Picture of a judge's wigRants Archive 2003Picture of a judge's wig

Date: 23/12/03

Turn It Off!

"Television was invented in order to be lousy at Christmas", said a wise man. Or, if it wasn't him, it was me.

Like many truths, it gains force with each passing year.

Time was when I would eagerly await the publication of the Christmas & New Year double issues of the Radio Times and TV Times. As soon as they arrived, I would sit down with a sheet of paper and plan out my viewing and listening for the fortnight. At the end of this process, I would end up with a side of A4 paper full of programmes not to be missed (and bear in mind that I have small handwriting, a habit developed in student days to minimise expense).

In recent years, however, the task of finding toothsome morsels has become increasingly difficult, rendering finding a needle in a haystack a leisurely pursuit with immediate results by comparison. Last year, the entire list amounted to about five lines - and two of those were for John Peel's Festive Fifty.

So what has gone wrong? Well, the problem is far more than just a failure of imagination or nerve on the part of the TV companies at Christmas time: it's a sign of a far greater and deeper malaise than that.

In this rant, I'm going to concentrate on what has gone wrong with ITV. This is partly because that is where the decline in television in this country is at its most acutely visible, and partly because my remaining interest in television is bound up with nostalgia, that word which is used so often in a contemptuous or dismissive way to imply living in the past (nothing wrong in that of itself - it's usually cheaper there) rather than, as I would prefer to see it, a way of celebrating what is worth keeping from earlier times and developing it for future use. This is what leads me to contribute to such web-sites as TV Ark and APFS, and to visit other such sites regularly.

There was a time when ITV was widely envied in the world as a fine example of how commercial TV did not have to be crass, lowest-common-denominator pleb-fodder. This was the ITV of Lew Grade who (Raise The Titanic notwithstanding) had an instinct for what would be popular quality viewing; of the Bernsteins at Granada who proved that you could transmit socially-aware programmes at peak times and get high viewing figures; of the small regional companies who, whilst not contributing much to the network schedules, were committed to (and, more often than not, had deep roots in) their own locality.

So, what went wrong? Basically, the intrusion of a powerful and corrosive political and economic ideology. The old, semi-paternalistic style of ITV was not to the liking of those who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. Break the chains, said the buccaneers of the new media age, and let freedom ring!

This 'freedom' was primarily about the freedom of corporations to maximise their profits. Nothing, but nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of so noble a goal, went the Creed Of The Philistines, especially if it means a favourable slant in the print organs owned by the same kind of mogul.

The zenith (or, as it turns out, the nadir) of this philosophy was encapsulated in the Broadcasting Act of 1990. In it, regulations which (for all their weaknesses) had meant that quality was considered the key test by which an application for an ITV franchise was judged, were junked. From now on, the dosh was all - after all this was a form of public good which was being sold off - it would be a shocking dereliction of duty if it were to be divvied up on the cheap, especially to people who thought that making excellent programmes was more important than maximising shareholder value.

Following what the tabloid press would call 'an outcry', a small, all-but-meaningless quality requirement was inserted in the provisions - but this wouldn't be allowed to stand in the way if other considerations dictated otherwise.

And there were 'other considerations', and some of them were downright sinister. The governing ideologues of Thatcherism certainly saw Granada as a nest of pinkoes, no better than those fellow-travelling Reds at the BBC. Moreover, there were other old scores to be settled: the government had never forgiven Thames Television for showing the Death On The Rock documentary, which exposed literally lethal lying by senior politicians and officials. And so the scene was set: the franchise round to take effect on 1st January 1993 was the acid test for the new, lighter, 'arms-length' regulation.

When the dust cleared and the underpants had been put in the wash, we had the sight of a world-renowned company (that very same Thames which had incurred prime-ministerial wrath) losing its licence to a company of chancers and City wide-boys called Carlton - a company with no track-record but plenty of brash promises.

There were other victims too: Television South were largely to blame for their own downfall, having over-reached themselves by buying MTM under a previous management team; but Television South West were guilty of nothing more than not being 'dynamic', 'thrusting' and all those other piddling epithets thrown about as a substitute for intelligent analysis. The only humour to be found in the entire mess was when (perhaps in some mood of mild mischief) the regulators decided to cut the tops off Mrs. Thatcher's favourite boiled eggs at TV-am. She was, apparently, incandescent with rage, and sent an apologetic fax from her unwilling exile to Bruce Gyngell, the station's chief.

