Book news

I'm thinking about instituting a 2 out, 1 in policy, in which I'm allowed to buy one book for every two I actually read. Not sure I've got the moral backbone to actually deny myself though. Although I am quite good on staying off hard drugs, booze and destructive activities, so buying books isn't the worst thing in the world.

In today are:
Luke Haines's second memoir, Post Everything. In case you've not heard of him, he was the monstrous and misanthropic lead singer of critically-loved and commercially negligible 90s band The Auteurs. Bad Vibes was a malevolent, wounded and hilarious account of his rise and fall during the Britpop era.

The Alastair Campbell Diaries Volume 3: Power and Responsibility. I love post-hoc rationalisation, and this is the mummy and daddy of all of them, given the huge number of immoral, amoral or just plain wrongheaded decisions requiring post-hoc rationalisation. Obviously even the full-stops aren't to be trusted, but it's compelling reading.

Iain Sinclair's new polemic, Ghost Milk on the cultural death of our cities under the weight of 'iconic' projects, 'regeneration' and capitalist homogenisation, played out on the margins of London. For some reason I didn't have a copy of his seminal Lights Out for the Territory either. If you like reading material that makes your head spin with a mix of horror, intellectual envy and admiration, he's the writer for you.

Finally - for academic purposes only, you understand, Mitzi Szereto's Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts. I genuinely am interested in popular cultural appropriations of Austen (hence my love of Clueless), so this should be fascinating.

By the way: did I lend one of you my copy of Gender Trouble by Judith Butler? I can easily get another one, but I'd have to heavily annotate it again, and it's never the same. If you've got it, bring it back!

Daily Mail in hating BBC shocker!

Here's a fine piece from the Daily Mail, by Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane, 'the eminent physician'.

BBC SNEER AT HEALTH TEACHING
In a Ministry of Health talk broadcast from 2LO… Professor Major Greenwood is reported to have made some disparaging and sneering remarks about advice given to the public on health matters by voluntary societies.
On behalf of the New Health Society, by far the most active organisation for health education in the country, I protest most strongly against a lecturer under official auspices using a privileged occasion for such a purpose.
The offence is rendered all the worse from the fact that we are debarred from making any report from 2LO. In spite of repeated efforts to secure this opportunity for assisting in giving valuable information to the public…we have been prevented from availing ourselves of it by the very Ministry which thus permits a thinly veiled attack to be made upon us.
The public will know how to judge such detraction of a society which is now successfully reaching every part of the country with its health propaganda'.

Rancid anti-BBC agenda? Check
Racist crank pressure group? Check
Insane health claims? You bet.

OK, the language may have alerted you to the twist. This article is from page 8 of the Daily Mail on February 4th, 1928. The New Health Society was 'social Darwinist' (i.e. it opposed all forms of public health, welfare, state aid etc. because such things interfere with the 'survival of the fittest' (which they massively misunderstood). It also campaigned on 'men's dress reform', i.e. looser clothes for health purposes and

saw the bowels as central to health and considered constipation the root cause of many ills of civilisation.

2LO was the call-sign for a radio station founded in the early 1920s and taken over by the BBC by the time Arbuthnot wrote his letter.

But for all intents and purposes, this article - and the rest of the edition - could be printed in the Daily Mail today, with very little alteration. It's a mix of rancid reaction, racism, celebrity gossip ('V.C. Officer Sues Hospital for Negligently Allowing Wife To Throw Herself Out of Window'), sensationalised crime ('3-Finger Jack Super-Forger Sentenced') and snobbery ('The Hostess's Secret, by the Hon. Mrs. Fitzroy Stewart').

Most pleasingly, Mr. Horatio Bottomley - from the comfort of his prison cell - is 'bringing a libel action against the News of the World.

Quite a lot of the rest of the pages are thinly-disguised advertisements for Daily Mail insurance schemes (the going rate for dead motor-cyclists is £250). Mr. Ghandi isn't much liked down at the Mail:

Footballers don't seem to have changed much either: Albert Collins, of Millwall Football Club,  denies adultery with Bertha Lukehurst.

In other hot news, the revolting congregation of St. Cuthbert's in Darwen, Lancashire, are pleased that the Morning Prayer will be available at 10.45, but still object to the (presumably disgracefully neo-Catholic) sung mass still being offered. Also in Darwen (I've been there: it's not a bustling metropolis), comes news that the local Liberal MP is resigning, for very honest reasons: it is 'quite impossible to follow politics and business'! Tell that to Nick Clegg!

