Richard D North.

[I wrote this update in 2013 and have revisited for a very light tickle in April, 2017.] Rather gallingly, my sceptical review of Oliver James's 2009 book, Contented Dementia, produces far more comment than most of my posts do. I more or less stick by it, though I wish I had found a way of noting my criticisms in a way which didn't seem such a red rag to fans of the care methods it promotes. Looking at the brouhaha now, there are some interesting things to note.... Read more...

The modern hospitality industry is fascinating. Naturally, it is plagued by the post-modern: Tesco's sort of went under cover to launch their Harris + Hoole chain of designedly uncorporate coffee shops, and they are probably quite nice. But they are unlikely to thrill the way Hemingways of Haslemere does. Read more...

I had highish hopes of Ferdinand Mount's book, The New Few. Here, after all, was a famously intelligent, civilised and well-informed conservative voice addressing a concern which is widespread: that Britain is badly run, and controlled by rather few people. Actually, the book made one wonder in what sense Mr Mount still feels he is of the right (if he does), not least since almost everything he says is commonly, and rather boringly, said by the left. The following looks at the book in some detail.... Read more...

RDN ploughs through this celebrated personal and intellectual exploration – and exoneration - of the moral psychology of the right and the righteous, and finds it surprisingly light on moral or any other kind of useful thinking. Read more...

This is a marvellous movie with all the zippy conversational smarts of a better Woody Allen but some of the florid psychological glamour of an Almodóvar. This if possible trumps Juno. We meet probably the best ever portrayal of a teenager growing into her intelligence and feeling as she plunges into a proper nightmare of circumstance. Don't worry, it's a comic masterpiece too, even if there's barely a belly-laugh in the whole 150 minutes. (The time flies by, contrary to reports that the film is overlong.) Read more...

All right. My headline may be over-egging things a little. Still, I am pretty sure I helped save the BBC from making a fool of itself over climate change politics. (If I'm wrong, and someone in a position to know lets me know in confidence, I'll cheerfully take this blog down.) The issue is especially interesting to me since I want the BBC to be scrapped but I don't really share the right's horror of its supposed left-wing bias or even the current blogosphere outrage at the BBC's climate coverage. Read more...

It's early days in the re-investigation of claims of paedophilia in Wales, but it is perhaps a good moment to hope that the work of Richard Webster gets re-visited. In his The Secret of Bryn Estyn (2005 and 2009), Webster (who died in 2011) made a detailed case that many of the allegations of abuse were false, and had indeed been induced by police, judicial and journalistic practices.  He claimed these failings had led to several false imprisonments. Webster criticised the Waterhouse Inquiry for misunderstanding the nature of false allegations, and for allowing them to go unchallenged. In short, Ronald Waterhouse (who also died in 2011) may have failed to uncover some cases of abuse, but it may well be that his inquiry also failed to uncover some gross miscarriages of justice. Read more...

Tessa Jowell has proposed that the BBC must be preserved and that it should be a mutual owned and controlled by the licence-fee holders. This is a socialist romantic's vision and it mirrors rather well my "right-wing" proposal for a National Media Trust. Read more...

There was something quite blissful about David Dimbleby's contribution to today's BBC Today programme (12 November 2012). He said the BBC was over-managed, and that such organisations as the BBC and NHS spawned bureaucracies. The paradox here is that he doesn't grasp that one reason that the NHS and the BBC are alike is that they are both state-sponsored behemoths with monolithic tendencies. Read more...

We should hope all hope that BBC is well-managed. Why not give George Entwistle a nice contract to design an organisational and cultural shake-up, now he's free to concentrate on such a cerebral operation? After all, surely the problems which sank him were of others' making, and Lord Patten says Entwistle was appointed precisely on this ticket? Read more...