Have I got satire for you

To greet the new series of Have I Got News For You, the Daily Telegraph has a piece by Olivia Goldhill about the history of television satire. In discussing That Was the Week That Was, she writes: 'The programme's sketches and songs were relatively tame by today's standards.'

Well, yes, some of the show - most of it perhaps - has dated over the last half-century, but I'd recommend watching Millicent Martin singing about racism in Mississippi if you want to see how powerful and chilling real satire can be. Nothing on television today comes even close. That's because today's television really is tame.

It's (not) the real thing

The Telegraph is running a great story from the Press Association today, warning that e-cigarettes will turn you into a coke fiend:

'In mice, nicotine was found to alter brain biochemistry and prime the animals to develop a need for cocaine.'

And to think that I've been labouring under the misapprehension that no one actually needs cocaine.

The long shadow of Margaret Thatcher

I had the great pleasure on Sunday of appearing with Beatrix Campbell and Richard Weight at the Southbank Centre, talking about the impact and legacy of Thatcherism.

Coincidentally, the previous day my review of Jonathan Aitken's new book on Margaret Thatcher appeared in the Daily Telegraph.

My thanks to Steve Thomas of the Southbank, and to Sameer Rahim of the Daily Telegraph.

Irvine Welsh and others

Of all the programmes taking a lightly satirical look at the week's news, the one I always had a fondness for was The Treatment on Radio Five Live, presented by Stuart Maconie in the late-1990s. I liked it enough that I went to a recording to celebrate my birthday one year. So I was a little saddened when Maconie gave my book, A Classless Society, a less-than-enthusiastic review in the New Statesman.

Ah well, you can't win 'em all over. And he does write: 'it is readable and accessible to a degree that may make the sniffier critics suspicious ... It is an entertaining read.'

The same day that was published came a four-star review by Anthony Cummins in Metro: 'His many-tentacled frame of reference is staggering ... Scarcely a paragraph goes by without a killer detail or illuminating anecdote ... The value of this book lies, above all, in the extraordinary amount of material it synthesises. It's easy to see it becoming still more essential as time goes on.'

And then today comes an unsigned review in The Economist: 'the relationship between politics and popular culture [is] meticulously and magnificently described.'

All of which builds rather splendidly to the review that will appear in tomorrow's Daily Telegraph and already available online, in which the great Irvine Welsh gives his view:

'Turner writes brilliantly, creating a compelling narrative of the decade, weaving contrasting elements together with a natural storyteller's aplomb ... In A Classless Society, Turner has produced an amazing work. However, I confess that I'm not looking forward to any book about the 2000s in Britain. I'm at a loss to fathom how any work dedicated to our history in that decade could possibly be as engaging and unique.'

That's just wonderful. I'm extremely grateful to Mr Welsh and to whoever at the Telegraph had the inspired idea of asking him to review the book.

So the current score amongst critics is 10-2: Craig Brown, Anthony Cummins, Matthew Engel, Roger Lewis, Andrew Neather, Richard Ryder, Dominic Sandbrook, David Stenhouse, Irvine Welsh and The Economist in favour; David Aaronovitch and Stuart Maconie against. I think that's a points victory at least.

As a matter of fact, he's back

I've written about Gary Glitter on this blog before. He was a terrific rock and roll star, responsible for some of the best singles of the 1970s. Not solely responsible, of course, since he had the brilliance of producer Mike Leander and the fine support of the Glitter Band to assist him. But it was his concept and we shouldn't lose sight of just how good he was.

It's difficult, though, because there's effectively been a ban on his music for years now, ever since the jail sentence for possessing paedophile pornography.

So, all credit to the BBC for finally lifting the corner of that ban with its broadcast of a 1977 edition of Top of the Pops. Not the most obvious place to start with Gary's work, but I always rated that single, It Takes All Night Long - one of his sleazier recordings from one of the early comebacks:

There's been a lot of criticism, of course, but for once the BBC have got it right on this issue: 'It would be inappropriate for the BBC to rewrite history, so the programme was shown in its entirety.' Quite right, too. That should have been the position for the last decade and more.

The best comment I ever read on the subject came from Craig Brown in the Daily Telegraph back in November 2005:

'Around the time that Gary Glitter was riding so high, Bernard Levin was busy writing articles in The Times about Wagner. As far as I can remember, he would argue that it was perfectly possible and legitimate to deplore the thoughts and actions of the artist while continuing to rejoice in his art. The same must surely be true of the equally rumbustious sounds of Gary Glitter.'

Yesterday's Papers: Gay marriages and the Daily Telegraph

The Queen's Speech this week omitted any mention of the proposed Bill to legalise gay marriages, presumably as a sop to those on the Tory right who regarded David Cameron's enthusiasm for the subject as 'the last straw'.

That quote comes from a piece by Fraser Nelson in the Daily Telegraph. Here's more from the same source:

'There was something wonderfully British about the passage of the Civil Partnership Act, which was approved one rainy Tuesday evening to no fanfare at all ... [A]lmost nobody cared. Civil partnerships were seen, quite rightly, as ironing out a legal crinkle: it seemed common sense to grant gay couples the same rights over issues such as inheritance and hospital visiting rights.'