Demand for Daily Mail 'No Soviet Petrol Used Here' is apparently rising: funny that its columnists still fulminate against dependence on Russian gas imports!

Of course, no issue of the Daily Mail is complete without a good deal of woman-hating. And here we are: 'inconstant' and 'unstable' Woman as enemy of trade and Empire, and woman student as threat to standards:

I'd love to link to all this, but I've only got it on paper. After going to a wedding on Saturday, I stayed with my friend John. He ripped up a nasty lino floor-covering in his new house, and found acres of this disgusting rag underneath.

Sound familiar

In a trenchant defence of the public moral and intellectual value of libraries (and not just as book warehouses), Alan Bennett writes this:

a young man, standing in front of a bookcase feeling baffled. He – and occasionally she – is overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that has been written and the ground to be covered.’ 

‘All these books. I’ll never catch up,’ wails the young Joe Orton in the film script of Prick Up Your Ears, and in The Old Country another young man reacts more dramatically, by hurling half the books to the floor. In Me, I’m Afraid of Virginia Woolf someone else gives vent to their frustration with literature by drawing breasts on a photograph of Virginia Woolf and kitting out E.M. Forster with a big cigar. Orton himself notoriously defaced library books before starting to write books himself. This resentment, which was, I suppose, somewhere mine, had to do with feeling shut out. A library, I used to feel, was like a cocktail party with everybody standing with their back to me; I could not find a way in. 

Welcome to my world. Even worse, I've bought the bloody things.  It feels faintly embarrassing to be defending libraries against Conservative attacks. After all, the stately homes from whence (see that, Ben?) the current crop have oiled, all have private libraries of their own. Eton has, no doubt, a fine library, and the libraries of the Oxford colleges inhabited by these lordly types are so fine as to be tourist attractions.

Perhaps that's the problem. Their home libraries aren't resources, they're decoration. Their college libraries are literally exclusive. The oiks can buy tickets to ooh and aah at the leather bindings and stern busts, but they're not invited to open the books. This lot resent the idea that they (and their imaginary public) should pay taxes for people to read Catherine Cookson and Horrid Histories and Sven Hassel etc.

To them, knowledge and enjoyment are private goods to be bought and paid for. To me, libraries are where you gain your freedom. My parents are highly educated, literate types. But if I read only the books they bought, I'd have a fantastic working knowledge of church architecture, Catholic doctrine, dermatological complaints, paediatric medicine and hymn lyrics. Admittedly, I've soaked up a lot of this stuff. But it was libraries which let me explore space and time, find out about the radical histories of Britain, Ireland, Spain, discover science and rebellion and poetry and Tom Paine and Mervyn Peake and Willa Cather. Much of this was smuggled into the house, caused violent arguments and got returned unread by and angry parent.

And if annoying your parents isn't a good enough reason to defend libraries, nothing is.

Last word to Bennett:

I have been discussing libraries as places and in the current struggle to preserve public libraries not enough stress has been laid on the library as a place not just a facility. To a child living in high flats, say, where space is at a premium and peace and quiet not always easy to find, a library is a haven. But, saying that, a library needs to be handy and local; it shouldn’t require an expedition. Municipal authorities of all parties point to splendid new and scheduled central libraries as if this discharges them of their obligations. It doesn’t. For a child a library needs to be round the corner. And if we lose local libraries it is children who will suffer. Of the libraries I have mentioned the most important for me was that first one, the dark and unprepossessing Armley Junior Library. I had just learned to read. I needed books. Add computers to that requirement maybe but a child from a poor family is today in exactly the same boat.  

It’s hard not to think that like other Tory policies privatising the libraries has been lying dormant for 15 years, just waiting for a convenient crisis to smuggle it through. Libraries are, after all, as another think tank clown opined a few weeks ago, ‘a valuable retail outlet’.

Here's an idea…

Lots of senior politicians, celebrities and so on have written articles for the Murdoch press and the other squalid rags infesting Britain. Usually, they're written by the paper's journalists (you knew this, didn't you?) or sometimes by the 'author's' advisors/PR handler/dog.

Like this one, 'by' David Cameron and Boris Johnson, but betraying not a scintilla of their vocabularies and style, and an awful lot of the Sun's trademark lies and stupidity.

So: now that the Murdoch press has been revealed to be a criminal enterprise (with other publications to follow), how about we ask them to donate their fees to a suitable charity? Perhaps Milly Dowler's parents could suggest one.

