At the end of the day

I couldn’t think of a serious conundrum to write about tonight. This may mean we’ve solved them all, but more probably reflects creeping exhaustion. All that driving yesterday, followed by all that shouting and yelling later. Funniest comment thread of the lot came from the bloke who dismissed thoughts about the meaning of infinity as ‘inconsequential’. It was probably from Dr Who, but I’m not sure which one.

It’s warmer here in South West France, but just as wet. There is no mud like French mud. The First World War was all trenches because most of it took place on French soil: thus the only alternative to arriving in Berlin with boots that weighed eight tons was to dig in and lob shells at each other. In the second lot, Hitler sat everyone inside tanks, and invented Blitzkrieg to ensure the Wehrmacht moved too quickly for the mud to stick. But even he never bothered with Vichy, because by the time he got to Paris, you could barely see his moustache for the caked-on clay. Mud is France’s version of the Russian winter. It is the safest barrier we have against rampant Islam. That’s enough on mud.

I’m pleased to see the Welsh and the Scots teaming up in their joint bid to be NotEngland. It kind of makes it clear where we stand on all this nationalist thing, in that we are England, forever guilty about NotEngland. And they are NotEngland, taking 40 billion quid of our very English money each year and calling us names and wanting to be free of us but not the money just yet please, because we’re not quite ready. In Scottish NotEngland, 1 in 2 either work for or are paid for by Government. In Welsh Not England, the figure is 1 in 3. When they bugger off, England’s bureaucrat/layabout quotient will fall to 1 in 7. Speaking personally, I’m all for it, but the loss of unproductive citizens has nothing to do with this view. I just want to see how NotEngland’s going to work, once they realise that there’s no market for kilts in Wales, and not much of a gap for arsonists in Scotland.

Do you know, when I saw what that policeman had done to vivacious 26-22-28 G20 Protest-Pin-Up Nicola Fisher’s shapely thighs, I was so shocked I nearly Googled Grandma. It seems unbelievable that so much harm could be done by one harmless cattle-prod, but this was as nothing to the scars the underprivileged policeman himself has suffered since birth by having the name Delroy Smellie.

“He didn’t have to hit me” said Knockout Nicola, “He could have picked me up and moved me out of the way”. Looking at the video 37 times throughout the day on BBCNews Channel, I must say I got the impression Smellie already had his hands full actually Nicola, but what with that and the name thing, you have to applaud the Met’s desire to get him reinstated. It’s good to see affirmative action doing something useful at last.

OPINION: FromTolpuddle to Strawberry Fields.

On our way from Devon to Portsmouth (in order to catch a Ferry to France) is the Martyrs’ Museum at Tolpuddle. For those taking British History at A-Level this year, the agricultural labourers of Tolpuddle dared to form a pretty benign sort of early Trade Union in 1834, and for their sins were allowed to go to Australia forever – there to help form the genes on which a great nation is based. It was an extraordinarily vicious punishment, and after being sentenced, leading victim George Loveless wrote on a scrap of paper the following lines:

“God is our guide! from field, from wave, From plough, from anvil, and from loom;
We come, our country’s rights to save, And speak a tyrant faction’s doom:
We raise the watch-word liberty;
We will, we will, we will be free!”

As one can see from this, politics in those days was about big issues: there was no place for prose poetry, and even less for ists, phobes, taxis and expenses.

If word had filtered back about the infinite variety of lethal snakes and insects inhabiting Australia, the Trades Union Movement would’ve been strangled at birth. As it was, the Unions were among the first of Britain’s many valued institutions to lose the plot about their reason for existence. They thought first they were there to run the economy, then the Cabinet, and then the Country.

Now they seem to see themselves as a branch of Health & Safety, because every strike they call has nothing to do with material gain, and everything to do with Customer Care. Thus, when Unite talks of full-strength cabin crews for ‘maximal safeness’ (?) and RMT pontificates on rail repair as a factor in accident reduction, this has nothing to do with job preservation.

Any old irony aside, what the Unions have discovered since 1997 is spin. But like Brown, they practise something called Visible Spin. This is based on the idea that everyone else is as gullible as Jack Dromey and Harriet Harman, and made even less effective by emerging from the same gobby blokes we remember all those years ago. And we do recall their ignorant militancy, do we not? Those fine men who had been mandated by their memberships and were acting in good faith and totally unwilling to take hindustrial haction but were being forced into this unhappy sitwation by the intransigence of a victimising management. Yes, those fine men who gave us all…. Margaret Thatcher.

