“Fly me to the moon…”

                

#23

   The average distance from down here in the South London Bus Lane to the Sea of Tranquillity doubtless remains the best part of 384,403 kilometres[1]. Getting there takes around 1.26 seconds if you are a beam of light[2] – rather longer if you’re a mammal. Let’s say it took a million years to get the first human to the moon and it’s now been 39 years since we left[3]. Life goes on.

   There was a time, not so very long ago, when the flight into Earth orbit of NASA’s Space Shuttle would have been headline news around the world from lift-off to touch-down. Last week Atlantis – the last shuttle to fly – glided into retirement with little more than its rolling sonic booms disturbing the Florida dawn. If you’d blinked in London, you’d have missed it entirely.

   With the Shuttle finally retired, can we of the Baby Boomer generation be far behind? For many of those born between 1945 and 1950 it’s probably high time we were grounded anyway. We came of age with the Space Programme (that’s ‘program’ for our American reader). I’d only recently developed acne and become aware of dandruff when, in May 1961, President Kennedy made a speech to Congress which included a commitment to land a man on the moon (and return him safely to Earth) by the end of that decade. JFK needed to generate some positive headlines after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and NASA were eager to capitalise on American fears that the Russians were ahead in – yes -  “rocket science”.

   As a nation, they had been spooked by the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and more recently by Yuri Gagarin’s space-flight in April ’61. They need not have worried. In the long run, the Americans’ Germans were far more accomplished plumbers than the Russians. A Project Mercury capsule (‘Freedom 7’) made Al Shepard[4] the first American in space in May 1961 and then in February 1962 John Glenn became the first American to go into orbit.

   I remember hankering after a pair of basketball boots like John Glenn’s. There was a photo of him relaxing on the deck of the USS Noa shortly after it had plucked his Friendship 7 capsule from the Atlantic Ocean[5]. He was leaning back in a chair and resting his boots on the ship’s rail; the epitome of action-man cool. Glenn went on to become a Democratic Senator for Ohio and returned to space 35 years later at the age of 77 on board the shuttle Discovery[6]. His mission: to investigate the physiology of the aging process. Way to go, John Boy!

   And that Al Shepard was an interesting guy too. He played golf on the moon during his Apollo 14 mission in February 1971 and was famously the originator of what became known to aviators as ‘Shepard’s prayer’[7]. My favourite among his observations came during an interview when he was asked to describe the sensations he felt during space flight. The interviewer was doubtless hoping for something movingly poetic or devil-may-care thrilling. Shepard, a test pilot to his finger tips, answered, “It’s a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realise that one’s safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”

   The period of the moon landings, 1969 – 72, also marked the pinnacle in the career of Wernher (“I aim at the stars but sometimes I hit London.”) von Braun. A member of the Nazi Party from 1933 and an SS Sturmbannfürher, von Braun[8] designed the V2 rockets which Hitler fired at London and the Saturn 5 booster rocket which made the Apollo missions possible. Tom Lehrer probably gave von Braun his best lines:

“My job iz to make the rockets to go up. Where zey are coming down, zat iz not my department.”

Mind you, dear old Wernher was not without humour himself; “Research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing.” That was one of his.

   From the V2 onwards, the imperative behind The Space Race was always military. We knew that. The guidance systems, the satellites, the boosters were all part of the arms race. Looking back, with the Cold War now only of blessed memory, it was a very expensive way to enable countless shopping and porn channels to proliferate on satellite television and to give the world the non-stick frying pan. The collapse of the Soviet Union did away with NASA’s leverage to secure a budget measured in mega-bucks. In future either the Russians or commercial sub-contractors will have to provide a taxi service for astronauts visiting the International Space Station.

  NASA’s last feint hope is the deep-space Altair-Orion project which could one day mutate into a lunar or even a Mars lander - unless the Tea Party gets its way and returns America to the eighteenth century. Any further lunar landings organised by NASA are clearly out of the question for the foreseeable - and will remain so unless…unless…unless we can convince Sarah Palin that Al-Qaeda is holding Elvis captive on the moon…what are the chances? [You read it here first].

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[1] That’s 238,857 miles in old money. I use the average because the actual distance varies due to the moon’s elliptical orbit.

