‘Troubled stock markets continue slide on Euro bank fears’ – Guardian 

‘Greek default talk gathers pace’ – Reuters

‘US Stimulus Package fails to lift markets’ – Irish Examiner. 

A selection only, but they give the general gist of what is happening. What do they show? Well, most importantly, they show that we are back in the selfsame mess we thought we had climbed out of in 2008 – to wit, that there are vast debts floating around and nobody to pay them. That’s an unpleasant and inconvenient truth. What else do they suggest? They suggest that stimulus packages by and of themselves make very little difference. In fact, if they did the American economy would be booming right now, having had billions upon billions injected into it over the past few years. Instead, they are in broadly the same shape we are. Why? Partly because of inefficiency and incompetence. Mostly, I think, because there is a clear lack of political will to go for either full-blooded pumping of money or hard-nosed austerity. I think, in such uncertain times, any decision would go down better than none at all.

Most importantly, they go some way towards bearing out what I have said for a long time, in various ways – once you are actually in a major debt crisis, there is not a good way out of it. You can cut your spending and be seriously miserable immediately, or not cut your spending (or increase it) and be even more seriously miserable later. This is exactly why Keynes advocated running surpluses in budgets – he was trying to make sure people avoided that debt trap. I have sometimes been accused by my friends of not being sufficiently Keynesian in these circumstances – my answer is always that you cannot begin Keynesianism in a slump caused by excessive borrowing to fund spending, because it is simply exacerbating and/or  postponing the problem. Had Gordon Brown maintained his tight fiscal restraint of the first three years he was in the Treasury, and sought to pay for any extra spending solely by increasing taxes (and ergo revenue) it is only fair to say (and I do try to be fair) that he would have been a Chancellor lauded for his far-sightedness. That policy would mean our debts would be low and our deficits nothing to worry about in consequence (they would also likely have been lower, although not necessarily much lower). Higher taxes might also have dampened the dizzy housing boom that helped bring about this mess – although again, it would not have saved us from trouble as this was an international crisis.

As it happens, because of the odd mixture of austerity/stimulus/running round like headless chickens that the world’s leaders and economists seem to have settled on by accident, we have chosen both to cut now and to stimulate, which is a weird combination that looks set to give us the worst of all worlds – so we will be miserable now and later. This does at least go some way towards proving the adage that there is no situation so dire a politician cannot make it worse if s/he really makes an effort. Alistair Darling’s book, which I am reading at present and will review when I have a moment, offers a most interesting account of how the banking system was rescued in 2008. At the time, there was hope that it had bought maybe five years to sort out our problems. Now it looks as though it will only be three.

Are we heading for a Third Great Depression? The signs are not good. After the Wall Street Crash, it was two years before the economy actually entered the depression – indeed, in 1930 Hoover and his advisers genuinely believed the worst was over. The same pattern may be repeating itself. If there is to be a trigger, it will be the defaults of Greece, possibly followed by banking disasters in Germany, which might well cause the collapse of the euro. But I can’t even guess what would happen then. Up to this point, history has offered me a rough guide to what will happen. From hereon in, with a sovereign debt crisis afflicting the West, we’re travelling without a map. The only thing I can say for sure is that even if we come through alright in the end, the road looks set to be very bumpy.

This may well continue through September, so if there is no serious activity on this site before October, please excuse my lack of attention. I do hope to put up a post on one particular aspect of 9/11 that I don’t think will occur to many others, but that depends on my finding an hour between now and Sunday in which to write it – a time that includes a funeral and the Onion Fayre. I also have some views on the politics of Scotland, tax systems and the current farrago surrounding the NHS – but they may have to stay private because I simply haven’t time to express them at the moment.

Have a good autumn!