This wasn't the end of the problem, though. Another provision of the 1990 Act and the decisions taken in its wake was to make it easy for companies to buy up further franchises with little or no intervention or comment from the regulators.

And this, as sure as Simon Cowell is an egregious git, is what happened. The new breed of TV company owners and managers, like Michael Green of C*rlton and Gerry Robinson, the terminally third-rate catering manager who took charge of once-respected Granada, saw their chance and grabbed it. Carlton (facing constant criticism of its own programming - Dennis Potter describing it, with uncharacteristic understatement, as a 'predictable disappointment', for example) was the first to launch its warships, acquiring Central, Westcountry and HTV in quick succession, and turning the first two into nothing much more than outhouses (only political pressure stopped HTV being debranded as well). Granada then started playing catch-up and in time gobbled up all those parts of England Carlton hadn't got (having had to sell HTV to Carlton as a result of a rare act of resolve by the ITC). Between them, they now had Mayfair, Park Lane and all the utilities.

And the end result? What we see today : an ITV controlled almost totally by two companies, and those two soon to be merged into one huge corporation (to be called, with customary effrontery, ITV plc). All regional identity has been ruthlessly airbrushed off the screen, except for the very recent token gesture of having pictures of local scenery behind the formless, gormless generic idents of 'ITV1': local continuity and even entire studio complexes have been closed down and production and administration centralised in London: management and PR Visigoths who think, like the Tories who thought that all they needed to do to make the Poll Tax more acceptable to the people of Scotland was to enforce it with even greater rigour and viciousness, that the answer to their problems is more centralisation, more generification, and the removal of any lingering commitment to quality.

As for the programming and the vision, well, it is impossible to imagine ITV today broadcasting serious documentaries and current affairs programmes in a peak-time slot as they once did with World In Action, This Week and The World At War. Instead we have I'm A Paradise Pop Star, Get Me My Image Consultant. All is froth, a televisual cappuccino which, when you reach the bottom, turns out to be based on a thin layer of shit-coloured liquid.

All this under the gleaming simper of a Labour Secretary of State, Tessa Jowell, who watches proudly as the condemned man that is today's ITV kicks open the trapdoor beneath its own bound feet and plunges towards Rupert Murdoch, that mortuary attendant for all decent broadcasting values.

Funny how there's so little worth watching nowadays, isn't it?

Date: 24/11/03

Not Kicked Into Touch?

Late in 2002, the National Assembly of Wales resolved with all-party support to petition the English government to allow our national day (March 1st) to be a public holiday. Apparently, we have to go cap in hand and beg for such things from London because we're not deemed competent to decide such things for ourselves.

The then Colonial Stooge (or "Secretary Of State" as he insisted on calling himself) Paul Murphy, treated the request of the elected representatives of our nation with total disdain. He wouldn't countenance it for a moment, he said, because it would mean "extra costs and disruption for business".

Now comes the news that, following England's rugby union World Cup win, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport in the English government, Tessa Jowell, may order a public holiday "in the players' honour" (see the Guardian report here).

Isn't it wonderful for us poor, backward colonial subjects that we are governed by people of such firm principles and such a solid grasp of priorities?

Date: 12/11/03

Portrait Of The Piss-Artist...

Dylan Thomas is shite!

There, I've said it. The sort of thing that Welsh people are not supposed to say. The noted Swansea lush is, after all, a stated favourite of our cultural tourism industry; a handy talisman for those who are desperate for anything, anything at all which can convey our nation to a heedless world, especially the English-speaking bits of it. We must have someone who is well-known, irrespective of the way in which their image actually reflects on our country and culture.

Thomas detested the nation from which he sprang. "The Land Of My Fathers - my fathers can keep it!" was merely one of his more frequently quoted aspersions on the place of his birth. This was not, contrary to received wisdom, the statement of a man who felt that he was a "citizen of the world" (whatever the hell that may mean); it was a remark typical of the children of the inter-war years for whom their nation was something to escape from, to overthrow, to regard as backward or irrelevant in the modern Anglo-American world.

