Comedians aren't public intellectuals. Send them back to tell jokes please.

Back in my youth there were comedians. They told jokes, made sketches and skits, acted in sit-coms and made guest appearances on game shows. I'm not going to indulge in some sort of list-making but there were legions of them - some with peak time shows on TV, some making up the numbers at the end of assorted piers and a whole pile, most I guess, scraping a living on the club comedy circuit. Some of them were achingly funny, the sort of people (Eric Morecombe, Tommy Cooper) who just made you laugh almost without effort, while others less so. It was a job and a very good living for the best.

One place, however, you didn't see comedians was on Question Time. Or indeed anywhere near politics or public affairs. It's not that comedians will have lacked for political opinions - they're mostly sharp, bright people and sharp bright people have political opinions. It's more that, I dunno, we didn't reckon that the political opinions of TV comics were any more valid that, say, the opinion of the solicitor on your high street, the woman who runs the successful boutique or the man opening the batting for Pudsey St Lawrence. It seems this has changed - comedians now (not all of them but a frightening proportion) seem to view their business as essentially an extension of political debate.

In 2015, Megan Garber argued in The Atlantic that comedians were the new public intellectuals. More and more comedy came with moral messaging, she pointed out: “Comedians are fashioning themselves not just as joke-tellers, but as truth-tellers—as intellectual and moral guides through the cultural debates of the moment.” Whereas once philosophers and political theorists held a public role of guiding national debates and parsing the nuances of current affairs, comedians were increasingly taking on that responsibility.

I don't know when all this started - maybe with Ben Elton unfunnily shouting "Thatch" a lot on Saturday Live - but it really isn't a good look. Especially when, as some appear to do, actually being funny, maybe telling a joke or two gets lost in the essential objective of sticking it to the (old, white) man. Occasionally down the pub us grumpy old folk mumble into our pint about how there's sod all in the way of good comedy these days because the sort of stuff we laughed at in the 1970s has been banned by the social justice warriors in their quest for a perfectly fair, equal and (it seems) spectacularly boring society.

This bowdlerising of comedy is fine (unless, that is, you want something on telly to laugh at) but it still does not explain why anyone thinks somebody telling jokes - regardless of how right-on they are - is any sort of moral guide let alone someone we should have on TV to pontificate on current affairs, foreign policy and the government of the day. Yet this is what we do, people whose job should be to take the piss out of the government, politicians and self-righteous social justice campaigners are paid to come on telly and make serious commentary about these things. With precisely no qualification at all beyond being in the producer's address book (do they have these things now-a-days or is it all on the phone), having a smiley demeanour and several hundred thousand followers on Twitter.

TV current affairs programming has become little more than an extension of the entertainment business - folk get invited on because they're box office (lots of social media supporters, a penchant for safe controversy) not because they know anything at all about the subjects being discussed. Even the favourite politicians of these shows - Farage, Rees-Mogg, Abbott, Flint - are there because they provide that box office in a way that regular front bench politicians don't. Name recognition matters more than the ownership of a brain cell - this is why comedians get onto current affairs programmes not because what they say is helpful, thoughtful, insightful or intelligent (said comment could, of course, be any or all of these things but this is a happy coincidence not something planned for).

This confection results in news and current affair programmes designed to focus on what's trending on Twitter (or at least in the 'Blue Tick' Twitter the programme makers look at) and a preference for celebrity over analysis - just look at how two TV chefs have essentially written Britain's food policy on the back of a couple of shows and a book. Debate around important topics is boiled down to sound bites, slogans and lame jokes provided by comedians, media-friendly academics, gobby pundits and politicians whose shtick is controversy for controversy's sake.

Comedy isn't made better by its providers looking over their shoulder at the political effect of their jokes - the humour should be enough. Eddie Izzard - pretty much the trendy political comic's trendy political comic - was incredibly funny talking about rotting fruit and whether le singe est dans l'arbre. I'm not sure being snarky about politics much improved his oevre. For sure, you can't say no comedian can ever appear on a current affairs show but we have to start asking whether what we want is entertainment shows for that (pretty small) part of the public that enjoys politics as a blood sport or programming that has a degree of depth, analysis and intelligence. If we want the latter (and I'm sure the grandees of the BBC will pretend this is the case) then we need to send the comedians back to do comedy shows.