It just takes enough people to search for the articles, then for everyone to write to/email/Tweet/phone the 'authors' until they're ashamed of taking money from criminals. Although there is one fly in the ointment: 'shame' is quite an alien concept for many of these chaps and chapesses.

Celine Dion: making herself look EVEN MORE ridiculous

I didn't know about Ridiculous Pictures of Celine Dion, but I'm sure it did good work as an antidote to the airbrushed propaganda pumped out by celebrities and their tame media outlets. I don't think you should be adoring or humiliating famous people, but if you're encouraged to do the former to excess, then it's entirely understandable that people might like to do the latter.

Most celebrities seem to be able to take it in their strides. I presume that the millions, the private jets, the entourage of yes-men and the adoration of quite a lot of people all go some way to softening the blows of the minority who wish only to jeer and mock.

Most, but not all. Ms. Dion has - despite the complete absence of legal basis - got her troupe of lawyer gorillas to descend on Ridiculous Pictures of Celine Dion and close it down. What have we learned from this affair? According to her, that celebrities shouldn't be teased, only adored. According to me, we've learned that Celine Dion Is Ridiculous, however she looks.

Here's a picture of Celine Dion looking ridiculous, in solidarity.

Dan's dogs have this haircut. 

I've seen this look before. Oh yes: on Doctor Who

Er… is this thing on?

Sometimes - especially in the summer months - you find newspaper columnists writing about how difficult it is to come up with something about which to write (or 'something to write about', given that most of them never listen to what they type).

Being a blogger, I don't have that pressure. Nobody's paying me to write. Well, actually a university is paying me to write research papers, but the less said about that, the better. But Plashing Vole is simply me ranting into the void. It did start as a tool for teaching some MA students about social media, and in that respect, it failed miserably. They'd never heard of blogging, didn't want to know about it, and certainly weren't going to try it, which torpedoed the second half of that particular day. No doubt it would all be very different now.

So I'm in the happy position of not having to blog if I don't want to. Or am I? After all, I have a readership of sorts. Some of you I know personally. Some have washed up here after being misdirected by friends. Others have followed links from social or even official media. Most of you are passing through, having clicked a link on a search engine. You wanted cars/sex/music/LOLZ and you got me, for which I can only apologise.

You're a disparate bunch, which makes you a tricky audience. I can't - like a radio or TV station - offer something for everyone and assume that you'll tune in to the bits you like. I have to balance the kinds of thing I offer in the hope that some of you will come back for more, driven by my magnetic personality and unique take, even if you're not interested in the source material. I'd quite like this to be one of those beautiful, cool, intellectual and literate sites like Tales from the Reading Room, or this one, or any of these. But I can't. Mainly because I'm a dumbs with the concentration skills of a brain-damaged gnat, partly because I just don't know enough and keep reading fun books rather than Improving Tomes, and partly because most of you guys would close-tab at high speed. (And I buy far more books than I read).

What else do I blog about? Politics, you say. OK, I do occasionally venture into that field, perhaps a little too enthusiastically at times. Winding up Paul Uppal MP (his newsletter is full of pictures of him posing as a volunteer, but doesn't find space to mention his cheerful votes to cut benefits, punish the poor, privatise higher education, enrich the banks, bomb more brown people, privatise the NHS and abolish libraries) is a public service, but I might just be losing some of you when I put up the 13th politics post of the day. What can I say? I'm a boring and obsessive man.

Then there's fencing: I'm a minority voice in a minority sport. You should all try it - it's fantastic, exhilarating and exhausting. But I understand that it's not to all tastes. Which brings me to my taste in music and other culture. It feels downright rude to bring to your attention all the wonderful artefacts that are better than the ones you're already familiar with. The Field Mice. Beefheart. Tiffany.

Finally, I put up photographs. Flowers, fencers, hills, silly signs, urban decay.

So: of what would you like more, and less?

Atlantis - lost once more

The last space shuttle has landed, and none will ever blast off again. You know that I'm a shuttle sceptic: better, safer, more practical vehicles have been and will be launch, and it's noticeable that the Russians, who have a cheaper, safer system, built and abandoned a shuttle.

But: the shuttle was beautiful, and brave. Here are all the missions it undertook, including those which cost lives.

