Prince Charles' watercolours

Prince Charles has, of course, collected a kicking from the Telegraph for his watercolours, despite obligingly providing them with several column's worth of material to blether about.  There's no such ingratitude here; this blog knows a freebie when it sees one.  

The Prince has published on line a gallery of his pictures.  The gallery begins here.

A serious publication deserves serious evaluation - he's no less entitled to that than anybody else who picks up a brush and allows you to see their work.  Watercolour is a defiant medium; it's just you, a few colours, paper, brush, and a pot of water.  That's all you need to record your world.  It's much less complicated than most other media but technically its a testing one because you have to have it clear in your head what you want to do and then lay it down in relatively few strokes.

Watercolour doesn't give much in the way of second chances; too many revisions and it goes muddy.  Spiritually it is closer to handwriting than painting; it's best if you get it right (write) first time because the corrections are difficult to disguise.   Experimentation is best done on cheaper paper; the idea is to find out how to work the brush and paint without worrying about a picture, then, when you have sorted out the strokes, turn back to reality and try to get the picture space organized.

Watercolour is democratic; it costs relatively few pounds to get going with a decent block of paper, a couple of brushes and a limited pan of colours.  The brushes are the most expensive items but cheap brushes will still get you started. You will be working with materials which any professional would be just as happy to use.  The grandma taking a U3A class starts from the same place as an Academician.

It is therefore interesting that the Prince chooses not an expensive camera but something which links him to every school child and hobbyist in the country.  Moreover, he chooses to pursue that common experience "Wow, I wonder if I could get that down on paper?".  Most of us give up at that point and get out the camera.

The pictures have been grouped by theme and location. It is obvious where his heart is, but for evaluation the question is: has he caught the differing lights in the various countries? How you judge that might depend on how well you know the places.  I think it is obvious from the selection that he is using watercolour as a private record, a way of fixing experience on paper but is not always sure which aspect of experience it would be best to anchor the picture in.

There are choices in any picture when you have only limited time and palette.  A giant major oil painting allows you to try for several in the same picture, but with watercolour you have to make that decision at the beginning and stick to it.  Do you want the structure of the rocks and buildings? Or are you more concerned to always be able to get back to the fleeting sense of light over a landscape? Or you might be more in love with the impossible colours and decide to focus all your attention on the them and their relationship to each other. This might yield an abstract image which structurally bears little resemblance to the thing you saw.  

Painters such as Samuel Edward Kelly (below) managed to combine these competing aspects and yet keep the colours clean, but there is also a strand of English watercolours which simply gives up and lets it go all sepia. They often paint decrepit barns and cottages where you'd expect it to be dingy.

Samuel Edward Kelly. Babbacombe.

It is often said that Prince Charles dithers; his pictures express an uncertainty about which aspect he wants.   Since photography has been invented, it isn't strictly necessary to paint a picture for that purpose now. If he picked two high-contrast shades, light and dark, concentrating only on pushing areas of the picture plane back, pulling others forward, he'd find the weight of the rocks compared to the lightness of the air would emerge.  They don't have to be strictly real; they just have to work in relation to each other.

Alternatively, many of the pictures show he is struck with the unearthly intensity of colour but then steps back politely, as if he doesn't want to be caught over-reacting and feels unable to lay down the ultramarine in case someone accuses him of not getting it quite right. The online collection does not show it, but there are times when light around Sandringham is psychotic; the leggy pine tress turn brick-red with slashes of dark emerald needles, the sky turns cerulean blue and the sun blood-drops in to the Wash.  Those are the evenings he should be out on Holkham beach saying this is my paintbox, my picture, and I'll damn well paint it whatever colour I see fit.

Overall  - sound catalogue, keep going, get bolder. There's always some bugger telling you that you can't do it this way, or that you shouldn't try at all. Don't listen to the Telegraph.

The return of Mr Ishmael

Like Merlin, he awakes just when you need him most:

"These telly MPs are just unspeakable. I’ve seen them, close-up, in the TeeVee studios, they’re not quite sure whether they are legislators who happen to be on telly or nascent stars, just a soundbite away from a lucrative, Robert Kilroy-Shit career. 

It’s partly down to their cowardliness, their terror in the face of a producer or a make-up girl, but it’s also due to the unique cocktail of stupidity, vanity, greed, dishonesty and arrogance which flows through their sclerotic arteries; they’re filth, all of them, cocksuckers, shiteaters, pimps, slags, blackmailers, fraudsters, beasts, nonces,  FuckMeJesus but the house of commons makes the Vatican look like a decent, wholesome  place."

Whitby Gazette and Jon Stokoe

The Whitby Gazette is the city paper of the Goth capital. It was also the first paper to publish the work of Lewis Carroll, a regular visitor from 1850-70.  Encouraged by the public reception - although self-critical about his early efforts -  the Reverend Dodgson went on to write the books which dominate children's literature upon which millions of pounds and thousands of jobs have depended.

Then in 1885 The Gazette recorded on 24 October:

"The Russian schooner Dmitri of Navra, with silver sand, came in suddenly, in heavy weather, but going ashore in Collier’s Hope because a total wreck"

The event camd to the notice of a visitor to Whitby, Bram Stoker, who also happened to find a name in a geography book in the local library which fired his imagination.  That wreck became the Demeter out of Varna, carrying the potent fictional character Dracula, which is why his landfall became the Goth capital.

Who knows, but if the editor of the Whitby Gazette had not carried that report perhaps Stoker might have had him come ashore somewhere else, thus depriving Whitby of millions of pounds of tourism income over a century later. 

Since 1854 the paper has maintained its place in the town and travels all over the world.   There is an online version but the interesting thing about the Whitby Gazette is that it is still growing in its paper distribution.  The online version is searchable but there is really no substitute for the discerning Goth or Steam punk or explorer; one simply must have a paper copy to read over tea no matter where that tea is taken.  The object itself, not just the data, is part of the experience with its nautical masthead and distinctive typeface.

Strange then that the owners, Johnston Press, are proposing to dispose of the editor.  Jon Stokoe bucks the trend in local papers.  While others are struggling,The Gazette is growing.  What ever he is doing, it is working.  Even asking the question makes only about as much sense as sacking Rumplestiltskin because it costs money to provide him with beer and sandwiches.  He's spinning straw in to gold, for goodness' sake.  Keep him at it.

A petition to save the editor has been set up to plead with Johnston to show economic sense. Jon Stokoe is worth the money and should be kept on.




Go here to sign the petition. 

BBC Busted - for International Women's Day

Fingerprints : an ambush against UKIP has been identified.

On  Question Time, Thursday 7 March, Amy Rutland, a regional Labour worker, pretended to be an average member of the public and took an opportunity to embarrass the Labour Party she supports by calling Diane James, the  UKIP candidate, and anyone else who is concerned about the effects of uncontrolled immigration "disgusting".



As noticed by Political Scrapbook, she claimed earlier in the day to have cooked this up with Stephen Twigg, who was appearing on the panel.  That probably explains why he was so smoothly ready with a prepared answer.  Amy later protected her tweets. It has been suggested that these were merely boasting after the event and that Twigg might not have been in on it - in which case why protect them rather than leave them open? 

Dimbleby, if doing his job properly, should have allowed Diane James to answer the original question of substance, which was about whether UKIP presented a threat to the Tories. Instead, he insisted that she respond to the insult. It has yet to be established if Dimbleby knew of the stitch-up; no doubt he'll deny it. It is very strange, though,  how the microphone was able to go to an auburn-haired lady at the front who also appeared to be primed with the keyword "scaremonger".  Were the women connected?