The tragedy is that in the intervening years, they’ve stopped talking about the Fatcherite Police State – which is a great pity, because the controlling fascist State is considerably more real now than it was then. In fact, if the Unions had stayed true to their roots, they would all be Libertarians today, fighting for the little man against a corrupt, secret judiciary. There’d be a Union of Vulnerable Mums to take on Staffordshire Social Services, for example.

But as I noted a few paragraphs earlier, the TUC was quick to spot its complete irrelevance, and thus switch to being something else. Rebranded Unite, it acts as another distraction for the media from Manderdarling incompetence…and gives the Prime Minister the chance to ‘solve’ a problem that didn’t exist before the United Tolpuddle Men started it.

British politics has turned into Strawberry Fields, where nothing is real, and there’s nothing to get hung about. Let’s pray this doesn’t last forever.

Today’s Slog posts: the point I’m trying to make here

The vitriolic response to today’s bonfire of Guido’s vanities was not entirely unexpected.

There are two reasons why today’s series of Slog articles about Paul Staines appeared. First and foremost, to put all the available facts about this bloke in one place – where they can be archived for historians to consider – and contemporaries to note. And second, to gauge the response to those pieces.

As to the first point, everything I’ve written has been written before….but in dozens of different places. So to those who want to criticise this auditing of facts – facts that have a direct bearing on the right of ‘Guido Fawkes’ to judge a corrupt system – I ask “What is your problem?”

The second point I have found on the one hand predictable, and on the other hand fascinating. The predictably blind defence of Guido is understandable, because he blazed a trail for others – and was early not just to spot that our legislators are corrupt, but also do something about it.

But as I expected, the defenders didn’t wait for the denouement at the end – about how Staines is trying to set fire to what exists, but while happily living off it (and colluding with some of its senior luminaries) as he extends his media empire. They merely read the earlier pieces….and got all haughty about them. What, pray, is the difference between that kind of behaviour, and the Guardian’s unwavering support for a political corpse called The Labour Party?

The other response truly is fascinating: hits for the site more than doubled. Doesn’t this demonstrate better than any other thing what is wrong with the whole measure of blogsite quality? That a critique of one blogger can have the blogosphere turning in on itself in a frenzy of self-absorbed yah-boo-sucks?

Paul Staines told the Guardian last November, “My reputation is my property”. All I’ve done is give folks the floor plans. If anyone can find anything in all that which is either invented or irrelevant, I’d like to hear about it. In the meantime, to those who see today’s special series as vindictive, I make this simple point: The Slog is trying to help create a better culture in the UK. It has no other political, social or economic agenda beyond that as a goal.

I doubt if Paul Staines is going to help achieve that goal. I think driving pissed out of your mind through a major city and then showing no contrition about doing so supports my argument. I think Guido hawking grubby emails around Fleet Street for money also supports it. I think him starting media companies with Labour candidates and then selling adspace to the very Parties he claims to hate piles yet more support into the argument.

For those who think calling Michael White as a witness ‘scraping the barrel’, I can only repeat that I disagree with many of the man’s political views (and only last week railed against my comment thread under a Guardian article being censored) but White is an experienced journalist with a long and distinguished career of getting his facts in a row before making wild accusations. He may not put notches on his bedpost, but he does at least put a perspective on often complex issues.

False Gods are bad news. None of us is God. There is no point in replacing one set of self-protecting hypocrites with another lot; we do not one day want to meet the new boss and find it’s the same as the old boss.

Guido Fawkes, libertarian…and Paul Staines, media mogul.

When it comes to the Establishment, I think it would probably be fair to observe that Guido Fawkes is against it, and Paul Staines is already in collusion with it…..perhaps even a willing member. Again, you must look at the facts and decide for yourselves.

The trappings of elite wealth appear, by now, to be in abundance: his wife Orla owns at least two properties in London – a house in Clerkenwell and a flat in Wandsworth – while the couple are also understood to have a substantial place in County Wexford, as well as a holiday home in France. So if he succeeds in his avowed aim of smashing the UK’s established socio-political system, the New Order is unlikely to oppose property ownership. How is Paul making the money to hold up his end of the marriage?