What I remember most vividly about the fall of Baghdad isn’t the statue, or the statements of Comical Ali, or the American triumphalism – it’s how pleased people were to think that Saddam had gone at last. The crowds who came out to meet journalists, shouting ‘thank you Mr Bush, Mr Blair, thank you so much,’ or the mob who set upon the statue with such joy once it was on the ground, finally getting back for years of torture, repression, suffering and fear. In Afghanistan, too, I remember the footage John Simpson brought us when he first entered Kabul, of jubilant crowds dancing and cheering, and young men publicly shaving off the beards they had been required to grow by law. That was then – this is now. I doubt if there are too many Iraqis who are pleased with the way the invasion has turned out in the eight years and more since the first tanks swept into Baghdad. Similarly, I imagine there are more than a few people in Afghanistan who are enormously frustrated at the current disaster zone loosely referred to as their country (if it can be considered so homogenous an entity) and its government.

Libya isn’t of course quite the same. Iraq was a foreign invasion – it was completely dominated by the actions and wishes of the United States, and Saddam was doomed regardless of how popular he was with the people (not that he was very popular outside the Sunni Triangle, but in principle it would have made no difference had he been the most beloved leader on the planet). And in Afghanistan, while there was a revolt against the Taliban led by forces loyal to the ousted government (re-named the Northern Alliance) which was aided and extended by NATO, it was also dominated by foreign troops and foreign investment. While Libya would never have been able to overthrow Qaddafi without NATO’s help, there is still a much greater level of local involvement – this is their party, rather than ours. Although there are rumours of foreign troops on the ground, even if they are really there they appear to be there in small numbers and under local rather than NATO command. So hopefully there will not be the insurgency and anarchy that we have seen elsewhere.

Even with that said, if history has taught me anything it is that nothing is simple. Qaddafi dominated government in Libya to such an extent that to all intents and purposes all institutions in the country – the civil service, the army, the commercial organisations and  just about everything else – have ceased to exist with his fall. The rebellion doesn’t appear very cohesive, and only a few of its members have experience of working in government – let alone of setting up a new one. A new army will have to be built from scratch – and given the nature and complexity of a modern army, the rebel fighters can be little more than a starting point even if all of them want to stay on and they have captured all the old army equipment intact. Very tough times lie ahead for the people of Libya.

But I hope – I really, really, hope – that we’ve learned the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan and if we help them, we do it discreetly and in a fairly limited fashion. That way, even if they make mistakes, they will be their mistakes to make and they can face them as a nation rather than having to blame us. Otherwise, scenes like this one may well turn sour in the minds of those taking part in them very fast – just as they did in Kabul and Baghdad.

The railway unions in 1911 were still in limbo between de facto recognition (which had effectively been conferred by the Trade Disputes Act of 1906) and actual recognition and co-operation with the railway companies. This may sound like a theoretical distinction, but it wasn’t. 1906 meant that unions were recognised as legal entities by the government and protected from being sued for damages in the event of a strike. However, actually negotiating directly with the railway companies when most of those companies refused to admit their existence was a bit tricky. Even where there were exceptions – the Cambrian line, for example, had recognised unions for several years – it tended to be grudging (the Cambrian had recognised unions after an unfortunate incident involving Parliament, the station master at Newtown and the very real possibility that all the company’s directors would be imprisoned if they didn’t).

This was of course compounded by the long hours, heavy responsibility, low pay and no little danger endured by the railway workers – the work was also of course dirty, heavy and often required great care and precision. Ninety hour weeks were not unusual, yet wages of a pound a week were high by the standards of the railway companies. Of course, there were benefits – railway workers had high job security, a network of benevolent societies and out-of-hours activities provided by both unions and employers, and a strong pride in their work. They were not, in any sense, comparable to colliers or dockers.

