Gordon Brown’s Favourite ‘Poem’

April 15, 2008

Blade is touched by the genesis of Mehmet Basci’s forthcoming book, World Leaders’ Favourite Poems.

“[Basci] wanted to unite, through the love of poetry, some of the world’s most powerful leaders in a dream of peace,” says his website. Basci does not speak English – something which is evident from the number of rogue apostrophes on his site – but managed to persuade a number of world leaders to submit their favourite poems. The result will appear, thanks to Parthian Books, on 15 August.

Our leaders leave their counterparts in literary hotbeds such as Belgium and Argentina to fly the post-modernist flag (Pessoa and Borges are duly lauded), preferring to wander amid more comprehensible clouds.

Tony Blair, perhaps contemplative of his role in the Iraq war, selects Rupert Brooke’s ‘The Soldier’. Its averment that the narrator’s death nevertheless leaves “some corner of a foreign field/That is for ever England” will, in today’s world, have its detractors, but at least Blair latched on to a bona fide poem. The beleaguered incumbent Prime Minister found even this a challenge, opting instead to honour lines written by an American professor as part of his Doctoral thesis.

Gordon Brown opted for a James Stockinger poem apparently entitled ‘The Hands of Others.’ It begins: “It is the hands of others who grow the food we eat, / Who sew the clothes we wear, / Who build the houses we inhabit.” Stirring, New Labour stuff, but when Parthian investigated further their marketing director had this to say: “We had never heard of him. We then found out that he was not a poet at all.”

Stockinger was happy enough for the lines to be used, though he noted that Brown had changed the words to suit his audience. Not just once, either, but in a dozen speeches over 15 years.

If Brown’s selection is not a poem, and if Brown is guilty of having plagiarised Stockinger for years (until the happy moment when his non-poem has metamorphosed into a poem), what of Basci’s dream of peace?

 

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From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.

Not so right said Fred

February 2, 2012
fred hat

So Farewell, then, Sir Fred Goodwin.

Now you are just Fred.

Not Right Said Fred, but plain Fred.

The Forfeiture Committee did for you.

No one had heard of it before,

But Dave said it had to act, and it did.

Trouble is that no one knows what to think.

Is it ‘Alas, poor Fred‘,

Or ‘Hurray! Sir Fred is dead!’?

We don’t know.

Do you?

By A. Mob, aged 1,378 and a half.