As we’ve already seen, order-order.com is owned offshore – by Global and General Nominees (G&GN), a Nevis-registered firm. This effectively deters all but the most determined litigants, as those wanting to sue are required to deposit $25,000 in court before any libel action can even get off the ground.

In 2006, as his readership began to grow, Staines fairly astutely decided that there could be serious money in blogging about the money-grubbing antics of others. In a nutshell, he set up a media-sales company to ‘represent’ bloggers – or put another way, make money out of the Establishment. With fellow-founder Alex Hilton (also a journalist and blogger) he formed Messagespace.

G&GN is the majority shareholder in Messagespace’s owner EOS Online Media Ltd. Not entirely philanthropic, the media shop also sells space on Guido’s site – as well as for Hilton’s own Recess Monkey, and Iain Dale’s blog. The ‘about us’ page of the company’s website lists some notably radical libertarian clients, for example the Cooperative Bank, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Conservative Party. Obviously, while Guido Fawkes rips into these corrupt, crypto-Soviet pillars of the Left, Paul Staines is delighted to take their money. So if his ruse to break the system from the inside succeeds, Staines will do himself out of a job on all fronts.

Even harder to understand is Paul choosing to go into business with Alex Hilton; for from the perspective of libertarian politics, Alex Hilton represents spawn of the Devil. He is the editor of Labourhome, and was until 2006 a Labour Councillor in Redbridge. In 2005 he lost Canterbury to the Tories, and is currently the prospective New Labour candidate for Chelsea & Fulham.

This dazzling political career led Wikipedia to note that Hilton ‘has been presented as a “grassroots political guru”’. And that may well be true, because Alex has since formed another company, Gamechanger. The site-blurb for this consultancy claims that ‘Game Changer is a one-stop campaign consultancy for public relations, media training, public affairs and digital engagement. We specialise in devising and implementing targeted and integrated campaigns that raise awareness and initiate change through the power of social networks.’
So to summarise, far-Right and utterly committed anti-Establishment terrorist Paul Staines went into business with a member of the Government Party. A bloke who is now a candidate for that Party – as well as being an advisor about media training – that very media training which teaches politicians how to evade questions from the press, or lie. The same press whose ‘too cosy’ relationship with ghastly Establishment toadies Staines is at pains to excoriate.
Alex Hilton left Messagespace not because Staines discovered the awful truth that he was a double-agent, but because the ever-tolerant Labour Party threatened to freeze Hilton out of the Left if he didn’t withdraw from all interests in EOS Online.
It has been suggested to me that right-wing blogger Iain Dale has also taken an investment in EOS, but I’m unable to stand that up – and anyway he is largely tangential to the story. The only point at which he’s more centrally involved in the career of Paul Staines concerns their mutual interest in Lord Ashcroft.
Staines and Dale are friends, and share (at the very least) some political views – plus a lot of business aims. The print magazine Total Politics launched by Iain Dale in 2008 is specifically aimed at the opinion-leading political Establishment. It is bankrolled by Lord Ashcroft, a man who probably represents (along with the Four Taxis for Hire) the major personification of corruption and undue monetary influence in contemporary British politics. Writing in his Guido Fawkes persona, Staines wrote on March 9th this year:
‘For the avoidance of doubt, Guido’s blog is an editorially independent, for profit enterprise. If James Murdoch, the Barclay Brothers, Charlie Whelan or Michael Ashcroft want to buy Guido’s blog, he is open to offers. Until that day the editorial line of this blog is determined by Guido alone…’
Amen to that. But here and there on order-order.com, a bit of Paul Staines keeps poking through the silly mask. He has a crack at Ashcroft, but in sympathy with the Tories rather than anger at The System:
‘There is growing resentment in some quarters with Michael Ashcroft, the feeling is that his Lordship has unnecessarily made difficulties for the Tories by waiting till this late moment to come clean. There is also a concern that in deciding to sue, at this time, the Indy (over allegations of corruption) he is guaranteeing more bad headlines during the campaign.’
It’s all a bit “I say there Mikey, play the white man old boy” rather than ‘Smash the System’.
Overall, for a man so implacably opposed to the ruling elite to have so many friends and partners at the front of that top-drawer seems odd in the extreme. If, that is, you accept that he really is against the system…..as opposed to wanting to collapse this one – so he can dominate the new one.
Which brings us neatly to the concluding part of this Slog Bonfire Day Special: what do we think Paul Staines wants to be after he tires of being Guido Fawkes?

