Author Archive
The Number ONE Show
Whoever said “It’s Blue Peter for grown ups” hit the spot perfectly. Perhaps it’s because I’m hopelessly besotted with Christine but no, it’s much more than that.
I admit, openly, without regret or embarrassment that on Facebook I am a member of the “When I grow up, I want to marry Christine Bleakley from ‘The One Show'” and the “Christine Bleakley: the sexiest TV presenter in the world” groups.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/profile.php?id=578616094&ref=profile
The One Show is a masterpiece. It crams so much information and entertainment in. It rivets me, not least because every day now I look for the slightest reference to Christine’s “Strictly” life. (Yes, I am obsessed).
I think the secret is that it’s live and that many of the features are made under pressure within very tight timeframes. These are the circumstances that bring out the best in many creative people when the adrenalin kicks in and the job just has to be finished.
I think The One Show has all the makings of a BBC classic. It could even be around for as long as Blue Peter.
Yet Again the MOD Fails Our Heroes
Hercules XV179, Call Sign Hilton 22
I hope that I never have to experience the reality of war. but, I think like every man, I am fascinated with how I would behave in combat. We all want to be heroes and, as I have read, courage is often forged from the fear of disgrace. The idea of letting down one’s comrades can be more frightening than bullets or explosions.
Even during the Second World War, I would now be deemed too old to fight. They won’t even have me in the TA, much as I would love to volunteer. Yet every day, right this very minute, there are men and women younger than my own children, who are being called on to put themselves in mortal danger on our behalf.
Our Hercules Heroes
These people deserve the very, very best that we can do for them. Clearly, the reality of combat means that there will be times when circumstances are less than ideal. Ammunition may run out. It might have been preferable to have larger calibre weapons given the force that the enemy deployed. If air cover had arrived earlier, lives may have been saved. The very nature of combat is that it is unpredictable but when there are lessons to be learned it is imperative that they are studied in depth and acted upon.
Why, oh why, is there episode after episode where the MOD refuses to acknowledge its failings and seems to duck and dive to avoid responsibility? This isn’t about civil service office politics, about covering one’s back or manouvering for promotion. This is about death and pain and blood and grief. It’s about mothers who will never see their sons again, about fit, healthy, beautiful bodies and minds that are broken, twisted and consigned to the scrapheap with – yet another scandal – insultingly inadequate financial support.
The Steve Jones Memorial Bench
Steve Jones was an SAS Lance Corporal on board the Hercules shot down over Baghdad in 2005. When I first came across the memorial bench on Thorney Island (see http://pjroldblog.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/walking-the-dog-2/) I was deeply moved and when I returned there a few months later to find a memorial book full of glowing tributes and commendations, I felt that this story was one I wanted to take further.
So I made contact with the MOD press office and very tentatively enquired what support they might be able to offer me with a further story, perhaps even a documentary. A very charming female Wing Commander seemed interested and said that two of the men on the Hercules had been personal friends. The Army though were different. I received a courteous but frosty reception and was told that there was no question of being put in touch with the victims’ families.
I can understand, of course, that some of the families will just want to move on and that journalistic investigation may prolong their grief. In the end it was made clear to me that while the MOD wouldn’t stand in my way, it believed that the story had already been exhausted and wouldn’t offer me any support.
I have been an MOD spin doctor myself. Some years ago I was the communications advisor to the Assistant Chief of Staff, UK Support Command on the launch of the British Forces in Germany Health Service. The year that I spent working at Joint Headquarters in Rheindahlen gave me an insight into the services that I am very grateful for. One memory is of the extraordinary combination of austerity and luxury that I experienced while staying in the Officers Mess. My room was like a prison cell but in the morning there was silver service at breakfast as I sat at a huge four inch thick mahogany table surrounded by oil paintings, regimental colours and memorabilia. There was no menu. I could just order whatever it was that took my fancy.
My overwhelming memory though is of the incomparable integrity of the people I worked with. It left me with a feeling (entirely undeserved) of connection with the military and an understanding of how one really could trust the man next to you with your life.
In the extraordinary age in which we live, when cocaine-fuelled w**nker bankers abuse their customers and the taxpayer, when venal politicians grub around in the muck on billionaires’ yachts, whilst in Afghanistan our boys lay their lives on the line in medieval conditions, it is time that the MOD displayed a fraction of the courage that men like Steve Jones have and admitted its failings to start the process of putting them right.