If you want to see the response by Diane James and the much saltier reply by Melanie Phillips which explained why UKIP are a threat to the Conservatives, the 5 minute clip is on Youtube.

But for the slow-learners in Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, let's play that old favourite Oh she's just a bigoted woman.  You can see the moment his political soul leaves his body.



Kebab Time for Biased BBC has other fun photos.

Stephen Hester is a banker

Crocodile wallets

Who is Stephen Hester?

Stephen Hester is the Group Chief Executive of RBS.  The one who was narrowly persuaded to go without his bonus.

Wiki

Hester is paid an annual salary of £1.2 million by RBS.^[1] Alongside this, he took home £6.5m in bonus and pension payments in 2010.^[8] In 2012 he was offered a bonus of just under £1 million, following some considerable pressure from politicians and the public, he declined the bonus.

You may have heard of him being disgusted and depressed about the 'selfish and self-serving' behaviour of his staff during the LIBOR rigging scandal.  Apart from banking, RBS is also 75% shareholder for Direct Line  which operates several brands of insurance.  One of these is Churchill

Churchill is part of the Direct line group, separately listed from RBS.  It is headed by Paul Geddes.

Now let us go back in time, this isn't about banking.  It's about insurance.

Churchill

Founded in 1989, Churchill is now one of the UK’s leading providers of general insurance, offering car, home, travel, pet, van and motorbike insurance over the phone or online. Many of the products are award-winning.

The Accident

In December 2009 the then-thirteen year old Bethany Probert took it in her head to walk home from horse riding at about 5pm.  The accident happened  on the Abthorpe Road which runs between Silverstone (NN12) and Abthorpe.  You can see it for yourself on Streetview, which toured the road in good weather.  The road is picture-postcard England, with straights, narrows,  and shallow bends between hedges dotted with mature trees. 

Yes, she could have waited for her mum to pick her up, but showing a spark of initiative and not being a prisoner, this schoolgirl decided to do what, at any other time in history, would be regarded as normal. She started to walk home on the country road. It was after sunset but it wasn't the middle of the night. Even in December people can be reasonably expected to be moving round at 5pm.   Being a young teenager, she didn't think to dress up in a hi-vis jacket, which is not a legal requirement. She also may have been listening to music. That's legal too.

The road doesn't have a footpath or lighting. It has hedges which  tend to lean in to the road, obliging pedestrians to walk a little further out.  The speed limit is 60 but speed, as we are often told by the better drivers, is not the point. Conditions are the point, and the conditions did not admit that 55 year old Mr Paul Moore, who was on his way to work for his 5pm shift on the far side of Silverstone, should travel faster than 40mph in his Saab 9-3.  

Unfortunately, he probably was traveling faster than that.  Seeing an on-coming vehicle, he changed his position on the road, pulling left, closer to the hedge where Bethany was walking.  Pedestrians are advised to face oncoming traffic but because of the hedges and a bend there, Bethany was on the narrow grass verge or the tarmac - it is thought she may have had one foot on each - rather than the advised side . For that particular point, she was on the correct side because of an approaching bend and a lack of a footpath (see paragraph 44 of Mr Pittaway's adjudication). 

Mr Moore did not see Bethany because he was focused on the oncoming vehicle. He hit the girl.  She was wearing dark clothing.  Had he been traveling more slowly and remained aware that the pools of shadow under hedges might contain any number of things - dogs, deer, junk, even walkers - then he might not have had the accident.

Bethany did not die but the head injuries effectively ended the independent life she might have had. She requires full-time care from her mother but she's alive and can move round.  Mr Moore didn't set out to hurt anyone, but the reality of driving is that you can, purely by miscalculation.  Eversheds summarized the court's findings; liability was established against the defendant.

Fortunately,  Mr Moore had insurance from Churchill.  The child cannot be put back as she was, but she can be cared for.

But Churchill doesn't want to pay up.  

When the case got to court in August 2012, by which time the child's condition was clearer, Churchill argued that because Bethany was a horse rider, she should have known about wearing a hi-vis jacket, even though she wasn't riding a horse at the time.  The court found that you can't expect a 13 year old girl to carry the same degree of responsibility for her action as an adult might. Besides, Mr Moore was not looking where Bethany was walking; he was focused on the oncoming vehicle. 

Churchill argued that she was negligent in listening to music, otherwise she would have heard the Saab coming.  The court replied, based on the opinions of the accident advisors, that the noise of the oncoming car would have obscured the sound of the car behind her. 

The insurers said they want to appeal.  Mr David Pittaway QC, hearing the case, wrote that he thought they were seeking to reopen the issues which have been decided.

Despite that we now read that Lord Justice Ward has granted permission that Churchill can take the case to the Court of Appeal.  Apparently, there is an argument that it might be alright to run children over if they aren't dressed as Christmas trees, psychic, and happen to be walking home in the country after sunset.

However, this post is not about about the strict legality of an insurance firm being able to go to the extent the law allows in order to avoid doing what it says on the tin: taking the financial pain away when there is a terrible accident. 

This is about Stephen Hester of RBS and Paul Geddes of Churchill, who should stop pissing about and pay out £5m as directed. It will cost them that anyway; it's just a question of whether the lawyers are allowed to gouge more of the £5m out for their fees, or if it should all be paid to the girl.

 £5m is less than Stephen Hester earned in the single year 2010.

The money, although substantial, can't be the issue. If it was, RBS  wouldn't be paying out bonuses of £1.5bn to staff in its investment arm. £5m is chicken feed in comparison.  The taxpayer owns at least 75% of RBS, and  RBS is the 65% shareholder in Direct Line.  RBS received £1bn in dividends from the flotation.  The Probert settlement has to be managed to keep Bethany and her mother the rest of their lives, since her mother has had to give up work to care for her daughter. If Geddes and Hester were told to pay it personally out of their own fortunes, they'd barely notice it.

Stephen Hester has two children as does Paul Geddes .   How might either of them might feel if their child  was smashed in to a hedge and then they had to spend three years fighting for the compensation which insurance is supposed to provide.  But then, earning a basic £1.2m a year, I expect Hester would  be able to airily wave it away and pay someone else to do the hard work of looking after the child.  If the worst came to the worst, he could sell the 350 acre estate in Oxfordshire or the ski chalet in Verbier.

Stephen Hester should ring Paul Geddes and tell them to settle before the stink does any more damage to the group ahead of the remainder of the divestment.  Geddes shouldn't even need telling. That he does, tells us something about the failure of Hester to inculcate a sense of duty and decency in his staff.  Hester will no doubt argue that under European Competition Law, he's not supposed to tell his executives what to do.  This isn't about European  Competition Law - it's about duty and decency.

 
It is the duty - already  admitted - of Churchill is to pay this claim.  Decency dictates that they pay the victim, not the lawyers.

Update 10 Feb 2013:  The Sunday Times reports:

THE boss of Royal Bank of Scotland will be handed a £780,000 bonus just weeks after the bailed-out lender was fined £390m for its role in the global interest rate rigging scandal. Stephen Hester is set to pocket the share award next month.  RBS, which is 81% owned by the government the taxpayer is adamant that Hester should receive the payment, which was granted in 2010, as he has received only one annual bonus since joining RBS in 2008. 

Ah, poor lamb. If only he'd been wearing a hi-vis jacket.

Update 14 Feb 2013.
Inform Blog reports that Lord Justice Ward has retired.

Blue Moon

You can have a religious argument about the definitions of "a blue moon".  Whatever, this month contains the novelty of two full moons in one calendar month.