Is Paul Staines for real?

Around 1980, plain Paul Staines began calling himself Paul Delaire-Staines, a double-barrel his father had dropped years before. Whether his need to invent an alter ego has always been with him is hard to tell. Certainly, his ‘colourful’ early life does seem to consist of swash-buckling and ‘I rode with the Contras’ – with bits of shadowy security services thrown in. But then, most of these accounts are based on Paul’s own version of events. He is however clearly a man who enjoys control and power: “When I call up a minister’s office,” he gloated in 2007, “you can hear them go, ‘Oh shit, it’s Guido.’”

I suppose in many ways, that’s only human – and one very human trait often applied to (Delaire)-Staines is self-adoration. “He’s a prickly fellow,” says journalist Michael White, “not wholly averse to legal threats….and curiously self-absorbed – a blog narcissist”. Journalist and blogger Craig Murray also refers to ‘the lazy and conceited Paul Staines’.

So he’s full of himself: big deal – aren’t we all? Well, not many of us would ever think to perform in the cringe-making Reilly Ace of Spies manner that characterised his shadowy ‘hidden identity’ appearance on Newsnight with the ever-present Guido-Finder General Michael White. Jeremy Paxman seemed bemused by Staines’ attempt to hide an identity known to tens of thousands of people – especially when within minutes White called him Paul Staines anyway. (White proceeded to tie Guido in knots and make what we could see of him seem profoundly silly…an exercise in which Paul didn’t appear to need much help.)

The other odd thing about that TV appearance (it was the first time I’d heard Paul Staines speak) was the nature of his voice. It seemed to me then more Paul Burrell than Paul Staines – which, given his already growing reputation for cojones, wasn’t at all what I’d expected. There was also a certain childlike quality to both voice and syntax: “that’s for me to know and you to find out” he said petulantly at one point, when White mischievously asked if he was ‘worth suing’. Given that some time afterwards Staines was to be found offering smoking-gun McBride emails to the highest bidder (the very press barons he claimed to despise) we might safely assume that he wasn’t yet a high-roller.

That slightly fey reality is also in stark contrast to the extremely odd text Guido Fawkes the Gunpowder plotter sent to his victim Damian McBride once it was clear he’d been nailed:

‘What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women’

These are apparently some words spoken by the hero Conan the Barbarian in a pretty dreadful fantasy-action movie of some years ago. And if fantasy-action is your thing, then I suppose that’s the sort of merciful text you’ll write to those whom you have ‘driven before you’.

This is in fact Guido’s favourite role: the merciless scion of the Establishment, riding forth to scatter its corruption, impropriety and spineless cowardice to the four winds.

And so we turn to a survey of whether Paul Staines is outside pissing into the elite’s tent….or merely at the trough along with the rest of the pigs.

When it comes to Paul-Guido-Staines-Fawkes and booze, a former intimate puts it succinctly: “Guido is a drunk”.

Far be it from me to take one person’s word for it (especially when given off the record) so we must reserve judgement on Paul’s relationship with alcohol – and once again let the facts take centre stage.

In early morning hours of 17 April 2008, Staines was driving his wife’s Volkswagen, swerving across lanes in south London in a manner suggestive of inebriation. He was breathalysed and found to be almost twice the legal limit. A true libertarian at all times, he was also driving without insurance. This is the account he gave the media at the time:

“I had been speaking at the Adam Smith Institute. They have made a lot of money so the booze is usually pretty good. I moved on with a few people to the Westminster Arms, where I bought drinks, and then to the Kennington Tandoori to show everyone the picture of Prezza on the wall. Then I was giving a few people a lift to Victoria station when the fuckers pulled me over.”

Perhaps noting the depth of Guido’s contrition, Judge Timothy Stone of the Tower Bridge Magistrates Court sentenced him to a three month curfew order – an extraordinary restriction to put on a 41-year-old man. Stone told Staines that the curfew would operate between the hours of 9pm and 6am, and he would have to wear an electronic tag. Asked by the judge whether he had an alcohol problem, Guido Fawkes replied “Possibly”.