Song for Rebekah

Is there no end to parodic uses of the 'Friday' song? I hope not. Here's the phone-hacking version.



and of course the inevitable Downfall versions:

I'm sorry for beggaring you all with my insatiable demands

Over in the US, the Republicans are doing the same as the Tories: claiming that people like me are ruining the country, and not the bankers and media moguls at all. Doonesbury has a very apt cartoon today:

Meanwhile, congratulations to my friends The Nightingales: newly signed to a very cool record label I can't yet reveal.

In honour of Zoverstock

I'm fully expecting an 8th copy of 10,000 Maniacs' MTV Unplugged CD in the post today, despite their assurances after the first 3 that the computer error had been fixed.

But I thought I should let you into the secret of why I like the band. Easy. Jangly guitars. Good catchy tunes. Good female voice. Thoughtful, interesting lyrics. Little pretension or faked 'attitude'. (I give Cynical Ben half an hour to respond with the foulest abuse he can muster).

Here are a couple of the tracks from the MTV Unplugged CD.



Their cover of Patti Smith's wonderful 'Because the Night':

Shhh… Pray silence for Paul Uppal's views on phone hacking

OK, don't expect much: it's simply more toadying to our compromised Prime Minister.

There are very few places in the world where the leader of the Executive would subject himself to two hours of questioning. One thing that shames our democracy, though, is that there are elements in the House that seem to want to make political capital out of the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone.

Quite frankly, a PM who employs someone at the heart of illegality, who instructs his advisors not to let him hear any evidence, and who consorts with amoral power to the extent that he does, should expect 'politicised' criticism. He's proved himself unworthy of authority and it's Labour's job to make this point.


As has Uppal: to reduce the affair to the murdered girl's phone is a cynical attempt to claim a moral high ground which he does not deserve, especially as he hasn't uttered a single word of criticism previously, either of the newspapers or the political-media nexus.


For Cameron to take the other part in this duet:

I simply wanted to make the point to my hon. Friend that he is right. At the heart of all this, as we have all these debates and discussions, we must bear in mind the victims of phone hacking, chief among whom are the family of Milly Dowler.

is the most revolting, cynical humbug. They should both be ashamed.


In other news, I've received Paul Uppal's Summer Newsletter. As you'd expect, it's lots of pictures of the MP posing with volunteer groups, and highlights of his parliamentary activity. Needless to say, none of his self-serving tax-cutting, aid-the-starving-property-developers questions find space. What a shame.


Update: The Rise and Rise of Tim Lovejoy spotted a detail I missed:

Once again I'm left reading something from Paul Uppal and thinking "Dude? Really?" before getting pissed off with him. Happily, I'm not the only one, as Margaret Curran, the Labour MP for Glasgow East wasn't too impressed either:

'May I ask the Prime Minister, in all sincerity, to dissociate himself from the comment of Paul Uppal?

Naturally, Dave duly dodged that question.

He did more than that: he implied that Uppal was right. 

I do not question the hon. Lady’s motives, but the point about this place is that people can watch what has been said, and they can form their own judgments.

Which just makes it harder to work out which of the two Tories is more despicable.

Vignettes of democracy

Two tit-bits from the world of politics: 

Cameron spoke to the Conservative backbench 1922 committee for about 20 minutes tonight but not one asked him about hacking scandal, PA reports.

A Conservative source said Cameron was adamant he would not apologise for trying to get the media onside in the run-up to the general election.

Right. So the only Tory Party body dedicated to holding the leader to account didn't bother raising the only news issue of the month, despite Cameron's former press secretary being arrested, and evidence that his aides deliberately kept him in the dark to avoid incriminating him. Mother of Parliaments everyone!

Meanwhile, Cameron has clearly decided that presentation is far more important than the principle that politicians shouldn't be pushed around by the press. Getting the Murdochs onside for political advantage is far more important. What an example to us all. How confident do I feel about his leadership? Er, not very.

Meanwhile, I'm reading the Moomins cartoon strip, volume 6. Here's how I'm feeling:

Watch out Glenn Beck, here I come

OK, I did an hour's round table discussion about the hacking/Murdoch affair on a local radio station, alongside a columnist from the Express and Star (much more measured than the bile that rag normally pumps out), my boss Paul (career radio broadcaster) and Dorothy, expert in popular TV.

I have to say that it was an exhilarating and humiliating experience. I got in most of the points I wanted to make (including some satisfying swipes at the Mail and a good deal of leftwing propaganda), and learned things from the others. I was also reminded that I have a voice like Donald Duck with adenoids.

I've done interviews before, including TV: this was far less stressful - it felt like a conversation with friends rather than being on the spot in front of thousands of people.