As it was so cloudy at the first full moon I wasn't able to see it so I'm hoping for better weather on Friday night. The August moon(s) are my favourite; she floats over the fens and fields as if looking for her own reflection in the water and windows.  The great harvesters creep over the land late in to the evening, half-paddle-steamer, half-dragon, then they vanish improbably by daylight as if they went back to giant burrows.

Logically, everyone knows the moon is a faraway rock but when you look at that silver white disc - or a ruby moon which I've seen - it is impossible to think of it as merely subjectively beautiful; she's objectively, intrinsically beautiful and always was long before there were any humans to wonder if you could reach her.

In 2005 Andrew Smith published his series of interviews with the astronauts who had done more than just wonder.  Standing at the pinnacle of thousands of years of technological development they had been able to answer the question: what's it like to go to the moon?

"Moondust - in search of the men who fell to Earth" was updated in 2009 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.  It is now 40 years since the final manned Apollo mission and  Smith's book puts the programme in to its historical context. He secured interviews from the remaining moonmen, including email exchanges with Neil Armstrong who clarified many factual points about the mission.

Thank goodness Armstrong's mission was successful.  The emergency speech had already been written in case anything went wrong.  And yet, as Smith's book shows, there is curious sense in which the eulogy remains true; the moonmen suffered a kind of death because their old selves would not exist thereafter and nothing they would do subsequently could quite compare with those few days.

This full moon will not have Neil Armstrong beneath it. I believe she'll be looking for him.
............

Moondust - in search of the men who fell to Earth
Andrew Smith, Bloomsbury 2005, update 2009
ISBN 978 1 4088 02380

Festival City

Edinburgh is rife with festivals.  There is even a website listing them.   The city is the setting for a new novella by John Robertson Nicoll called The Balloon Man in Edinburgh.

On a fine Spring day in Edinburgh a strange, shabby little man alights from the train at Waverley Station and makes a beeline for Princes Street Gardens bearing gifts for the squirrels that inhabit the trees there. He meets an old Polish gentleman who, feeling sorry for the little "tramp", offers him free temporary accommodation in his large house on the edge of the City's New Town. But old Josef doesn't know what he has let himself or his tenants in for. Over the next few days the old landlord, poor lovelorn Miss Laird and the crook, Driscoll, will all feel the effect of Buster's presence and their lives will be changed forever.

Currently it is available in a Kindle edition, £1.78, and there is a free Kindle app for those of us - like me - who haven't got a Kindle and want to read it on the PC. 

John R Nicoll also has a blog and is supposed - nudge nudge - to be getting on with writing an important fact-based play about Scotswoman  Jane Haining, who refused to abandon the pupils under her care when the Nazis took power in Hungary. 

Pretendy government at GovNet.co.uk

Back in September 2009 Witterings from Witney looked at a  body called GovNet Communications which paid various nabobs to be on their 'board'.   There's nothing unusual in this; sometimes the board member makes a useful contribution by way of consultancy, other times they are hired for their contacts or air of respectability and glamour.

Now WfW has received letter from solicitors Turner Parkinson LLP crossly stating that their client is not at all happy with the post. 


GovNet Communiations is a trading style of Partnership Media Group Limited no. 3307092

While the domain name govnet.co.uk is  allowable, the unwary will easily confuse it with gov.uk, and thereby be encouraged to mis-read the website as a government organ, especially with a board studded with lords who used to be ministers and an existing MP. The current key government website is direct.gov.uk but gov.uk is the beta site which may replace it.

It is a hazard of the domain name system that very similar names can be generated but owned by different people. Nominet will resolve disputes of this sort without going to court. Based on a quick reading of the nominet archive, Nominet asks users to make sure that websites are sufficiently different so as not to mislead people and takes in to account whether other intellectual property protections - such as trademarks - exist.  An intellectual property lawyer would have to advise as to whether the government has taken out any protections which would make the domain name 'govnet.co.uk' one they could complain about.

GovNet is proud of its speakers and essentially, sells influence 

Understanding ModernGov draws together a range of senior Government contacts, bringing you the very best speakers and trainers with the most relevant knowledge.

They also have another product called Understanding ModernGov copied on both the moderngov.net and moderngov.com registrations.  Nothing wrong with that, but the unwary might think they are part of the government.  Wording on the website fosters that impression.  For example:

Understanding ModernGov provide a portfolio of highly informative, interactive Government training courses that clearly and concisely explain the mechanisms of government and parliament.

But they aren't 'Government training courses' in the sense of being produced by the government, They are a set of talks about the government which you can pay to listen to. In some cases, from people who you've already paid once to do their job, and who are now selling their arses - or more likely, ours - to the highest bidder.

As the GovNet domain tells us:

Each course is CPD Certified, providing an in-depth perspective of the mechanisms that drive central, regional and local government.

They are certificated in as much as there is an established trade body, the CPD Certification Service, which acts as an umbrella for private training providers.

Membership of the CPD Certification Service signifies the corporate commitment to the sharing of knowledge and enables members to have a wide range of material independently certified by us and to utilise our certified CPD symbol on items promoting their CPD material and on Certificates of Attendance and CPD Self-Assessment Forms.

You must put what weight on this you think fit.  Some trade bodies are stronger than others. In general, the older established ones have acquired legal protections linked with the obligation to enforce minimum standards and the mechanism to do it, and their stamp carries weight, especially if they can exclude other people from using identifying words in that trade, e.g. The Law Society.   However you should never assume a body has any legal authority until you've checked.

Here for example, is an Intellectual Property course, which originates in a specialist body with legal standing and is delivered by recognized training bodies, which is definitely worth the money.  That's the sort of thing to look for when buying training. 

The existence of Partnership Media Group Limited is on the govnet.co.uk and moderngov.info websites but it is gently down-played, directing the attention to the Government Procurement Service logo with "supplier" written under it in tiny letters, misleading the glancing eye as to who is providing the material.

  we are the UK's leading Public Sector publisher and events organiser.

Well, yes, that may be strictly true in the sense of publishing material about the public sector, by it isn't a "Public Sector" publisher and events organizer.

Partnership Media Group Limited says:

The names, images and logos identifying the GovNet News and Events portal and Search the Public Sector (STePS™) , are proprietary marks of the Partnership Media Group Limited trading as GovNet Communications. Copying of our logos and/or any other third party logos accessed via this website is not permitted without prior approval from the relevant copyright owner.

Did they bother asking the UK government if it minded someone taking a domain name so very close to their own?

The ASA and judicial review

There have been updates in the tale of Cranmer and the Advertising Standards Authority, (ASA)  where Brer ASA punches the tar baby Cranmer for not raising its hat to him, only to find that he gets stuck in a worse mess than being offended.

It is not clear why the ASA decided to have this fight which is a political one disguised as being about an advert.  What little authority the ASA has has arises from the willingness of advertisers to accept its rulings rather than risk having a statutory body created. It is industry-funded which is better than taxpayer-funded.  There are plenty of firms who just ignore the rulings; presumably they are not worried about whether the ASA can lean on publishers or search engines to restrict access to their material. Here is a list of them.

The eminent blogger Guido Fawkes says this in a comment to Cranmer:

The reason I ignore them is because they have no power. No statutory basis. They are a self-appointed, self-regulatory organisation ............. no different from the green ink loonies who write to me every day apart from the fact that they have a letterhead.

 Which prompts the question:

If judicial review is the process for reviewing the decision-making process of  public and quasi-public bodies, is the ASA the sort of organisation which can be taken to judicial review?

There has been at least one judicial review which by the very act of being heard bolsters the view that the ASA is a quasi-public body doing public work and, besides, people keep responding to the ASA as if it had Authority. 