I don't know whether Thomas' father spoke Welsh. I suspect that he did but, like so many in the first two-thirds of the 20th century, was too full of that national inferiority complex which manifested itself in a headlong rush towards cultural deracination to pass the language on to his son. Just as we saw in S4C's slavish lather-fest of adulation for Sir Goronwy Daniel a few nights ago - a man by all accounts so in love with his nation's language that he kept his affections to himself and wouldn't allow his offspring to partake of it.

Much of Thomas' bile towards his roots no doubt springs from that psychic trauma best illustrated in the story of the fox who had his tail cut off and went around insisting that all other foxes should lose theirs too; after all, it was such a wonderful thing to do, quite aside from the fact that it would stop him from feeling different. Here was a man who had become deracinated before he even had any real knowledge of his roots.

His view of Wales is also that of the spoiled little brat in a warm nursery in a comfortable middle-class home - a combination of the twee and the self-indulgent. Thomas (in his short stories and his poems) seldom appears but that he is centre-stage, and the sort of Brigadoonification illustrated in such as "Under Milk Wood" is scarcely much more than the overactive but ill-disciplined fantasising of the Clever Little Boy.

So why has DT (and were there ever more appropriate initials for such a one?) gained so much adulation in the world? Is he any good as a poet?

Certainly not in a Welsh context. In both the languages spoken in this land, we have produced (and continue to produce) many poets who, emotionally, aesthetically and technically are his superiors by some way. Just consider a few names from the English-language side: R.S. Thomas, Nigel Jenkins, Harri Webb; and from the Welsh-language stable one could name a few dozen, from Dafydd ap Gwilym all the way to Twm Morys. All of these produce more light than heat - the converse of Thomas, whose own dim light seemed to shine from his own posterior orifice.

So (to ask the question a second time), why has Thomas become so lauded? The answer may lie in the connections he made in the circles of English literary dilettantes whose acquaintance he made on his journey to immortality. Bear in mind that those circles were extremely insular in terms of their inability to cope with the notion that non-English cultures in general (and those of these islands in particular) had anything worthwhile to offer them. The native cultures of Wales, Scotland and Ireland were seen as provincial at best, at worst backward and belonging to times which should be forgotten, as being counter-modern. To these people, the idea of taking cognizance of other cultures was beyond them.

Dylan Thomas must, therefore, have been a godsend to them. Here, after all, was someone who appeared to speak their language, and write it in interesting ways, but who also conformed to the convenient Central Casting stereotype of the Celt - a moody drunk, by turns melancholic and florid, a verbose, beseeching sponger off the Chosen People of literary fashion.

The sub-literati who championed him (and who continue to do so - Thomas seems to have reached that stage defined by Robert Graves when he said that "popular adulation of Shakespeare has rendered even his shabbiest work sacrosanct") did not, therefore, need to adjust their mind-set in dealing with him. Nor did they have to resort either to a knowledge of another language, or to any deep thoughts regarding the value of their own, before turning this stage-Welshman into a sort of totem, icon or mascot for their own (as they no doubt saw it) open-mindedness and modern sensibilities.

Add to this the deep mistrust of the overtly intellectual or literary in English culture (it was a wise man who said that the word 'poetry' could disperse an English crowd faster than a fire hose), and you have the secret of Thomas' success - you could be lulled by the empty sounds without ever once having to engage the brain.

It is therefore utterly appropriate that an entire industry has grown up around the legends which Thomas weaved about himself, in which task he was ably abetted by those who one would have hoped should have known better.

What little there is of intellectual life in Wales, too, is so lacking in self-confidence and so full of provincialism, that this facile mutterer has yet satisfactorily to be debunked. It is time to make a start.

(For further thoughts on this, see Hywel Williams' article in The Guardian of 27/10/03).

Date: 08/10/03

US Credibility Terminated

There are times when one genuinely does not know whether to laugh or weep. The election of Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Governorship of California is just such a time. The laughter, however, is of a bitter and sardonic nature.

The most populous of all fifty US states has elected to lead it a Hitler-admiring lunkhead with no experience, no policies and no morals. A bad actor whose propensity for steroid-enhanced violence and serious sexual misconduct are really good advertisements for his adopted country.

(I mean, wasn't it bad enough for them to have started Ronald Reagan's ascension?)

