The Daily Novel

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.

According to The Guardian tonight, senior Conservatives are telling David Cameron that there is so such thing as his Big Society. As well they might. Although his invitiation to the people – that’s us, folks – to join the government sounds like a big change from Thatcher, who declared there was no such thing as Society, the electorate think it is a Con, with a small C and a big C.

It is the party of big business and the bankers trying to persuade the electorate that they are acting in the interests of ordinary folk, rather than the the money which supports them.

Just like Oliver Letwin, my own MP in Dorset, who on Saturday night, was telling party members his plans for bringing the bankers into line. Despite the fact that his own pay cheque comes from one of the oldest and most successful of the banks, N. M. Rothcschild.

Letwin is one of the principal architects of the Big Society strategy.

The verdict of the electorate, delivered after last Thursday’s television debate, is unmistakeable.

The voters, who want a change, think  Cameron, like Brown, is offering more of the same.

Since last Thursday, the Tory strategy has changed. They have targeted the winner of the debate.

By arguing that a vote for Clegg is a vote for a hung parliament, leaving Gordon Brown in power.

Which is the subject of my next blog.

So now we know after all these years of speculattion. Lord Ashcroft has not been paying his British taxes, because although because of loopholes in the law he can claim he is a ‘long-term British resident’. Even though he has kept his non-dom status so has been avoiding his British taxes.

What this means, which the Westminster British press corps has not yet realised, is that the money Ashcroft has been pouring into Cameron’s funds, is just part of what he has saved because he has managed to cling on to his non-dom status2

So the British taxpayer has been funding the Conservative Party!

The millions Ashcroft has given the Conservatives is just a part of the taxes he has not paid.

I don’t want a public enquiry, which will report two or three years  hence.

Bt I do think that if Cameron wants to win this election he should fire Ashcroft now.

His conference election speech was based on Obama’s call for Change.

Obama realised before the banking crisis that change was necessary.

Which means governments everywhere taking back power from the financiers like Ashcroft, who are motivated by making as much money for themselves as possible.

They are the people who have created the crisis.

Cameron if he wants to win must show that he is not their pawn.

He is not doing well. As the opinion polls show.

Despite the huge unpopularity of Gordon Brown his poll lead has whittled away.

While I have been attending to my own concerns City University has appointed a new head of journalism, George Brock, currently the international editor of The Times of London. Since I have been temporarily out of touch with City, I have no idea why they chose him.

But now I have checked him out, I can report, that had I been on the selection committee, I might have shouted for him.

Because of a long article he wrote, not for The Times, but for The Times Literary Supplement. (Yes, folks, it’s still going!)

It was entitled, ‘The end of journalism?’. The question mark is mine, but I feel it was implicit in Brock’s article.

He is asking the right questions.

But he has taken on the responsibility of managing City University Journalism, now by far the biggest journalism department in UK and recruiting hundreds of students into our trade.

Journalism recruitment is booming. Up over a third on last year. But journalism jobs are being slashed. And even Rupert Murdoch is worried that the economic model which sustains print journalism is bankrupt.

This year’s graduates will be competing for fewer and fewer jobs. Next year the problems will be worse. Since many talented undergraduates who would have got journalism jobs are instead opting for doing journalism courses.

City University Journalism, nor any journalism training outfit, cannot solve these problems. But they can do something.

They can address the problems of why the public does not trust journalists.

What is it about the pracice of journalism currently that has caused this growth of distrust?

Let’s hope Brock will find time to pursue the ideas in his article. As well as helping the 400 journalism students in his charge, who be expecting that the money they will be paying to City U will bring them JOBS when they graduate.

Gordon Brown may come to regret, not the cabinet changes which were forced on him by his colleagues, but his own choice of Alan Sugar. As Mandelson wrote in the leaked emails he is overly impressed by the celebrity culture. And he does like Sugar, who like his name, can be sweet as well as tough and ruthless. (I tried to find a picture which reveals his cuddly teddy bear side, but could not. But you have all seen flashes of it on television.

He may also live to regret not giving Caroline Flint the promotion she wanted. She is turning out flinty by nature as much as Flint by name. According to newspaper reports this morning she is going to make a fierce attack on him on Monday. She is not only angry about not getting the promotion she thought she had been promised. She is angry because of the newspaper reports that Brown was influenced by the glamour photographs of her in The Observer, which he did not like. (Probably it was the photo of her lolling on a couch, like Hollywood teenager seducing a teenager, but since I am a family blogger I have used here the primest pic from the pack.)

She is only one voice.

But the co-incidence of Brown’s embrace of Sugar coming at the same time as his rejection of Flint has angered people inside and outside the Labour Party.

Sugar at his charming is patronising towards women. And most women I know think his tough guy style is just what we don’t want in our businessmen, managers and politicians. (Indeed, part of the success of The Apprentice is that it is joke. ‘You’re fired’, is not at all like real life, when being fired means ending up without any job at all and nothing to pay the rent.)

Whatever the other Labour female MPs think of Flint, none of them will be happy with the reduction of the number of women in the cabinet (including the sacking of Margaret Beckett, who has never shown any inclination to pose for a glamour photograph.)

And most Labour MP’s, both male and female are very angry indeed at the increase of peers in the re-shuffled cabinet.