[2] Fly me to the moon. Lyrics: Webster & Burke. Music: Bart Howard 1954. Definitive recording: Frank Sinatra with The Count Basie Orchestra, 1964

[3] Eugene Cernan, Commander of Apollo 17, 14 December 1972.

[4] Alan Shepard 1923-1998

[5] In those days, in fact for the whole of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes, returning astronauts splashed-down (literally) into either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. That’s why the re-usable Shuttle was such an innovation.

[6] In October 1998 Glenn spent 9 days in orbit as a ‘Payload Specialist’ on board Discovery. His 1962 orbital flight had lasted less than 5 hours.

[7] “Oh Lord, please don’t let me fuck-up.” Shepard uttered these words – or words very much to this effect - shortly before the launch of Freedom 7 on 5 May 1961.

[8] Wernher von Braun, 1912-1977. Lifelong enthusiast for space exploration and specialist in delivery systems for WMD.

                                                        

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

#22

We posted our Blog (Life in the Bus Lane, #21) at 07.32 on Thursday 7th July, last. In it we criticised the phone-hacking scandal which then centred on The News of The World (NoW). By 17.15 that same day James Murdoch was announcing the imminent closure of the NoW, with the issue on the following Sunday to be its last. ‘Back of the net!’ as they say on the terraces…Bow to the awesome power of The Bus Lane! ‘Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!’[1]

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, ‘after this therefore because of this’… ah the transitory joys of the supreme logical fallacy. For a moment back there we thought The Bus Lane had hit the big time in terms of our power and influence on events. But, come to think of it, if for “Ozymandias” you read Murdoch in Shelley’s sonnet, then there’s a whole other connection to be made anyway.

Meanwhile - back to reality – we would not have wanted to bring about the closure of The News of the World even supposing that we could. The fact that Rupert Murdoch ordered its closure perfectly illustrates the core of the problem. As far as he is concerned, what gets published is what he wants published and what would he care if – to save his imperial arse - four hundred people are suddenly sent down the road? Murdoch’s solution to the NoW problem was characteristically that of a New York Mafia boss – Where is Luca Brasi? -“He sleeps with the fishes.”[2]  

If our Press Complaints Commission had any gumption, any backbone or any sense of purpose it would have refused to allow the closure of a financially viable national newspaper and insisted that publication resume just as soon as ownership and control had been transferred to a collective of the people who work there. The problem was not the newspaper; it was the owner and the executive creeps he sent out from Manhattan to do his bidding. Murdoch wants you to believe that it’s all about rotten apples. Once Rupert’s been through the head-count and chucked out the bad apples he thinks he can go back to business as usual. Well he can’t. It’s not just a few rotten apples. It’s the barrel, stupid!

The late Dennis Potter[3] named the pancreatic cancer that eventually killed him, “Rupert”. In a piece to camera he did for ‘Opinions’ on Channel Four Television in 1993, Potter said: “I’m going to get down there in the gutter where so many journalists crawl…What I’m about to do is to make a provenly vindictive and extremely powerful enemy…the enemy in question is that drivel-merchant, global huckster and so-to-speak media psychopath, Rupert Murdoch…Hannibal the Cannibal…”[4]

In March 1993, Potter gave a last interview to Melvyn Bragg which was also broadcast on Channel Four. In it, Potter said of Rupert Murdoch, “There is no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press, and the pollution of the British press is an important part of the pollution of British political life…”[5]

If we knew, nearly twenty years ago, that Murdoch brought a malignancy first to journalism, then to politics and eventually to televised-sport, why is it only now that our political elite have found the courage to stand-up to him? Here in The Bus Lane, we have conducted a boycott of the Murdoch Empire ever since The Times and The Sunday Times fell into his grasp. Not buying The Sun was never difficult but we have missed thousands of hours of Test Cricket and Premiership Football because of our refusal to subscribe to Sky Sports. Murdoch will not have missed our paltry shillings, but it would have been a joy to shout I told you so! – if only we had not just discovered that The Dirty Digger also owns our favourite box sets: The Sopranos, The Wire and Madmen. God-dammit! As Count Arthur Strong might have warned; “His testicles are everywhere…”[6]

Rupert Murdoch’s genius lay in spotting that in the likes of Tony Blair, Boris Bullingdon and ‘call me Dave’ Cameron (and many, many, others) we had the best, most venal, most opportunistic and most self-obsessed political class that money could buy. So he bought them. Once he had shown them the power of his media interests he knew that he had them by the balls and such was their ambition and their gullibility that their hearts and minds soon followed. And having pocketed his politicians, why would any of our senior police or sports administrators hold out against him? They could plainly see that he owned a majority in the House of Commons; lock, stock and rotten barrel.