That’s not what other facts might suggest. This was Staines’ fourth appearance on an alcohol-related offence, and his second drink-driving ban in five years. Nor does the nature of his last Guardian interview suggest that Paul has, as yet, decided to sober up. The piece (based on a café-breakfast interview) recorded that:

‘After an hour in the cafe, he suggests a visit to the pub across the road. Three pints in, his BlackBerry pings…’

Paul Staines discovered a taste for mind-alteration fairly early on in life. As he freely admits, “I was kicked out of College for smoking dope”. Humberside College of Higher Education, to be precise: but he soon moved on to higher things.

“Taking LSD and pure MDMA was the most staggeringly enjoyable, mind-warping experience I have ever had” he wrote in a piece extolling the virtues of Rave parties some two decades ago. In possession of an agenda as well as lots of drugs, Paul penned the tract in favour of such things because he was the PR officer of The Sunrise Collective – an organisation specialising in raves and acid house parties in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Sunrise avoided police action by calling its large-scale dance parties ‘private member clubs’, and thus putting them beyond police control.

But the time had come to put way childish things, and do something usefully anti-Establishment. So it was that Staines eyed up the City…and became a Hedge Fund Manager.

Some allege that this is when the delusions of grandeur began. But others deny this: they suggest that signs of engorged deceit had become obvious much earlier.

Paul Staines and porkie-pies: the evidence

The masthead over Paul Staines’ website http://www.order-order.com proclaims ‘Guido Fawkes’ blog….of plots, rumours and conspiracy’. With that as a content promise, the main thing the reader would want some reassurance about is how much of it is likely to true.

The jury is forever out these days about the truth or otherwise of what appears on blogsites; debating the specific veracity of any given story quickly becomes a fruitless exercise in the exchange of allegations. But the track-record of the author is a reasonable factor to take into account, given that – when it comes to habitual lying -the past is very often a guide to the future.

Accused recently of a propensity to racism, Staines answered “I’ve always been anti-racist”. It’s difficult to believe Paul on this. On his own admission, he was an ardent supporter of the South African apartheid regime for a time. It could be that the colour-bar dimension of the Nationalist Government wasn’t what attracted him to Botha and friends; but then there’s the incident during his spell as a leading light in the Federation of Conservative Students, when he was (as the Guardian put it in May 1986) ‘Tory student leader in racist party link’. The Party concerned was the BNP, with whom he was ‘trying to form a pact’ in Hull.

Now we’ve all been stitched up by the Guardian in our time, so this may not mean he is a racist. But it does make the claim to be anti racist hard to swallow. The same applies to the self-assigned prolific nature when it comes to journalistic output. In a recent Guardian interview, he said “I try and have a story out for breakfast, another at 11, another after lunch, and another before people go home”. That’s 21 stories a week and not far short of a thousand a year. It doesn’t check out with many folks, either inside or outside the blogosphere. As a former Guido employee told The Slog late last year:

“Guido spends most of his time these days running rehashes and scribbling about nothing important. He hasn’t done anything notable or original for ages”. Guardian writer Michael White made this very point to his (hidden) face during an interview with Paxman on Newsnight, and the Daily Telegraph also alleged that many of their interviewees were ‘citing the many weeks when his blog consists of little more than tart one-liners, indigestible lumps of Eurosceptic or libertarian rhetoric, and endless promises, not always met, of impending revelations.’

The Paxman interview (with ‘Guido Fawkes’ offsite and in the shadows) also saw Paul’s mouth run away with him when claiming “that’s interesting, given that Nick Robinson was the source” in relation to a gossip piece treated with contempt by White. Robinson almost immediately issued a denial of this assertion, and Staines was forced into a humiliating back-peddle later, denying that he had ‘ever’ used Mr Robinson as a source.

Wikipedia too isn’t always 100% reliable, but over the years one suspects perhaps Paul Staines has helped them out with the odd ‘fact’, such as ‘after a successful career in the City, he had made enough money to devote his time to blogging’. Either that, or Guido has some space-cadet friends prepared to talk in his support, because this clearly isn’t true. On 9th October 2003, Staines declared himself bankrupt.

