The Daily Novel

Quite suddenly, in the last few weeks, most of the pundits on both sides of the pond, have started to say that what we are facing now is the worst financial crisis since the Great Crash of 1929, which led to world-wide depression lasting five or six years. In which many people in Britain and America had difficulty in finding enough money for basic necessities, let alone tbe products of consumer capitalism.

This time around the crisis has been in the housing market in both countries. Financial institutions have fuelled the dreams of people’s wishes to buy better houses for themselves, and become capitalists themselves by borrowing money to buy houses to let. Now they are in trouble, because they borrowed more money than they could afford.

And now the property market is plunging. Because people are being charged more for mortgages, if they can get them. And at the same time interest rates are being cut. So the banks (if they have not gone bust) are earing more by a widening gap between the rate at which they borrow and the rate at which they lend.

But some ordinary folk are losing their homes and others, who went in for buying to let, are in severe financial difficulty.

‘Ordinary folk’ for the purposes of this blog, includes pretty well everyone in Britain and America who is not super rich. For them, the purchase of a house is a much bigger spend than anything else in their lifetime. However much they know about finance they cannot regard it just as a property investment. They are buying a home, and for many where the home is, and when they have to buy it, is determined by forces quite outside their control.

Currently I am buying a flat in London to replace our rented flat. In the full knowledge that whatever I pay is likely to be more - maybe much more - than what the flat will sell for in the next two or three years. Maybe more than that. But if I hang around I might be dead before the bottom of the market.

Later on tonight, when I am in bed, the first of the television debates between the Obama and McCain will be taking place. Most of the pundits say that what happens in this first debate often determines the result of the election. Today’s debate is supposed to be about foreign policy.

But the pundits are also saying that American voters are more than ever concerned about the economy. Whatever either candidate says tonight will be said against a background of financial markets in chaos. So voters, and viewers all over the world, will be looking for clues about how well each candidate will do when it comes to managing a financial crisis.

Notsomuch as which candidate is tough and experienced enough to stand up to Putin, Iran or South Korea. But which candidate is asute enough to prevent the stock market panic pushing the world into a long recession.

Is an article in Thursday’s Guardian Simon Jenkins asserts that journalists are born not made. His evidence is from his own personal experience. Simon Jenkins makes his living from journalism. Therefore he is a journalist. In his own estimation.

He is paid for voicing his opinions in several media, as well as The Guardian, so he thinks that what he does is journalism.

But writing colums as Jenkins does is not journalism. But merely a part of journalism. What Jenkins writes is mostly worth reading, because he voices his own personal opinions, which are derirved from a serious analysis of today’s problems.

Which is his forte.

But that is not journalism.

At which Jenkins was a miserable failure, as the editor of the Evening Standard and as the editor of The Times.

His columns, deriving from his own personal view of the world, are frequently illuminating. And thank God that the mainstream newspapers (The Sunday Times as well as The Guardian and the BBC) are stil prepared to pay him to write them.

But journalism is about reporting the facts, not telling people what the journalist thinks about the facts.

Simon Jenkins was born not made.

But journalistis need to be made. They need to learn that their job is not to tell the world what to do. But to report what is actually happening.

In my last blog, Brown and out, written as recently as Saturday, I said Labour needed a new leader to have any hope of winning the next election. Today I have to report that the only new leader to emerge at the Labour Party conference in Manchester was a radically changed Gordon Brown. As the political correspondents in the conference hall wrote in today’s newspapers, he did not make a great speech. They rated it good. I rated it very good. When I read the speech in full on the BBC web site. Which was not the impression I got when saw the main BBC News last night, which gave a few sound bites and a lot of commentary.

The most widely quoted sound bite, was when Brown said, that although he was in favour of apprenticeship, this was ‘no time for a novice’ to run the country. In one blow he managed to finger his two main rivals, the youthful David Cameron, who has piloted the Conservative Party to a 20 per cent leader in the polls. And the even more youthful David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who has been processing around Manchester, professing loyalty to the Prime Minister, but making speeches that leave no doubt in anyone’s mind, that he sees himself as the leader in waiting.