In an earlier case the ASA investigated whether quoting passages from the bible can be an advert which causes offence and concluded that they were and should not be used again. Instead of pointing out that ASA is not the first body in history to have suggested that Christians can't say what they are going to say whether you like it or not, the Sandown Free Presbyterian Church (SFPC) took the ASA to judicial review. (This was a Northern Ireland case).

Mr Justice Treacy found for the Sandown Free Presbyterian Church:

Mr Justice Treacy accepted that there had clearly been an interference with the applicants’ right to freedom of expression [Art 10] since the effect of the ASA’s decision was to prevent the applicant advertising in similar terms in the future.  

He accepted, however, that the ASA had a legitimate aim of maintaining a system of self regulation in the advertising industry which provides adequate controls against the publication of material that would cause widespread or serious offence, including offence that interferes with the rights of readers of a particular sexual orientation to respect for their dignity and private life. 

 (Summary of judgment here.   Full judgment here.)

Mr Justice Treacy appears to have accepted that the ASA is a quasi-public body doing public work.  The ASA aren't about to contradict him. They engaged the experienced  Dinah Rose of Blackstone Chambers and she doesn't appear to have argued for dismissal on the grounds that the claimant could not bring her client to judicial review. That would have been to argue that the ASA has no legal standing and isn't a quasi-public body.

The Sandown Free Presbyterian church brought the case for its own purposes so it didn't ask that prior question. The reviewer of the case - because there were internal challenges first - also thought the ASA had authority.

I consider that the ASA has a duty to weigh up the arguments and counter-arguments and decide whether the advertisement has, or is likely to have, caused serious or widespread offence. That decision must be taken with due regard to the context, medium, audience, product and prevailing standards of decency.

My emphasis on "duty".  Does it have a duty?  It certainly can give whatever opinions it likes, but then so can any club on the behaviour of its members.

In paragraph 53 the court makes explicit its belief about the status of the ASA;

1. Moreover, seriously offensive advertising attacking a particular sexual orientation may interfere with the right to dignity, and the right to respect for his or her private life, of the reader of the advertisement. This right is itself protected under Art.8 of the Convention, and the ASA, as a public authority, has a positive obligation to protect that right.

By paragraph 66 the judgment implicitly accepts the ASA as an emanation of the state even though it is in the form of a private company, industry-funded and cannot compel compliance. In paragraph 73 he considers that although this isn't an example, there could be instances where the ASA would be entitled to order the church "You can't say that".

But surely that depends on establishing whether the ASA have any power to order anybody around who doesn't want to be?  Making an assumption doesn't deal with the prior legal question: can the ASA be brought to judicial review?  

This is not the first time the question has been raised since governments began to set up private agencies to do quasi-public work.  In 1987 that question was asked about the Panel on Takeovers and Mergers. The discussion involved looking at the reality of regulatory power being distributed in a world which was changing.

There is no hard-and-fast rule about this; the court reserved the right to decide to hear a case because nobody can foresee exactly how administrative structures will be in the future.  However, strong guidelines emerged for when a body's decisions can be reviewed: (note: my summary, not definitive)

- the body has to be producing effects in public law

- the body does not need to have statutory support but it ought to be able to point to something official from which it emanates, although that might be a convoluted route as a result of other acts which does not set it up directly.

- the body's rulings cannot be ignored, that is, if it has enforcement power such that when it gives a ruling, it is only fair that it should be reviewable by the courts.

Not all of these have to be in place to bring a case. Their Lordships tried to differentiate an argument between members in a private club with situations where that club has public law effects.

Applying that to the present example, the first is arguable. The ASA has some effect on advertisers but would you call that public law? It involves cutting off the access to revenue by telling publications not to accept advertising, which is definitely an exercise of real power.

The second is also arguable. The ASA keeps saying the government recognizes it but do they have a duty to undertake investigations.  What power compels them to do an investigation when they are unwilling?

But, as Guido Fawkes demonstrated at the very beginning, the third ground is the weakest. If you have a choice whether to take any notice of them, at least in certain media, then how are they a tribunal or a public body?

If  the ASA is not a public body because it cannot enforce its rulings, why is it being taken to judicial review?

If the ASA is a public body, can the Freedom on Information Act be used to prise open its secret complaints procedure?

A little more about the ASA

Cranmer has published the response he has given to the ASA.

The ASA has issued a pompous statement which seems to miss the main point: they haven't got any grounds to investigate and even if they had what they think of as a right to investigate, they still haven't got any power to do anything except, maybe, to hand it to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) who are most unlikely to want to tangle with this one. The EHRC prefer to stick to beating up fond old couples such as Mr and Mrs Bull down in Cornwall (and then claiming they didn't mean to launch a second attack for more money), and calling Christianity an infection.

We can all investigate. A little more about the ASA is useful to collect.

Firstly, it's not an "authority". It's a company as registered at Companies House, specifically:

ADVERTISING STANDARDS AUTHORITY LIMITED (THE)
MID CITY PLACE
71 HIGH HOLBORN
LONDON
WC1V 6QT
Company No. 00733214

The members of the council are all listed on the website with short clickable biographies.  The best known are Lord Smith - that's Chris Smith who, although gay, has never made any secret of it and has never allowed it to be an issue in any of his work, at least as far as I know, Professor Andrew Motion best known for his poetry (some of which is OK but not as good as Pam Ayres), and Martin Narey, best known for heading up Barnardos and signing-off the sort of ads which stigmatize white men as child beaters. 

The people who run the organization day to day include 
Miles Lockwood, Director of Complaints and Investigations

Miles joined the ASA in September 2010 and is responsible for leading the complaints and investigations teams, the core function of the ASA, who dealt with over 28,000 complaints last year. He studied History at the University of Nottingham and then obtained two post graduate certifications in Law at Nottingham Law School. Qualifying as a solicitor in 1998, he worked in commercial legal practice and specialised in general litigation and dispute resolution matters. 

Lockwood's top-class biography continues. It is hard to believe that he signed off a poorly screened complaint which is not within the scope of their own code, so perhaps he didn't know about it.

It isn't the first time that the ASA has had a spat like this with Christians.  At the end of March 2012, the ASA took issue with a standard  Christian leaflet where they offer to pray over you in the belief that this can promote healing.  The group who gave out the leaflet also included a sensible health warning about visiting your doctor.  There was no suggestion that they tried to coerce belief, cozen money out of people or prevent people getting proper medical attention.

This didn't stop the ASA sticking their noses in, attempting to make themselves arbiters of the printed material which barely qualifies as promotional.  There's nothing unusual about healing services; the ASA appears to be trying to claim the right to tell churches they can't use the word 'healing' at all.   

Since Christians have the unfortunate trait of often being irritating they don't get the support they deserve when their right to freedom of expression is infringed.  Blogs which should have known better failed to identify this as an freedom of speech and religious expression argument, thinking this was about a literal interpretation of what everyone with a scrap of education knows is poetic language and religious belief, both of which are entitled to protection and are matters of opinion, not fact. Why isn't Andrew Motion doing something brave like protecting freedom of speech?

The ASA used its considerable industry funding to lean on a bunch of harmless street pray-ers whose earnest desire is that my knee will be fixed without surgery by divine intervention.  Let 'em try, I say.  If it works, I'm better off, if it doesn't I'm no worse off and I'm still on the waiting list.  How strange that the hedge-witches, shamen and priests all accept that it is my choice whether to go for surgery or not but the ASA thinks it knows what is best for me.

The disputes over faith healing and what can be said about it stem in part from the antagonism in the alternative health-care field.   This was foolishly increased when the chiropractors decided to try to use lawfare (good word, I just heard it) to silence their critics. 