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"You will eat want we tell you to eat" - fussbucketry on our TVs

The clip starts with one person presenting how standardised packaging for "junk food" would look - this is accompanied by "ewwww" sounds from the others round the table as they agree they'd never eat something packaged like that. "But I wouldn't eat it anyway" giggles one of the participants.

None of the people round the table 'debating' the subject - "Junk Food: should it come with a health warning" - is is any respect an authority. No nutritionists are present, no-one who understands advertising, not even a public health professional. Instead we've a bunch of TV presenters and journalists who proceed to demonstrate just how much they loathe the choices of a lot of ordinary people out there in the real world.

We see James Caan, he of Dragons' Den fame, exclaiming "yes, yes" at the idea of banning Burger King and KFC. And Rachel Johnson, Remainiac extraordinaire suggesting that parents are incapable of resisting the pestering of children to buy a "bottle of water and a Cadbury's for a £1 in WH Smiths". Not, of course, that station forecourt booksellers are the favoured haunt of mums with screaming kids in tow.

For me this three minute long clip sums up so much that is wrong with our society, with government and with the punditry that sets the tone. "We can't afford...", "one in eleven children...", "Our NHS..." - a collection of ill-informed, evidence-free comments from people who've no idea at all what it's really like to raise a couple or three kids on a low income but who are ready and eager to condemn the failings (or what they see as failings) of those in this circumstance. All summed up by the first presenter (my apologies for not knowing who he is apart from being a vaguely familiar TV presenter sort) saying "people are making the wrong choices" and that we have to educate them into making the right choices (by telling lies about cancer, heart disease and rotten feet).

What we have is a bunch of privileged - in every meaning of this word - people given a platform to promote an intolerant and snobbish disdain for what other people do. The tone and the comments display a belief that somehow people like those gathered here to 'debate' the issue of "junk food" have some sort of righteous duty to stop other people making what they've decided are the "wrong" choices.

For me this agenda - nannying fussbucketry - is at the heart of the elite attack on the personal choices of ordinary people. The subtext of the debate is that we are not capable of making our own decisions, right or wrong, but must be guided by great and good people who have experience of presenting TV shows, writing newspaper columns and telling bad jokes. Every TV entrepreneur, actress, comedian and writer of columns in weekly magazines must adopt - with passion - a cause that involves lecturing poor people about how they're doing it all wrong.

Whether it's food, drink, bicycles, dress sense, or buying blue toys the great and the good want you to do what they say. They want to tell you that you've bought the wrong sort of car, gone on the worng holiday, visited the wrong restaurant and had the audacity to buy cheap semi-sparkling wine. These great and good believe they know what you should do and what is good for you. Like nineteenth century Methodist preachers they're going to bang on about how you are not living you lives properly.

And, if you're not compliant enough, these splendid folk will campaign for the government to damn well make you do what they want you to do. Moreover, such wonderful people are not to be challenged - fussbuckets like Jamie Oliver are to be given acres of print and hours of sychophantic TV without ever once being challenged on the evidence for the fads and food fascism they're promoting (or indeed the way in which it's used to promote their latest money making scheme).

The little clip I linked to above isn't a debate (although Nick Ferrari does at least try) it's a love-in where a bunch of self-important semi-celebrities outbid eachother as to who can be the most illiberal, the most snobbish and the most patronising about poor people. There's an important debate to be had about diet, food and obesity but conducting it on the basis of "let's ban stuff" and "you'll all get heart disease and diabetes if you eat this stuff" is simply dreadful - especially when this is done without any evidence.

The problem is that the views of such folk - nasty and bigoted views about people not in their high society - influence the decisions made by politicians. We can see the trajectory, the slippery slope, towards advertising bans, sin taxes, mandated school dinners, forced reformulation and standardised packaging. Add in bans on new shops, the removal of shiny branded livery and restrictions on what can be sold to minors and we have the full agenda. Unless we shout at these fussbuckets, these health fascists, expect this to happen, expect a duller world made ever drearier by the pompous nonsense of great and good folk on TV.

