Friday 22 July 2011

Well, that didn't take long...



How the hell do they do that?

Louise Mensch is Prime Minister

Yes, after several hours listening carefully on the phone, the QO can exclusively reveal that as part of a complicated backroom deal involving the 1922 Committee, Angela Merkel, Piers Morgan and several shadowy figures from private equity firms, Louise Mensch has agreed to take over as Prime Minister of Greece.

Outgoing Greek Premier George Papandreou said in a packed press conference: "I believe it's time to stand down in favour of someone who is well aware of the downside of fractional reserve banking and, by the way, is something of a χαριτωμένο κορίτσι, as we say in Greek. Cute, I think is your term."

Mrs Mensch dimpled prettily before launching into an incisive commentary on the limitations of fractional reserve banking, and why Piers Morgan was a waste of skin. She said that she was committed to ensuring that every Greek citizen was able to retire at 48, as she intended to, and further pledged herself to stabilising the Greek economy while continuing to press Rupert Murdoch and News International on their disgraceful behaviour, seeing that Chris Huhne was dealt with according to law, restoring the British armed forces to their former glory, and helping her good friend the Quizzical Observer to bang out the most cynical, half-baked blog post of the week.

The QO was understood to be in hiding, but through his newly appointed media consultant, Andy Coulson, denied that he was just seeing how many Google hits he could work into four paragraphs and a photo ripped off from the Guardian.

Friday 15 July 2011

Use it or lose it

A recent study by American scientists - and since they're American we can't call them "boffins", much as we'd like to - suggests that the instant availability of facts via Google and other search engines is causing us to remember where to look for facts rather than remembering the facts themselves.

Well, duh. This process has been going on since the Babylonians invented tax 5,000 years ago with their cuneiform records of who owed the priests money (I'm nearly sure that's right, but I haven't checked with Google yet). In my own lifetime, the knowledge of the 'times table' and how to use a slide rule - both thrashed into me as if my life depended on it - became largely irrelevant with the advent of the pocket calculator. I was allowed to have both slide rule and pocket calculator on the desk during my maths O-level, and you won't be surprised to hear which I chose to use.

For the younger readers, I should perhaps say that the slide rule was a strange object consisting of various sliding sections with strange markings on them, with a cursor block that slid up and down as well. By careful and informed manipulation of the various slidy bits, you could perform your calculations and get a very accurate answer. But it didn't tell you the order of magnitude - or in other words, where to put the decimal point - so you had to be able to approximate the calculation by other means. I bet you can see where we took to the pocket calculator like a tabloid to a PIN number. Plus you could do real cool stuff on your calculator like nearly spell 'HELLO' upside down, with a bit of work.

There are in my opinion two great secrets to a successful, productive and happy life. Humans are good at both of them, if they put a little effort in.

First: be adaptable.
Second: minimise your therbligs - that is to say, be efficient.

So, embrace technology. Don't clutter your mind with imperfectly remembered data. Learn to search for it effectively, and leave your mind free for creative thought. Instead of relying for the whole of your life on the one slanted view that your teacher served up as 'facts' during those lessons all those years ago, learn to keep learning as new facts and new interpretations emerge.

And yet... and yet...

That's all very well in theory, but I worry that my generation - that had basic literacy and numeracy hammered in at all costs - has the advantage over those following on, in that if all the electricity fails I can still work out the change I should get at the shop. (Although these days, if the electronic tills stop working, they won't sell you anything, so maybe this is a moot point.) I could still use a slide rule with a bit of squinting. I don't need to use a spell-checker. I don't need Word underlining dubious grammar for me.

I don't know whether we've got the right balance yet. I do know I love the instant gratification of momentary curiosity that Google offers. And I can do far more work in a given day than I could when research involved physical travel to a good library or an awful lot of time on the phone and sending off for hard copy publications. But it's good to know that a lot of basic stuff is up there in the memory and not reliant on Google.

By the way, I know that the phrase "PIN number" contains a redundancy. But it's common usage, and I'm as common as they come.

Monday 11 July 2011

Latest in the phone-hacking scandal...



