PETRONA

A rant and some new crime fiction reviewed

Considering that blogs are widely held to be suitable forums for ranting, I thought I'd continue the "rant" elements of my yesterday's post about Hans Fallada (mainly to do with high pricing of books by a dead author but also the Independent's awful "50 summer reads" online feature received a justifiable blast for being both feeble editorially and hopeless functionally). 

This time, the rant is directed at The Times Saturday "Review" section (I don't recommend going to the link as the paper is preparing to charge for online content so you have to register, etc, to read any of it and it isn't that good on this occasion.)  On the paper's relaunch a few months ago, the dedicated Books supplement was subsumed into a broadsheet "Saturday Review" section, with the Books coverage taking up the last two or three pages of it. Ever since then, readers have been subjected to vast, tedious articles on a small range of "loved by the Times" "arty, cultural, celebrity types" endlessly recycled --- nothing wrong with any of these people now and again, but it is boring to read about them too often, as they are a bit shallow. (An example of what we poor readers have to put up with is last Saturday's edition, with a huge photo of Tracy Emin, one of their regulars, on the cover with the giant-font caption "I've got my sex drive back". Please! I do not care and I am sure that most readers do not either.)

At the same time, the book reviews are reduced in number. I am mainly interested in crime fiction but I do like to read half a dozen reviews a week of newly published fiction books across the board, to keep current and to dip into the odd one. Not much chance of that any more, given the acres of space given to "celebrities" who have some vague intersection with "culture" - pop music and celebrity photography seeming to be most popular with the Times Review editors. Last Saturday, for example, had a double-page spread about celebrities writing about nature, with an enormous picture of a man I've never heard of (but a pop musician, according to the caption) in a river holding a fish and most of the rest being a photo gallery of minor TV celebs and pictures of wildlife species. Words - a poor second best. Also there is a one page feature on Philip Larkin - nothing wrong with him but The Times is always running features on Philip Larkin. The next one-page feature is a review of a cricket book.

None of this leaves much space for fiction. On Saturday, there were "main" reviews of just three books: a new edition of an old favourite of mine, A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (the "review" being a pathetic rehash of gossip about Hemingway's wives rather than much of a review); a book by Megan Stack who is apparently an American journalist; and a scathing (long) review of Bret Easton Ellis's latest book by Lionel Shriver (another Times regular) - which I don't need to read as I shall never read anything by this author.

The other dozen or so books mentioned are covered by brief paragraphs. At least this week there are some crime books reviewed - three of them in a composite review of about 500 words, by Peter Millar. One book is Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer (no mention that it's a translation, by K Seegers, or that it is on the shortlist for this year's International Dagger prize) - five brief paragraphs of praise. (My Euro Crime review of the same novel is here.)  The second is The Whisperers by John Connelly, which I have not read and shan't read as it is, writes Millar in his positive but short take, a fusion of horror, the effects of modern warfare, the supernatural, museum looting and an ancient Sumerian legend. No thanks. The third review (five paragraphs again but a bit longer this time) is a very positive one of The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly, which Millar describes as "a beautifully crafted, evocative psychological thriller that oozes Englishness and is all the better for it". (I think the author is Irish though, but never mind.) He also calls it "an elegy for the blighted summer of hope that was 1997". I liked the book but not quite as much as Millar. My Euro Crime review of it is here.

Observer interview with Maj Sjowall

The couple of recent magazine articles about Stieg Larsson and his Millennium trilogy, one in Prospect magazine and the other in Vanity Fair, were rather disappointing: a mix of rehash of the already well known and not very well-informed opinion on the part of the writers. These articles, I felt, were more to do with their writers showing off their intellectual credentials (not, as it happens!) to their readers, than with conveying anything constructive about the appeal of these books and their author's story.

Completely different from these two pieces in almost every way is a superb piece in today's Observer (22 Nov), by Louise France, about Maj Sjowall. Although I know the 10-book Martin Beck series, written by Sjowall and her partner Per Wahloo during the 1960s and 70s, and have read several articles about the authors and their novels, I learnt a lot while reading it, and found it very moving.

Sjowall did not become rich by writing these masterful books; she lives in a small flat and cannot afford a car, but she's happy and "free" as she defines it. The article tells the story of Sjowall's early life, how she met Per Wahloo, and how they came to write the Martin Beck books. Louise France, a fan of the novels, is right to point out how they still hold up today as exciting, involving detective stories even without the internet, email, faxes, DNA profiling and mobile phones, because they rely on tight plots, characterisation and have a strong authorial voice. Or, as she puts it: "what makes the books so compelling? There's something inherently honourable about them, something to do with the meticulous research that went into each one before it was written, and the frail humanity of the characters. They display, say critics, a relevance and timelessness that is the mark of all good fiction. The deceptively simple style is both sparse and dramatic – an accomplishment all the more remarkable when you think that the books were written by two people. "We worked a lot with the style," explains Sjöwall. "We wanted to find a style which was not personally his, or not personally mine, but a style that was good for the books. We wanted the books to be read by everyone, whether you were educated or not." People tell her that the Martin Beck series marked the beginning of a lifetime of reading. "They picked them up off their parents' shelves when they were teenagers and discovered a love of books." "

