the village to buy one or two papers, but when I fish in my pocket and look in my wallet, I find I don’t even have a penny. I leave my papers on the counter and go to the Post Office. It is closed untill 2 PM. I try the cash machine in the supermarket, but it wants to charge me £1.65.

Back to the newsagent, who is sympathetic. I can have the papers on tick. My name is written down on a scrap of paper and put in a red box behind the counter. Down to the pub to have some lunch. No, I can’t do it in my card, but I am welcome to use their cash machine.

That machine wants £1.95. But at least the publican accepted a cheque for my fish and chips.

Got my money at the Post Office afterwards but I have to queue at the counter because they don’t have a machine.

So that makes two big companies, banks and pubs, fishing the money out of my pocket to swell thteir bank accunts, another big company providing service with a smile, but at a cost presumably on their profits. And one small shopkeeper providing the kind of service small shopkeepers always used to provide. And don’t forget they charge exactly the same for newspapers as do W. H. Smith, so they are not making serious money out of me.

The Wall St Journal is the only one of the US heavies to talk figures today on the batttle for the US presidency. The Journal reports that Obama has now taken the lead in the votes of the super delegates, those senior party leaders, who cast their votes at the convention, alongside the delegates who are pledged to vote one way or another by the popular votes in the primaries.

The Journal, quoting Associated Press, says that Obama has 276 superdelegates for him, against only 271.5 for Clinton. There have been several contradictory figures oven the last few days on the superdelegates’ scorecard. This is not surprising because the figures reported are partly based on hard evidence and partly on the ring around by journalists calling superdelegates to discover their latest position. But all the results shows the two candidates neck to neck.

And with only a a handful of primaries still to declare Obama has a clear majority of the delegates elected by the popular vote. So that it is now almost certain that Obama, not Clinton, will carry the Democratic banner into the election next November.

The Washington Post’s Election story focusses on a speech by the leading leftish candidate for the job, John Edwards, who has finally committed himself to Obama, after sitting on the fence ever since he dropped out of the race himself. This is an important endorsement, because Clinton has a strong following amoungst left-of-centre Americans.

As for the New York Times the headline for their article says it all. It was:

Already, Obama and McCain Map Fall Strategies

Murdoch’s main popular US newspaper, the New York Post has other concerns, including O.J. Simpson, who is still alive and well and talking to the newspapers, and George Bush.s daughter, who is apparently getting marride. For its election coverage it chooses an AP story, headlined:

Clinton goes from inevitable nominee to on the ropes

Again, the headline says it all.

That leaves Fox Television, which is Murdoch’s television company in the US. They have a ‘Clinton leads Mothers’ Day Charge story. It reports Clinton efforts to fan the dying embers of her campaign but it also reports Obama snatching the lead amoungs the superdelegates. They also have a story highlighting the resignation of a McCan aide, who was close to the Burmese junta.

So no sign here of Murdoch’s media bowing to their master’s voice, rather than following the reporting imperatives.

Murdoch, I am sure will want to have some influence on both the US election and the British election but he is not declaring his hand at this stage. His first newspaper job was on the Daily Express, in the days of Lord Beaverbrook, whose political sympathies were well-known and trumpeted by the Beaver himself, in tthe media and in early-morning telephone calls to his journalists.

Murdoch behaves quite differently. He likes to listen to his journalists before he takes a position. And, though he is most definitely right-wing in his sympathies, he does not ally himelf to any political party. But like Beaverbrook, who had his obsessions with Empire Free Trade and the welfare of his native Canada, Murdoch has strong passions. Against Europe and for Jesus Christ.

So I don’t think Obama has anythinng to fear from Murdoch. He is so Christian that he has dealt with his rabble rousing pastor very charitably.

Brown may not be so lucky, though he is, according to report, a follower of the man from Galilee. But it is not a driving force in his life, as it was, and is, with Tony Blair. And the most talked about leader from Labour’s next generation, David Millibrand, is the son of a man who actually went public saying that Karl Marx had ideas that were worth thinking about.

If Murdoch went for the most high profile believer in the Labour cabinet, he would be pushing for Ruth Kelly. No evidence for that.

So that should be some comfort to Gordon Brown. But not too much. Because there may be a leader in the wings who none of the commenators, including myself, rate.