Having been in the Times Higher, Guardian and The Sword recently, I'm feeling like a complete media whore. More radio please!

Would you Adam and Eve it?

Thanks to the kindly folk at Zoverstocks, and despite my protests and their assurances, I received my 7th copy of 10,000 Maniacs' MTV Unplugged live CD today.

They told me around copy 3 that it was a computer error which had been fixed. Could I suggest a big sign by the packing desk reading 'NO MORE 10,000 MANIACS MTV UNPLUGGED LIVE CDS TO PLASHING VOLE THANK-YOU'.

This is the weirdest way I've ever been stalked. As the 10,000 Maniacs sing on their MTV Unplugged live CD, 'What's the Matter Here?' and 'Trouble Me'.

What Rupert learned from Capone

China Daily, as I pointed out here, thinks that capitalism is the root cause of the Murdoch newspapers' evil.

They're not far wrong - but it's been going on for longer than Rupert's been in charge. Here's an amusing little paragraph about The Times and Al Capone in 1932. Claud is Claud Cockburn, a great campaigning journalist of the mid-twentieth century.

…he interviewed Al Capone at his headquarters… gently frisked by a couple of 'bulging Sicilians', he was escorted into the mobster's presence. Their tête-à-tête was conducted in a civilised manner, even though Claud immediately spotted the barrel of a gun poking through the transom of a door… 

'Listen, don't get the idea I'm one of those goddamn radicals', Capone snapped… 'Don't get the idea I''m knocking the American system. My rackets are run on strictly American lines. Capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if only we seize it with both hands and make the most of it'. 

Despite these profound insights, the interview was never filed. When asked why… Claud remarked that Capone's remarks were in essence identical with the editorials of The Times itself, and he doubted whether the paper would be very pleased to see itself in agreement with the most infamous racketeer in Chicago. 

From Norman Rose, The Cliveden Set (London: Jonathan Cape: 2000): 158.

Hear no evil…

I promise I'll get back to mundane nonsense soon, but the Murdoch story just keeps on giving.

The big story yesterday was confirmation from the two senior policemen giving evidence that Ed Llewellyn,  the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, explicitly told them not to inform David Cameron what was going on - despite employing the News of the World editor who had to resign because of the phone hacking scandal.

This is a disgrace. This is the Prime Minister of a country deliberately isolating himself from the certain knowledge of criminality as a subterfuge. The Chief of Staff has to resign, and I'm sure that when he does, he'll say he was acting alone to protect the PM. It won't wash. An apparatchik doesn't behave like that unless he's damn sure that it's what the boss wants.

It reminds me of a mafia boss covering his ears while taking the payments from his underlings. It's deniability, but it isn't plausible deniability. It's personal survival taking precedence over political and moral responsibility.

One simple rule for public servants

One of the reasons the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police had to resign was that he'd accepted a free stay at a health spa. A day before I went on strike, the Chancellor of the Exchequer - fresh from attacking us for not working - turned up at Wimbledon. The head of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs has frequently had slap-up feeds in posh restaurants with the companies who he subsequently let off their taxes. A lot of golf is played by businessmen trying to butter up councillors and planning officers - often excluding women of course.

There's a culture amongst politicians, civil servants and other public servants of socialising with their class, regardless of propriety. There is - in Anthony Sampson's terms - a political class which is educated in the same schools and universities, lives in the same areas (of London), goes to the same events and dines in the same restaurants.

So let's end these cosy deals with a simple rule.

If you're paid by the taxpayer, your meetings are held in the office, with a minute-taker.

Is that clear? So Murdoch doesn't sneak into the back door of Downing Street. Party donors don't murmur sweet nothings into the ears of Cabinet Ministers at Glyndebourne. Policemen don't go to dinner with News International hacks and councillors don't shake hands with developers down at the Masonic Lodge. Weapons manufacturers don't - as now - second their staff to the Ministry of Defence. I won't accept lobster from academic textbook publishers.

Instead, if people want to talk to public servants, they come to our cramped, bleak offices and drink bitter coffee, while every word both parties say is recorded. Every citizen is under surveillance all the time, so this seems a small price to pay.

It will take some adjustment, but it's a small requirement for anyone who wants to live off our taxes.

The view from Beijing

The Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece, China Daily, isn't very impressed with the News of the World, and sees it as symptomatic of capitalist distortion.