What did he have which led a few million otherwise (one hopes) sane and rational people to choose him? What does it say about the frailties of the psyche of Mr, Mrs, Miss and Ms America today that they vote for someone to hold an office of great status and substantial power because he is famous? Because that can surely by the only remotely sustainable reason for their decision - unless one subscribes to some sort of theory of mass hysteria and/or delusion. And even if one grants that premise, what are we to make of a society so deeply and self-regardingly in love with celebrity that it will give those who possess it the Keys To The Kingdom without any serious reflection upon the actual (as opposed to the projected) character of the real person?

'Arnie' is, of course, media-savvy. Having made a living in the ridiculous ways he has for so long, it would surprising if he wasn't. And if there's one thing the idlers and trivia-peddlers in the media of today love, it's someone who speaks the language they understand easiest and best - even though to anyone with a remotely critical outlook it sounds like a lot of ducks quacking.

This may explain the easy ride that Schwarzenegger had from the corporate media (both in California and throughout the US generally). The downplaying of the allegations (far too numerous and from far too many different directions to be mere malice or some liberal conspiracy) about his perpetual sexual misconduct, and the playing up with a grotesque stridency of the musclehead's "I'm for the little guy" line indicates either a deliberate attempt on the part of Republican-partial media organisations to lie (if semi-plausibly) to their audiences, or a sort of consensus psychopathology - one where everyone is holding out for a hero, and who cares if he's an abuser, a thug, a know-nothing, just so long as he has the right sort of chin and his teeth glint in the California sunshine?

And all this, my dear readers (if I may be presumptuous enough to use the plural - the hit counter on this site makes me wonder sometimes), from the largest state of a country which repeatedly stomps about the world demanding its own way, and which claims that it, and only it, is the saviour of mankind, The One True Way And The Life. How on earth (while we still have an Earth, of course) can we possibly take American pretensions to superiority seriously when such as Arnold can be elected to positions of power and responsibility?

"Unhappy the land that needs heroes", wrote Brecht. Unhappier yet may be the land which elects them to office...

Laugh if you will, but let us also weep for California Über Alles under its new ruler.

Date: 06/10/03

More Hoste, Less Spood

Why is it that, however carefully you proof read them, you never spot spelling mistakes in web pages until after you upload them to the server?

Smiley banging head against brick wall

Date: 16/08/03

The Hag Queen Of The Chattering Classes

She's been at it again.

I refer, of course, to Janet Street-Porter, that dental-chart-on-a-stick of whom English urban liberals seem to be so enamoured.

She has tried to lance the boil of her hatred of her (Welsh-speaking) mother before, and the tactic is always the same: a tirade of desparate insults against our nation and our people. Her latest (a wretched attempt to publicise her one-woman show at the Edinburgh Festival - another place where the liberal pretensions of the Independent-reading classes are cossetted beyond endurance) was true to form.

She whines on about how awful Cymru is, how dreadful its people, how backward its culture. Can she really say that the ingratiating, self-regarding metropolitan culture of which she herself is such a prominent (and loud) feature is superior? Especially as its snobbery, unmerited élitism and condescension towards other cultures (typified by the sort of faddism by which Malian kora music is "in" one month, but awfully passé a couple of weeks later, darlings, having been replaced by Javan ethnic jewellery or some such) has rendered London a cultural joke-shop compared to cities such as Paris, Barcelona or München.

She says, in a radio interview, that when she goes to North Wales, the people there treat her as if she was an alien being.

Quite perceptive of us, I think.

For a riposte to one of her earlier rants, see this poem by the newly-chaired poet Twm Morys.

The line at the end of each verse translates as, "Said Janet Street-Porter, and no-one less".

The final couplet translates as:

"Laugh, Janet! Cry! Kill yourself!
It doesn't matter a f*ck to the people of Pen-Llŷn"

Date: 07/08/03

Crimes Against Language (#2)

I read a memo from a colleague today. I wish I hadn't. For there, referring to the need to take action in reply to enquiries, was the phrase "to respond in a timeous fashion".

"Timeous"???? (*)

I can only suppose that he had seen it in a memo from senior management, or in one of those "consultation documents": you know, the ones where you can be certain that the decision has already been taken before they "consult".

