It is helpful to say that England in Dickens’s time had the highest real wages ever known by this or most other countries. (It’s a mixed picture as this paper is good at discussing.) Awful things happened, and especially to poor people. Indeed, our own times are a walk in the park compared: but then our own times are pleasanter (at least in material terms) for nearly everyone, nearly all the time, than they have ever been.

It is frankly absurd to say that the material well-being of our times bears comparison with that of Victorian England.

Ian Hislop’s thesis was a muddle. He had the bold premise that Victorian bankers were morally superior to our own. There’s something to be said for the seriousness and moral purpose Victorians showed (and my own interest in a professional renaissance is based on that sort of thought). But he ran out of steam quite quickly: as he pointed out, there were bankruptcies, pure greed, nastiness, and instability in the Victorian financial world, and indeed they had greater and worse consequences than the venalities of some of our own capitalists. Hislop’s ending was about right: we could do with more of the best of the Victorian spirit.

And of course, the big problem of Hislop’s thesis is that the modern affluent pay far, far rates of tax than ever the Victorians gave away in philanthropy. And it is of course a problem of socialism that it makes virtue compulsory and that runs contradictory risks. On the one hand, compulsion robs virtue of its moral quality. On the other, compulsion makes virtue invisible.

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One episode (“The Calorie”, 24 October 2011) I’m thinking of was devoted to the idea of calorie-counting. The show lined up various people who argued that there was no solid connection between a food’s energy content and its being a contributor to obesity. So far so good, one may say. It may be that it’s no good just going by the calorie count on food packaging. (Thought that’s one of the means by which I am discriminating between foods, and it seems to work, more or less.) Along the way, contributors complained about ”processed food”. The show’s sign-off was to the effect that we might overcome any confusion by insisting on ”real food”.

But this is nonsense, surely, and we were in effect reminded of some of the silliness of the idea in an episode of the show (“Future Food”, 14 November 2011) which looked at a subset of the foodie movement:  “food futurists” are deliberately messing with our ideas about the stuff. They were toointeresting for the Food Prgramme to ignore, but they were mostly off-message.

Some of my irritation with the the FP caliphate is that they are sure that words like “slow”, peasant, natural, old-fashioned, revivalist, heritage, artisinal, organic, free-range, or co-operative are good. I don’t share that, but I get it.

More particularly and seriously I can’t see that anyone would be wise to construct a diet which avoided processing. Even leaving aside the fact that to do so would eliminate cooking, one has to reckon with getting rid of bread, cheese, pasta and butter. All are processed, and all are variously good or bad for slimmers or gourmands, according to circumstance. Of course, most restaurant food is the ultimate in processing, but somehow escapes censure.

But I can’t see that an all-in-one TV dinner, for instance, or a military rations pack, or a Complan drink, must be assumed to be lesser – or unreal – food merely because they are extremely processed.  Ready-meals can be formulated so as to be healthy, tasty, and indeed artisinal, by turns.

Wherein does “real” food consist? One might go for provenance, animal welfare, conservation values, dietary merit, culinary diligence or talent. I see that ideas of authenticity and naturalness will sometimes come into play, for some people. But we have to remember, for instance, it might well be the case that the “unnatural” pig farming of the UK may have much higher welfare standards than the more “natural” farming of a peasant. And someone might well choose to source their food from intensive horticultural firms rather than free-range or organic beef herds.

The point is that there is no such thing as “real” food.

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I suppose it’s important that Laure is a fantastic colleague, and supports, sisters or mothers the more wayward of her team. When she does get romantic (if that is quite the word for her office liaison) it’s unwisely. Sarah, on the other hand, is an appalling colleague: she doesn’t so much upstage or suspect everyone around her as dismiss them as confusing or distracting her detective powers.

Indeed, isn’t it true that Berthaud is just about riding the tiger of the chaos of her investigations whilst Lund has merely to commune with her own understanding of the swinishness of the world to emerge with a culprit, eventually?

By a nose, Lund is the more interesting character because she gives so little away.

Anyway, they are the amongst most absorbing cops we’ve ever had, though Wallander and Maigret would give them a good race. Jane Tennison is in there, batting for the old bats and perhaps less fantastic. Perfectly English, Tennison can’t offer the touristic allure of the younger pair.

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But it made me uncomfortable only because I am not sure it is proper to let Ricky Gervais pull my chain.

I like politically incorrect comedy only when it is really offensive. Gervais says, I think, that his work is kind, intelligent and PC: it challenges our inner racism, sexism, sizism or whatever. I am happy to have these challenged, but I don’t want them toyed with.  I don’t want to be told in an ambivalent way that if I am somehow the right sort person – in the right sort of know – I have licence from Gervais to laugh at his material because it is only offensive to those who are not in the gnostic secret.

I don’t think one can be faux-unPC; or joke-unPC, or safely unPC. It should be a dangerous business or nothing.

In short, midget comedy ought to outrage all right-minded people. If it did, it might be funny. Its being a guilty pleasure is just what some comedy has to be.