This followed a very nasty court case with his former partners, during which the Judge said:

‘”….the most acrimonious litigation, hard fought at every turn of a number of interlocutory skirmishes. No holds were barred; no punches were pulled…(Mr Staines is) a man who played fast and loose with the truth…”

Far from being loaded (at least, not with money) Paul Staines is alleged by another former worker to have been given something of an ultimatum by his genuinely high-flying wife Orla: get a job, or leave.

Since that time, of course, you have to hand it to this egocentric man: he has produced a money-spinning site and business out of nothing. Several sources (Wikipedia again, and one or two sloppy hacks when Guido gained some serious notoriety) have repeated several times that he ‘gets a quarter of a million visits from his devoted fans every month’. Unfortunately, be this the result of the Fawkes spin-machine or not, it simply isn’t true.

Fellow-blogger Tim Ireland (who, we must be clear, really has it in for Staines) was the first to spot the anomaly between boasts in the Westminster Arms and Google Analytics reality. Guido has never argued with Ireland’s dismissal of his bloated readership claims (and those of his chum Iain Dale) but all the same it seemed only fair to look at the data myself. They show that during February 2010, the Fawkes site got 57,000 unique visitors a month – the accepted measure of ‘real’ readership in a sector rich in exaggeration and sleight of hand. This is rather less than 250,000.

Even when supplying personal detail about the Company he formed (in Caribbean tax-haven Nevis) Staines gave a false name and a fake address. He claims to have done this to keep litigious victims off the scent; but this contradicts his other boast – that he is happy to be ‘fearless’ in his reporting because ‘injucting the site is a jurisdictional nightmare’.

Paul is fond of the cloak and dagger thing – which is fine, because the plot & rumour promise is partly about that sort of stuff. But returning to the point of this opening piece on the man behind Guido Fawkes, his apparently consistent history of mendacity doesn’t bode well for a site which – in his own words – “prides itself on getting the facts right”.

And equally, accuracy and a measured approach are helped by abstinence….but hindered by mind-altering substances.

Bonfire Night is coming early this year.

Time for a bonfire of Paul Staines’ vanities.

In a special feature tomorrow, The Slog will look at the various aspects that make up the man behind Guido Fawkes.

Regulars will know that for some time now, I’ve felt that the Blogosphere is (with a few notable exceptions) a ‘space’ where practitioners shout, swear, accuse and make full use of their relative safety from prosecution. On the whole, having captured everyone’s imagination at the start, the Blogosmear is turning into a new oligarchy….and senior bloggers are branching out.

Guido Fawkes (aka Paul Staines) is the highest-profile person in the Blogistocracy. But does he have the right to stand in judgement of The Establishment? Tomorrow, The Slog will investigate.

EXCLUSIVE: How German killer-doctor fell victim to NHS cover-up accountants

Ubani (l) and Gray (r)

A tip-off given to The Slog last Thursday has resulted in some startling facts coming to light about the people behind overseas replacement GPs.

The case of Daniel Ubani – an overseas locum GP who killed a patient through overdose – was an inevitability, not an accident, medical sources alleged late last week. But as usual with the NHS when under fire, the real reason for this doctor’s mistake has been covered up.

Take Care Now (TCN) once provided services for five local NHS Trusts. It also employed Daniel Ubani. But it was very quickly sacked by these trusts after news of Ubani’s unfortunate accident occurred…and had to be rescued in a ‘fire sale’ takeover.

Ubani administered ten times too much of a painkiller to seriously ill patient David Gray. But this wasn’t a random miscalculation. The reality is that:

1. All TCN’s locums were issued with a GP’s bag. To save operational money, they were routinely given tenfold dose batches of medication – as this was much cheaper than equipping them with individual vials.
2. The GPs frequently did not have English as a first language. This also lowered the cost of hiring.
3. They were frequently put into service straight off the plane….when they were far too tired to work a shift from scratch.

An employee of a similar supplier of weekend/emergency locum services to the NHS alleges:

“Everyone doing this has had to cut costs to the bone…but the pressure comes from the NHS, not us. Once the media found out the truth about foreign doctors, we were all told to charge less or lose our contracts.”