Management-speak is the curse of our age. Not simply because of what it does to itself and those who use it (apparently with a straight face), but because of the effect it has on those subjected to it. The ambitious see it as a form of "open sesame" - if they start to use it, they reason, then it will show how au fait they are with the latest trends in business leadership and thus boost their credentials for preferment. What this does to the linguistic wing of their immortal souls doesn't bear thinking about, but it does explain much about what is wrong with modern management.

(*) Footnote: although this hideous word does not appear in the Concise Oxford, it does rear its ugly head in Collins. It is 15th Century Scottish in origin, although how much more of that dialect from that period is familiar to management consultants and other parasites on the world of work must remain, for the moment, a moot point.

Date: 26/07/03

Hi, tech! Or, how IT can stop the world

Scarcely half an hour after the last update on this page, my trusty PC started giving me the runaround. To cut a long story short, it has taken me fortnight to get the bastard straightened out, and time alone will tell whether it'll behave itself in the long term.

I thought that it was children who were supposed to go through the "terrible twos"?

I can't claim a great deal of technical insight for the final resolution of the problems (which involved 0E errors, sudden power-offs and all sorts of wacky events). I don't think that I would be up and running even now if I hadn't inadvertently erased the boot files on the hard drive - meaning that I had to reformat the drive for the third time in ten days.

I blame Bill Gates. Well, I mean, everybody else does.

Date: 13/07/03

Crimes Against Language (#1 in an interminable series)

(Yes, I know: two updates in one day. But it has been "busy, busy" these past two weeks).

I worry about the BBC. I worry about the state of education in this country. These two concerns come together in a couple of examples of the misuse of (or even the casual disregard for) language.

All right, I'll admit that it comes a bit close to home for me. Part of my job involves scrutinising letters which go out from our office for errors in form, content and language. I see enough avoidable screw-ups there to make me despair - and this from people who, almost without exception, are intelligent and articulate, even the managers.

One would have hoped that any organisation which concerns itself with the dissemination of information would at least take all proper care to ensure that the communication would be correct. But, to take just two examples from recent weeks, this doesn't seem to be a concern to the BBC, because both of these cases come from their teletext service CEEFAX.

The more recent referred to a botched police investigation into a murder case. Some public citizen got up to complain of the weakness of the conduct of the inquiries. Whoever he was (I forget now), I'm sure he wasn't as illiterate as the BBC made him out to be when he was quoted as having opined that the police's "expertise have not been shared".

This are getting ridiculous ; since when have 'expertise' been plural? Ever since people started thinking that anything which sound like it end in an 's' are a plural, I suppose, in the same way that people don't seem to be able to handle apostrophes anymore (see http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif for a good idea about how to make the point on that question).

But, to be fair, it can sometimes be entertaining when one of these failures results in the creation of what is almost a parallel universe. I saw (again on CEEFAX) a quote from a football manager whose team had just lost a crucial game. "I am absolutely gutted. I am lost forwards."

Well, at least he'll be able to see where he's going....

Date: 13/07/03

Awww, Diddums! Is De Lickle Wich Boy Sad, Den?

I think the phrase I'm looking for rhymes with "Clucking bell!"...

I read that a psychotherapist in America says that we groundlings should show sympathy for the rich. Apparently, the poor darlings have a serious affliction, and she has dubbed it "affluenza".

I think you can judge the value of someone's ideas by the respect they show for language when trying to convey them. The coinage of such a barbarism not only demonstrates the fundamental loopiness of the idea, but goes a long way to show why so many in the mind professions (especially therapists) are held in such contempt.

Leaving my priggishness on that point aside, however, the notion that we should feel sorry for the wealthy is spectacularly brass-necked. It seems that being rich disturbs one's emotional well-being. Well, fan me with a dishcloth! Another blinding flash of the obvious!

One possible reason for such a debility which was not raised in the article which I read is that, given that the vast majority of the rich have become so as a consequence of being ludicrously over-rewarded (often for activities which have no real benefits for the well-being of society), these poor folk are overcome with feelings of guilt, remorse and futility. But then, most of these people never question the great good fortune which has put them where they are, so it couldn't be that.

Whatever terrible crises of the soul which may afflict them, I think most of us would rather have their problems than our own. I live in a village which has been scarred for nearly a generation by the slash-and-burn approach to industry taken by the detested Th*tch*r, and where most people have constant worries over whether they will still be able to afford the mortgage (or the rent, or the payments on the car, or whatever) next month. Most people in our society (you know, market-fans, the one there's no such thing as?) walk along the edge of a sword in financial and material terms, and have to mis-use so many of their precious few moments in their lives worrying about being able to have even some of the fundamental accoutrements of civilised modern life.