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In which The Guardian reminds us why we like Top Gear

Cars - what's not to like?

It was good of The Guardian to remind us why we like Top Gear:

Top Gear fetishises the totally unnecessary consumption of fossil fuels in the name of sport, entertainment and feeling better about your premature ejaculation disorder; it normalises dangerously fast driving; it contributes to the hunger for more and more cars that we neither need nor can sustain; it treats the sheer act of moving a machine as if it’s a display of heroic bravery and skill; and it paid Jeremy Clarkson’s salary for over 25 years.

I don't know where to start with all the goodness in this quotation for it gets right to the heart of Top Gear's appeal which is to wave those two fingers made famous by English archers at Agincourt in the direction of all the spiritless, pinched, judgemental, snobbish bores like Nell Frizzell, its writer. What Top Gear provides is a brief escape from the endless dribble about climate change, from the institutionalised attack on the motor car, and from the dreary moral high ground inhabited by people who write for The Guardian and appear on Channel 4 News.

Cars are great. They sit at the heart of our civilization. Nearly 90% of journeys made are made in cars. The manufacture, sale, maintenance and support of cars is a massive slug of our economy. The modern car is a remarkable feat of engineering, filled with innovation in engine management, fuel efficiency, communications and comfort. And millions - I really mean millions, far more than ever even glance at The Guardian - enjoy the stuff that goes with cars and motor sport.

So Nell Frizzell doesn't like cars (I probably don't believe her on this one but we'll take her at her word). That is, without question, her loss. For the rest of us, we'll carry on enjoying programmes that celebrate cars and car culture, that do so with wit and charm, and that provide the tiniest piece of opposition to the endless boilerplate of green nonsense that infects our media.

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Instead of choreographed leaders debates, let's just broadcast lots of local hustings...

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More froth and bother has been expended over the matter of TV debates than on any number of things that actually matter in our lives. Partly this is because the big broadcasters dominate the agenda with newspapers and the hordes of spinners, PR men and political hangers on toddling along behind. The 'Westminster Bubble' some call this - a place where debate is conducted on the basis of triangulating political careers and pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes rather than with the intention of seeking solutions.

The voters are sitting there - in as much as they're paying any attention at all - looking bemusedly on as shouts of 'chicken' are interspersed with ever more complicated explanations as to whether this or that format for a TV debate is most appropriate and even more occult explanations about the reasons a particular date or location is wrong.

I think we need to move on from this sterile sideshow to real political decisions. A grand televised showpiece was always a bad idea (it was in 1966 when Harold Wilson refused a debate with Ted Heath and remained so in 2010 when Gordon, Dave and Nick graced our screens). Not only does it undermine the premise of our democracy - the election of representatives - but it trivialises debate. The format is set up to focus on presentation and style rather than content or the sharing of argument. Most people won't watch but rather will see a few carefully chosen soundbites on the evening news while listening to the so-called 'political reporter' analysing the leaders' hair, ties and body language. This is not debate but yet another example of politics as show-business, the triumph of gloss over substance.

In these days of the Internet, of easy live broadcasting and of social media interaction, we need to rethink what we want from debates. Do we want, over the period of the campaign, two or three grandstand events carefully orchestrated to shine nothing on the real issues of the campaign? Or do we want to sent the broadcasters - the big guys and the little guys, radio and TV - out into the UK's 350 constituencies where real debates might be taking place? Every constituency has a few local hustings - usually organised by a local church group or a voluntary organisation - that bring the candidates together to debate subjects raised by the local audience. Why don't we broadcast lots of these rather than a sterile and preening debates between a load of leaders who aren't on the ballot paper for most of us?

Instead of a debate moderated through carefully planned national events, we'd see a more untidy campaign where sometimes the 'wrong' thing gets said and sometimes candidates stray from the approved line. It would be invigorating and would perhaps involve more people in debating the issues rather than treating the election as a sort of beauty contest between leaders or manifesto slogans moderated by the broadcast media.