No-one, but no-one, thought Margaret Thatcher was a possible Tory Prime Minister, until the force of events gave her the opportunity, which she grabbed with both hands, demolishing the sceptics with one swing of her handbag.

This morning’s Sunday Times is not sharing the serialisation of Cherie Blair’s memoirs with The Times and The Sun. They have been spending Rupert Murdoch’s money bagging the serialisation rights to the memoirs of Blair’s deputy prime minister, John Prescott. We learn from the long interview story - longer than the extract from Prescott’s memoirs - that, though Prescott told Blair he was a shit, he was really quite fond of the bloke he called, Bambi. Compared with how he felt about Gordon Brown.

So this story amounts to a kick in the ribs to Gordon Brown, as he struggles to govern the country in the wake of Labour’s devastating defeat in the local elections.

As I reported in a previous post, Murdoch’s Sun on Saturday gave quite a different spin on Cherie’s memoirs. Their interview story put the boot in on Brown. Whereas The Times interviewers wrote a measured story, in which Cherie’s main criticism of Brown, was his failure to push hard enough for Blair’s public service reforms.

It is probable that Cherie Blair said much the same to The Sun as she said to The Times. So the difference in the treatment of the stories comes from the different spin put on the story by the two newspapers involved.

So which newspaper is most accurately interpreting the views of the proprietor, Rupert Mundoch Esq?

Perhaps there will be a clue from the coverage of the Wall St Journal, which Murdoch acquired in January. But a search of their website found they had had nothing to say about Cheire Blair or even Gordon Brown for several days.

So there is no hard evidence that Murdoch is trying to hurry Brown out of office.

However, Peter Preston, the former editor of The Guardian, reports in his column in The Observer today, that the new editor of The Times, James Harding, has suddenly flown to New York. Preston thinks that Murdoch might be thinking of parchuting him in to the job of running the Wal St Journal.

He may be right, but it is equally possible that Murdoch has called him in for a chat. To get an informed view of what is happening in UK politics and to tell him what the Murdoch priorities are.

My guess is that Murdoch does not want ot take any public position on the next UK election at this stage. The Labour Party can easily stay in power until the autumn of 2009, and if pressed, until the winter of 2010. By keeping his powder dry, Murdoch has negotiating clout. Whereas if he ran a campaign, it could well result in a revival of public disquiet about the concentration of media power in Britain in his hands.

His judgments are likely to be careful and cautious. But he takes no risks at all in allowing his newspapers to voice disquiet about Brown, because that is what many leading members of the Labour Party are already doing, though quietly. And again my guess is that he has no great entusiasm for the Old Etonians in the Conservative leadership, and he might not be averse to backing one of Labour’s younger ministers in a bid for the leadership.

But that he wil not initiate such a move.

And currently his mind is probably even more focussed on what happens in the US next November.

Which will be the subject of my next blog.

This blog is a follow-up of a blog I wrote early this morning entitled, The Times tells ‘The truth about Tony and Gordon’. For most of the day I have been unable to blog because of technical problems. So I came back to this story just now.

And, I have to beign by admitting that I made some serious mistakes, in my early morning story. But I still hold to my view, that this morning’s Times is one of the best I have read since it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch. It is, once again, a serious newspaper, worth reading by anyone who wants to keep up to date about natioral and international news.

But what I did not realise until just now, that this issue of The Times will go down in history, as the time that Rupert Murdoch paid off Tony Blair, which enabled Rupert Murdoch to make many millions during the stewardship of New Labour in Downing Steet.

But it must have been a lot, because the Blairs have bought yet another million pound home. And this by supposedly Labour supporters.
What I missed this morning is that the Times main exclusive story, the serial rights for Cherie Blair’s memoirs, was, in fact, Murdoch’s payoff to Blair. So that today, Blair, although not so rich as Murdoch, is far richer than he could have become by doing the rather important, but not very well paid job, of being Prime Minister.
The Times story includes some brotherly advice from Blair to Brown in his present problems.

But, as I found out later in the day, The Times Exclusive, is trumped by The Sun, which proclaims a- a world exclusive. Now, as it happens, The Sun is also owned by Rupert Murdoch.

From which I conjecture that the sum of money that Murdoch has paid over to the Blairs is so large that it cannot be recouped from what he hopes to gain from The Times serialisation. So Murdoch, shrewd businessman as he always was, is citting his losses on the Blair payoff, by filling The Sun pages as well.

