Bowie: Six years

It was a Monday, a cold and grey day just like today, six years ago. I had to get up before 7am to catch an early tube. The radio alarm woke me. I am not a great morning person, but what I heard made me jump up from the mattress. There was tension in the voice of Nick Robinson, the presenter of the Today Programme that day, as he broke the news through my radio's speaker that David Bowie was dead.

"Oh, no don't say it's true", were the words that flashed in my mind.

Poleaxed, I got up and got ready to go to work.

I walked down Brixton Hill - I had been a resident of Bowie's birthplace for 15 years by now - and before crossing the road to the tube station, I stopped by Morleys department store. On an external wall there, around three years earlier, a portrait of Bowie as Aladdin Sane had been installed by Australian street artist, James Cochran.

It was just past 7.30am and already people had gathered in front of it, laying flowers and lighting candles.

I got on the tube, still numb with shock and grief. I put on my headphones and scrolled to my Bowie songs on my phone. The only one I could play was Sorrow.

"With your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue, the only thing I ever got from you was sorrow."

The last Bowie song I had listened to was just the night before. I had been watching on Channel 4 Deutschland '83. As the episode closed, the credits rolled to the sound of Modern love, one of my favourites.

Throughout the tube journey I could only listen to Bowie songs. The sorrow began to lift a little as his talent and humanity vibrated in my eardrums.

My mind was transported to how Bowie soundtracked my life, how he had changed the world.

That evening there was joy as well as sorrow in Brixton. The Ritzy cinema displayed on its marquee the simple words:

DAVID BOWIE

OUR BRIXTON BOY

RIP

My eyes may have watered a bit then.

People were on the street, with guitars singing along. The flowers outside Morleys carpetted the pavement.

An impromptu memorial party had been arranged at very short notice at the Prince Albert pub. It was absolutely rammed and the queue to get in snaked down Coldharbour Lane. Fortunately, my wife and I knew one of the bouncers on the door and she allowed us to jump the queue.

The pub was full of life, tears and fellow feeling.

Yesterday, on the anniversary of his death, I again walked down Brixton Hill and headed towards the Aladdin Sane portrait. There were fresh flowers and burning candles. The flame still burns. The black star still shines.

Let's have a heated debate

Here we go again. Televised election debates have been proposed by Britain's major broadcasters, this time suggesting a '4-3-2 strategy', where the PM would go head-to-head with Ed Miliband in one debate, both would be joined by Nick Clegg for another and all of them joined by Nigel Farage in a further debate.

This had provoked predictable fury from other party leaders, and David Cameron has urged broadcasters to look at spreading the debates over a longer period, not just during the six week run-up to polling day on May 7.

pic: Sky

Cameron says that the three leaders debates during the 2010 election campaign 'sucked the life out of the campaign'. The debates had novelty value, I guess, with the UK finally catching up with the USA which had its first presidential debates 50 years earlier. Did it suck the life out of the 2010 campaign and what did the debates achieve? 

Well, it briefly led to 'Cleggmania' but the LibDems poll rating slipped back by polling day. Voter turn out went up slightly, but it is hard to link that to the televised debates, but rather more to do with the election being much more competitive than that of either 2001 or 2005 when Labour was still the overwhelming favourite.

It is clear that politicians are going to play politics with any proposals, because that is what politicians do. Yet, it is vital for democracy that those who seek to govern us are accountable to voters. Debates are a powerful way of increasing that accountability.

Here are two proposals that I suggest could: a) could take some of the politics out the deal making around the set up of the debates and; b) widen public engagement by making the debates not the sole preserve of the traditional broadcasters.

Firstly, let us make the debates a permanent fixture of general election campaigns and let us have a neutral arbiter of the rules. In the US, since 1987, there is a standing Commission on Presidential Debates which sets the rules. We do not need to set up a new body for this, but could give the job to the Electoral Commission.

Secondly, let us have at least one of the debates on-line. The Telegraph and the Guardian have already teamed up with YouTube to make such a proposal for 2015. As a spokesman for the Digital Debate Campaign says: "We believe that one of the debates should be on the biggest video platform in the world, YouTube. More than half of people under the age of 44 get their news from the web rather than television and it's time that politicians moved into the digital age."

Let us urge our politicians to make it happen, make it permanent and make it digital.

Politics 40 years on

Being a politics junkie I have been watching BBC Parliament's complete re-broadcast of the Oct 1974 election results, tonight. This is of special interest to me as I was born in the middle of the campaign (which, means, I only worked this out recently, I was conceived during the three day week). Of course, I stayed up late last night to watch the by-election results, which got me thinking about similarities and differences between then and now.