Larry David is better at this: Curb Your Enthusiasm is about a man who is not exactly bad, but he rattles with prejudices and has that dash of Tourettes that ensures the worst of him is always on display. As noted here, The Guard was also good: here was a man who just couldn’t stand political correctness: it offended him. He had the balls to put himself on the line for this peculiar bit of prejudice, which amounted almost to principle.

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It is interesting to speculate whether we’d prefer Rupert Murdoch and News Corp to get out of British media. As a snob, I would mourn The Times and the Sunday Times, a little. I would mourn Sky News. I would mourn some of the American TV shows which Sky re-broadcasts and the arts channel which Sky originates.  It is not certain that any of these would survive abandonment by Murdoch. I wouldn’t mourn the troublesome red tops which have paid for the indulgence of my elitist tastes, but that’s hardly noble of me.

Below is my case about Murdoch and News Corp. But first, here’s Paul Hoffman’s comment which spurs this entry:

“In the light of recent events I decided to look up Pravda on the web and came across your 2006 review of its revival. My comment is here because I can’t find anywhere else to leave it. I saw the original production and remember it vividly perhaps not least because I rarely share any opinions with Brenton or Hare. But your review of the revival was so dismissive of their warning about Murdoch that you surely have to retract what you said ( in effect that their claims were hysterical left-wing blather).  You’ve been proved wrong about the decline of the press in 2006 and wrong about the play. I think a detailed explanation and apology is required of about the same length as your criticism. Good faith demands it.”

The burden of my review was that the British media is in good health though a bit trashy; that Murdoch hasn’t dented it; that Murdoch has contributed to the survival of a popular quality press. I should have added that Murdoch’s invention of Sky News was a good development.

Here are some tentative remarks about where the current scandal leaves us.

“In the light of recent events”, there must be great doubt that News Corp’s current leadership can be thought “fit and proper” in the special sense required for media ownership, or even for ordinary directorships. We’ll see. It is also clear that anyone – especially any politicians – who recently schmoozed the upper echelons of the Murdoch world is now at least a bit tainted.  It is also very possible that fear of News Corp produced too much schmoozing over many years.

But we can back up a bit. As Gordon Brown told the House of Commons on the 13th July, News Corp didn’t have a free run in his time. I’m not sure it ever has, or ever would have. I doubt Rupert Murdoch’s influence on politics and policy: he seemed to follow the political weather rather than make it.

We need to split things out. The Sunday Times and Times, and maybe even the Sun, operated their journalism within the ordinary modern codes and mores of their bit of the market. These may be inadequate in some ways, and in need of reform, but they are not necessarily especially Murdochian. (Good luck with any reform, by the way: liveliness and scurrilousness are close cousins.)  Sky News seems excellent.

If News Corp had not owned and been responsibile for the News of the World it would have seemed to me a proper owner for the whole of BSkyB. I am not even sure that the Murdochian malfeasances at the NoTW (whatever they were) were of a sort which necessarily impinge on the matter of News Corp’s ownership of BSkyB. Suppose the wrong-doers in News Corp are punished, and maybe leave the firm – would we then have a case against its owning BSkyB?

I have never really understood why the issue of journalistic plurality is thought to impinge on the issue of potential monopoly power which is raised by BSkyB’s sway over the paid-for satellite TV market. As a producer of broadcast material, Sky is a small player. If it grew, how do we know that would be bad for plurality until we saw whether its material contributed to diversity or to dreary orthodoxy? Indeed, if Rupert Murdoch were to influence the broadcast media in the useful way he shook up print journalism in the 1980s, then he might yet prove a force for good, if a flawed one.

But the point surely is that you could take Murdoch or News Corp out of the equation (whether they were saints or sinners) and you would still have the problem of regulating BSkyB’s relationship with other broadcasters and other platforms such as cable (not least as they compete over sports rights). And there the problems are not journalistic but commercial, and that’s a whole different kettle of fish from hacking and allegations about buying material from policemen.

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There are three set piece questions and here they are, more or less:

(1) Should Galliano go to gaol?

RDN says no, of course not. Like Von Trier, he’s a motormouth whose celebration of Hitler has no meaning beyond – maybe – being an attempt to free-fall through the politically-incorrect. Anyone who takes this sort of thing seriously needs to get a life. These intemperate people are twerps, not thugs, and it seems very unlikely that the really vicious amongst us take their cue from such scions of the arts.

(2) Should women cover up?

I would almost prefer to see more burqa and less thong on our high street. And there is something in that poor Toronto policeman’s view that women ought to consider dressing modestly. They have of course a right to dress like sluts, and there’s no evidence that I know of that tarty dressing gets people raped. Still, whether in dress, drink or general deportment, women would be sensible to be, er, sensible.

(3) Should we bin the Human Rights Act because it allows the “wrong” immigrants to live here?

I say no, the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Convention is a pretty good expression of civilised values. Our judges usually interpret it about right, which is hardly surprising since their grandfathers (as it were) more or less framed it.

