INTERESTING hustings for the Hampstead and Kilburn parliamentary seat last night. More soon. The only shame of it all was that half an hour was spent talking about – yet again – the expenses row again.
There was even mention of duck houses and moats, as if we hadn’t heard about all of that a squillion times. Of course, it has been an important debate and changes to the expenses system are vital, but jokes about moat-clearing are now achingly dull. The discussion was much better when it switched to Afghanistan, the economy and immigration.
BY law, I have to comment on Thierry Henry, the new public enemy number one, the new Jan Moir, the new Maradona. After all, I’ve been banging on about what a saintly man, what a role model he has been in his career in a football column for five years. I love the guy.
Now though, because of a split second decision, I’m supposed to forget every backheel, every 25 yard shot, every mazy dribble, every impossible volley. Forget every visit he made to the sick kids at the Whittington at Christmas. Without his i-pod earphones in. Write off too all his charity work for Unicef and kids with cystic fibrosis. We must, the sweeping world of spin insists, all be accessories in a manufactured fall from grace.
Of course the goal that everyone is agitated about shouldn’t have stood and Ireland deserved to be beaten by a legitimate goal – if they were to be beaten at all. It would be the most magnificent thing in the world if France now agreed to a rematch by themselves, without any words even coming from Fifa.
Henry: From this..
But Thierry himself hasn’t done anything criminal, he hasn’t fed ketamine to puppies or written a homophobic column in the Daily Mail. The judgemental rush to make him a pariah for being caught with his dabs on the ball is just a product of the fact is that most people don’t support Arsenal. All the people who support teams left dazed by Henry’s mesmerising ability – say Tottenham, for instance – are trying to get their own back by characterising him as the worst villain since the guy who cut off Brad Pitt’s wife’s head in Seven.
It’s manipulation justified on the grounds that we’re all sticking up for the Irish..
Say what you want. Thierry will always be a role model, regardless of what a few weeks of tabloid rage says. Since leaving Arsenal, he has continued to be what is often grandly called an ambassador for football and I cheered when Barcelona won the European Cup last year and he finally got that competition’s winning medal.
..to this
Besides, compare the path he has taken since leaving the Gunners to the only man who has got even close to scoring the same number of goals for the club: Ian Wright.
Wright: From this..
Oh, Wrighty. What’s happened? My hero when I was in my teens, he was the only player who ever seemed to score before Arsene Wenger arrived. Cooler than Shearer, more explosive than Andy Cole, Wright seemed to be the best of everything. But since leaving the Gunners, oh dear, he has done much worse things than a quick handball. As if some adviser has told him that people like loud and shouty television presenters who don’t bother finishing their sentences, Wright has stormed through a number of utterly useless television programmes which have ultimately undermine his reputation as the second highest goalscorer Arsenal ever had.
I mean, can you imagine Thierry hosting What Kids Really Think or ditching his high-paying Pepsi contract to advertise Chicken Tonight. Like Wrighty did.
..to this nonsense. Live From Studio Five.
Forever wandering in search of TV format that fits, Wright has babbled and shouted, like a modern day Kris Akabusi, through other gash over the years like Friends Like These, Friday Night’s All Wright and They Think It’s All Over, as well as yelping though adverts for Ladbrokes and The Sun. And now it’s the garish shock of Live From Studio Five, a nightly sack of television discharge disguised as a chat show. There he sits in between Kate Walsh and Melinda Messenger grinning and saying ‘nah, man’ a lot and pretending he doesn’t understand normal things so that we all cheer oh-Ian-you-are-ke-razy.
Thierry may be feeling sorry for himself this morning, but he count his stars he isn’t presenting Live From Studio Five.
THERE was a strange moment on Adam Boulton’s Sunday show on Sky News at the weekend during a mini-debate between Toby Young and Fiona Millar over the wisdom of city academy schools. Young, defending his plan to sponsor a new academy in Acton, began reciting pass rate stats about the success of Camden School for Girls, implying that Millar used the top performing school for her own children and therefore could not understand the problem faced by parents finding a secondary to their liking elsewhere in London.