For the full story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7683909.stm
Not In The True Spirit Of The British Forces
Corporal Mark Wright
I was dismayed, upset and disillusioned to hear Rear Admiral Tony Johnstone-Burt, Commander of Joint Helicopter Command, speaking about the inquest into the death of Corporal Mark Wright and the maiming of his six colleagues in Afghanistan.
The Coroner, the “guardian of the crown’s pleas”, with the full authority of the Queen herself, found, as a matter of fact, that the mines were detonated by the downdraft from the Chinook helicopter that went into rescue the men. Yet the Rear Admiral had the audacity, impropriety and outrageous, traitorous arrogance to say “that’s not true at all”.
Rear Admiral Tony Johnstone-Burt
The Coroner said that the MOD should hang their heads in shame. The Rear Admiral should hang his head in a noose for the disgraceful, insincere, weasel and wicked words he spoke in an effort to deflect the Coroner’s criticism.
Clearly these men were badly let down and the Rear Admiral’s conduct will bring more pain to those that survived and to all the families and friends concerned.
Why can’t the senior officers and the MOD display just a fraction of the courage that Corporal Wright and his colleagues did and admit they failed them?
Behaving Like Mad Geordie Crackheads
So is this to be pattern that our rescue of the w**ker bankers will follow?
Northern Rock is now owned by you and me. Not by Gordon, Alistair and their cronies but by British taxpayers. Do we want them throwing people out of their homes onto the streets so that we then have to pick up the bill for re-housing and supporting them?
Now that the “new” management has got its greedy hands back on the tiller they’re heading straight for deep water where they can pillage, plunder and overfish yet again.
I say get rid of all the w**ker bankers and put some real business people in charge. We don’t want the “experience” of those that have mismanaged banks already. We want new blood, fresh ideas, people who know the reality of business, not the fantasy world of banking.
I hope and pray that our rescue of these organisations will prove successful based on root and branch reform of the way they do business. We don’t want a few token sacrifices. We want all the dead and rotten wood cut out.
Let’s remember that these scoundrels still owe most of us many thousands of pounds in illegal bank charges they have stolen from us. Perhaps as much as £50 billion over the last six years. The sooner the OFT gets its finger out and resolves this outstanding matter the better.
Another Nightmare For Harriet Harman
Who could possibly look more foolish than Harriet Harman? Whatever her words, her appearance in an outlandish splash of fake rocks and cheap party dress or city suit of whatever sort makes her look utterly, utterly beyond any credibility at all.
If she has a communications advisor (which she must have – at least a dozen|) then what sort of incompetence is this? Her words are nonsense. Her meaning is impenetrable but her appearance?? No politician should suffer from such an amateurish and humiliating presence in this day and age. I am sure that she has a sincere intent but what better example can there be of over-management to the point of disaster?
Walking The Dog 10
Morning mist, a September Sunday in the valley between Sutton Poyntz and Osmington.
The sun is already high in the south east. 
But in the steep sided valleys, mists meander around in the growing warmth.
Autumn colours are beginning to develop and the mellow fruitfulness is in full bloom. One of the many local birds of prey pulls off from teasing the lowly rooks and flys up to a taller perch.
The grass is soaking wet with dew as if a huge cloudburst had just passed by . Everywhere there are hundreds, thousands of glittering cobwebs. As your angle of view changes on a moorland bush another hundred thousand catch the light and another and another.
High above, great V-shaped skeins of canada geese are heading south west for the Lodmoor and Radipole reserves. As I raise my imaginary Boss over-and-under and swing onto the leader they break formation. They tumble and dive, all order destroyed. Like a pack of Messerschmidts and Focke-Wolfs set upon by Spitfires and Hurricanes, they spray apart in random escape
Portland is invisible but there is a flotilla of racing sailboats in the bay and a pair of jetskis zooms past at full throttle. The Weymouth lifeboat, out I hope on exercise, carves a huge half mile circle of wake. In the background a giant tanker stands guard at the harbour entrance
It is time to play mountain goats and so right to the very edge of the precipice run the dogs. A moment’s pause then down they go slippering and skittering in pursuit of another rabbit.
Now Is The Time For Recrimination – Before They Get Away!