So when the Serjeant-at-arms hauls the Murdochs – father & son - into the dock in front of the Commons Culture, Media & Sport Committee next Tuesday, let’s not beat about the bush. Let’s go Aussie and call a spade a bloody shovel. And let’s hear someone demanding to know what they’re offering by way of compensation for our corrupted politics, corrupted cops, corrupted sport …oh, and corrupted journalism.

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[1] Ozymandias. Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1818

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

[2] The Godfather. Mario Puzo. 1969

[3] Dennis Potter, English journalist, television producer, playwright and author. 1935-1994.

[4] Quoted by Craig Brown in the (Murdoch-owned) Sunday Times. 28 March 1993.

[5] Dennis Potter – interview with Melvyn Bragg 15 March 1994. Broadcast on Channel 4, 5 April 1994. Transcript available at www.guardian.co.uk – News – Great Interviews.

[6] Count Arthur Strong’s Radio Show. Steve Delaney. BBC Radio 4. 2005ff.

… things that rats won’t do

# 21

   About the time of his 1991 movie ‘Hook’, Steven Spielberg used to suggest that scientists were increasingly using lawyers instead of rats for experiments in behavioural psychology. He gave several reasons why this might be so. It helped that lawyers were becoming more plentiful than rats in Hollywood and that laboratory technicians didn’t get so attached to them. The clincher, though, where the lawyers won hands down, was that there are some things that rats just won’t do…

   Nowadays the lawyers face stiff competition from bankers and journalists; all vying with one another to prove their profession the most dishonest, the most disreputable, the most amoral, the least concerned with the interests of anyone but themselves. You have to wonder what is going wrong in a society where standards of professional integrity melt faster than ice-cream on a summer day. Can it all just be down to money?

   Historically, the ownership of newspapers has attracted some outstanding scallywags. In recent years we might make mention of Conrad Black at the Telegraph and Robert Maxwell at the Mirror. Publishing newspapers is a basic right but owning them and controlling them is a privilege. I don’t believe that people like Rupert Murdoch own newspapers for philanthropic reasons. But nor is their interest entirely driven by profit. They could almost certainly become even richer if they disposed of their newspaper holdings and invested the cash in something else. But they don’t do that because they crave the power and influence press ownership brings.

   Does anyone seriously believe that Rupert Murdoch leaves the running of his papers entirely to his editors, while he relaxes on his sun-lounger and waits to see the bottom line? Mr Murdoch has an agenda which courses through the veins of his media empire and affects the decisions made by his executives. Tony Blair and David Cameron both assiduously courted Murdoch. It wasn’t just for his magnetic personality, his sparkling wit and his affable Aussie charm. They were convinced that to achieve their own political ambitions they needed the active endorsement of his media empire – “IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT”[1]. And that is why we are entitled to enquire whether Mr Murdoch is a fit and proper person to wield such power.

   It’s an issue close to the heart of our claim to a democracy. Rupert Murdoch is Chairman of News Corp which, according to Wikipedia, is second only to Disney as a global media conglomerate. How worrying is that? Very, I’d say, but I was cheered a little last night by some subversive newsreader on the radio describing Murdoch as now ‘the Head of News Corpse’.

   I remember once, a long time ago – say, 1957 or thereabouts – my primary school teacher wanted to introduce our class to the idea of newspapers. To begin, he asked pupils to name a newspaper their parents read. I answered ‘Daily Express’ because I’d seen it at home and liked the image of the medieval knight it used as its logo. Then another boy piped up with, ‘News of the World, sir!’