The idea that they (or, indeed, anyone else) should feel sorry for the rich is either a rather sick joke on the part of someone with a warped sense of humour, or it's a very clever attempt to assuage the annoyance of those of less elevated financial fortune, somewhat along the lines of wretched old clichés such as, "Oh, well, so long as yer've got yer 'ealth", or "It can't buy you happiness, can it?". These are anthems for the self-defeated, clarion calls to servile apathy.

Feel sorry for the rich? Pardon me while I blow me nose....

Date: 21/06/03

Serf-Time

I just knew that this subject would crop up sooner or later...

William Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Battenburg (or "Mountbatten-Windsor" as they insist on calling themselves) deigned to pay a teensy-weensy visit to our benighted land last week, in the company of his father, Charles, Prince of Absentee Landlords. Presumably Charles kept saying to him, "One day, my boy, all this will be yours".

I am a republican. There, I've said it again (see "Honours Without Profit" at 14/06/03 below). I've never understood why being one should still be considered something to be furtive about. I would have thought that being a monarchist is a greater reason for shame.

For consider what monarchism entails: it means that you believe that a person (or even an entire family of them) is in some way intrinsically better than you are (always has been, always will be) simply on the grounds of birth or heredity. It doesn't matter whether the individuals concerned are thicker than a docker's packed lunch, more lacking in morals and social values than your average council-estate smack-dealer, or more buggy than a Microsoft v1 release; they are our superiors, and that's all there is to it.

Ponder what this says about monarchists. These are people who get off on the notion that someone has an innate superiority to them, and who have multiple orgasms at the thought of being in the presence of these strange creatures, or even in the same county during the same month as them. What sort of lack of self-respect does this imply on their part?

For the essential element in monarchism, as with theistic religions, is serfdom. It implies that a crown (even of thorns), a throne (even in the clouds) and a lot of land (even of the Promised variety) give the wearer/occupier an innate superiority over everyone else, irrespective of the qualities (or lack of them) of that individual. And so we reach a situation where nobody's actual merit matters - they can be as moral, kindly or talented as any paragon you can imagine ; they don't count for much because they don't come from the right family! Astonishing! It's as if democracy had never been re-invented. It's certainly as if the racial theories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had never been in any way discredited by their own absurdity and crudity.

We in this colony of the defeated some call Wales seem to have a very bad dose of this affliction when it comes to the tiara-monde. Having not had even a middle-ranking nobility to call our own since about 1450 (careerists as they were, they piddled off after the Tudors grabbed England), we seem to be delighted to be able to drool after someone else's. And wasn't this on full show last week? You can tell, even with the sound down, when those glorified bus conductors called "news presenters" are about to bring us a royal story: their faces contort into a rictus simper which looks, to these eyes at least, to be one eighths calculated insincerity and seven-eighths artificial sweetener.

And so we had it. The ingredients were all there: the swarming crowds (all of about 150 people, about 1.6% of the population of Bangor - now you know where the US got the idea for that 'statue-toppling' photo-op in Baghdad from); the gummy grannies with their best macs on; and, worst of all, the schoolchildren corralled in to sing. We rightly object to children being propagandised by politics, but isn't this every bit as political? Our next generation is being taught the politics of licky-licky, sucky-sucky, tuggy-tuggy to these parasites, whilst at the same time being taught little if anything of the history of the country in which they are growing up. Scenes like that drive me to despair. If not rage.

Monarchism, like all forms of know-your-place-you-worm-ism, is a form of social illness. It prevents people from thinking about what they themselves are and what they might achieve ; it encourages passivity and a sense of inferiority ; and it more deeply entrenches a system of deference and inequality which means that those at the bottom tend to have to stay there.

Of course, in the eyes of those at the top, this may be The Point. It's time for the serfs to grow up.

Date: 18/06/03

No, Prime Minister

I sometimes wonder what it is with Tony Blair. Is he really Dr. David Owen's final curse on British politics? Is he Margaret Thatcher in trousers? Is he a fifth columnist for the Daily Telegraph?