When they first met, Sjowall and Wahloo enjoyed reading the same type of detective fiction, those that had taken the genre out of the drawing room and onto the streets - Hammett and Simenon, for example. For their own novels, "Their aim was something more subversive than what had gone before. "We wanted to describe society from our left point of view [says Sjowall]. Per had written political books, but they'd only sold 300 copies. We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality. We wanted to show where Sweden was heading: towards a capitalistic, cold and inhuman society, where the rich got richer, the poor got poorer." They planned 10 books and 10 books only. The subtitle would be "The story of a crime" – the crime being society's abandonment of the working classes. The first plot came to them on a canal trip from Stockholm to Gothenburg. "There was an American woman on the boat, beautiful, with dark hair, always standing alone. I caught Per looking at her. 'Why don't we start the book by killing this woman?' I said." " That idea, of course, became Roseanna, the first book in the Martin Beck series.

Did the society that Sjowall and Wahloo feared come to pass? "Yes, all of it," she replies. "Everything we feared happened, faster. People think of themselves not as human beings but consumers. The market rules and it was not that obvious in the 1960s, but you could see it coming."

There's lots more in this excellent article, so I do recommend reading it. Perhaps, if you haven't read any of these novels, it might encourage you to try one. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

See also: Maj Sjowall interviewed at the WSJ.

Reviews of the Martin Beck novels at Euro Crime, including several by me.

Storm in a symbol over Brown/Kernick Deadline

I know that the blogosphere exists so that people who are het up about something can vent vigorously and in public; receive unprocessed comments of agreement from their buddies; with the result that all concerned feel vindicated in their little bubbles of mutual ignorance. You just have to learn to avoid this stuff if possible, or if not, to let it wash over you. Even so, I think that some of the posts I've seen about this Dan Brown/Simon Kernick deal, even by experienced bloggers, are just silly. (Here is an example.) In at least one post expressing outrage about possible customer misunderstanding, the wrong Simon Kernick title has been cited - a mistake that can be interpreted in various ways.

When I first heard about this marketing campaign, I thought from the headline of the article that it was a bit rich. However, having actually read beyond the title, it is clear that what is going on is this: W. H. Smith is running a promotion in which if you pre-order Dan Brown's next novel, you get a free copy of one of Simon Kernick's books, called Deadline. For this purpose only, the free copy has a cover with both Brown's and Kernick's names on it, in big letters. You can't buy this book, you are only given it if you pre-order Brown. You are told via one of W. H. Smiths usual flyers for this purpose that if you pre-order Brown, this is what you are going to get as your reward.

If you happen to be browsing the shelves at W. H. Smith in blissful ignorance of all this, you might stumble across Deadline by Simon Kernick, but it would have the usual cover - no mention of Dan Brown anywhere.

So what's the big deal? Simon Kernick is happy because his back-list sales have gone up. Readers are happy because they have been given a 'free' copy of a book that is probably more enjoyable than the one they have paid for and ordered, when they get it (the Dan Brown). The publishers and W. H. Smith are certainly happy, not least by all the extra publicity which will probably lead more people to take up the deal (even if only to invest in a limited collectors' edition of Deadline!).

Oh well, if bloggers didn't get upset about this, they would find something else to upset themselves over, I suppose. Quite possibly this post.

A welcome perspective

Thank you, Dave Knadler, for providing some much-needed perspective on MJ. Here's an excerpt from his post, but do read it all - it is one of those posts which sums up all the craziness in a nutshell.

"When a major celebrity dies, it's bigger than World War II, at least for a day or two. The stars get realigned -- literally, because there's one less of them, and figuratively, because big stories have this way of becoming small when something bigger comes down the line. Who cares about Sanford any more? Who cares about Iran? We are talking Michael Jackson here, who has Touched Us All in ways we will still be discovering years from now. Personally, the coverage I've found most poignant is this piece about the time Michael Jackson inadvertantly dropped his sequined glove in the toilet."

See also Dave's RIP for a TV Angel.

The Onion: King of Pop Dead at 12; Michael Jackson dead: what do you think?; and [warning] another story that is a bit tasteless.

And for something completely different and much funnier than the previous Onion stories: Copy Editor's Revenge Takes Form of Unhyphenated Word.

End of the line for science journalism?

Although I say it myself, there are some really stimulating, readable and fascinating articles in Nature this week (25 June issue) about science, journalism and communication with the lay public. Most of this post is taken from a Nature Network forum post: you're welcome to join in the discussion there.