The root causes of David Gray’s death were first, an inexplicably poor piece of negotiation between Patricia Hewitt and Primary Care doctors (GPs). And second, an attempt by Trusts involved in salvaging something from it to minimise the damage.

Last week – as Channel Four viewers saw to their dismay – the woman behind this mess was busy sexing up her ‘consultancy’ services to private health concerns. And indeed, she is already being retained by various private sector interest groups.

Nobody – not the suppliers, or the Trusts, or the Minister of the time – comes out of this with any dignity. It would be too easy to simply say “this is what happens when you mix business with medicine”. But the truth is that parliamentarians, civil servants, accountants and private suppliers all played their part in the lead-up to David Gray’s death.

There’s nothing wrong with a sample of one who gets out a lot.

Sitting in a hairdressing salon in London’s Surrey Quays last week, I overheard a conversation between two young girls (mid twenties – one the coiffista, the other the client) on the subject of families, and getting away from them. It went like this.

Yer need yer own space doncha?
Yeh, but yer need to get back an’ see yer mum.
Yeh. But yer own space is nice.
Oh yeh, yeh.
You got a partner?
Yeh, my Dean- ‘e’s lovely. Cooks an’ that ‘e does.
You got any kids?
Not wiv Dean, nah. I ‘ad a likkle girl though, wiv me ex.
Oh right. Is she wiv you?
Nah, she’s wiv ‘er Dad in Leeds. Lovely bloke. Just dint work out, yer know?
Yeh, course. You see ‘er much?
Nah. Issashame an’ that, but she’s got annuva life now.
Yeh, s;pose so.

Last Christmas, we stayed with friends in Sussex. Mutual friends came to lunch on Boxing Day. Their neighbours had split up, it seemed. Dad had gone off with somebody half his age. They’ve got three children at public school, and the deserted mum is frantic because the caring hubby’s closing words as he slammed the front door on Christmas Eve were “You’ll have to fight me for every penny”.

We have another chum who’s been through three partners in seven years. The kids dread going home, in case another stranger’s arrived while they were away at University.

Our wood supplier has just split up with his partner. They have two children under five. They both say it’s amicable. I wonder what the kids think.

Another friend has four children by two women. He’s passionate about his business, and thus spends three weeks in four globetrotting. Of the four kids, one is a member of a hard-line feminist revolutionary Group, one a control-freak incapable of dealing with colleagues, one a drug addict, and one anorexic. His wife asked me last year what I thought was wrong with our children these days.

These apparently small-scale examples are entirely valid for two reasons. First, because if I added all such similar experiences up since (say) 2005, I would have a robust quantitative sample…certainly big enough to satisfy an old-fashioned market researcher like me. And second, because they were all brought up and discussed not as horrific, one-off exceptions, but as further examples of ‘life today’.

What the examples validate is the existence at all levels of society of a thoughtless preference for personal gratification above the crucially important task of all parents: to provide a settled and loving home environment for their children, and – if serendipity and being human means that isn’t possible – then at the very least to put the kids first, and remain in charge of them. I have to say that, when childless people show irritation in the presence of ghastly children and their pathetically indulgent parents, even as a parent myself I identify with the childless folks completely.

One of the conscious deceits of New Labour is that we must not allow personal observation to ‘cloud’ our judgement of ‘the bigger picture’. But the bigger picture is to be found in the aggregation of the smaller snapshots. Society is made up of millions of loving family units and gratuitously abandoned responsibilities. Our personal observations are invaluable, and should not be dismissed as bigotry. We are all individual monitors of cultural decline, and should stop apologising for it.

Fawlty Times

In the internet age, nobody can have a monopoly.

At long last we know the date – it’s to be June. Rupert Murdoch has decreed that May 31st will be the last day on which we can all read the Times Online for free. King Canute may have commanded the waves to go back, but it wasn’t his idea; this one is all Roop’s.

Two weeks ago when the old boy announced his attention to do battle with the New York Times, a famous US journalist wrote an open letter to ‘all journalists’ asking when the American press would ‘wake up to the fact that Murdoch is not one of us’. This wasn’t a sleight aimed at Australians: he meant people who write the news, and tell the public what the bad guys don’t want that public to know. Murdoch certainly isn’t one of those. He’s more a ‘give the public what it wants’ sort of bloke. What he quite obviously has never been about is fearless news, attention to detail, and a free press. More than happy to do deals with the liberty-crushers of Beijing, he was the publisher of easily the most obvious forgery of the twentieth century (one which won me a £100 bet) and has had his staff needlessly ruin more lives than any other proprietor in history.