These circumstances were mostly behind the strike of 1911 – essentially, siding workers in Liverpool downed tools over long hours and low wages, and on being told the Lancashire and Yorkshire would replace them with non-union labour, appealed for a full strike. The unrest spread rapidly, through all companies and members of all four railway unions (one of the reasons why the companies had fended off the unions for so long was because the unions were fragmented and constantly feuding with each other). In fact, the unions themselves rather felt events had moved beyond their control – the great Jimmy Thomas complained bitterly that freelance agitators had whipped the strikers into a frenzy of expectation as to what could be achieved, that made actually concentrating their minds on the real gains that were possible – union recognition and better conditions, with the promise the former would lead to still more of the latter – very difficult. Matters began to get out of hand, and those trains that did still run had stones thrown at them.

The government eventually broke the strike under Lloyd George’s leadership by threatening to mobilise the army against the strikers and instructing the companies to recognize the unions with the threat that the Kaiser had planned a diplomatic coup in Morocco while the British were distracted, and if he pulled it off the government would publicly blame the railway companies and denounce them as unpatriotic. Minds were also concentrated by the news of serious rioting in South Wales. But unfortunately by then it was rather too late for John John and Leonard Worsell, both of Llanelli, one aged 21, the other 20.

Precise details remain slightly obscure – accounts tend to be coloured by the political views of the writer. To reduce it to its essentials, the Irish Mail was still running across south Wales, after an earlier police charge had driven a large crowd off the railways at Llanelli. However, stones had begun to be thrown at the trains by the re-mustering strikers, and the Chief Constable of Carmarthenshire sent an urgent message to Cardiff requesting the help of the army. He was sent a detachment of the Worcestershire Regiment to try and restore order in the town. The Irish Mail was stopped when strikers jumped on the footplate and put out the fire, injuring both the driver and the fireman in the process. Troops arrived and cleared the train – however, it was a long way from the station and a restive crowd had gathered again, hemming it in. Some witnesses claimed stones were thrown – others claimed the crowd was angry but not aggressive. Whatever the truth, the Riot Act was read, and warning was given the troops would open fire if the crowd did not disperse in 60 seconds. John John, a striker, jeered that the troops would never fire, or would fire only blanks, and even dared them to shoot at him. Leonard Worsell, who lived nearby, went to see what all the noise was. When the troops opened fire on the crowd, he was one of three people shot – with John John, one of two fatalities.

The deaths set off a series of further riots throughout the tinplate areas, and saw railway track at Llanelli ripped up – the damage was immense. Trains were particular targets – the one the troops had rescued was completely destroyed. Several more people were killed as buildings were attacked, looted and burned down. In a rather ironic lack of self-awareness, one of the strike leaders afterwards denied that the Riot Act, which was used extensively in an (unsuccessful) bid to quell the disorder, needed to be used. The truth was that a grave situation had, by means of the troops firing to kill from the first, without a warning volley, been turned into a major catastrophe.

During the recent riots, I expressed concern that it might well have ended with troops on the streets – although fortunately Adam Collyer was right and I was wrong, they weren’t needed. Llanelli was one of the times I had in mind were armed men confronting a tense/violent situation led to people dying – not even those necessarily involved. The truth at Llanelli, as far as I can judge, is that a rioting crowd confronted a military unit commanded by somebody who knew too little about the situation to make a reasoned judgement on the danger – and so ordered his men to fire on the basis that if in doubt it was better rioters be killed than his men.Of course, a bystander was also killed. Yet so far as I know, nobody was held to account on either side for the disaster. A soldier who had gone absent without leave from the Worcestershire Regiment subsequently claimed he had been specifically ordered to fire at a particular individual, and had refused. No certain testimony either way was produced at his court-martial – and on the whole it seems unlikely that the officer in charge (Major Stuart) would have singled out individual targets. That was certainly not British military practice in crowd control in the era of the First World War – as Reginald Dyer showed to even more terrible effect in Amritsar eight years later.