They attempted to sue Simon Singh for libel and such is the state of our laws that they were able to be a significant nuisance until finally dropping the case in April 2010.  It went all the way to the Appeal Court, though, before they were told that Singh's original article was comment, not fact, and that he was entitled to express his opinion.

There is a suggestion from one blog campaign that the ASA isn't up to much, but  it is confusing because it attempts to be over-clever and simply does not understand the ASAs limitations.  Then again, the ASA doesn't understand its limitations.

The website asa-rocks.org  has a series of pages expressing its rage over quackery and the apparent inability of the ASA to do anything about it.   I share some of their anger but they don't seem to understand how difficult it is to draw that line, especially since some medical doctors have engaged in quackery and misrepresentation, often in places which do matter such as when they are expert witnesses in court.

In climate science we've had the epic quackery of Global Warming but so far the ASA hasn't sent any letters to UEA asking them too explain themselves or tear out pages of their undergraduate prospectus which presents them as having a science faculty.

The bugaboo of asa-rocks is asa-sucks, the defunct campaign which noticed that the ASA was not sticking to the process of receiving a complaint and investigating, but instead had got in bed with another campaign, the Nightingale Collaboration, to systematically challenge the alternative services sector.   When this was revealed, the ASA dropped the association.

The Nightingale Collaboration makes some good points, but as it was fuelled by reasonable outrage at the use of the libel laws against Singh, its main  purpose was to return-volley lawfare against the Chiropractors by finding something they can't substantiate then reporting them to the Trading Standards which does have some legal standing, unlike the ASA. This summary gives a fair over-view of both sides.  The chiropractors should not have played rough if they didn't want the same level of response.

The other alternative care providers generally took a robust attitude to the ASA, advising that on receipt of a letter you should consider binning it as junk mail or perhaps making a complaint to the ASA that you have been contacted by an organization which misrepresents itself as having legal authority.

Technically, the ASA could take issue with every beauty parlour whose facials claim to rejuvenate the skin. That is an impossible claim to substantiate for prior reasons based on entropy.  However, the ASA would find itself even less popular if it decided to go after Madame Rene; do they seriously think her customers expect her to do miracles?  Her customers are not interested in hearing they look like WH Auden and there is little she can do about it; they expect Madame Rene to get on with the aromatherapy massage and for the ASA to mind its own beeswax.

I will decide for myself what I think of god-botherers and beauticians.  

Update:  In which Cranmer fisks the ASA interim statement and it emerges that the group who were supposed to have complained are very cross because they didn't, although one of them complained about about a separate magazine.


Update: Bucko points out that the ASA fail to comply fully with company law.

Magazine prosecuted for stating the bleedin' obvious

The Spectator is to be prosecuted for breaching a court order which banned anyone from writing about the defendants in the Stephen Lawrence case lest they claim they could not receive a fair trial because the jury had been influenced.

This a fair argument in most cases; you don't need to be a lawyer to assent to the common sense of wanting an unbiased jury, without getting fetishist about whether the jury have ever heard of the defendant.  However it was pointless in a case which already had billions of words devoted to it and had begun life as an attempt very publicly to force the CPS to bring a case, then gone on to a high-profile inquest, press campaign, an investigation by the Police Complaints Authority (as it was then) and a major enquiry, and then another investigation by the IPCC in 2007.    The original trial collapsed; this meant some defendants could rely on the old double jeopardy rules to avoid a second trial, so hallowed law was changed to put them on trial again.

Whether they could ever have received a fair trial after the papers had tried the old "sue us for defamation if you aren't murderers" gambit is open to debate, and must raise issue of whether the inquest and three further reports were entirely without influence. If we refused to try everybody who was already known in the public press, then Jeffrey Archer would never have gone to gaol.

Besides, if this Spectator article could have prejudiced a jury, it would be against the Crown, not against the defendants.  As an article it offered little further damage to those on trial; its ire was directed at the court system by pointing out what everyone already knew, i.e. that in the intervening years there were other prosecutions all fully covered in the press, by the BBC and by the law wire services.   It wasn't secret.

Neil Acourt and David Norris were jailed for racially abusing a police officer, Detective Constable Gareth Reid, in 2001.  They were convicted and appealed on the grounds that they hadn't been able to receive a fair trial due to being repeatedly condemned in the papers since 1993. 

No, said Lord Justice Mantell, sitting with Mr Justice Wright and Mrs Justice Rafferty, just because you've been criticised in the press is no reason refuse to bring a trial.

However, they slightly reduced their sentences which they felt to be out of line with other examples of similar offences, which caused Sergeant Ravi Chand of the National Black Police Association to complain that judges didn't understand how serious this was. In other words, their original sentence was tainted by being an interim attempt to payback people who were felt to have got away with murder. The Sun was explicit in this "Lawrence thugs jailed at last" it said, glad that the CPS had finally got a conviction to stick against them.

So one of the defendants  in the 2012 murder trial, David Norris, had already had the issue of prejudice against him answered in the courts. On the day that the Spectator was supposed to have distorted the very fabric of the space-time continuum, that information was available all over everywhere, including the BBC, the Daily Mail, and a solicitor's news service which was open to the public at that point and has since gone behind a paywall. 

Later, the officer who alleged racial  abuse by Acourt and Norris, DC Gareth Reid, alleged that he had been the subject of racial discrimination, losing an employment case against the Metropolitan Police in 2010.  He had brought previous discrimination cases in 1997 and 2001.

Eventually, convictions for murder were brought in. The evidence looked poor but these are not the defendants one goes to the barricades for, and they have been convicted by a jury of their peers.  Possibly the grounds for appeal will mention The Spectator and will make as much as they can of the fact that if it was worth prosecuting the publication, that must mean it had some influence. So the defence must be pleased that they've been handed an extra argument to use by the legal machine which was so keen to see the clients jailed.

The Lawrence case has  always been choked with people trying to use the murder of  one young man as proof of racism in the police.  Neither the collapsed trial, the inquest or the PCA investigation delivered the conclusions which the press and campaigners wanted.  Eventually,  the Macpherson report got us decades of political correctness and which resulted in the police being  too scared to take on child abusers who instantly play the race card.

This time we are going to get the show-trial of a publication because the courts think this will demonstrate who's in charge and stop the pesky press reporting things or even mentioning what they already reported a decade earlier. Shush, someone in the jury might have heard of Stephen Lawrence.

It won't be much of a show; editor Fraser Nelson has already said they will not contest the case and will just pay the fine, which is a wise call.  But note, the original piece wasn't about the guilt or innocence of the defendants; it was criticising the justice system. However, Mr Justice Treacy thought the jury weren't influenced by two decades of media coverage and they said they hadn't read the Spectator,  and he met them so he should know.

Here's a useful timeline to help keep track of all the things other than a couple of lousy paras in a patrician house-mag, which might have come to the attention of anybody conscious since 1993. 


Stephen Lawrence has been held up as a martyr for 20 years, and so he is; but if there is one thing any averagely-educated person can see it is that martyrdom can swing round unpredictably.  Keep going with the prosecutions of the messengers and the political correctness, and we yet might see scumbag David Norris carried out of court, re-sanctified and wearing the white robes of a poor misused victim of the justice system.

Are you looking at my bird?

Police are arranging protests about cuts to the front line which they say will make their job impossible because they already have far too much to do.  Strange then that two uniformed persons - thought to be officers - were dispatched from Harrow police station for a word with a gallery owner.  (Note: contains an image some people may find shocking. Report: Evening Standard)

An officer happened to see a picture he disapproved of - apparently while he was on a bus - and was able to divert two of these furiously busy personnel from their normal work of catching murderers to argue about classics, or rather, to lean on the gallery owner to take down a picture of Leda and the Swan.  As it happens, they were packing up for a new exhibition anyway.