One of the key attitudes of Blair and his governments over the last six years has been the constant denigration of workers in the public sector. Time after time, whenever they need to look good to Middle England (where most of the party's marginal constituencies reside), they resort to portraying public sector workers as being inefficient, bureaucratic dinosaurs; or, alternatively, as Trotskyite wreckers out to consolidate their power at the expense of better service for The Consumer. The level of flak flying around has been higher than at any time under the previous Conservative administration.

(I should at this point declare an interest: I am a public sector employee. I work in an office belonging to one of the main departments of State, a department which has seen huge changes in the twelve and a half years I have been in it).

On Tuesday, in a lecture (the appropriate word, given his usual tone of address to those who, at least in theory, are on his side) to the Fabian Society, Mr. Blair was at it again. He stressed, for the umpteenth time, his commitment to 'reform' of the public sector and how he will not let anybody in that sector stand in the way.

His use of the word 'reform' may be the significant point. This appears to have replaced the standard Blairite watchword of 'modernisation' to describe his intentions. Of all the buzzwords and cant terms to have gained currency in the past two decades, 'reform' has been one of the most frequently used, and one whose literal meaning is most regularly spun out of existence to be replaced by the Humpty-Dumptyist sense we have all come to know and love.

(Humpty Dumpty, you may recall from your reading of Lewis Carroll, said that when he used a word it meant whatever he wished it to mean, not what it actually meant).

Those of us whose memory of events predates last week will recall the way in which the word 'reform' was used by late-model Thatcherism and its successors. 'Reform' of the health service meant the creation of the wretched 'internal market' whereby money which should have gone into patient care was instead used to import a vast cadre of middle-management, accountants and PR-folk (many of whom are still there despite the 'market model' having been abandoned, at least in name); 'reform' of local government meant the replacement of democratically-elected control with power by cabals of hand-picked quangocrats, answerable to no-one but the ministers who appointed them; 'reform' of public transport led to the disappearance of bus services in many rural areas (leading to the 'people carrier' blight of today), and reached its baleful zenith in the lethal disaster of the privatisation of the railway system.

It seems that, with Mr. Blair, the word still means much the same as it did to the ideologues of the marketeer right of the 80s and 90s. Just look at his policies: 'reform' of education means the creation of schools which will be run by a collection of ideologically-motivated cliques (including the obligatory groups of religious nutters who believe that Creationism is scientifically on a par with evolution); 'reform' of the health service (yes, another one) will entail the creation of 'foundation hospitals' which will be able, through a series of legal fiddles and preferential treatment, to draw the best talent and facilities to them, thus inevitably impoverishing the rest.

'Reform' also, invariably, increases or institutes the heavy involvement of private companies in the running of public services in a form of 'privatisation by stealth'. Corporations are invited to take over the running and control of large sections of the public sector, again under preferential conditions.

Consider the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) if you want to see where this will lead. Under PFI, companies are awarded contracts for building, say, a new hospital or school. They will then effectively own that building for the period of the contract (which can be as long as 50 years). The contracts, however, are so designed as to preclude (except in the most unusual circumstances) their being terminated without the taxpayer having to dig deep to pay compensation to the corporation involved, however incompetent, venal or corrupt it may have been. Those companies fortunate enough to be favoured by the government with these contracts are on a certain winner for the next two generations,despite a number of studies which have already concluded that PFI is almost always more expensive to the taxpayer than the usual way of doing things.

So why do it that way? Well, it seems that it helps with the accounting. If you can move items of public expenditure to another part of the balance sheet (or even remove them from it altogether) you can claim that you are keeping under control (or even bringing down) public expenditure. This will play well with Essex Man, Worcester Woman, or whichever stereotype of middle-class England you want to impress. You know, the ones who think that they should have first-class public services without having to pay accordingly. But there is always a price to pay, and that price will now be paid in damn-nigh unbreakable contributions to the profits of dozens of private corporations for the next 50 years or so. A false economy is no economy at all.

The Prime Minister wants to 'reform' (or is that still 'modernise'?) the public sector, as he clearly sees it as under-productive. Perhaps I can advise him of a better way, based on the experience of my colleagues in recent years:

1) Stop insulting us. It's a simple thing Tony, you could start right now, and it wouldn't cost you anything. I know that the vast majority of public servants have worked, and continue to work, very hard to implement your government's policies at ground-level, and they deserve more respect than you have shown them. Morale is lower than I can ever recall it being, and being told that we still aren't working hard enough, and that if we resist even the most idiotic of your policies then we are 'wreckers' and 'vandals' isn't going to help.