(4) I was asked whether I’d had a “moral moment” during the week. I offered up six news-orientated thoughts:

Put the lost penguin out if its misery
Rescue  the just-discovered Amazonian tribe from its sad dentition and bigotry
Maintain the right of circus animals to enjoy their performance art
Enjoin strict diets on fat diabetics so they don’t need medication
Celebrate the right of schools not to teach the competing mumbo-jumbos of religions

I think the production team picked the circus issue. Below (in case you’re interested) are some leads.

An informed account, surprisingly sympathetic to keeping ciricus animals.
Animals in Circuses and Zoos: Chiron’s World? by Dr Marthe Kiley-Worthington, 1990, OOP

And various useful documents which are much less antogonistic than one might suppose:
http://archive.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/welfare/act/documents/circus-feasibility-study.pdf
http://www.north-herts.gov.uk/aksnherts/images/att318.pdf
http://archive.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/welfare/documents/circus-report.pdf

The most seriously argued case against circus animals:
http://www.helpelephants.com/pdf/WILD%20ANIMALS%20IN%20CIRCUS.pdf

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Mr Lloyd goes on to celebrate  Terry Pratchett’s recent BBC show about assisted dying, and placed it in the long BBC tradition of supporting any such ”progressive” cause and “defying those – religious, conservative, fearful, professionally scandalised – who find it abhorrent”.

Mr Lloyd does note, without comment, the widespread awareness that Mr Pratchett’s show was the latest of five which ”were in favour of assisted dying to none against”.

I don’t know what it is about progressiveness which frees it from the possibility – the taint – of bias, like a cloak of invisibility.

I am inclined to add that the BBC’s campaign for the leading Burmese politician, Aung San Suu Kyi, seems a bit partisan too. Sure, she’s a hero; sure she’s garnered a vast number of votes; sure she has been abused by the government of her country.

She is, as it were, a patron saint of democracy, in the manner of Nelson Mandela.  But Mandela was out of politics during his incarceration and was then crowned (so to speak) as a neutral Head of State. So I see differences between the two. Anyway, I was uneasy when I watched John Simpson’s genuflection the other night. It reminded me of recent commentary (and yes I might have seen it on the BBC) which suggests that some democrats and other thoughtful people in her country are not convinced that all her policies are ideal.

Switching tracks, I noticed that Countryfile‘s John Craven (BBC1) discussed at length (and as part of something billed as an investigation) British and German policy on solar power as though it were a given that (a) solar power was good and (b) it didn’t matter how much it cost in subsidy to get more of it. Of course, not every aspect of every subject can be aired at every outing. But solar panels may well be the next bio-fuels, if you follow me.

It may be that these are all examples of “enlightenment” or “progressive” values but I can’t see that they are consistent with BBC impartiality.

It’s not that I think such bias should not be present on our screens. Indeed, I think the BBC is an absurdity because it is required to be impartial. But we should call a spade a spade and allow that in these cases, a  note of sharpness and challenge should have come from somewhere.

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(1) I am very interested in the Military Covenant, as you can see here.

(2) The public used to think that the Public Sector was special. It was “official”, it was somehow oathed to the Crown; it was underpaid but well-pensioned; it had a special sense of duty.

(3) A lot of that has changed. The big difference is that many nurses, teachers, cleaners, binmen, “civil servants” now work for the private sector. They serve the public as well as ever, but not by virtue of being public servants per se.

(4) It is understood that the private sector serves the public too, whether as fuel-tanker drivers or behind the till in Tesco.

(5) The public sector is paid better than it used to be. (It is disputed whether it has parity with the private sector and hard numbers are hard to come by.)

(6) Now that most private sector workers are not unionised and many public sector workers are, there is a sense that Public Choice economics and Producer Capture (both of which speak to the undue political muscle of the well-represented) cushions the public sector from the rigours of the private sector, including during recessions.

(7) There is less tolerance now that a sector of the economy should be patronised by having their pensions organised for them by the state on preferential terms rather than being paid better and buying into their own pensions. 

(8) There is an increased awareness that it is peculiar that public sector pensions should be paid for by the taxpayer at the time of pay-out rather than paid for during the workers’ careers.

(9) We need to understand that we should accord trust and gratitude to people all over society rather than somehow ghettoise the public sector as especially deserving (especially in the degree to which the public sector has, in Tom Winsor’s words, “secured indolence”). 

(10) None of this is to undermine the special role of people who specially swear allegiance to the Crown. That may properly be required of (and an honour for) those who apply force, whether employed by the state or not.

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We were discussing issues arising from Adam Wishart’s film, 23 Week Babies: The price of life.

I should have stressed that, on the evidence (not least from the brave Dr Daphne Austin),  aggressive intervention in these cases is a matter of what one might call “cruel and unusual treatment”.  

If we know that only 1 in 100 of these babies have worthwhile life expectations, then we cannot inflict suffering on 99 babies so as to “discover” the “lucky” baby.

So it is not just shortage of money or love which most makes the survival of these babies problematic.

What’s more these are society’s issues. That there are parents who commit themselves to the survival of their own premature baby does not make a case for generalised intervention, but they do pitch the personal against the social. So doctors, lawyers and moralists have to get involved.

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