At a packed press conference this morning, Max Clifford announced that Ms Katie Price had commenced legal action against News International because her name had not so far been mentioned in the phone-hacking media coverage.

Said Mr Clifford: "It's outrageous in this day and age that the press can just fail to hack somebody as famous as Katie. She's a lovely girl, whom I've known since she was a 34-A, and she's distraught and distressed and will be pressing for punitive damages."

An ex-News of the World editor and current chief executive of News International, who didn't want to give her name, remarked off the official record that of course Katie Price's phone had been hacked, but there were only so many times you could print "yeah, like, right, cool babe", especially when there were dead teenagers, soldiers and terrorist bomb victims available.

Meanwhile a spokesman for the Sunday Times said that the whole notion of hacking a celebrity like Katie Price was deeply offensive. The Sunday Times had standards, and only hacked Prime Ministers and royalty.

The case is ongoing.

Thursday 7 July 2011

Rethinking Rebekah


















Rebekah Brooks was awarded an honorary degree last year by the University of the Arts, London, for being inspirational and in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the arts and creative industry.

At the time that must have seemed a good decision. Rebekah's rise at News International has been genuinely remarkable - from being a secretary at the News of the World to its editor in 11 years; and to chief executive of NI nine years later. And this despite her inability to spell her own name. Truly a woman marked by destiny.

Monday's chip wrappers

It's just been announced that the News of the World is to close; Sunday's edition will be the last one. James Murdoch has said that any revenues will be donated to charity.

The media frenzy continues and Twitter, FB and the blogosphere are going into meltdown. Interesting times.

Wednesday 6 July 2011

Made of wrong

As a journalist and a cynic, to hear that the News of the World hacked Milly Dowler's voicemail did not leave me as surprised as it should perhaps have done.

The phone-hacking story has been rumbling away for some years, and Private Eye and the Guardian in particular have been following it. It's a dispiriting saga, encapsulating much of what is wrong with our society. Pour yourself a stiff drink and wade through as much of it as you can stomach on the Guardian's round-up page here.

So much about this story is depressing. The press have always been pretty hard-nosed when chasing a story, but this really does stink. What also stinks is the fact that investigations by the Press Complaints Commission, the House of Commons media select committee and the Metropolitan Police have all rather conveniently not gripped this and dealt with it adequately.

It is starting to look very much as if the News of the World have some helpful contacts within the Met. How was Millie's phone number acquired? How come the police investigation turned up so little of what evidently went on?

Isn't it also convenient that successive Governments have acceded to News International's wishes? It's been going on for years. Maggie Thatcher cleared the way for Rupert Murdoch to get into broadcasting as well as the print media just before she left office, and in the last few days Jeremy Hunt trembles on giving the OK for Murdoch to take full charge of BSkyB. David Cameron seems to be on very good terms with Rebekah Brooks, the editor now in the spotlight at the News of the World. That said, he's announced another enquiry today, for all the good that will do. About the only thing that might just seem reassuring would be to task a police force other than the Met to come in afresh and start digging, but don't hold your breath.

On a wider point, it's also depressing that the overall quality of the British press has fallen so low. Let's not pretend that there was ever a 'golden age' when press standards were above reproach; it wasn't really until after World War II that the old habits of rather servile and uncritical respect for the establishment wore off, but sadly it was only a decade or three later that the focus of the tabloids switched away from even a pretence at serious reporting towards celebrity gossip, tits and the lowest common denominator. Unfortunately, the newspaper-buying public have encouraged them in this. Murdoch wants to make money, and he knows that sleaze and sport will sell.

If anything good were to come out of this whole mess, it would be if there were a serious mass boycott, much as Liverpool has shunned The Sun since its coverage under Kelvin Mackenzie's editorship of the Hillsborough disaster. There are plenty of campaigns underway online to try and rouse enthusiasm for this, or to put pressure on News International's advertisers. I don't know what effect it will have, but it's worth a try. Since Murdoch doesn't take notice of any moral or qualitative factor, only money, that's likely to be the only way of attracting his attention.

That was the QO's serious post for the month. We return you now to our usual programme of inanity and inattention.



An update: I see that O2 and Mitsubishi have announced they're pulling their advertising from NotW. Well, that's a start.