Now the concept of a free press has taken on new meaning, Mr Murdoch’s instinct yet again is that of the greedy monopolist: this is my News Corporation, and ye who would enter must pay for the privilege. Unless he is quietly sitting on the mother and father of all creative ideas, it won’t work – and it doesn’t deserve to: his decision to charge for generic, badly-written content is effectively that of an actor-manager penalising the theatre audience because the movies have arrived.

I’ve been a grudging admirer of Murdoch now for nearly forty years. As a businessman in his heyday, the Digger had the measure of everyone, and more foresight than the rest of Fleet Street put together. But I never saw him as anything other than a twisted cultural nihilist. His natural position is on the side of those with privilege, money and power – unless of course they have a plummier accent than him, in which case he does everything in his power to destroy them. Eighteen months ago I wrote that, for the first time, he was being forced into a situation against his will; I still think this, but now feel in addition that he really doesn’t get the internet.

He’s not alone. The emerging senior blogistocracy and the Chinese Government don’t grasp it either. Much as I deplore the idiocy and lack of commonsense among geeks, nothing of human derivation is ever going to stop them from stopping something they don’t like, staying one step ahead of the authorities – or finding out what they want to know. Whether this be hacking into the US Defcom system, evading Chinese censorship or punching holes in Newscorp firewalls, these folks are invincible.

Ultimately, the only ways to get people to pay for something are either to produce something vastly superior to what’s available for free – or become the only supply source for something that already exists. Murdoch bought his way to the top via the latter monopoly strategy all his career. He has never followed the first route, because quality and creativity are beyond him. This is why Newscorp will never make it on the internet as long as he is alive and at the helm.

ELECTION: Why a Battle of the Baggage requires the right to positive abstention.

The choice before the electorate begs our abstention. This should be enshrined in the ballot papers.

Seven weeks ago I was in Teignmouth visiting friends, and the subject of positive abstention came up: that’s to say, having an option saying ‘None of the Above’ on the ballot paper. On the way home, there was an excellent discussion about it on Radio Four, in which one woman from the Electoral Reform Society pointed out that active abstention is a way of finally getting it through politicians’ heads that low turnouts are partly apathy, but more often a combination of disgust and rejection. Yesterday I had lunch with an old friend and mentor who also opined (without prompting) that he thought the ‘anyone but this lot’ option should be included on polling day. I myself have been campaigning for the Anyone But Bercow option on all papers crossed in Buckingham.

This is not chattering classes stuff: it is, as far as I can tell, a spontaneous desire by the more intelligent people in Britain to prove (at last) that the problem voters have is not politics per se, but political Parties peopled by deaf transmitters. (This in itself, of course, explains why the proposal won’t be adopted).

The election due to take place just over six weeks from now is turning into The Battle of the Baggage: New Labour weighed down by Trade Unions and bent MPs versus Dave Toryism encumbered by Lord Ashcroft and the Filthy Rich bankers. Over-simplification or not, both are trying to be something they aren’t, both are looking backwards, and both are bereft of good ideas.

In between these two is a smaller Party comprising the uneasy merger of two previous incarnations based on social democracy in one case and individual liberty in the other: so it’s a sort of disciplined collective for contrarian libertarians. Faced with such an oxymoronic raison d’etre, the Libdem stance is, unsurprisingly, largely based on its good fortune in being neither of the other two Parties.

In short, all we know is what the three main offerings don’t want to be seen as – not controlling and Left, not nasty and Right, and not muddle in the Middle. The only problem being that this is precisely, in turn, what they are.

In this context – and given that our taxation entitles us to representation – estimates calculated by myself and others suggest that a good 45% of us don’t want anything on offer. This alienation will be reflected on polling day in a ‘turnout’ of (I predict) no more than 55%. Such would represent a mockery of democracy. And the only thing that will save for our democracy a tiny residue of respect is the active abstention option.

My favourite to date is ‘None of these represent my needs’, but it’s not that snappy – anyone with any better alternatives should feel free to join the comment thread.