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No book programmes on TV? Rather than moan about it, Mr Harris, go and make one

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I make no secret of my dislike for the manner in which books (and arts in general) are discussed by the folk in the media. So I was struck by the report that Robert Harris, who I gather is a successful author, had a go at the BBC - and broadcasting in general - for its coverage of 'books':

‘Today we have 300 television channels and no dedicated book programme and it does seem to me that that is an absolute disgrace,’ he told the audience, who cheered in response. ‘The BBC, a monetary funded organisation, should do a bit more to help business. Whether we write fiction or non fiction, we provide the basis for movies, for documentaries and I do think Tony Hall if you’re watching this on the BBC news do a little bit more for the book trade please."

OK, let's take Mr Harris at his word and agree that (as he told the reporter) there is a demand for a TV programme about books. If this is the case then there is a market opportunity and Mr Harris, rather than expecting the BBC to spend taxpayers money on making such a programme, should invest his own cash - or cash from other investors - in what is clearly a great business idea.

Unless, of course, the demand is only from the tiny audience of self-important glitterati in which case, Mr Harris, this is just special pleading.

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Jamie, Nigella, Delia...you're making us fat!

 

Or so says Dr Ricardo Costa, senior lecturer in nannying fussbucketry at the University of Coventry (do these places spring up overnight - until today I didn't know Coventry had a University).

The study, published in the Food and Public Health journal, found that many celebrity chef recipes in cookbooks contained “undesirable levels” of saturated fatty acids (SFA), sugars and salt which are linked to obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Note the detail here and the words - "undesirable", "linked to" aren't really any justification for the headline: TV Chefs are "adding to obesity" and are typical New Puritan weasel words. After all I don't need any evidence at all to "link" something to something else and this is precisely what Dr Costa has done. The research simply runs a load of recipes from celebrity chefs through a computer model and publishes the results:

Food preparation recipes (n=904), covering a wide range of meal types, from 26 dominant British based Celebrity Chefs were randomly sampled from literature and web sources. Recipes were blindly analysed through dietary analysis software by three trained dietetic researchers (CV 6.9%). The nutritional value of each recipe was compared against national healthy eating benchmark guidelines using a healthy eating index (HEI).

Nothing in the research suggests that Jamie, Nigella and Delia are making us all obese with their glorious culinary temptations. The authors however make a huge leap from these temptations to suggest that these wicked TV chefs are affecting our food preparation habits (again without any evidence) and that they are, as a result:

...a likely hidden contributing factor to Britain’s obesity epidemic and its associated public health issues. 

Again we see the loaded words of public health - using epidemic to describe rising rates of obesity is bad in a newspaper article but, in a scientific paper such misuse is inexcusable. Even if obesity rates are rising (and they aren't) it will never be an epidemic because getting fat isn't contagious - I won't catch obesity off you, not even a little bit. And "hidden contributing factor", which I assume means "we haven't got any evidence to support this statement so we'll say it's hidden".

The profile of obesity suggests that Dr Costa and his colleagues are talking nonsense. Obesity is disproportionately an issue for women from lower social classes and middle-aged men. At a guess these aren't the front of the house when Jamie scooters round Italy or the Hairy Bikers talk about vegetables. I may be wrong, of course, but my contention has precisely the same amount of scientific value as Dr Costa's - essentially none.

All this is a reminder that much of 'dietetics' is simply fancy calorie counting based on a set of willfully misrepresented half-truths about salt, sugar and fat. Obesity is a consequence of eating too much and exercising too little and has precisely nothing at all to do with the recipes presented by Lorraine or Antonio on our tellies.

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Ban TV advertising because some folk can't say 'no' to their children.

I've been busy so haven't touched on the latest anti-advertising campaign. A campaign of moronic ignorance but given acres of airtime and page space because, of course, it's 'for the children':

Mr Kent, a journalist and broadcaster, told the BBC he had seen the effect of advertising on his six-year-old son.

"He's like most children - if I don't get to the TV before him, he's grabbed the remote and found an ad," he said.