Worsell and John were really victims of a tragic inability by the unions and the railway companies to listen to each other. From that point of view, the weakness of the British economy, still emerging from the First Great Depression, was also to blame, for artificially deflating profits and wages. Yet when they died, something was achieved – it was to finally put in place a system of union recognition and arbitration on the matter of wages with the companies. It can’t be said it was particularly effective – strikes were a constant feature of the next twenty years – yet it was a start, and it was a start the unions exploited to the full in later years to gain themselves greater power and influence. In fact, the union position of the 1940s may have been said to have started with the deaths of the unfortunate Worsell and a striker named John in Llanelli. From that point of view, it was a seminal moment in the twentieth century – a century dominated by union power and industrial conflict thanks to the recognition they gained after Llanelli.

Admittedly, they had an enormous amount of help along the way. The collective insanity of the Australian selectors in picking not-quite-their-best 20 million players (OK, only 17 in practice, but others disagreed and felt they had gone further) helped quite a lot. Then there was all that business about only playing South Africa once, and not playing on the subcontinent at all during the last three years when the rankings were being decided. Yet this is the first time since the days of Peter May – a man who, let it not be forgotten, has been dead for 17 years and didn’t die particularly young – that England have had a side that genuinely looks capable of beating just about any other one out there. True, it’s only in Tests so far, although in bilateral ODI series their record is pretty good and they won the World Twenty20 cup not so long ago. But England have about 9-10 top quality batsmen (the current top 6 less Bopara, plus Trott, Hildreth, James Taylor, Jon Bairstow and Adam Lyth) and more significantly the same number of decent pace bowlers (the four used in this series plus Finn, Graham Onions, James Harris, Chris Woakes, Ben Stokes and perhaps even Tim Linley) plus two proven spinners and one who will doubtless become one soon (Swann, Panesar, Rashid). Where’s the weak link? It’s a little like the West Indian sides of the 1980s – a second XI of West Indians was still more than capable of thrashing just about any other side in the world. Or, to put it another way, a side of those spares might well still beat Australia.

However, India should get our vote of thanks for the sterling role their muddled preparation and generally abject performance played in the final reckoning – with the honourable exception of Rahul Dravid, who looked at all times until this match not merely a class but an entire school apart. Lesson to the Indian board – if you drive your players remorselessly 365 days a year, give them no holidays, deny them practice matches worthy of the name, then throw them in against the world’s most formidable attack in their home conditions, they will not do very well, however good they are. Four of India’s top five average over 50 in Tests, and the fifth averages around 48. That means on average by the time the top five are out, India out to have roughly 250 on the board, setting up an average total of well over 300. In this series, however, India have yet to score more runs in an innings than the 294 Alistair Cook (Gloucester boy done good) has managed in one innings on his own – their best effort having been 288.

So, well done England. I do hope you can win on the subcontinent, and then beat South Africa. It’s such a lovely sensation to see England handing out the sort of drubbings Australia used to give to us throughout my childhood I would like to have time to get used to it.

It might even almost make up for Gloucestershire’s shortcomings…

There are of course times when there is no pleasure at all in being proved right, because it’s a situation that helps nobody and harms a great many people, and for me this morning is one of those times. Four months ago, almost to the day, I wrote this:

Even apart from its economic effects, hot weather, by depriving people of sleep and by forcing them outside much more, tends to cause trouble on its own. The French Revolution happened after several failed harvests and a heatwave. The poll tax riots occurred in an unusually hot summer. This summer, government cuts begin…

And today I hear of rioting in London (again) Birmingham, Nottingham, Liverpool and Bristol. Under such circumstances there is no pleasure at all in being proved right. Here’s a further prediction that gives me no pleasure – as this chaos now seems to be being exploited by criminal gangs in order to loot various stores, this is not going to end without the Army on the streets or a week of heavy rain. And here’s hoping that’s not a correct prediction, because Armies on the streets tend to be accidents waiting to happen, and there’s no sign of prolonged wet weather approaching.