The tone of The Times articles is very much that Blair currently is advising his long-standing colleague, Gordon Brown, as he faces the biggest reverse in the Labour Party’s fortunes for forty years.

The tone of The Sun article is quite different.

It is putting the boot in on his old colleague Gordon Brown, whom Cherie never liked. So the political message to Sun readers, is ‘don’t vote for Gordon Brown’.

Readers, you can judge for yourself, because I will include The Sun World Exclusive at the end of this story.

But meanwhile you should be asking just how big was the Murdoch payoff to Tony Blair? Since I am a realist I know that I cannot possibly find out today. But I do know, from past experience, that decent journalists will find out. And that it will be a sum large enough to buy a house in central London.

Just at the time when many Labour voters are having difficulty in fighting off the banks and building societies who are trying to repossess their homes.

Point made. Below the Sun’s World Exclusive.

GORDON Brown HOUNDED Tony Blair out of office, the wife of the former PM dramatically claims today.

Cherie Blair accuses her husband’s successor of “rattling the keys above his head” as far back as April 2004.

She fought to stop him standing down.

Cherie, 53 — whose autobiography is being serialised in The Sun — says the two ARE talking now.

But she admits: “I thought he was putting too much pressure on Tony to leave when Tony wasn’t ready.”

In her book — and a bombshell interview you can read by clicking on the block above — the mum of four finally breaks her silence about life in Downing Street.

She exposes the truth behind the rifts, the rivalries, friendships and fallouts.

Top QC Cherie says: “Tony used to say in terms of ability that Gordon was way ahead of everyone.

“The irony is, if they’d only worked as closely as originally agreed, Gordon’s chance would have come sooner.”

p>The London Times scooped the rest of Fleet Street this morning with the first extract of the autobiography of Cherie Blair. For once, the ‘Exclusive’ tag to the story is justified. The Times has no doubt paid serious money for the extract rights to the memoirs of the former Prrime Minister’s wife. And they are making the most of it, by launching it on a Saturday, the day of the week when circulation of the national newspaper heavies dips.

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(Picture from The Times)

The impact of this chunk of contemporary history is brought up to date by an interview with Cherie Blair (also, of course, ‘exclusive’), which brings the story right up to date, by linking it directly to the present predicament of Gordon Brown, who is still-shocked by the worst Labour local election results for forty years, and the high profile loss of the London mayor’s porlour to one of the new Conservative leader’s closest friends, Boris Johnson.

Cherie reveals that even now Tony Blair is talking to Gordon Brown and advising him how to get himself, and the party, out of the hole he has dug. Amazingly, Blair thinks that Labour can still win the next election if he puts more emphasis of continuing the public sector reforms started during the early years of the Blair government.

This morning’s Times also carries some advice from a leading Blairite, Peter Hyman, who was Blair’s chief speech writer, during the campaign to win the 1997 election and susequently, in the cabinet office during the years of power. Now, Hyman is a school teacher and columnist for The Times in his spare time. This morning he suggests that the way ouf of the debacle is to switch David Millibrand, one of the brightest of the young Cabinet ministers, from Foreign Secretary, to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. The present incumbent, Alastair Darling is almost as clumsy as Gordon Brown, not because he has a clunking fist, more because he comes over as a bloke with a limp handshake.

It is an ingenious suggestion. As the economy moves into recession, the biggest challenge for the Government is steering the economy through the choppy seas ahead, and particularly helping those loyal Labour voters at the bottom end of the income band, who will suffer most. Though Hyman does not say so, if Millibrand does get the job, and if he makes a success of it, he will be the most credible leader to take Labour into the next election. As the leader of Even Newer Labour, who can lift the party beyond the squabbles between Blair and Brown.

There is much more meat in this morning’s Times, which I think is the best I have read since Rupert Murdoch bougt the paper from Lord Thomson. There is for instance an excellent story from Tim Reid from the campaign trail of the US election. I would like to blog about it.

But today is my day off. But at least I think I have learnt enough about the workings of the new version of WordPress, which carries this blog to readers, to be able put in a link, so that with one click of the mouse, you can read all of this yourself.