This double-edged barb did far more damage to Miliband than it did to Cameron. Because the television cameras panned to him looking like a giggly callow youth, as the picture here, taken from the BBC web site, demonstrates. And because Miliband had demonstrated during the conference week that he could be just as clumsy as his boss, famous for his ‘clunking fist’ style.

Miliband made some unguarded comments in a lift full of political correspondents including the man from BBC. This how the BBC reported it:

He paid tribute to Mr Brown in his speech but aides were heard telling him it was being given “six out of ten”.

A BBC journalist heard him reply: “I couldn’t have gone any further. It would have been a Heseltine moment.”

As several political journalists pointed out in today’s papers, Michael Heseltine had left the Conservative cabinet before he attacked Margaret Thatcher in his own quite open bid to become leader himself. Miliband is trying to have it both ways, by remaining in the cabinet, declaring his loyalty, while at the same time, making it obvious to all but his advisers, that he is trying to stab him in the back. Witness his article in The Guardian a few weeks ago. And his behaviour this week.

But back to the speeches. Here is a link to Miliband’s main conference speech. See if you can find some substance in it.

By contrast Brown’s speech was full of substance. He talked sense about the chaos in the financial markets and the impending serious recession. He demonstrated his commitment to competition, the free market and private enterprise, continuing the Blairite New Labour policies. But he also stressed the need for government intervention to correct the excesses of the market, and pleadged new measures to help the poor and vulnerable including the growing army of pensioners.

He was rightly criticised in the first year of his premiership for indecisiveness. In this speech he clarity and decisiveness. He offered a clear alternative to Cameron’s New Conservatism. If he continues this way, Britain, like the Americans, will have a clear choice in the next election.

In the last few months I have written several critical blogs about Brown. I don’t regret them. But I do admit I was wrong to write him off. I think he has been changed, by the experience of power and by the tumultuous events of the last few weeks.  From it - to judge by this speech - what is emerging is a new vision. Not the old Labour of Roy Hattersley, Clem Attlee, Nye Bevan and Keir Hardie, but a new new Labour, which seeks to mesh traditional Labour values with the realities of a global economy.

This is only one speech. But a very good one. And the least you can say is that the clunking fist has learnt how to use a stiletto. And the content of the speech demonstrates that although David Miliband looks much more like Barack Obama, that it is Gordon Brown who is articulating policies and a vision that are in tune with the new American Democrats around Obama.

I may have used this headline before. No matter.

Gordon Brown, who stems from Old Labour roots, has since he became Prime Minister, been more Blairite than Tony Blair himself, in allying himself with George W Bush’s America.

In the last few days he has switched around, after reading in the ‘capitalist press’ about the collapse of American consumer capitalism.

He is now switching back to his former agenda of Old Labour, because the Labour vote in the polls has been wiped out by the new MacMilianism of David Cameron. His chances of winning Labour votes are slight. His chances of winning the votes of people who are not Labour are nil.

He is yesterday’s man.

Labour needs a new leader if it is not going to be wiped out in the new election.

It needs someone who is more in tune with with the world as it is, after Bair and after Brown, and, equally important, after George W Bush, who will go back to his ranch on November 4 next.

The time has come for Gordon Brown to join Roy Hattersley in the House of Lords. And to continue to make a contribution by writing for the newspapers.

Will he choose to write for the Murdoch press. (His style is more The Times than The Sun.) or will he compete for a space on The Guardian opinion pages?

Who knows.

But Labour in Manchester needs to be picking a new leader who can have some hope of producing a halfway decent performance in the next election.

One of the several things which has kept me away from blogging recently is the return of my daughter and her family from a month in the US. They were staying with Alix Berlin, an old friend of mine in Boulder, Colorado, as well as touring in a gigantic camper van They report that everyone they met in Boulder was hot for Obama. Hence the cap they brought back for me.

They also brought me an American ranger denim shirt, lined to withstand the cold desert nights. I like to think it is the kind of thing Sarah Palin wears when she goes out hunting moose.