Llanwarne is, obviously, a Welsh word, but when I met the organist she told me it is pronounced English fashion, ‘Lanwaarn’, rather than as written. It is a small hamlet – I don’t think it quite merits being called a village – off the road to Hay on Wye, just over a mile from the junction at Llandinabo. Yet I had heard of it before. Many years ago Sir Roy Strong, formerly director of the National Portrait Gallery, retired to Much Birch, and some years later wrote a book called A Little History of the English Country Church. In the epilogue, he relates his experiences in the 1980s as a member of the congregation of one of Llanwarne’s churches, which served as a partial inspiration for the book.

This reference to ‘one of Llanwarne’s churches’ may sound a bit odd – but nevertheless there are two churches at Llanwarne. One, Christchurch, is a small Victorian country church of 1864. It isn’t very unusual, although it is handsome in its own way, and might hold over a hundred people at a stretch, which is comparatively large for a church of that date and district.  It also has quite a pleasant little organ, although I am told on good authority it needs a lot of work doing to it.

The other (left) is more interesting, more beautiful, and no longer used because it is deficient in the matter of a roof (that is to say, it has no roof). There has been a Christian place of worship in the area of Llanwarne since the seventh century. Although the first church has not survived, the 13th century church of St. John the Baptist that replaced it is still in situ, barring roofs and windows – indeed, the tower is still intact and still houses a peal of bells that remain in fairly regular use. The problem was its location. St. John’s was built in a dip, next to the Gamber brook. In the 1850s and 1860s, for no discernable reason, this began flooding very badly – with the net result that the church was constantly inundated. At this point the new lord of the manor told the Rector to stop being a fool, abandon theold church and build a nice new one on the hill fifty yards away – and he would pay. So it happened, and now there are technically two churches in Llanwarne – because I believe the other remains consecrated ground.

St. John’s remains a peaceful and beautiful place, and I sat there for a while, enjoying the tranquility. There is a notice in the mediaeval gate warning people in no uncertain terms not to climb on the monument because the stonework is no longer secure – indeed, I could see that for myself. I think some of the top of the walls have gone in the last 150 years, because one arch comes to a point in mid air – something like the arches of old Roman aqueducts, that remain even though all the surrounding stonework has gone. The floor, which would for a church of that period have been either tiled or paved, is now covered in grass, and I suspect at least a couple of feet of earth deposited by the brook. A channel has been dug through the old doorway which sits well below current ground levels, the windowframes are at ground level, and the internal door arches seem surprisingly low even when the great rise in average height and build is taken into account.

Like all churches prior to the birth of the heritage movement, St. John’s underwent many changes over the centuries. For example, it clearly had an entirely new roof, including a new design, put on at least once. The reason is not difficult to guess either – the mediaeval roofline is clearly visible, and it shows a pronounced bias to the south, meaning the peak was badly off-centre. This would not of course have mattered quite so much had it not been fairly obvious that the other end had the peak bang in the centre! It is also quite a bit smaller than Christchurch – but not grossly so. The main way in which Christchurch’s design was an improvement is in the absence of a remote side-aisle, being instead built in cruciform with pews in the transepts.

Although St. John’s would probably not have been so readily abandoned now given its age and interesting architectural features – Ashleworth Parish Church is still used despite the fact that the River Severn rampages through it at regular intervals – it is easy to understand why, in the 1860s, with what would still at that time have been an expanding rural population, a church prone to flooding, money to hand, a firm belief in the ever-continuing expansion of the membership of the Church of England, and the influence of the Oxford Movement demanding the installation of an organ and a choir, the people of Llanwarne would have been willing and indeed eager to build their new church.

Of course, this is not the way things tend to happen now when churches have to close for any reason. A view years ago (2008) the church of St. Michael at Brampton Abbotts closed its doors for the final time after its roof became unsafe and no money could be found to repair it. It was not replaced – instead, its treasures were salvaged for other churches in the area and the small surviving congregation heads to Bristow. Similarly, this church at Maerdy in the Rhondda Valley, also closed due to an unsafe roof, was due to be replaced by services in the Village Hall. Grandest and most saddening of the lot was the closure of St. David’s Church in Newtown, one of the grandest churches in Mid-Wales (and possessed of a fine three-manual organ) although the congregation are blameless for that – it was not their fault it was built on a marsh, suffered acutely from damp, and it had been plagued by structural problems throughout its existence. The town of Newtown, the largest in Powys, now has a parish church at Llanllwchaiarn a mile out of the town – ironically, one of the very mediaeval churches that Newtown Church was founded to replace (the other having, still more ironically, having been abandoned due to flooding).