"It's like watching kiddie crack take hold, despite all our best efforts."

And what exactly does Kent Junior do when he's found an ad? We aren't told. Now maybe said junior has a vast trust fund and can spend it himself but somehow I suspect that the child only gets stuff that Mr or Mrs Kent buys for him.

Now let us be very clear about advertising "to children" - it is very rules bound (it you don't believe this check out the rules) and, when we speak of young children, they very rarely have any purchasing power. The advertising is directed to parents not children.

However, what should really bother us is that there is precisely and exactly no evidence - as in studies that test a scientific hypothesis - to support the contention being made by people like Mr Kent - indeed their cosy little lobby group, "Leave our kids alone", even admits this on its website:

The effect of advertising on children is an emerging area of research. As with most psychological studies the results are a little less clear cut than those in the field of physics or chemistry.

An the anti-advertising crowd then go on to cite three 'studies' none of which show any causal relationship between advertising and well-being let alone between advertising and parents giving into the pestering of their children. Let's take the National Consumer Council study - "Watching, Wanting and Well-being".(pdf) Apart from concluding that advertising bans won't work:

We found that, with children watching a much wider range of programmes than those made specifically for them, attempts to ban specific types of advertising in children’s programme time will not protect much of the under-14 population.

...the study finds that children weren't struggling or suffering as a result of watching TV:

Nearly nine in ten children believe that ‘I have a number of good qualities’ and 83 per cent say ‘I feel good about myself ’. Over seven in ten say ‘I feel that I’m a person of value, at least as valuable as other people’

Moreover, they discovered that children like stuff and knew (mostly) that to get the stuff you want you need money:

Over half of the children think they would be happier if they had more money to buy things for themselves. Nearly that many think the only kind of job they want when they grow up is one that gets them lots of money.

Rather than fretting about children being 'too materialistic' we should be celebrating the fact that half of them have recognised the central - and crucial - fact about our world: if you want the good stuff you need economic success.

The truth in all this is that adverting isn't the problem. The problem is parents who give in, who let their children pester them. In truth it's these nice middle-class parents like Mr Kent who are the problem - rather than facing up to their inability to resist advertising, they choose to first blame their children and secondly blame the advertisers. For what? For their inability to say "no".

So they compare TV advertising to smoking - that'll get a headline:

The tobacco industry managed to argue for years that cigarettes don't cause harm.

That's right folks, middle-class lefties journalists who can't say no to their children have this problem because of TV advertising. It is killing them! Look at the evidence:

Proving causality is difficult, especially when it's in an area as complex and nebulous as psychology

Bother. There isn't any evidence so let's just make stuff up:

Most parents will know instinctively that their children are deeply affected by advertising. They'll also know that children now are far more materialistic than children were 20 or 40 years ago

Are they? Show us the evidence? Oh dear, there isn't any. Here we go again.

Ban everything. It's for the children.
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Nannying fussbucket of the Day: Cllr Steve Bedser

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Cllr Bedser is Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing and chair of the Birmingham Tobacco Control Alliance so he has good fussbucket credentials. And the fine gent thinks that smoking should be banned on "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here!"

During this episode a contestant, Helen Flanagan, was filmed repeatedly as she smoked. Whilst I understand that the episode was broadcast after the ‘watershed’ I am of the strong view that the frequency of this image was such that it condoned, encouraged and glamorized smoking, especially by young girls. There was no editorial justification for including these particular scenes.

And, this particular fussbucket argues, this is all for the children who will rush out and start smoking because they've seen some celebrity (of sorts) having a drag on telly. In a 'reality' show - you know, one that's like real life*. The real life where people smoke.

Cllr Bedser has inhaled the full anti-smoking bible - 'denormalisation' is the game and:

Smoking initiation is associated with a range of risk factors, including exposure to tobacco marketing and depictions of smoking in films, television and other media.

This is thoughtless kneejerk fussbucketry -  peers and parents are overwhelmingly the drivers of smoking 'initiation' not seeing some star with a fag.

*OK "I'm a celebrity..." is only tentatively connected to reality.