I shall be resuming my blogging on the US election and commenting on the collapse of American consumer capitalism after I have blogged on one or two local events I have witnessed.

Although Humphrey Lytttelton died a few months ago, aged 85, his music making lives on live, as well as on cds. On Thursday night I went to a tribute concert organised by the Friends of the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead by the Humphrey Lyttelton Band, which is still playing the kind of music he loved. For the last several years Lyttelton has done an annual charity concert at the Royal Free. I have been to all of them, since I have been a fan of Lyttelton’s since the 1950s when I used to go to 100 Oxford Street.

Last year’s concert was the best of the series. Humph, on the trumpet, was joined then, on the clarinet, by Wally Fawkes, who he had first played with in 1947. These two young whipper snappers both went on to start their own bands, but they remained firm friends. And last year Wally came out of retirement to play again with his mate of the 1940s. On Thursday night, Wally came out of retirement yet again to join them. Although he is only a year or so younger than Humph, he still has enough breath to play a strong clarinet.

On Thursday night, the number which moved me most, was Trouble in Mind, which was one of Humph’s favourites. It gave him an opportunity to play his virtuoso trumpet solo. This year Wally Fawkes played the opening bars on the clarinet. He then gestured in the piano bit by Ted Beament. Fawkes, like Lyttelton, is a tall commanding prescence. He does not have to shout to lead a band. And he then moved on to bring in the trumpeter, a young man with jeb black hair called Ben Cummings.

Young Ben had the most difficult job of the evening because he was playing the maestro’s favourite instrument. In the early numbers I had been mesmerised by Ben’s extraordinary movements, which were commented on afterwards by my neighbours. In a good jazz concert most of the audience are participating by stamping their feet in tune with the music.

The performers on stage, however, when they come from the English generation of Lyttelton and Fawkes, maintain their cool. No extravagant gestures. But young Ben Cummings was born at a time when Mick Jagger was recent history and Louis Armstrong was from the Stone Age.

Ben, when he plays, does the most amazing things with his legs. Both of his knees vibrate intensively in tune with the music. This maybe because he is striving to make himself different in order to earn a living. Or it might be because this is what happens to his legs when he concentrates on producing good music.

In other words, it might be because when he tries his best to play good jazz in the spirit of Lyttelton, Armstrong, Ellah Fitzgerald, etc, this is what happens to his legs.

Who knows?

But in the spirit of the internet, you, the reader, decide.

While I was sitting on a bench at the Cobb today, soaking up the sunshine and drinking in the view of Lyme Bay, a couple passed me. He was in his mid forties. She was somewhat younger.

He said:

She kept my motor bike and would not even let me take my old push bike.

And then they were gone.

The New York Post, which for most of its history has backed the Democrats, has come out for John McCain in an editorial judgment delivered two months before polling day. Although this is not Rupert Murdoch’s most important newspaper the fact that it has come out so early so emphatically can be taken as an indication of the way Murdoch is leaning. The Wall Street Journal, his latest acquisition, has not yet declared itself, but since it has been mostly Republican, and has a strong Republican readership, it is likely to vote for McCain as well. Fox News, Murdoch’s television channel has been noticeable for its many anti-Obama slanted stories.

The London Times has provided in its news reports and from its columnmists some fuel for both sides, but my impression is that as the weeks have gone by it is veering towards McCain.

The Washington Post and the New York Times has provided plenty of ammunition for the Democrats, particularly by pointing out Sarah Palin’s short-comings, like this story in the Post today which alleges she has been cheating on her expenses.

And on this side of the pond The Guardian has been providing plenty to cheer up the Democrats, notably this story by Gary Younge today. It is an analysis of the state by state polling results. These demonstrate a big lead by Obama in the most important states whereas the national polls are showing only a narrow lead for Obama. As Younge points out, since the President is elected by the sum of the votes of the states, not by the nationwide popular vote, this could make all the difference.

But Younge still thinks the election will be close, because, as he says, the polls are notoriously unreliable and the experts disagree as to how they should be interpreted.

