Instant expertise

'We have a responsibility to protect the Yazidis of Iraq,' is the headline of a leader column in the New Statesman, an attitude mirrored across the British media. 'Yazidi' is the word of the moment, and suddenly we're knee-deep in opinions on, and analyses of, this hitherto unheard-of people.

Unheard of? Well, pretty much, if you broadly rely - as most of us do - on the media's portrayal of the world.

I just looked up on the News Bank data base, and in the first two weeks of August 2014, there were 324 mentions of the word in British newspapers. That's compared to the first seven months of the year, when there were just five such mentions. Looking further back: in 2013 there were two references to Yazidis, in 2013 three, in 2011 four, and in 2010 four.

Which, of course, doesn't stop any of us from airing our own opinions in homes and pubs, on the internet and radio phone-ins, as though we have any real idea at all what we're talking about. It's wonderful how quickly we can all become experts.

Buffoon of the Week

Richard Dawkins in this week's New Statesman: 'I read novels for entertainment rather than for edification. I never quite understood why you would read fiction to understand the human condition.'

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.

Daleks Daleks everywhere

As the BBC starts to gear itself up for the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who next year, the new series starts tomorrow with the return (yet again) of the Daleks, the enemy that keeps coming back for more.

To mark the occasion, there's a bit by me in the current edition of the New Statesman about the Daleks and their creator, Terry Nation. My thanks to Jonathan Derbyshire for commissioning the piece, and for giving it such a fabulous title: Sergeant Pepperpots.

Voices from the Blank Generation

I'm a few weeks behind the pace here, but I've just been reading Paul Anderson's piece from Tribune, marking the thirty-fifth anniversary of the release of White Riot, the first single by the Clash.

The Clash were never as big for me as were the Ramones, but apart from that, Anderson's reflections strike a chord. Only two more and I'll be able to form a band.

An excellent column, I was thinking, as I nodded along in agreement. And that was before I had the pleasant shock of seeing my New Statesman piece being quoted.

And while I'm on the subject of my contemporaries: my thanks to Dan Atkinson for the mention in his blog.

Passing the Tebbit Test

I was reading Norman Tebbit's blog this evening. As you do. And amongst his replies to comments left on a previous post was this paragraph:

There were some pretty silly posts, as from unikey who declared that more people nowadays do not vote than do vote. Of course that is not true and I suspect that he misread a rather good article in the New Statesman of 19th March about the matter.

I assume this is a reference to my article in that issue, since I write about one of Tony Blair's great achievements: he got a government elected with the support of fewer people than there were abstentions. The don't-knows actually won the 2001 election, the first time such a thing had happened since universal suffrage. To prove it wasn't a mere blip, Blair repeated the feat in 2005.

But anyway, my point is this: Norman Tebbit said it was 'a rather good article'. Which is nice.

New Statesman online

The extract from my e-book Things Can Only Get Bitter, which appeared in the New Statesman last week, is now available online.

The New Statesman (again)

I bought my copy of this week's New Statesman today, complete with seven-page cover-story extract from my e-book Things Can Only Get Bitter.

I'm tremendously pleased with this. I'm on the cover of a magazine that published - amongst many others - three of my greatest literary heroes: George Orwell, H.G. Wells and J.B. Priestley. I'm very grateful to the editor Jason Cowley for his support, and to dozens of others, including the chief sub-editor Nana Yaa Mensah.

The book should be available at the end of next week, but until then, the New Statesman is clearly the place to be.

The New Statesman

This week's issue of the always excellent New Statesman (out tomorrow) carries an extract from my e-book Things Can Only Get Bitter. The book itself will follow in a week's time, but you'll be wanting a preview.

Books of the Year

It's the time of year when the great and good get to nominate their books of the year in the more serious periodicals. Having never it on to any such list, I'm hugely excited by Dominic Sandbrook in the New Statesman, who names Tim Pears's Landed and Craig Brown's Lost Diaries, and adds:

'I also loved Alwyn Turner's splendid Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s, which not only re-creates the weird world of the Falklands war, the miners' strike, alternative comedy and the Filofax, but finds room for Mike Gatting, Zola Budd and To the Manor Born.'

Since I don't write for such august publications, I don't have the chance of reciprocation, but I would take the opportunity to say that Mr Sandbrook's State of Emergency is the only new book I've actually bought this year, which is as big a tribute as I can pay it. Normally I wait for books to turn up in charity shops, but I was keen to read his account of the Ted Heath years in Britain. And damn fine it is too.