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No. Sitting doesn't make you obese. Eating too much does.

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Some halfwit American psychologist wants to ban television because it makes us obese. Trust me folks this man is a weapons grade nutcase:

On average, he says, a British teenager spends six hours a day looking at screens at home – not including any time at school. In North America, it is nearer eight hours. But, says Sigman, negative effects on health kick in after about two hours of sitting still, with increased long-term risks of obesity and heart problems.

No. Eating too much makes you obese not watching the telly. If Prof. Sigman believes otherwise then he really doesn't deserve the title "scientist".

There are 24 hours in the day and the child will spend around ten of them asleep. That leaves around eight hours of other stuff. But the clue to this lies elsewhere in the article (in the Guardian, now leading the way in nannying fussbucketry). This is about ensuring children lead a purposeful life - lying about doing fun stuff because it's fun can't be healthy can it?

The RCPH's Professor Blair said there were some simple steps parents could take, "such as limiting toddler exposure as much as possible, keeping TVs and computers out of children's bedrooms, restricting prolonged periods of screen time (we would recommend less than two hours a day) and choosing programmes that have an educational element."

If sitting watching a screen is bad, it doesn't matter what you're watching surely? Or is there some magic dust that flows from "educational" content that stops kids dying from watching the goggle box?

This is a classic piece of New Puritan propaganda. We must have a purposeful life and the over-riding purpose of life is for it to be a long as possible. Health is everything and any pleasure that does not serve this purpose must be stopped.

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The Pathology that causes the Nannying Fussbucket

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People who believe it right to pass judgement on others' choices, to criticise the life decisions of folk they've never met - these are the nannying fussbuckets. And it has always bothered me why these people - whether from a supposed righteous authority or else some corrupted concept of the zeitgeist - feel able to pass these judgements. To attack someone for being too fat, for smoking or drinking, for bringing up their children wrong. These nannying fussbuckets take it upon themselves to know better, to badge others' choices as wrong and to call for controls and bans to enforce these judgements.

This morning I came across the response of CBS WKBT news anchor, Jennifer Livingstone, to someone who chose to judge her for being overweight. Here's what that person said:

Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain. I leave you this note hoping that you’ll reconsider your responsibility as a local public personality to present and promote a healthy lifestyle.

Jennifer responds with a condemnation of this bullying approach - judging her on the sole basis of her body image. Jennifer says to the person:

"You don't know me. You are not a friend of mine. You are not a part of my family..."

Some people - friends, family, personal advisors - are qualified to talk to us about our lifestyle. To tell us we drink too much, should stop smoking, might like to lose a few few pounds, perhaps would benefit from some healthy exercise. No-one else has that qualification - and to act as if you do st to step from the path of tolerance into a world of the bullying control freak. To embrace life as a nannying fussbucket.

However, this approach - the judging of other people's lifestyle choices - has become institutionalised. This includes politicians pontificating about the "sexualisation" of young girls (it's always girls, never boys) or the availability of chocolate bars at the supermarket checkout. It covers self-serving groups that want to regulate the display of magazines and ban The Sun's Page 3. It encompasses the growing licence regime - seeking to control pleasure and enjoyment in an overplayed concern about anti-social behaviour.

Above all it results in so-called "public health" policies designed to denormalise choices about drinking, smoking and eating. To control any behaviour that isn't "healthy", to ostracise people who refuse to worship at the shrines of "well-being". These people - I've called them New Puritans - are everywhere seeking to direct the choices of others, playing with statistics and promoting pseudo-science as justification for these controls.

And it starts with people who think it OK to send an e-mail (or a letter, a passing comment, a tweet - any communication) to someone they don't know telling them they are fat. Or shouldn't smoke. Or drink.

This pathology - an obsession with health above all other things - has infected our society, has created the worst sort of nannying fussbucket. Complete with "stoptober", minimum pricing for booze, motions to council about shisha, fat taxes and a vast, pseudo-pharmaceutical industry of health and well-being. Yes it is bullying but more than that, it drives the legions of prohibitionists, rules merchants and health fascists in their mission to remove every last vestige of pleasure from the lives of ordinary people.