If the gallery manager, Jag Mehta, gives an accurate account, the visitors claimed that 'condoning bestiality' was illegal, which sounds more like a PCSO making something up on the spot. 

In general, you can condone what you like, providing you don't mind what people think of you. What you can't necessarily do is is carry it out (Sexual Offences Act 2003), distribute it (Obscene Publications Act 1959), or possess a depiction (Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008) without the law imposing a penalty. 

The legislation is dotted about rather than consolidated, but luckily the Crown Prosecution Service has written a  useful guide to these offences.  However, there have been cases which alter the matter, which means their guidance cannot be a definitive. Also, the 8 page pdf the Ministry of Justice wrote has vanished, or at least the online copy has. [Update: having trouble with this link which worked for a while and now does not:  Here it is,  maybe it will come back.  Many thanks to the researchers at Backlash.]

The following relies on the CPS guidance on extreme pornography.  They know all about Leda and the Swan

The painting "Leda and the Swan", another example raised during debates in Parliament, would also not be caught by the new [2008] offence, because it would not meet the "explicit and realistic" test.

Established photographer Derrick Santini was sailing very close to the wind under this definition.  His portrayal of the myth may explain why somebody going past on a bus may have got all hot'n'bothered.

Santini’s use of the lenticular process involves photographing a sequence of still images, using live models, which are layered and printed using a special technique, under a ribbed plastic sheet acting as a lens.  This results in a hologram-like effect where the figure within the frame moves as the viewer passes, although not an actual hologram, it is a form of animation where an illusion of depth is created.

Makes a change from those old nudie cards where if you tilt the picture, the lady's clothes jump off.

I'm assuming that the swan and the woman were photographed separately otherwise the RSPCA might have something to say about it - and I'm guessing that what is depicted is impossible. You try training a swan to land in that space.  There isn't a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Models. It says something that given a picture of a naked lady and a migratory bird, apparently in the act of congress, the police are worried about the one with feathers.

If you want to see the full set of pictures, they are on page two of Santini's gallery under the heading "lenticular artworks".  The website is full of slow-loading animations.  It might not be easy to explain them if somebody were to ask so they shouldn't be regarded as safe for work, which is a different question from whether they fit within the definition of an offence.

There are plenty of legal disputes to be had here; for example can a theme such as Leda and the Swan come within the second CPS heading?

 That the image is extreme namely grossly offensive, disgusting, or otherwise of an obscene character;

A little offensive, yes, particularly if it is the rape version of the myth but in general the theme of humans and swans getting it on is common. But one of them is only disguised as a swan i.e. at various times in the past it is more acceptable to show a human and an animal rather than two humans.  There are always  people who worry about the sexual nature of the motif in showing any intimacy but only the ignorant have ever misunderstood that it is about sex with animals.  

Besides, it is neither reasonable nor possible to go back through the museums demanding that all the Leda and the Swan versions are hidden in the archives, trying to decide which ones are merely ecstatically affectionate. 

In addition, it was only in January 2012 that a conviction was denied by a jury in R v Peacock.  The material being supplied by Michael Peacock was nasty and fitted within the guidelines of what could be regarded as obscene, so the CPS brought the case under the Obscene Publications Act. The jury did not accept the prosecution case.  Since we can never see in to the jury room, we don't know exactly why, but we do know that this signals that the CPS are mistaken in what the public are prepared to regard as likely to deprave or corrupt.

However, Alex Antoniou of the City Law School points out that all this means is that the Obscene Publications Act may be undermined.  The CPS now uses the newer extreme pornography charges as these are about possession of an image rather its than publication:

prosecutions under the new sections introduced in January 2009 (ss 63-7 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008) related to extreme pornographic images have dramatically increased in the last two years: according to the CPS, in 2009-10 prosecutions were brought in respect of 213 offences, whereas in 2010-11 the number of offences reached 995. It is noteworthy that these latest figures released relate only to possession of extreme pornographic images portraying bestiality.

A prosecution under s.63 requires the permission of the Director of Public Prosecutions.  An officer could be in a great deal of paperwork if they didn't check first that the CPS wanted to use a classical theme as a test case - especially the exact one which was quoted in Parliament.  This artwork tests the boundaries of realism by using photography but on the other hand, a moment's thought about swans tells you that you can't be looking at something realistic.

It is reassuring to know that when the Home Secretary cuts the number of police officers, it won't matter because we can just get rid of the two spare ones who go round wrangling with art wallahs. Until then, don't tell them about Europa and The Bull.

Here is a Leda and the Swan pas de deux. There are two things to note: firstly that the male often holds his arm in a swan form. This is to signify that Leda sees a swan but we all know he's really supposed to be a god in disguise.  Secondly, that the bodies echo each other the way birds court.

The Police State of Norfolk

A fracas has broken out over pictures of football strip which got out ahead of the PR gig, and the story is now running in the Daily Mail and on regional television. A fan found pictures of the new strip on an authorized website and re-tweeted them, 12 hours ahead of the official  launch.  The club noticed and was annoyed.  It called the police.

I can understand that the PR wallah who was arranging the jamboree was miffed at having their thunder stolen just before they hawked their wares, but what I can't understand is why the police thought that they had to involve themselves in a civil matter by trying to classify this as within the scope of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

The essence of our computing legislation is that, like much modern legislation, it is drawn widely because it is impossible to predict the situations in which it might be needed. The onus is on the police and then the CPS to not use it unless they've got a case which is in the public interest.

The wording was deliberately vague; the security services pushed for the Act in 1990 following the quashing of the Gold and Schifreen conviction, so that unauthorized access would be criminalized rather than the method for gaining that access.

The difficulty with this kind of 'no arguments sonny' legislation, though, is the unwritten deal that the state won't use it to get involved in private matters, to settle private or commercial scores or apply it trivially. We don't have a written constitution. Maybe it can't be adequately expressed in writing, but that's the deal and any reasonable grown up understands it. The difficulty is knowing when to refuse to become embroiled because it is just too trivial to be a criminal matter.

Why exactly did the police rush round to a fan's house? This was obviously a case where one is sympathetic then goes to talk to the lawyer before getting involved.   Possibly there was a matter of copyright infringement, but that's a civil matter, not for the police.

The allegation of a hack doesn't appear to have any substance; Norwich FC themselves put the pictures up via the intermediary promoter Emmerson Marketing, who didn't lock the pictures off properly and were amazed when the fanboi found them by looking at their HTML code and seeing the links there, although they were not yet revealed (reports El Reg in the comments).  Whoops.

As for any commercial implications; there aren't any. Norwich got some free advertising for a garment which nobody but its own fanbase cares about.  All the commercial damage came from the police trying to put the frighteners on a customer.

This was a case which was very low priority, and yet the police reacted because the h-word was waved around. Because they are police and not marketing managers it didn't occur to them that if you are planning the launch of a new home strip, in fact quite a lot of people have to know about it - particularly the sponsors, Aviva, who will have approval of everything, the t-shirt printers, the photographers, players and video artists making the promotional material, and the people building the marketing website who need the pictures ready to go.   The idea that a strip is 'secret' is charming nonsense,  a fairy-story which was told to the police, taking advantage of their relative ignorance.

Shirts don't happen by magic. They happen by contract - and contracts are not, in the first instance, a matter for the police.

Let's have a look at the time-line.