What has not changed:

• In 1974 as in 2014 there was no public enthusiasm for either Labour or Conservatives, who were neck and neck and also the Liberals were on the slide.
• The BBC coverage was helmed by former Economist editors Alistair Burnett and Andrew Neil respectively
• Arguments over Europe were to the fore and there were promises of a forthcoming referendum
• Esther Rantzen on the telly; in 1974 reporting from the count, today fronting adverts for Accident Advice Helpline

What has changed:

• Union leaders and historians being interviewed and taken seriously
• Northern Ireland mired in violence
• Just 27 women MPs elected

Also it was interesting to see mentions of some characters who would become notorious: Jeffrey Archer, who did not defend his Louth consituency; Robert Maxwell losing at Buckingham; Cyril Smith winning in Rochdale.

I look forward to all the whizzy graphics the BBC will wheel out next May, but surely we have lost something?:

Ebola: Why the UK media panic? Because we like to be afraid

I was originally going to entitle this post 'Ebola, should we panic?' but I realised that only people with medical expertise can truly answer that question.

The tabloid front pages of the last few days have got increasingly hysterical on this issue. Horrifying details of the symptoms, fears of it spreading in Britain and demands for political action have been the leitmotifs of the coverage. It is, of course, a major health crisis in Africa, by any stretch of the imagination, but the potential for widespread infection and deaths here at home is minimal, just like SARS and bird flu, surely? As theonion.com has so presciently satirised the ebola vaccine is at least 50 white victims away. So, why the media panic?

When it comes to issues such as crime, disease, terrorism or tricky public policy issues such as immigration, the default media position is that of alarm, or even tabloid scaremongering. The more paranoid and Marxist among us, posit elaborate theories that it furthers the corporate interests of media owners to keep us scared and that encourages us to keep buying advertisers' products. I have never bought this theory. I have never met - or worked with - a journalist who has operated like that. Journalists may be venal and may have to toe the proprietors' editorial line, but they are not that calculating.

The fact is, that what is news is new. It is novel. It is different. Murders, pandemics, disasters are news precisely because they are deviations from the norm. This also explains other stories such as Ukip's media-driven rise. Ukip is new, it is different, it is box office; just like the SDP was 30 years ago.

Undoubtedly, on at least the single of issue of crime, tabloid sensationalism has fueled the fear. Home Office research in 2003 showed that tabloid readers' fear of crime was disproportionately higher than that of non-tabloid readers. I doubt that this has changed in 11 years.

It is not just the media ramping up the fear index. Politicians try to out do each other in 'demanding' measures that are increasingly 'robust'. We have a choice. We do not have to buy those newspapers. We do not have to vote for those politicians. But we do read those stories, we do click those links, we do call for action. Because, deep down, don't we all secretly like being a little bit scared?

Trolling and doorstepping: The good, the bad and the unacceptable

The British used to be known for being undemonstrative, un-emotional and possessing a stiff upper lip. The internet seems to have ripped those filters away - the mask of anonymity allowing the most bilious comments and the phenomenon of trolling.

How did a church-going, sixty-something, provincial woman such as Brenda Leyland become 'Sweepyface' posting vile comments about the parents of Madelaine McCann? Is this the face of modern Britain?

Trolls: the (almost) acceptable type

Well, no of course it is not. Much has been theorised about the death of the stiff upper lip, many dating the occurrence from the emotionally incontinent reaction to the death of Princess Diana. Yet we Brits have been much more willing to show our emotions than the cliché demands, whether on VE Day or mourning/celebrating the death of Margaret Thatcher.

Also it is not the relatively recent invention of the internet that has allowed Britons to be anonymously vituperative. The poison pen letter is a staple of British crime fiction and a news search shows that that this analogue tradition is alive and vile in the age of Twitter and Facebook.

Did Brenda Leyland - who it appears to have subsequently died by suicide* - deserve to be doorstepped by a Sky News team and exposed to the nation? I tend to agree with  Roy Greenslade , and Grace Dent that there was a public interest in doorstepping the woman - who was not identified by name on-screen - but perhaps it should not have been broadcast live.

Doorstepping has long and noble tradition in British journalism. Who can forget the dogged exploits of Roger Cook? Although more recently televised doorstepping has been more about theatre than getting results - I am thinking of Donal Macintyre here - for many journalists it has been the only way to confront the subjects of their investigation.

I have had to do it myself in my journalism days. I attempted to doorstep George Galloway at his Streatham home (his near neighbour: Cynthia Payne), but only succeeded in having a garbled conversation with his then girlfriend whilst avoiding the teeth of his angry Alsatian. I had a much more civilised response from a wealthy Labour donor I once doorstepped in Notting Hill. Both doorsteps were done to allow the insertion of the sentence 'when approached for comment at his London home, last night...' in the text of the newspaper article.

Incidentally, being a non-driver, I always had to hire a taxi whilst on doorstep duty from the cab firm my employers used. The drivers were known for their fearlessness. The firm was the only one to cross the picket lines during the Wapping dispute, thus earning the label of the 'scabby cabbies'.

I missed out on serving an apprenticeship on local newspapers, so as well as sadly lacking any shorthand skills I never had to do the death knock. Yet the doorstep is a vital part of keeping journalism alive - even in this world of digital trolls.


*I urge anyone who has to write about suicide to first consult the excellent media guidelines from the Samaritans.