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Sunday mornings...

I don't know about you but I've never been able to get to grips with this habit of showing political programmes on a Sunday morning. There is a place for interviews with the great and the good, faux little debates and the endless scandal-mongering that passes for political journalism these days but it isn't for Sunday morning.

I gather from extensive investigation (I asked some bloke down the pub who seemed well informed) that this politicisation of the sabbath morn is, like so many other bad things, an import from our former colonies in North America. Which is odd because I though they were a deal more god-fearing than us and troop in their droves (do droves troop or rather meander?) to vast churches built using the same architects who, in England, design warehouses for electrical component distributors.

So now, as I sit with my morning tea (dreaming sweetly of bacon sarnies) before the telly, I am regaled with Andrew Marr interviewing some or other grandee - today it happens to be Nick Clegg. Marr's interviews do rather remind me of the "great microphone of state" and provide rather less insight than Desert Island Discs. It's almost like a staged, scripted event - a few gentle questions, the grandee getting his (it's usually a 'he') point across and Marr being able to extract just the one theatrical squirm from the interviewee.

Sunday mornings are to blame for this softball approach - if the interview was at seven thirty on a Wednesday evening, it would be all businesslike, stern and of infinitely greater value to the viewer (although less useful to the political superstar being grilled). Sunday mornings are for tea and slippers, for having breakfast in the garden, for the slow life. Sunday mornings are when we should savour things - the sun, the grass, our families and all the good things around us.

Sunday mornings aren't for politics.

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The Peterborough Pravda. Is this what Louise Mensch wants from local media?

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Yesterday, Louise Mensch – the MP for Corby – argued that local newspapers are an essential cog in our democracy:

She called on the government to conduct a review into "local democracy and the local press" to see if there might be some sort of direct or indirect subsidy that could support the sector.

She attacked plans for local TV stations, which will compete against newspapers, because the proposed funding plans include using part of the licence fee as well as BBC content.

Now there are a few obvious things that might be said about Mrs Mensch’s suggestions not least that Tory MPs calling for business subsidies is a wholly new experience for this very long-standing Tory member.

However, at the heart of this isn’t the question of whether we have a local press – in my view we have as vibrant a local debate as we’ve had in a very long while. But here in Bradford very little of that debate is down to the local evening paper.

Local papers have declined, many have merged, closed or become mere shadows – more advertising sheets that newspapers. And that decline continues – think for a second or two where you go to look for a job, a car, a house or the cinema listings? In times past you bought the local rag on the appropriate day and looked in the class ads. Now you use your lap top or your iPhone – tomorrow you’ll be using the telly in your living room.

Local newspapers have become ever more reliant on the money that local councils spend – the statutory notices, job ads and theatre listings. Without this cash, many more local papers would go to the wall. Maybe this would be a loss but it is the market that is killing these papers not the choices or decisions of local councils. People no longer buy the evening paper – 30 years ago the penetration of the York Evening Press was up at around 80%. Hardly a house in the City didn’t receive the paper. Today that paper sells around 25,000 copies each day (as it happens about the same as Bradford’s Telegraph & Argus). The Doncaster Star sells fewer than 3,000 copies.

It seems to me that, for all her good intentions, Mrs Mensch is railing against the wind – for sure, stopping councils from producing their own free newspapers and not using the license fee to support local TV might slow the decline a little. But the decline will continue for the simple reason that people no longer buy the local paper and local businesses no longer advertise in the local paper. And while this is happening local papers reduce their editorial staff – I fear that many will simply be desk-bound churners of press releases (which isn’t why anyone went to journalism school) – to the point where they simply don’t have the resource to cover stories.

However, public subsidy – using taxpayers’ money to stop local papers closing – seems like a recipe for a supine, state-directed newspaper. Something of a Pravda of Peterborough or Isvestia of Ipswich – regurgitating the tractor stats produced by the local authorities and printing without question or challenge the words of the local MP. A ghastly shade of the challenging, offending and investigating local paper of legend.