Make no mistake about it.  Sarah Palin electrified the Democratic Convention in her 36 minute speech yesterday and dominated the prime time television screens. No matter that her speech was crafted by the Republican speech writers, she made it her own, and delivered it with great panache. Her opening quip brought the house down.

What’s the difference between hockey mum and a pit bull. Lipstick.

As she delivered the punch line, she drew her hand across her lips and smiled. And then she proceeded to cut Barack Obama’s throat.  Belittling his experience as a community organiser in Chicago, compared with her own as a small town mayor. Turning his own jibe alleging that John McCain would not follow Osama bin Laden into his cave, by saying Obama wants to offer him a place at table.

She is more Annie Oakley than Margaret Thatcher. She shoots from the hip better than most of the boys, but underneath she has a heart of gold, bringing up her disabled child, standing by her daughter who has failed to follow her own injunction about no sex before marriage. And watching the convention scene yesterday it was like a Hollywood movie with the enormous McCain and Palin families hugging each other with abandon.

The main thrust of the attack was on the Democrats as the party of the elite and she included the media as part of that elite. She portrayed herself,  accurately,  as the outsider, the woman from the small town and the small state, who understood the people of America better than those who had spent most of their lives in Washington.

This line of attack is full of contradictions. Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, is very much a Washington insider, but then so is John McCain.  And although Barack Obama can be portrayed as a member of the East Coast elite, given that he has spent most of his working life as a teacher at Harvard, the fact that he comes from a background quite as humble as that of Palin is self-evident.

And the Republicans cannot have it both ways. Their attack on Obama for most of this campaign, and again yesterday, is that Obama lacks experience. That he is new to Washington and has not yet managed to get any new laws passed in his short time as a Senator in Washington. Moreover, the Republicans have continually tried to portray Obama and his wife, Michelle, as somehow not fully American, which taps into racial prejudices. In other words he is the ultimate outsider.

They cannot have it both ways.

Yesterday’s speech makes it clear that Palin is going to be a big factor in this campaign. And what her speech makes clear is the battle in one very important sense is going to between her and Barack Obama.

There are huge differences between them. And those differences are about belief and policies. Obama is on the left of his party.  Palin is part of the right wing moral minority which brought George Bush to power.  Unlike Margaret Thatcher, who defeated Ted Heath and reshaped the Conservative Party in her own image, Palin stands for another four years of Bushism.

John McCain may yet come to regret that he did not push harder for his friend, Joe Lieberman, or go along with one of safer Republican leaders.

Photograph: Associated Press

Yesterday the battle royal for the presidency of the United States was put on hold as New Orleans was evacuated in advance of the arrival of Hurricane Karpova. President George Bush cancelled his scheduled visit to the opening day of the Republican Party convention in Minneapolis St Pauls in order to concentrate on helping the City to avoid the loss of lives which resulted from Hurricane Katrina. The new generation of attack dogs on the internet, however, did not obey the cease fire.  They revealed that the 17-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin,  was pregnant.  The McCain campaign admitted later in the day that the story was true.

Barack Obama, far from using this strategy to taunt his opponents, declared that the issue was off-limits. He said that his own mother was only 18 when he was conceived. That speech will spike the guns of those in his team who might want to use this news to pillory Palin’s extreme pro-life stance: she is against abortion, even in those cases where a woman has become pregnant as a result of rape or incest.

Obama’s speech, of course, will do nothing to inhibit the terriers of the media. And we can expect to see photographs  of the steadily going bulge in the Palin daughters belly as the campaign approaches. And speculation as to whether a shotgun marriage will be arranged before polling day.

This is a good time to review the use of dirty tricks in this campaign, and the role of the press in such campaigns.

Thus far most of the dirty tricks have come from the Republican side. The nastiest of them has come from the Republican side.  Several  of the most right-wing US media , including the Murdoch-owned Fox News, have continually referred to Obama as Barack Hussain Obama. Journalistic convention is to write Barack Obama at the first mention, and use Obama on subsequent mentions. There are exceptions to this when there might be confusion. As in the case of the present US President, who has to be George W Bush to differeniate him from his father, George Bush, and his brother, Jed Bush, the Governor of Florida.  And  John Kennedy was occasionally referred to as John F Kennedy, because of all those other Kennedy’s, ilke his father, a prominent businessman and Ambassador to London during the second world war, and his brother, Senator Edward Kennedy.