St John the Baptist at Llanwarne has found a new sort of life as a restful green space. But I doubt that will be true of every country church that has to close in the next ten years – and I suspect there will be many of them as repair bills mount unless congregations increase in size. Some may be taken over by their villages as communal areas. Some might be made into houses or flats. Others may have to be demolished entirely. Even if it is their fate to become pretty ruins, I personally feel there is nothing quite like a living church – and the carcass of a dead one, however pretty and however much I like it, is a poor substitute. If I went back to Llanwarne to see a church again, it is Christchurch I would want to see. After all, what changes would there be to learn about at St. John the Baptist?

When I first moved back to Gloucestershire in 2008, things were so bad at one point even Asda stopped hiring. No firm typified this more than Renishaw, based in Wotton-under-Edge with factories elsewhere in the Cotswolds. Renishaw specialises in precisely that sort of export-led, high-tech light engineering that is going to have to really thrive if we are ever to get out of this awful mess. In the winter of 2008-9 it appeared to have plunged into deep crisis. It was laying off staff, putting the rest on short hours, talking of closing plants, concerned about the possibly permanent loss of markets abroad, and generally giving the impression of being on the brink of bankruptcy. The following year, I speculated that its difficulties might impact on the General Election in Gloucestershire. After all, it was in a highly marginal Con/Lab seat and it was a major local employer. I was immediately contacted by Renishaw’s press office, who in a polite but firm comment told me that things were improving rapidly from this nadir, they were recruiting staff again and they were looking forward to a bright future. I gather that the Icelandic ash cloud last year caused them a few problems again, due to the difficulties of shipping urgent orders, but they continued to recover.

And today, in news everyone who cares about industrial recovery should welcome, I read that they have posted record results for last year, and are advertising 140 vacancies, many in Gloucestershire. Many congratulations to them, and their staff – and as I said before, long may it continue!

Although the Belgians ran their African empire with disastrous consequences, they have given the world a rich legacy of culture. French speaking Belgium produced one of the greatest singer-poets of the last century, Jacques Brel. The French-speaking Belgians’ claim to fame includes the creator of Hercule Poirot, Georges Simenon, and the creator of Tintin, Hergé. They have Magritte. On the Flemish side let’s not forget Rubens, Van Eyck, Breugel and Van Dyck.

Somebody, I think, needs to engage their little grey cells more productively. Belgium gave us Hercule Poirot, via Agatha Christie’s memories of Belgian refugees at her house in the First World War (she later rendered it into Styles for The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot’s first case). It also gave us Georges Simenon, the creator of Maigret. The two would not be confused by an intelligent person, or for that matter a person who spent five minutes searching Google. The list is moreover less than comprehensive – for instance, it missed arguably the most famous Belgian of the lot, Audrey Hepburn.

What depresses me more, however, is the thought that she was paid to write this inaccurate drivel.

1] The Guardian. They’ve done brilliantly – they’ve actually made a good solid scoop for what feels like the first time since the repeal of the Corn Laws. Moreover, they blew the largest Sunday paper straight out of the water – it went from Britain’s most popular and successful newspaper to literally nothing in less than a week.

But to counterbalance – 2] The media in general are big losers in this scandal. That’s for all sorts of reasons – however, the main one is that it has shone a hard, bright spotlight on their grim and unforgiving world, and people do not like what it shows. And if the News of the World is only the start – well, I’ve studied enough reports of tipping points for the print media, starting in 1927, to treat them with scepticism, but the loss of the largest and most famous of all Britain’s newspapers for reasons which do affect a great many others might just be it.