Maybe that’s what Mrs Mensch wants but for me, I’ll take my changes with bloggers, Facebook and citizen journalism. That might just be the better future don’t you think?

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The end of civilization as we know it...

...or something like that as the European Court of Justice sticks it to Sky and the Premier League by allowing us to ship in those foreign decoders and watch the football as broadcast by Greeks, Finns and Luxembourgois. The sound of pub pontification echoes across the world (or would if more pubs were open) and many predict that the great football bubble will burst. In just a few short years will we see Wayne Rooney supplementing his meagre income by shining shoes at Piccadilly station and Arsene Wenger sat with a batter paper cup outside Highbury Station?

Somehow, people seem to miss the point. Quite rightly there is no copyright protection on a football match – after all, what’s involved? We point a camera at the pitch and, hey presto, a football match is broadcast. Not much human creativity there! So the issue never was copyright – the issue was the licence. And the ECJ has reminded us that we live in a ‘single market’ and that broadcasters cannot make arbitrary boundaries for their own purposes within than market that are enforceable. This is what Sky and the Premier League tried to do.

However, the idea that this will end the football bubble is misplaced. The licence agreements are time limited and subject to renegotiation. Up to that point the licensees (including Sky) are obliged to comply with the contracts – including, I assume, paying the fees. So in the short-term there is no effect on the Premier Leagues revenues. The problem comes when the licences are renegotiated.

The Premier League will – I’m prepared to bet – simply issue one set of licences for the whole EU. The losers won’t be Sky (unless some upstart Slovakian broadcaster outbids them) but the various local licence-holders. There won’t be a licence for Greece, a licence for Spain and a licence for Sweden – just one EU licence.

The publican in Portsmouth may be grinning broadly right now but her action, it seems to me, has caused little more than an irritation to the Premier League – but possibly a bigger bill for Sky (or that upstart Slovakian broadcaster).

It probably isn’t the end of the Premier League gravy train. Civilization will be saved!

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It's bad parenting not the pressure of modern life that's the problem

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We are told by “200 experts” that children’s health is being undermined by the pressures of modern life. 

“Although parents are now deeply concerned about this issue, the erosion of childhood in the UK has continued apace since 2006. Our children are subjected to increasing commercial pressures, they begin formal education far earlier than the European norm, and they spend ever-more time indoors with screen-based technology, rather than in active outdoor activity and play.”

Apparently – or rather according to unspecified “studies” – the ‘well-being’ of British children falls below some supposed international standard. And judging by the letter, this is despite parents being 'concerned'.

Now it seems to me that there isn’t a great deal of substance in this argument. It may be that our children are suffering because of “commercial pressures” but it is far more likely that the problem isn’t advertising, computers games or television but bad parenting.

Here’s one of the 200 making her point:

One study by Sally Goddard Blythe, the director of the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology in Chester, concluded that up to half of children were not ready for school at the age of five because of “sedentary lifestyles”. They struggled to grip pencils properly, sit still, stand up straight and even catch a ball after failing to develop physical and communication skills at a young age.

It isn’t the “pressures of modern life” that’s causing this problem now is it, Sally? It’s the parents of these children – the ones who don’t play with them, who use the telly as a baby-sitter, feed them an endless soothing diet of fizzy drinks, sweets and chocolate and don't take them to the park.

So why do these “experts” take it upon themselves to challenge something called “modern life” rather than the failing parenting of some mothers and fathers (assuming the latter is anywhere to be seen)? I’m sure the children of these 200 ‘experts’ are not suffering in this way. I’m sure they’ll grow up active, able, well-adjusted and able to recognise advertising (and its purpose). Indeed, most children - a clear majority - will benefit from modern life, from the TV, from computer games, from computers and from the wonders these things bring into our homes.

But what these 200 "experts" propose is a collection of tired, old-fashioned ‘progressive’ solutions – banning advertising (there’s always a ban close to the surface when these so-called ‘experts’ write), replacing education with play and further interference in the curriculum of primary schools. And absolutely nothing – not even a mention – of poor parenting.

And it is parenting not modern life that is the problem.

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