A little surprised, Millar had to remind Young that she doesn’t send her kids to Camden School for Girls. Her family use schools closer to home, Parliament Hill and William Ellis, where she leads the governing body and Young – by coincidence – is a former pupil.
I knew Young had been a past student at Ellis already, but was reminded by the recent When Boris Met Dave documentary on More4 during which Daily Telegraph sketch writer Andrew Gimson, another local face, was caught smirking about it during his talking head cutaway. Smirking, because when Young got to Oxford he found himself suddenly surrounded by students from another world, cocksure young men who had gone to Eton, like Boris Johnson and David Cameron.
I’m sure his new school in Acton will be more Ellis than Eton, but if he is determined to open it and compete with the existing secondaries, Millar won’t be the only one hoping he make sure its admissions are open to all. And not just the brightest kids in his neighhourhood.
CHRISTMAS has been cancelled for… It’s a stock newspaper line for those terrible moments in the weeks before December 25 when things go wrong and ruin the normal festive celebrations. This week, Christmas has been cancelled for Arsenal fans.
Why? The long-loved tradition of football matches on Boxing Day has been trampled on by some fixture arranging bod somewhere who has moved Arsenal’s match with Aston Villa to December 27. What a spoiler. There’s always footy on Boxing Day, it was designed that way as a perfect escape from leftover turkey, nonsense television and games of Trivial Pursuit. Sadly, Arsenal fans have seen so many matchday traditions wither away over the years – the marching bands, roasted peanuts, long ball tactics, singing at matches. Now they’ve lost the main treat of the day after Christmas.
A FEW months ago, Theo Blackwell – the loudest member of Camden’s Labour Party – announced that he will not be seeking re-election as a Regent’s Park councillor after eight years on the council. While he has irritated opponents with his fiery scrutiny of the way the council is run, I have spoken to lot of coalition councillors who say ‘at least he’s given it a good go in opposition’. They concede that unlike others he didn’t lose interest when Labour lost control in 2006 and simply melt away.
What’s he going to do next? Judging by this poster he spotted in east London – there’s a job going over there.
Army of Theos
THIS one is rumbling on in corridor conversations at Camden Town Hall. Election candidate Jo Shaw’s apparently unexpected appearance laying a wreath at the war memorial in Euston on Remembrance Sunday has split opinion and letters have been arriving at the New Journal’s offices on the subject in the last few days, some defending her, some adding to the criticism raised last week.
I wrote the story up last week here because a rare alliance had formed with the Labour and Conservative councillors suspending their normal feuding to come together to raise concerns in a joint protest. It also appeared to have been an issue in the minds of senior council officers.
Since last week, I’ve heard some sharp words from Jo’s colleagues, obviously angry over what they see as an unfair attack on their parliamentary candidate. They maintain she was just laying a personal wreath and that a video of her at the memorial was not being compiled as an election resource.
Whatever the colour of their party allegiance, what everyone seems to agree on is that these kinds of sensitive, unifying occasions should not be used for party politics. All sides deny doing so.
To draw a line under it all and in the interests of fairness, here’s what the two sides were saying last week in a bit more detail, and readers can decide for themselves what they think.
Letter from Councillor Andrew Marshall, leader of the Conservative, and Councillor Nasim Ali, leader of Camden’s Labour group:
“The Mayor of Camden represents everyone, regardless of politics. Never is this more so than on Remembrance Sunday, when the Mayor lays a wreath on behalf of the people of the borough and of all its councillors, as has happened every year in the borough’s history. It is not a time for political grandstanding.
Attendees were quite taken aback when Liberal Democrat parliamentary
candidate Jo Shaw simply attached herself without any warning to the civic
dignatories at the war memorial at Euston this Sunday, laid a separate
wreath on behalf of Camden Liberal Democrats as part of the formal
proceedings, and then jumped into the civic procession (in which she had no
role), cutting in ahead of some of the borough’s former mayors.