Is there a slight rewriting of history going on? These are some headlines from stories published in the Daily Telegraph back when the Civil Partnership Bill was first proposed by the Labour government of Tony Blair:

'Williams denounces gay marriages' (27 May 2003)
'Legal rights for homosexuals denounced - by gays' (30 June 2003)
'Taxpayers face £240 million-a-year bill for gay contract' (1 July 2003)
'Gay unions denounced as charter for tax dodgers' (1 July 2003)
'Outrage greets National Trust's plan for homosexual "weddings"' (28 December 2003)

Not quite true, then, that 'almost nobody cared'. The Telegraph clearly did, and spent some time agonising in its leader columns on what the correct Tory attitude should be. This was an early sortie:

'Homosexuals clearly have some special grievances - over hospital-visiting rights and funeral arrangements, for example. But there are other ways of righting these wrongs, one by one, than by inventing a form of quasi-marriage ceremony that would be open to widespread abuse. The problem of inheritance rights, for instance, might be solved at a stroke by abolishing inheritance tax altogether.' (1 July 2003)

But then the Conservative Party, under the leadership of Michael Howard, decided that there would be a free vote on the issue, a major shift in its position, and the Telegraph followed suit:

'Allowing gay people to affirm their relationship within a civil contract does not undermine the institution of marriage. It might even reinforce it. We will all benefit from greater recognition of stable relationships, of whatever kind.' (25 November 2003)

So all's well that ended well. But it wasn't quite as smooth a passage as Fraser Nelson implies.

All thro' the House..

It's always slightly worrying when one finds oneself agreeing with Charles Moore, but his article in yesterday's Daily Telegraph does have a point: the NHS really isn't very good, is it?

It's not the worst of the public services - the police clearly have that position sewn up - but, despite all the ritual praise from politicians and broadcasters, for whom it can do no wrong, it's not 'fantastic' at all. Given a choice, I'd rather fall ill in Germany or in France than in England.

Whether the government's reforms will make any difference, I have no idea (nor, indeed, much faith). What I do know is that unquestioningly to defend the status quo means accepting a health service that isn't as good as it should be. It is also an act of political cowardice. And it's the position the Labour Party appears to be adopting.

In this case, it's even more cowardly, of course, because it's obvious that, were there a Labour government, it would itself be busily reforming away. So Ed Miliband keeps quiet about his own opinions, and instead spends his time every week at prime minister's questions delivering a list of professional bodies who don't agree with the government.

Those bodies can speak for themselves, and do frequently. It's not Miliband's job to act simply as the mouthpiece for GPs. It is his job, as leader of the Labour Party, to convince the country that he has some thoughts of his own. Preferably Labour ones.

The benefit of silence is that it allows voters to read into your lack of expressed intention whatever they want. At the moment, this means that Miliband sounds like he's shares the public mood: sentimental loyalty to a system that no other country seems to be rushing to copy. But at some point, he needs to come up with something more substantial.

Doesn't seem very likely, though. It's political opportunism gone mad, I tell you.

Let Us Now Praise... Lewis Silkin

The 1945 Labour government headed by Clement Atlee was packed full of giant political figures. So much so that some of its members tend to get unfairly neglected, chief among them the great Lewis Silkin.

Back in his time on the London County Council, Silkin had been instrumental in introducing the green belt policy. Now in government, he introduced three massive pieces of legislation that transformed the country just as surely as did the more celebrated health and education reforms of the time: the New Towns Act in 1946, the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, and the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949.

These were genuinely socialist reforms, for which campaigners had been fighting for years. In the case of the Planning Act, the struggle to gain democratic control of development went back to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution: a century on from the Public Health Act of 1848, Silkin's Act finally made all new development subject to statutory oversight by local authorities. It also allowed compulsory purchase, facilitating new construction for the common good, and introduced the concept of listing buildings of architectural or historical merit, so that they might be preserved for the nation.

No more were the concerns of individuals to be placed above those of communities. Clough Williams Ellis, the creator of Portmeirion, whose wife was a member of the Communist Party and who own sympathies lay in that direction, called the Act 'an encouraging sign of returning sanity' after the horrors of the Second World War.

But that was then, and this is now. And in modern Britain, where political polarities so often seem to be reversed, we find the right-wing Daily Telegraph campaigning against the coalition's plans to relax planning laws, and the left, most notably Vanessa Redgrave, fighting for the right of travellers to remain at Dale Farm in Essex, in the face of decisions made by the local planning authorities.

Even more confusingly, the local authority concerned is Basildon - one of the towns established in the late-1940s under Silkin's New Towns Act.


As ever when political morality becomes confused, one should look back at that great post-War government and ask: What would Lewis Silkin do?

Harry Hammond obituary

There is a very fine obituary to Harry Hammond in today’s Daily Telegraph. It’s really good to see the massive contribution he made to the development of rock photography being accorded the respect it deserves.

My thanks to Harry de Quetteville and Roger Wilkes for their help and courtesy.

In tribute to both Harry and Buddy Holly, here's a photo of the latter taken by the former (© V&A Images), which is on view in the Buddy Holly exhibition at the Proud Gallery:

John Summers obituary

A fine obituary to the late John Summers appears in today's Daily Telegraph. My thanks to Mr Roger Wilkes for his unfailing courtesy and professionalism in compiling this piece (and for finding such fabulous pictures).