Charles Moore
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My thanks to the editor of the Observer, following my question last week about why people say ‘across the piece’. Roger Alton thinks that what they ought to be saying is ‘across the piste’. Is it all just Chinese whispers? I wanted to discuss all this with Mr Alton at The Spectator’s summer party, but it was impossible, trying to talk across the pissed.
The political blogs of Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes boast this week that each now receives more hits than the official websites of either the Labour or the Conservative parties. This breakthrough seems to have been accomplished by their reports of John Prescott’s love life. Although politicians have much to worry about from these sites, I suspect that lobby journalists have even more. As Guido (real name, Paul Staines) himself points out, the parliamentary lobby has, by its nature, a tendency to conspire with politicians to produce a ‘line’. It controls the flow of information and is bound to collude with the suppliers of that information, the politicians themselves. For years, attempts have been made to break up the lobby but these have never worked because there has been no workable alternative conduit. Now there is, or soon will be. The lobby takes its name from the physical place where the journalists stood to meet MPs. Today the web is usurping that gothic hall, creating an infinitely bigger and much less safe place.
A businessman friend observes, of the British army’s attempt to interdict the heroin trade in Afghanistan, ‘It will be as successful as if 500 Afghan policemen arrived in the City of London and tried to close down the stock market.’
This column complains from time to time, to a chorus of displeasure from readers, about the enthusiasm with which the planning system prevents new building in rural areas. So few of you will probably share my depression on hearing that when you visit the planning officer in an ‘area of outstanding natural beauty’ in the North, the first thing he says as you enter the room is, ‘Whatever you want, the answer is no.’
I feel instantly sympathetic with David Cameron’s call to love hoodies because I so much like the longest-standing hoodies in the West — Benedictine monks. Perhaps because of the poor reputation of hoods these days, or perhaps because of general barbarism and ignorance, it has become much more common for monks in their habits to be insulted on public transport. The next time you see a monk, give him a hug.
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