The red coastguard helicopters (as you can just about see in my photo above) were buzzing over Lyme Bay today as the authorities decide what to do about huge landslip which cascaded rocks, tip debris and mud on to one of Dorset’s most popular beaches on Tuesday night. Dorset Council has sealed the western end of the prom with yellow tape, and when I arrived there at 2.30 PM today, a notice was being put up, warning people if they ducked under the tape and walked the coastal path, they would be liable to a £400 fine.

In fact, it is legal and fairly safe for adults, to walk along the beach view the fall up close and then continue on to Charmouth, so long as you stick to the two or three hours around low tide, which was 3.55 PM today. You do need to keep well away from the cliffs. There are two dangers.

There could be further falls, of rocks, trees and debris as a result of Tuesday’s slip. And there could be another big slip at several points along this coast. The national media proclaimed on Wednesday that it was the worst for a hundred years, but the front page. of today’s Lyme Regis News has a more sober and accurate story. Here are the first two paragraphs:

LYME REGIS has suffered its biggest landslip for 26 years.
The slip on Tuesday night blocked more than 400 metres of coastline at the Spittles, between Lyme and Charmouth, an area notorious for landslides.

The News quotes extensively from Richard Edmonds, the earth science manager for the Jurassic Coast and Dorset County Council.

“This was a very, very big one - it is not stable at all. It’s very steep so I should imagine the sea will take it away, but probably not until the autumn storms.
“But there are lots of loose boulders there that are going to come rumbling down.
“I wonder what it has done in terms of walking the beach - it might be much more difficult to walk from Lyme Regis to Charmouth.
“It is going to remain a hazard because of falling rocks so people will need to stay away, certainly from the base of the cliff.”

The News has a picture taken by Maritime and Coastguard Agency from a helicopter, which gives a good overall view of the scene at high tide.

Even without the present instability heightened by all the recent rain, this coast can be dangerous because of the number of spots where you can easily cut off by the tide. Last Saturday, before the slide, the Lyme Coastguard Rescue team was called out when two people were seen scrambling up the cliffs. This is always risky because as well as the possibility of dislodging rocks, you can find yourself in deep mud or quicksand before you get to the top.

My final picture is another view of the section of the coast west of Charmouth, which the coastguard thinks is liable to another slip before the century is up.

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This is the area where the rocks and assorted debris landed on the beach, where children had been playing earlier in the day. I went down there today at 2.57 PM, which was low tide. For two hours around low tide it is still possible to walk from Lyme Regis to Charmouth, though as you skirt the section photagraphed you must be prepared to walk ankle-deep in mud.

The very green tree in the centre of the picture fell off the cliff top half an hour before I arrived, a clear indication that it is still unstable. The landslip covered a section of cliff about 400 yarsd broad. Most of it slipped to a level half way below the top but did not fall on to the beach. You can see this in the next picture showing the eastward part of the slip (the Charmouth side).

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The picture above is the section to the left (westward) side of the previous picture, showing where the rocks started to spill on the beach. The picture at the top of the blog overlaps with this picture.

The slip may have brought down some interesting fossils but all that is visible so far is the archaeology of the twentieth century, which came down from a disused council tip at the top of the cliff.

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Most of this part of the Dorset coast is unstable. The coastguard told me today that they had been expecting the next big slip to be on the other side of Charmouth below Stonebarrow Hill and the Golden Cap. This is shown in the picture below.

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While I was sleeping as soundly as usual last night, a churk of the cliff was falling into the sea only a few hundred yards away. Said to be the worst landslip on this natural heritage coast on Lyme Bay for over one hundred years. Earlier today the coastguard were warning people to stay off the beach, because of the further risk of falls of rock as big as car engines. Now, apparently it is thought to be safe. The fall is likely to have dislodged a treasure trove of fossils, because this part of the coast is one of the richest sources of fossils in the country. This is the link to an amazing BBC video taken from the air which hovers slowly over the scene of devastation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7388564.stm

I am afraid that you will have to copy and paste this URL in because I have not yet mastered the art of inserting links in this new version of WordPress.

Since I had spent the morning merrily blogging away about Hillary Clinton and Gordon Brown I had no idea what had happened until my sister telephoned me. The landslip is on my right as I type here looking out to sea.

The coast on my left, which has even higher cliffs going up to Stonebarrow Hill and the Golden Cap was undamaged last night, as you can see from my picture below. But it did suffer a smaller landslip in the middle of January and a section of te costal path is still closed there.