3] Ed Miliband can count himself as having done rather well. He’s got the issue into the public consciousness, made himself the front man for it, and has always looked to be ahead of the game. However, a note of caution – he has stored up nasty hostages to fortune. In glibly dismissing Tom Baldwin’s breaking into a bank account as ‘in pursuit of a legitimate story in the public interest’ he has not only condoned the action, he has robbed himself of the simplest and therefore best line of attack – that all dubious practices by the media stand equally condemned. Moreover, he has now actually tried to move the story onto precisely those other crimes with a discussion of whether Gordon Brown’s bank records were also broken into. This could well be a case of a man who scores a tactical victory at the expense of a strategic disaster. The more so as we are almost four years from a likely election, by which time much of this will be forgotten by the public – but not the press. If there are any survivors, they will have no reason to love him, and that may cause him problems.

4] David Cameron has had a shocker – a series of straightforward, ghastly blunders. I personally defended him over the initial employment of Coulson, as I thought it was probably not a particularly serious matter and in any case the evidence seemed at best patchy. How wrong I was. How wrong he was too. More seriously though, he seemed reluctant to make the step of claiming Coulson lied to him to keep his job until this afternoon despite days of pressure, or to apologize for the error. Not dumping your friends in a crisis may be the sign of a good person. However, it is the sign of a weak politician. Cameron’s reluctance to knife his very closest friends has been noted before – the expenses scandal, anyone? – but in a case like this it is harming him, and the government. He needs to decide where his loyalties lie – fast.

5] Big winners in all of this are politicians in general. After years of toadying up to Murdoch, they are able to turn and vent their feelings on him. Indeed, for perhaps the first time since Stamp Duty was repealed in 1855, the politicians are in the ascendancy over the media – with public revulsion, falling sales, weak advertising revenue and question marks over their practices, the media will be desperate to conciliate Parliament rather than the other way around. No longer the Fourth Estate or Government by Journalism? Well, perhaps not quite that. I found it really interesting to see how badly hated the media has become among politicians – all that unction turning so rapidly to bile hints at years of suppressed loathing.

6] I think the biggest winners, if it all goes as it should, might be the public. But let’s be clear, so far that’s not the case. It was the advertisers, not the public, that forced the closure of the News of the World, which sold well even in its last week. It was political pressure that thwarted Murdoch in his takeover of BskyB, and may yet rob him of his remaining stake in it on the grounds that he is not a ‘fit and proper’ person to run a media organisation. It was alleged corruption in the police that forced the police investigation. But if we have a more cautious press – and I cannot for an instant believe that free speech or investigative journalism is imperilled by telling a lot of lazy fools to follow the same laws the rest of us have to abide by, although it might well put a long overdue end to the activities of Mazher Mahmood – and a cleaner police force, plus a more direct engagement with what politicians think and say rather than what the media wants us to believe they think and said, we shall all definitely be winners.

So the great losers, of whom no more needs to be said:

7] Rupert Murdoch

8] Rebekah Brooks

9] The police

10] All journalists, especially Coulson

All of whom have their reputations tarnished by these scandals , in the case of the first two possibly beyond burnishing. It might even be the end of Murdoch’s media empire, that just six weeks ago was arguably the most powerful organisation in the developed world. The News of the World is gone, the Sunday Times is under pressure, BSkyB is up for grabs. Where next?

Finally, a quick thought. Politicians and the media used to love each other to death. They were symbiotic – politicians said stuff that they wanted to be heard, with sympathetic commentary, and journalists wanted to write down important stuff that would be read. That’s how we had the cosy love-in between politicians and journalists, and why the two often cross the boundaries. Perhaps this partly explains why Cameron was so anxious to believe Coulson. In a slightly different context, the words of Shakespeare seem highly appropriate in these circumstances. For this, it seems to me, is how politicians and the media operate in relation to each other. Quite which one is which, I’ll leave up to you.

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love, loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.