If there was a real desire for each party to lay its own wreath, as indeed
happens at the Cenotaph, then there are established procedures for the political groups on the council to reach agreement on this. This is to ensure that the memory of
those who have paid the greatest sacrifice is properly – and respectfully -
honoured.
Instead, this was simply rather transparent one-upmanship: Ms Shaw’s real
motivation is made plain by the fact that she arranged for herself to be
videoed by her team while laying her wreath, presumably for future political
use on YouTube etc. Can’t we protect civic traditions from bandwagon
chasing?”
Jo Shaw, Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Holborn and St Pancras:
“Members of my close family have served in the armed forces. I laid my wreath on Sunday in a personal capacity and as a local resident to remember the brave work that they and countless others do and have done. Also I wanted to pay my respects to all those who have died in the World Wars and in more recent conflicts like Afghanistan and Iraq.
I sat behind the children from the Air Cadets at the service and I was struck by the tragedy that young people only a couple of years older than them have died in the last few days in Afghanistan, fighting on my behalf.
This was a very personal moment of reflection and remembrance. If Remembrance Day is not a time for political disagreements to be put to one side then I don’t know when is.
I attended the service and wreath laying at St Pancras Church last year. The number of deaths in Afghanistan in the last few months have made the sacrifice made by others much more at the forefront of my mind this year, which is why I wanted to lay a wreath. It didn’t occur to me to make my tribute at a time other than at the official service . I didn’t know Russell would be filming on Sunday. I’ve no intention of using his footage. I spoke to the Mayor’s office in advance of the service, they brought the wreath (signed by me alone, not on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, as I was attending in a personal capacity) to the service for me and told me when and where to stand in order to lay it. Like many people, I wanted to pay my personal tribute.”
CAMDEN Council would love to appear in The Guardian for eye-catching policies and trail-blazing initiatives. Like that time they got pages of print coverage in nationals for doling out Asbos to the managing directors of promotions companies who used messy fly-posting advertising. Long time ago now.
This weekend, the council had to make do – not with front page praise – but with a bit of look-what-the-silly-old-sticks-have-done-now poking in Simon Hoggart’s Saturday column on the website. It’s about the outrageous jargon used in a recent council report on the future of the borough’s libraries. Departmental defragmentation. Huh?Widening of spans of control. Say what? Information plinths? Stop now.
Writer Ruth Gorb, weeks ago, was the first to file on this unreadable bluster in the New Journal.
The council’s web team were crowing about gaining a crystal mark recently. It effectively means they don’t put local authority guff-words on Camden’s website. It makes the site a clear read, easy to navigate. Well done. It’s just a shame the same dedication to clarity has not been adopted to all of the council’s paperwork reports and that what Camden planned changes to the library services was not made absolutely clear to its own staff and users from the start. It would have probably made the last few weeks easier for leisure chief Flick Rea, who has faced a stiff job convincing library regulars that the rise of machines and cuts to some jobs will pave the way for a brighter future suggested by her tongue-twisting civil servants.
THE Green Party’s three councillors in Camden are beginning to nark a few members from other parties over claims they are stubbornly refusing to sit on licensing panels at the Town Hall. Sharp words were spat their way at the recent full council meeting and the stand off has become a standard grumble for the councillors who do turn up each week to make important decisions, such as whether your local pub can stay open all night.
As I understand it, the Greens in Camden feel that as they only have three councillors, they shouldn’t see their small team shunted into licensing committees. Instead, they believe they should be allowed to take up seats on more eco-greeny council bodies – like the glamourous Culture and Environment Scrutiny Committee. The simple solution to that concern, I guess, would be to win more seats. Win the public vote and you get to pick and choose.
Mr Pipes, backstage
MWA-HA-HA-HA-HA. All week I’ve had a little chill left over from Halloween and it’s all thanks to West Hampstead blogger Blake Connolly. I don’t really buy into the night: I think once you are in your 30s, dressing up with fake fangs and skeleton suits should hold only limited entertainment. You shouldn’t really like it in your 20s.