I am delighted to see that The Times and now, this morning, Andrew Marr, are joining me in calling for bankers to be brought to account. The “Thunderer” even said that “heads must roll”. Roll they must, many of them, until the baskets are full and the streets of the City are running with blood. The executions should take place in public so that the greedy thieves and scoundrels who have pillaged our economy can be subject to public humiliation and villification as they meet their doom.
I will carry the metaphor no further but the dread and fear that should now be ruining the weekends of the chief executives and chairmen of the banks should be little different from that of the French aristocrats awaiting the guillotine.
We must insist that those individuals who have taken multi million pound bonuses from banks, funds and all forms of financial institutions that are now insolvent must be able to justify the payments in the same way that a director of a small business that had gone bust might have to explain his drawings to a liquidator. In many instances money will have to be recovered.
Whether guilty of personal wrongdoing or not, the chairmen, chief executives and non-executive directors who have presided over this catastrophe must take responsibility and go! The same sanction must fall on the heads of the regulators.
Lord Adair Turner, Chairman, and Jon Pain, Managing Director Retail Markets, who both accepted poisoned chalices at the FSA only last month may have some excuse but the rest of the board should be summarily dismissed, not even allowed to resign.
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have been extraordinarily unequivocal in many of their statements this week. We want to know much, much more detail about the “mechanisms” that will put in place to restrain the banks in future. If the taxpayer has saved your business then in future you will not be gambling on ludicrously complex financial products that only you understand and for which you set the rules. We prefer that you lend £100,000 to a small business rather than £10 million to a virtual roulette wheel.
“There a million stories in the Naked City”. Now is the time for “le dénouement”.
I Must Go Down To The Sea Again…
My first few weeks in Weymouth are brim full of experiences, pleasures, delights and precious few disappointments.
Here I am, nestled away in the delightful village of Sutton Poyntz in a deep cleft in the chalk hills in the biblically named valley of the River Jordan. Behind me, to the north (for an old sea dog always looks towards the water!) is my mountain. In fact, my recent purchase of an Ordnance Survey map has revealed that it achieves only one quarter of the height needed to qualify as such. Believe me, when you climb it, as I do most mornings, it seems plenty high enough. I used to think the miles that I walked with Capone and Carla around Chichester Harbour meant I was fit but in Dorset there are hills!
To the south is the most stupendous view across Weymouth Bay to Portland. The Jurassic Coast tumbles away towards Lulworth. The monstrous cliffs of Portland join the town’s Esplanade along the great shingle isthmus that is Chesil Beach and the sky, usually blue, reminds me every minute that I must be close to paradise.
It is not always a peaceful scene and I look forward eagerly to some vicious winter storms. Last weekend, Portland was hosting its speed trials and, sure enough, a 40 knot wind was blowing across Chesil Beach. The wind and kite surfers sailing parallel to the road were clearly outstripping the cars and the breeze was very much more than brisk.
I parked up, released the beasts and we set off to walk west over the shingle spine. The wind was as fierce as any I have known. Carla whimpered. Capone struck on. I struggled. Chesil shingle is large pebbles, difficult to walk through and with the blast in our faces almost impossible. As my head peeped over the crest I remembered what real wind means. Reaching the top I could lean my whole weight into it and riding the gusts, stand like Kate Winslet at the sharp end of Titanic, supported on air, resplendent in space.
We stumbled down the far side, an awe inspiring sight before us. Eight foot monsters pounding down. Spray flying thirty feet high. The majesty of the ocean before us. The huge, roaring, raging, thundering of the shingle dragged back in the undertow. A lump in my throat, my tears mixing with the stinging spray. The overwhelming, compulsive, massive power of it. I am part of an island race. The salt must run in my veins because this is being alive. Nothing can be more complete, more absolute, more real. Time stands still while the incomparable terror and beauty of nature displays itself.
The walk back is much easier with a helping hand up the hill and in the lee of the shingle mountain the wind now feels gentle and modest. This is why I came to the ocean. This is what feeds my soul.
I remember more than 20 years ago standing on the north coast of the island of Iona with my four month old son in my arms and being similarly overcome. If this is what Weymouth offers me in the first month then i am here for life.
Today, it was blissfully calm. The sea at Bowleaze Cove was as flat as the millpond at Emsworth. Above a million feathers of high cirrus cloud, slightly below, scudding cotton wool puffs, dark at the edges, a Dali-esque caricature of a sky but real not surreal. This is my new home and I love it!
Peter Reynolds 