Recently, News of the World, a newspaper under News Corporation, was shut down as a result of the phone hacking scandal. Some experts in Beijing and Shanghai believe that this incident directly exposes the inherent money-seeking nature of Western media today, and the false nature of the concepts of “freedom”, “impartiality” and “human rights” that they have long bandied about. As the scandal has continued to develop, it has become a major assault on the model of media supervision and control in the West.

It's hard to disagree with the basic points. Virtually all media academics - of which I'm half a one - would agree that the pursuit of profit has degraded the public sphere and commoditised readers and subjects alike. Furthermore, most leftwing commentators would agree (thanks to Gramsci, Foucault et al.) that 'freedom', 'impartiality' and 'human rights' are discourses used as weapons rather than meaningful terms with a causal connection to what we call democracy. Listening to Norman Lamont on Radio 4 yesterday describe the financial markets as democracy in action was chilling and demonstrative of this idea. Likewise the Murdochs explaining how much access they had to prime ministers.

Of course China is hypercapitalist now and was never communist in the purist sense of sharing resources and power equally amongst the citizens (you'd have to go back to Winstanley for that), so it's a bit cheeky of China Daily to accuse Murdoch of being a greedy tyrant! I certainly wouldn't want a media run along Chinese lines: craven, slavish and demonstrably false, but their analysis of Western media is pretty good.

There's only one solution. Everybody read Vole. I write it for free and say what I want. Though I would like access to the corridors of power.

The Murdoch hearings, digested

So, James and Rupert Murdoch are giving evidence to Parliament.

It's not very enlightening. Murdoch Sr. seems to have been reading a lot of Beckett and Pinter: long pauses followed by monosyllabic replies. Sometimes he appears to be blaming his son. James seems to be suffering too: nobody calls him Mr. Murdoch, and his expressions betray hatred of not being the top dog in the room.

Their defence appears to be - rather implausibly - that they didn't know anything, nobody told them anything. They're completely surprised by the implication that there's anything untoward about press moguls have frequent, complete and secret access to Prime Ministers. Democracy, it seems, is an alien concept of which they've heard without being tempted to try.

In some ways, it's an object lesson in PR tactics. The Murdochs have clearly been coached: stay polite, talk for a long time but don't give anything away, reel off dates and figures to avid the impression of waffling. At times it gets farcical, reminding me of another character: 'that would be an ecumenical matter'. (Sorry about the ad, couldn't find one without).



It's not entirely working though. Murdoch Sr comes across as senile. Perhaps this is his tactic, but I suspect it's an inability to deal with a situation which he can't control. I doubt he's ever been compelled to answer questions or follow someone else's line of thought.

OK, it finished with Murdoch getting a custard pie in the face, the egregious Louise Mensch scraping together enough brain cells for a good question or two, and Murdoch dropping the senility act in favour of reading out a prepared statement that sounds ('my son and I') like he's apologising to the neighbours for James breaking a window with a football. And almost as sincere.

What we didn't learn was much about the command structures, who's paying for what, and what responsibility the Murdochs will take. Murdoch seems to feel that he's the victim ('I was betrayed by people trusted by people I trusted'). Humbug!

Should David Cameron resign?

I mentioned this aspect of the hacking story briefly yesterday, but Polly Toynbee takes it up very effectively.

But is there more to come? The Mail on Sunday reported that Cameron intended to hire the BBC's Guto Harri as his press secretary. So close, apparently, was the appointment that the Harri family visited the Camerons one weekend in 2007 at Chipping Norton to discuss it, but the job went to Andy Coulson after Rebekah Brooks "is said to have told Mr Cameron that the post should go to Mr Coulson to strengthen links between the Tories and News International". Is this true? Reviewing the papers on the Andrew Marr programme on Sunday, I pointed out this story and said Harri was well-known in the BBC as a straight-as-a-die, honest man. I was pleased to get a text from Harri just after the show saying "Thanks". Does that mean it is true? I called Harri, who now works for Boris Johnson, to check. Yes, he said he'd heard tell that his name was not acceptable to News International. "I heard it as gossip on the grapevine – but I have no idea whether or not it's true. Yes, I did talk to David Cameron about taking the job – but whilst I lingered they'd clearly approached Andy Coulson." He had a good idea who the source from the Sun was for the story. How Cameron must wish he had given Harri the job. The idea that News International planted their man in the heart of Downing Street is truly shocking.

If this is true, then the Prime Minister has to resign. You can't have the man running the country choosing taxpayer-paid officials according to how acceptable he is to a particular media company.