There is no doubt, therefore, that the persistent use of Hussain had been politically motivated. And that the bias has been put in by the editors and owners of the media. It does not require a leak from Obama insiders to know that his middle name is Hussain.

There is also little doubt that this simple word usage has been devastatingly effective. Several journalists have found in recent weeks that many American voters they have questioned think Obama is a Muslim. This extraordinary, given the daily media coverage in the winter, after the inflammatory remarks made by Obama’s Christian Pastor Wright. During that time Obama made a major speech, when instead of denouncing  Wright as a wicked man, said how grateful he had been to him for his guidance when he was a young man. (He also made it clear that he disagreed profoundly with the inflammatory comments.)

The point is that all America and all the world knew in detail about Obama’s regular Christian church attendance.  But the memories of ordinary voters, who have many other things to think about, are short.  And the probability is that this single word insertion in media coverage has been a major factor in the dwindling of Obama’s lead in the opinion polls to nothing in recent months.

On the Democratic side the most spectacular use of dirty tricks happened just before Christmas, when the New York Times reported that John McCain had had an affair with a leading Washington lobbyist, a handsome blonde woman. Their article emerged after a four month investigation. It went off like damp squib because both McCain and the woman concerned denied they had gone to bed together. And the New York Times was unable to prove that McCain had improperly exerted pressure to advance the business interests of the lobbyist.  So the rest of the media slaughtered the New York Times for publishing an unproven story.

My point here is that this potentially lethal blow beneath the belt was delivered not because the New York Times was manipulated by the Democratic Campaign, but because of bias and passions of the New York Times journalists involved. At that time the New York Times was passionately committed to the election the Hilary Clinton, and had been since the start of the campaign.

Those passions were again evident last week when the New York Times,  on the day before the Democratic Convention was due to have the roll call for the presidential candidate,  followed the likes of Fox News by referring to Barack Hussain Obama. Even though by that time it was clear that Hilary was not even going to be vice president, the partisanship of some New York Times staffers shone through.

Those passions are still evident now.  And now that both the Clintons have made it clear they are backing Barack Obama, they are aimed at John McCain.

The most detailed critique of  McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin was in their article on Saturday.  That article backed by some journalistic digging in Alaska, emphasised that Palin was under investigation for allegedly using her power to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job. They also asserted that Obama’s first choice was Senator Joe Lieberman, and that he had only given up at the last minute, because Republican Party leaders and fund-raisers refused to have Lieberman, because he is an independent Democrat, and worse, he is strongly pro-abortion.

In rebuttal, the McCain campaign asserted that Palin’s name had been high on the list since last February, when McCain met her for the first time – for fifteen minutes.  Which was enough for him to decide that she was his soul mate. The rebuttal  explained that, although as the New York Times reported, Bush had only had a short telephone conversation with her before she was suddenly summoned to meet him last Wednesday.  But their story was that McCain had all his options open right until the last minute. Lieberman was only one of several candidates being considered.

Now the New York Times is Jewish, and from time to time this bias shows, more than most newspapers it strives not to distort the facts.  We shall probably have to wait for the historians to tell us whether this New York Times article resulted from their bias. Or resulted from knowledge they had but could not disclose. They are close to Lieberman. So it is not beyond the bounds of possibility their assertion that Lieberman was the first choice came from a hint from him -  strictly on an off-the-record basis.

To summarise. The media has had, and will continue to have, an influence on this election.  Second, the biases within the media are quite as strong as elsewhere, and these include the biases of journalists as well as owners.  Third, that although journalists get caught up in the heat of the battle,  most of the serious newspapers are still guided by the facts their reporters unearth, even when those facts do not fit in with the opinions of  proprietors and staffers.