April 17 The fan posts pictures on Twitter
April 18 Norwich FC call the fan at 4.30am, then the police.
April 18 The police interview the fan
April 18 PR releases run by interested websites and papers - see below.
April 19 Daily Mail runs the story about the police interview.
April 19 Norwich FC official launch at Carrow  Road, which shows strip with a different style collar and new yellow streak on the shorts

The police seem unaware that Norwich gave the full story and a picture of their director, famous Twitterist Stephen Fry, posing with the shirt on April 18 to the insurance industry website Insurance Times and other websites such as strip suppliers. In order to set that exposure up, they may have given the material to websites on the 17th, who then package it for release on the 18th.

All that happened was a fanboi broke an embargo which didn't apply to him anyway.

Extract:

Aviva extends sponsorship deal with Norwich City to 2016

18 April 2012 |By Newsdesk

Insurer will continue to feature on team’s shirts and sponsor Community Stand

Norwich City director Stephen Fry said: “We’re so thrilled Aviva are with us for another four years. A four years which we hope will see our beloved club consolidate its natural home in the Premier League. “The new kit fitted me like a…football shirt. I was so pleased to be able to launch it, even while 12,000 miles away. You’d be amazed how many Norwich fans there are in New Zealand.”

 ........

As Fry explains he is in New Zealand and posing with the shirt, we can safely assume they've been in production for some time, other wise he wouldn't have one and they wouldn't be available to go fresh on the shelves, would they?  This is not 'secret' - it's just that some advertising material was pointed  out to the target market a few hours before the pr launch was scheduled. It's no more than a sneak preview of a product, the soul of gossip.  Nothing whatever to do with the police, who misdirected themselves as to the nature of this complaint.  It's only a 'surprise', the way a new car or a birthday present is a surprise. Fanboi rudely spoilt the "surprise", which is hardly surprising because that's what fans do - they talk about the club.  Clubs generally encourage this because without fans they are nothing.

The Club initially tried to defend its stupidity, then realized it had got it wrong and embarrassed the sponsor, Aviva, who sponsors them to butter-up the customers, not antagonize them .  The very last thing you should do for someone who just paid you a pile of dosh to be associated with a global brand, is draw attention to a minor stuff-up at a PR launch. Norwich FC made their own patron saint Delia look like a cheap thug.  Given Fry's media sophistication and his own enthusiastic use of Twitter, it is most unlikely that he would have run screaming to the rozzers.

The Police State of Norfolk

Someone with clout at the club called the police - was it CEO David McNally? He would have had to be asked first.  Then somebody with clout in the police responded by sending a constable when they should have insisted on taking legal advice first .  Any lawyer worth their salt would have pointed out that a twelve-hour spoiler was not the end of the world and that the first thing to check - politely -  was how the leak happened. It's not necessarily a criminal matter at all.

The question is why did the police act so swiftly?  Was it an example of funny handshakes, the hospitality box and putting the apparatus of a police state at the disposal of a bezzie mate?

That the police mistakenly thought this might be a hack is just about credible.  However, since it took five minutes to explain that the club's promoter had left live links laying around, the correct response is "Sorry to have troubled you Sir, thank you for being so cooperative".  And then tell David McNally that they are satisfied there was no criminal offence and that they wouldn't be taking it any further.

Instead, Norfolk police have ham-fistedly continued to suggest that there might have been an offence if malice had been present, with the poor fanboi being marched around to say sorry as if he could be guilty of something criminal.  This was not a criminal offence at all.  If it was anything, it was for the civil lawyers and not the police.

Norfolk Constabulary are very bad at these matters. They have just spent months being suckered in to the Climate Change debacle, where people mashing up data to suit their agenda have used - or wasted - police time in trying to control and shut down academic dissent. 

Sammy Davis Jr.

During the week the name of Sammy Davis Jr. was mentioned and someone said they hadn't realized he was more than a somewhat mannered singer.   This is an easy mistake to make; Britain did not receive the quantity of shows which demonstrated his ability.  Let's put that right now that by thanking the uploaders and his estate who have made  material available so that we can glimpse how this major talent worked and begin to appreciate that he was one of the very best popular entertainers which America has ever produced.

Those who knew him insist that he was in fact the greatest; talented in  an over-arching way that was difficult to see it all at once.

Exhibit one is a section of a 1963 show he did with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.  Despite the natural competition between them, they knew who was the talent on that stage.  Sinatra pleads  "What do you waaaant of us?" They go through their joshing and party pieces in the time honoured "Hollywood Party" mode, then at 6:14 Davis produces Marlon Brando.

He doesn't just impersonate a character; he acts it for both good and ill, showing the power but also the incoherence in that style of theatre. Impersonations, my foot. Right there in a tiny link you have a profound critique of the method school of acting; Davis was never incoherent in his life and he's not convinced that it is of any value.  Dammit, this is supposed to be performing for an audience, not modelling.

The Copa Room, Sands Hotel, 1963 part 3



Item 2.  This interview ought to be compulsory viewing for every grunting youth in the land. Pay attention boy, this is how articulacy makes people forget about the looks of the person in front of them. Although Davis regularly joked about race - it was, and is, a major political consideration which can get in the way of a performance - it is known that what he was particularly sensitive about was the glass eye he was obliged to wear after a car accident.  Although he walked in rhythm, it's observably the case that he was no raving beauty. Perversely, that was lucky. A prettier face might have found it impossible to cope with the disfigurement.  As it turned out, people were not all that bothered; they wanted him to joke, to dance and to sing. Luckily, so did he.

Wogan interview with Sammy Davis Jr. 1989 (part 1 of 4)



His signature song, Mr Bojangles, has many versions available. This one is from 1985 and is remarkable for its simple orchestration which never overpowers the poetry. When lesser performers attempt it they misunderstand it to be a schmaltzy tum-ti-tum.  Davis shows that it is in fact an intimate monologue delivered to you, personally.

Mr Bojangles 1985



A Youtube search now shows the major performances of his life and The Estate of Sammy Davis Jr. has archive photography and further material.   In 1964 Ed Sullivan knew he had created a special moment when Davis and Ella Fitzgerald appeared together for him.  He says that when the audience grows up, it will tell its children they saw them perform.  What Sullivan could not foresee is that the recording survived and is here.

StageFright

To the Theatre Royal at Bury St Edmunds for the first production of StageFright by Michael Punter, directed by Colin Blumenau.

Set 1894 during the run of Sir Henry Irving's  "Faust", the action takes place on a night with winter weather so foul that it traps Sir Henry and his theatre manager, Bram Stoker, in an attic dressing room in the eaves of the Lyceum theatre in London.

By coincidence, the temperature on Saturday in Suffolk was -7C during the day and -12C at night, so the audience came in having just experienced the sucking cold of an icy grave.

Bram Stoker was writing Dracula in those days, summoning him up from the influences of theatre, religion, secular philosophy and his own Irish talent - under-estimated by Iriving - so that there seems to be another character, one who never appears, threaded through the work.

It is believed that Irving disapproved of Dracula - he is said to have walked out of a reading and never played the part, although it would have been natural to offer it to him. It is also possible that Conan Doyle saw the pair working and fed that in to his own creations, Holmes and Watson, recognizing it to be much more than a case of an employer and a technical manager.

Irving  was a self-made man and he knew exactly what he was doing; creating effects on the stage. Even his name was partly an illusion, re-fashioned because it sounds so much better than John Henry Brodribb.   Michael Punter gives Irving all the doubt and superstition which goes with the job of acting no matter how hard Irving tries to stick to rational responses.  If you spend your working life summoning up illusory characters, isn't there a risk of calling up something real, Irving wonders, of speaking the Devil's name and having him answer. Perhaps he is always listening for the invitation, like an actor waiting for his stage-call on the other end of a speaking-tube?