   “Damn my useless parents,” I thought, registering a ten-year old’s disappointment that there was this paper containing all the news from all the world and my stupid family didn’t have the nous to buy it. When I got home that afternoon I announced to Mum and Dad that there was now a paper carrying all the news in the world and why didn’t they buy it? Oh how they chortled! They laughed then as we all should surely laugh now at the preposterous title Murdoch retains for his pathetic rag. “News of the World”? Leave it out.

    “Reality,” sa molesworth 2, “is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder.”[2]

   Somebody on the television news last night was wondering where to draw the “moral line” in British journalism. The line has always been there. It doesn’t need drawing but it does need holding. The Press Complaints Commission has a voluntary Code of Practice under which the print media are supposed to regulate themselves. The Code is clear and probably laudable. However, when it comes to enforcement, the PCC has, kindly, been described as “toothless” and, more unkindly, as being “about as much us as a chocolate teapot”.

   The Chair of the PCC is Baroness Buscombe. She was reported in The Independent [3] to be “indescribably angry at being misled”. The revelation that journalists were capable of telling lies apparently caused her to swoon. Well, that’s how much of a grip she has on the situation. Journalist tells porky! Shock! Horror! Etc.

   The Express Group of newspapers walked away from the PCC earlier this year and seems no better nor worse as a result. You could try replacing the PCC with a statutory body with real teeth in the form of financial penalties and similar sanctions. That would solve one problem but risk creating another in the form of what would be, to all intents and purposes, an official censor. Maybe that’s what we deserve? Maybe that’s what the ambitions of clan-Murdoch have brought us to? As with its police force, perhaps a nation gets the newspapers it deserves. But who then shall guard us from the guardians?

   I would prefer to pin whatever feint hopes I still retain on the notion of ‘fit and proper persons.’ You will have guessed by now that I am not persuaded Rupert Murdoch qualifies in this regard. Nor does his notorious acolyte, Rebekah (sic) Brooks (nee Wade); famed for her ability to rise without trace and for her constant bad-hair day. The PCC should be able to adjudicate robustly and pillory those who fail to follow its Code. Name them and shame them. Name the individual journalists, name their editors and name their proprietors. Establish a clear link between ownership and the Code – fail to follow the Code and they certainly forfeit the right to extend their media empire to fresh titles.

   The people who hacked their way into the private telephone messages of murdered children and their families knew what they were doing was wrong. The editors who used that information may, briefly, when facing an imminent deadline, have not asked sufficient questions about its provenance. But after twenty-four hours or a night’s sleep, or when they had sobered-up – then they surely knew the answer – and that was when they needed to display some basic integrity. That was when they needed to screw their courage to the max and blow the whistle, pull the plug or do whatever was necessary to bring the house of cards tumbling down. The fact that they didn’t is rightfully now their downfall. That was when they failed to be ‘fit and proper persons’; failed to be professionals, revealed themselves as mere mercenaries.

   We don’t need a Judicial Enquiry or a Royal Commission composed of the great and the good to draw lines around what journalists can and can’t do because ultimately that will put the mother of all super-injunctions on us, proscribing what can and can’t be written. Publish and be damned – but first be damned sure that what you are publishing and how you came by it, can be squared with your conscience and not just with your employer’s prejudices and/or bank balance. At present, everyone is pointing at someone else and all are shouting, “Round up the usual suspects!”

   The origins of the word profession can be found in Latin with words literally meaning ‘publicly to confess’. A person who writes for a living should ultimately be prepared, when challenged, to defend and justify their research and their words openly and in public. It doesn’t matter if they’ve got it wrong. Coming to the wrong conclusion is not what matters. We can all do that. We’ve all told a few porkies, ducked and dived, invented this and not checked that. Yes, these are sins, but they are venial sins. The sins committed at the News of the World were mortal. They were not excusable, not justifiable and cannot be pardoned or washed away by an apology or retraction. Off with their headlines if not their heads!

You wouldn’t even want to wrap your chips in a Murdoch paper, would you? Let alone read it…

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[1] Front Page Headline, The Sun, 11 April 1992.

[2] Whizz for Atomms. 1956. Geoffrey Willans & Ronald Searle

[3] 5 July 2011