Call me a grouch but I think it’s become just another excuse for bars to sell more beer, all they have to do is put some fake cobwebs around the pub and get the staff to dress up like The White Stripes for the night.
But, this year, Blake’s new Egospace blog gave me flashbacks to a younger age by posting up the full version of Ghostwatch, the notorious BBC mockumentary screened on Halloween in 1992. Notorious because it was one of the most frightening things ever put on television. Watching it again on Blake’s blog, it’s the first time I’ve seen it since freaking out as kid and seeing glimpses of Mr Pipes the Poltergeist (he’s scarier than he sounds) hiding in the curtains of a kid’s bedroom still made me jump.
If you don’t know what I’m banging on about, Ghostwatch fooled half the country into thinking a special broadcast from a house in north London – a kind of Most Haunted Live at a time when Yvette Fielding was still a teenage actor in Seaview and there was no Most Haunted Live – was a real ghost search. An experiment which most people thought: They won’t find anything but could be a laugh.
Michael Parkinson chaired a discussion with a ghost expert in the studio, while Mike Smith took calls next to a telethon bank of operators and inside the house his wife Sarah Greene was a roving reporter spending a night in the haunted house. For good measure, Craig Charles was out in the streets talking to the crowds. It starts off all jovial but gets darker and darker and darker as Pipes makes fleeting visits. There must have been thousands of families shrieking at each other ‘did you see that’. Crucially, this was before Sky Plus, so you couldn’t rewind and to check whether you really had seen Pipes in the reflection of the French windows. Also creepy is the fact a soppy Going Live presenter like Sarah Greene and somebody as earnest as Michael Parkinson could be so convincing. They are more persuasive than the real actors.
And Ghostwatch, despite saying ‘written by Stephen Volk’ at the beginning, was persuasive. There was a claim afterwards that the programme led one man to commit suicide, while two children, whose parents had been disarmed by seeing that nice Sarah Greene doing a programme for evening telly, were said to be left with post traumatic disorder. After a review and questions in Parliament, the BBC promised not to show it again for ten years.
That self-imposed ban is over but the Beeb hasn’t revisted Ghostwatch since. If you want to, head to Blake’s place here and scroll down.
HERE’S an interesting document generated down at Conservative campaign headquarters at Millbank, mischievously passed my way this week. Created by Tory strategists for rank and file members, it sets out what the party needs to do to in constituencies where it currently doesn’t have an MP. Given the grandstanding in north west London already, you might have guessed that the new Hampstead and Kilburn seat is right up there in the ‘Seats In Our Sight’ list for the Conservatives.
Apologies for the quality of the scans, but have a squint (see below). This handout appears to show that the party’s number crunchers think candidate Chris Philp needs a hefty double digit swing to unseat Hampstead’s sitting Labour MP Glenda Jackson. In fact, the required swing listed in this memo is even bigger than the one thought to be needed by George Lee, the Tory challenger to Frank Dobson in Holborn and St Pancras.
Philp, the memo says, needs a 12.25 percent swing away from Labour, while Lee needs a slightly smaller 12.11 percent swing. Those kind of chunky deficits are usually only made up during landslide, sea-change general elections where a party is soundly drummed from office.
The swingometers used here of course are unlikely to take into account the Lib Dem threat through candidate Ed Fordham to Jackson in Hampstead and Kilburn. Labour and the Lib Dems could for example split a large share of the vote, in doing so open up the path for Philp to win through. The Greens, with Bea Campbell now on the election trail, could also play a part in that division.
Philp has also been buoyed by a suspected lead in recent public opinion polling by YouGov. Nevertheless, as he tries to establish himself as the candidate most likely to defeat Jackson, he surely can’t be happy that internal documents like this could potentially leave readers thinking he is off the pace.
Seats in our sights? The London List
In Camden..