2) Listen to us when we're talking to you. Are you really trying to tell us that you know better than we do what needs to be done? On the rare occasions when we are consulted, our comments and suggestions seem to be routinely ignored in favour of the latest wisdom coming out of your favourite focus groups, or companies of 'consultants' engaged at great expense.

(Oh, and by the way, the best management does not come out of those who have an MBA or who have swallowed the latest Californian-style management-guru-speak wholesale. It comes from people with experience and understanding of the jobs that their teams actually do).

3) Stop changing things around every few months, and stop implementing new policies and systems before they have been properly tested. My department has suffered particularly badly in recent months as a result of a new system which was rushed in before it was (or we were) ready, simply because it was politically expedient to do so. This comes hot on the heels of a set of reorganisations which were dictated entirely from the top (again with no consultation until it was too late to make a difference), and have led to further disruption confusion and waste.

4) Reward us accordingly. Salaries in the lower levels of the civil service consistently run 20 - 30% below the equivalent jobs in the private sector. Thousands of public sector workers qualify for Tax Credits because their pay is so low. Those who do not qualify for Tax Credits (me, for instance - no kids, no registrable disability), are particularly hard hit. Public services will lose their best talent if this is not corrected soon.

(And to those of you who would say to that, "Well, why don't you go and work in the private sector, then, if you're so pissed off about it?", I reply that many already have gone and more will inevitably follow. Do you want good public services? Well, in this market-orientated world, you'll only get what you're willing to pay for. There are many of us who are committed to working for the public benefit, and it is spectacularly ungrateful of the public to wish to take advantage of that commitment by under-valuing us).

We face a crisis in the public sector. The public needs to be told the truth about how that state of affairs has come about and what steps really need to be taken. Blaming those who are doing their very best under increasingly difficult and stressful circumstances does everyone a disservice.

Date: 14/06/03

Honours Without Profit

Well, there's another busload. The latest 'Honours List' came out last night.

Perhaps it only matters if you think it does. As a republican, I can't claim that the world would end (or even vaguely wobble upon its axis) if there were ever any real surprises in it. But the whole process contains within it the kernel of the true nature of the society we inhabit.

Firstly, the 'royal' thing. We know that, with few exceptions, Clan Windsor has very little to do with who gets what. The nomination process takes place entirely within the upper reaches of the Civil Service (which may be why so many denizens of that stratum of public administration end up being 'gonged'), and the decision-making is as opaque and secretive as it ever was (are we allowed to know who is on the committee which makes those decisions? It's probably a secret).

The government has been quick to point out that over half of the awards (52%) have been given as a result of public nominations. Yet, if you look at which ribbons went where, you can see that this has changed nothing. The knighthoods and senior awards in the by-now ludicrous Order of The British Empire have still gone to the same categories of people : 'luvvies', pop-stars, kickers-of-balls-of-wind and that curious category of businessmen rewarded for 'services to charity' (I know the Labour Party has fallen on hard times, economically, but not even this has been enough to earn it charitable status - at least, not yet).

And the rest? The home-helps, the lollipop ladies, the fundraisers for local causes, the dedicated schoolteachers and nurses. Well, as ever, they've been given the tin stars, the MBEs. This has replaced the old British Empire Medal as the repository of that official insult, "We think you deserve something, but this is all we think you deserve".

More than half the awards numerically may have gone to 'ordinary' members of society, but when the status of the awards is factored in, the overwhelming value (in terms of social cachet) is still grossly skewed towards celebrities and favour-buyers.

So, what to do about it? Perhaps it would be best to scrap it altogether, possibly encouraging local communities and interest groups at large to make their own awards. At least we may then judge the recipients far more clearly on the basis of who is making the decision (and on what grounds) than can be ascertained at present. This would certainly be preferable to another alternative ; namely, having the whole thing sponsored by some tabloid rag where popularity would be the over-riding consideration.

One thing may be said for certain : it will not be until the nurses and teachers get the knighthoods and the over-paid and over-hyped end up with the lids off baked-bean tins that we will know that the system has been dragged into the real world of the twenty-first century.