Stuck for that freezing night in an attic, the pair of them begin to discourse on this - or rather, Irving declaims and Stoker sets up the lines for him, because that is how their relationship works. They think they are alone but an empty theatre is never completely empty; you have to be careful what you do, what you say because you never know who may be listening. Could a building record the events which happen in it, Irving muses.  If you ask the staff of Marks and Spencer just a few yards away in the modern shopping centre in Bury St Edmunds they will tell you yes, and the building doesn't even have to exist any more. They still get half-ghosts of monks wading through their sales floor and sinking down staircases which have not existed for centuries.

The snow falls outside and soon Irving and Stoker begin to suspect they are not alone.

The Theatre Royal is an 1819 building, beautifully refurbished for a modern audience, so that this is the perfect intimate place to watch a play which aims to recreate the conventions of Victorian stage and parlour magic.   The set has been constructed to nudge out in to the auditorium, dissolving the line between stage and seats so that we are invited to float in the dingy cluttered room, a spectral presence, as if hovering at a seance table.  This is the world where lighting is by gas; that is the product of science and an advanced economy but gas light is still soft and variable and is delivered in fittings which resemble the old oil lamps.  We are looking in to a dusty jewel-box of enchantment and treasure.

The director and author were adamant; to capture the rich flavour of  High Victoriana it had to include stage illusions which the Victorians would have expected in a theatre they would have recognized. Drama had not yet reached the naturalistic psychological approach which is most common today.  Stoker and Irving squabble about this;  Stoker has all the best technical arguments but Irving's case is made in the play itself; there's no mistaking the jump of the audience when .... spoilers, sweetie.

The premier run of Stagefright is at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds
From Tuesday 14 February until Saturday 25 February
Tickets cost between £8 and £20 depending on seat and performance, bookable online (scroll down and select date).

For some locations in Suffolk, the theatrebus deal is available which includes transport, the ticket, a drink and the programme.  All tickets: £23  For under 26’s: £11.50

Concessions are available including the £5 on-the-day for under 26 year olds, but must be booked via the box office: 01284 769505

The performance is suitable for anyone over 8 years old but is genuinely frightening.

Chymorvah Appeal ruling

Allsorts disappointed with ruling

Peter and Hazel Bull of the Chymorvah Private Hotel in Marazion have lost their appeal to treat civil partnerships differently to marriage as a matter of religious belief.

Full ruling -  Bull & Bull v Hall & Preddy

This means that while the Bulls cannot refuse to have civil partners sharing a double bed,  exclusively gay hotel owners will rely on there being no specific cases which challenge their own blatantly discriminatory practices.  

A marketing term applies here; "gay-friendly" hotels are hotels which reassure guests who happen to be gay that they are welcome. "Exclusively gay" hotels are a significant niche market which specializes in welcoming guests who are gay. They are usually run by hoteliers who are also gay. They exclude other other guests on the basis of sexual orientation and/or gender. It is not clear that this has been legal for a while now, but there has been no significant challenge to the practice, only to some of the advertising.

The popular Pride Lodge in Blackpool advertises

Pride Lodge offers '4 star' accommodation specifically for the LGBT guest and their friends. We do not masquerade as a Blackpool Gay Hotel, we are exclusive and choose not to accept bookings for families or Stag and Hen parties,

So Pride Lodge does not accept a) heterosexuals (unless perhaps you are a friend of an LGBT person) and b) married heterosexuals. It believes it can treat people in civil partnerships differently to those in marriages - precisely the opposite of what was intended in law, now clarified in the Chymorvah case.

Hamilton Hall in Bournemouth is run by John Bellamy, offering specialist retreats exclusively for men; there is an emphasis on gay men but the hotel says that it will accept bookings from heterosexual men.  It wasn't him who worried about the Chymorvah's inconsistencies:

"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."

Bellamy apparently understood the danger and intolerance of the Chymorvah case but perhaps was poorly quoted in February last year:

"We've been campaigning for this law for years so that everyone is equal, but it could spell the end of gay-only resorts."

Well then, maybe either stop campaigning and accept that if you want to discriminate, the others will have to be allowed to as well. 

Bellamy immediately went to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) for legal advice.  They say they won't prosecute him - because it is alright to discriminate if you are gay but not if you hold religious beliefs -  ands since they can veto these cases they can probably prevent anyone else suing him.

Hamilton Hall is also the first men only hotel in the UK to be investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and be allowed to continue being a MEN ONLY HOTEL. 

In a similar vein, Guyz Hotel has changed its wording which used to specify that the hotel was exclusively male and exclusively gay, so that now is by implication. Except on the nudist weekends where you can be gay or bisexual but must be male. And naked, thus bringing it with the possible exceptions.

Key West in Torquay is an entire resort which is exclusively male, gay and bi-sexual i.e. it discriminates against exclusively heterosexual men, and women.  It does this by bringing itself within the definition of a private club.

At Key West Resort our ethos is to provide a safe and enjoyable environment for Gay and bisexual men. In order for us to achieve this Key West will operate as a Private Members Club. To use the facilities or to stay at the resort it is a requirement that you fit the criteria of the membership, Gay or Bisexual Male, you will be required to sign an acknowledgement (or tick the accept box when booking online) that you have read and agree to the membership rules.

A gay club can refuse to allow heterosexual married Christians in at all by calling themselves a club, but a Christian heterosexual hotelier cannot refuse to allow a pair in a civil partnership to share a double bed. Can you agree to be discriminated against?  That surely does not give  protection against the legislation. Maybe Chymorvah should just make it clear that it is private members club.

In the year since the original  Hall & Preddy v Bull & Bull case there has been a subtle change on the websites and marketing.  It is still clear which are the exclusively gay hotels but some of them have become reluctant to be identified. The case has done nothing to help them openly promote their businesses, which have had to go back to the days of people knowing which were the gay places and which not.  Cliff House in Devon has been established as a gay-owned, gay-clientel hotel for forty years now, but does that mean it will refuse bookings from hetersexual couples? It is difficult to tell from its gallery which includes things such as "Gareth's Mum's Wedding".

What should have worried the EHRC was that both the comments in Pink News and a balanced piece by Nelson Jones in the New Statesman  lacked sympathy with the prosecution.  It is obvious to anyone who isn't a lawyer that what matters is everyone making a living and everyone getting the hotel room they want.  That is best done by tolerating the inconsistency on both sides. The price for gay hotels is the very modest one of a couple of insignificant private hotels which are barely any different from the Pink House in Brighton.  They just all operate slightly different exclusion criteria.  Goose. Sauce. Gander.

There are female hotels too.  Hitherto a smaller sector, they may appeal to gay women but the overall sense is of refined gentility which relies on nicely brought up ladies not wishing to bump in to wuff gentlemen in the corridors.  The demand for this is growing. You would not worry about your daughter or your granny using these exquisite rooms; they might also appeal to ladies of very orthodox religious views.  Overall there is more tolerance of this version of discrimination but the growth in the service has become controversial as business hotels begin to reserve corridors by gender - and may refuse a booking from a man if there are only 'female' rooms left.

The irony is that while the Chymorvah hotel in Marazion found itself in the middle of a fight because it refused entry to two men who happened to be civil partners,  the original claimants Hall and Preddy didn't rock up to the beatiful women-only  Chymorgen on the North Cornwall coast only a few miles away and demand to be let in.

Apparently they don't mind being discriminated against on the basis that they are men, but they do mind that a pair of Christians won't recognize their civil partnership as equivalent to marriage. 

It is, and was, always about trying to force the public, and especially the orthodox Christians,  to accept civil partnership as marriage, which is why Hall and Preddy went to Chymorvah and not Chymorgen. 

....

Earlier link: Marriage a la mode - Popcorn