Many researchers see science journalists as a public-relations service or as an ally in spreading the news about their work, asserts a Nature Editorial this week (459, 1033; 2009 – free to read online). The Editorial points out that there is a deeper value of journalism: to cast a fair but sceptical eye over everything in the public sphere — science included. This kind of scrutiny is easy for researchers to applaud when a news report questions dodgy statistics or dubious claims about uncertainties in evolution. It is not so easy when the story takes a critical look at animal-research practices, overblown claims about climate change or scientists’ conflicts of interest. But such examinations are to the benefit of society, which needs to see science scrutinized as well as regurgitated, and journalists are an essential part of that process.
This week’s Nature special issue, of which the Editorial is a part, shines a spotlight on the profession in changing, troubled times, and is published to mark the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists from 30 June to 2 July 2009 in London.
Scientists can do little to stem the current bloodletting, in which readers and advertisers are deserting publications that are downsizing or folding at fast pace. But, argues the Editorial, they can make worthwhile attempts to ensure that questioning and informed science journalism persists in whatever new forms might emerge from the carnage. If the future of the media truly is a dire landscape of top-100 lists, shouting heads and minimal attention span, then such efforts might at least defer the grim end. A good start would be to have a look at the advice for academics speaking to journalists provided by Brad Delong and Susan Rasky. And from the other side of the coin, the Washington Post‘s national environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin and its executive editor Marcus Brauchli discuss the future of science coverage in their newspaper in a Nature Books&Arts Q&A.
But do newspapers even matter? Blogs and microblogging services like Twitter are opening up conferences to those not actually there – how is this direct to web exposure affecting science journalism, and indeed scientists themselves and their options for peer-review and publication of their research? A range of angles on these questions are covered in a Nature News feature, including the story of a recent ’blogostorm’ about a Cold Spring Harbor meeting in which scientists seemed free to report what journalists could not.
In other articles in this week’s Nature, Toby Murcott in Toppling the priesthood argues that the process of science needs to be opened up to journalists; Boyce Rensberger (Too close for comfort) tracks the progression of scientific correspondent from cheerleader to watchdog; and Nadia El-Awady in The Arab boom suggests much room for improvement in local journalism in Arab countries. The bottom line? To what extent should scientists help — or care?
(All the Nature articles mentioned and linked here are part of the science journalism special in the issue of 25 June 2009. The three Essays and the Books&Arts article are free to read online for 2 weeks from the publication date.)

Narnia Code revisited

Via Brian Sibley:

If you missed last night's broadcast of The Narnia Code, the documentary based on Dr Michael Ward's controversial book, Planet Narnia and its interpretation of C S Lewis's septet of fantasy novels beginning with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you can catch it for the next seven days on the BBC iPlayer.

(Check out the caption competition at his post, if you do nothing else!)

Major distraction from crossword puzzle

I received a shock this morning, sitting quietly on a jam-packed train as usual, reading through the newspaper about G20 summits, financial crises, etc - worked my way through all of the main paper to the obits and weather (ignored the sports as usual), then opened the second paper, which is usually full of rather vacuous fashion and "human [lack of] interest" stories along lines of "man became house husband while wife went back to work after having baby and describes in minute detail what it is like to peel potatoes" or "Jade Goody deconstructed where's the cash for the accompanying ads". I usually skip briskly through these to get to the puzzles on the back page, so I can get the crossword and codeword done by Vauxhall, leaving the fiendish and killer sudokus to the tube journey to Kings Cross - with the Polygon in reserve if it is the beginning of the week (when the sudokus are easier).

Well, after all that preamble, there I was quietly sitting there when I opened a page and - this is what I saw. (Article is here.) It is a more interesting than average interview (not that I am biased), and completely threw me off my stride as far as the codeword was concerned. I think they really need to give the commuters some warning if they are going to include material like this in the paper.

I thought that those interested in Scandinavian crime fiction might like this quote: .... "his characters seem burdened by profound inner sadness. Is this melancholia part of him? “Maybe,” he says, seriously. “Although I like laughing at myself. But I do recognise that part of me.” Is it connected to his Danish roots and gloomy Scandinavian heritage? “Maybe,” he says again, still serious. “Although that’s an easy out, I suppose.” And this urge compulsively to create, how does that relate, exactly, to who you are? He sighs, sits back and, as if beginning anew the fairytale story of Viggo Mortensen, announces softly: “For as long as I can remember, even as a little boy, I used to think it was unfair that someday I was going to die.”  The story of Mortensen begins in New York, where he was born, but quickly moves to South America, where he was raised, the eldest of three boys, by his Danish father, also called Viggo, and American mother, Grace. The family remained in Argentina, where Viggo Sr managed a chicken farm, until 1969, when the parents divorced and Viggo Jr moved with his mother and brothers to New York State.  It was around this time that Mortensen began questioning the nature of mortality. “Whose idea was it?” he would ask. “I didn’t decide to come to this Earth and I certainly don’t want to leave it now that I’m here.” "

There are more musings about mortality, and the lack of need for amassing a fortune making rubbish movies, in the interview. Maybe Mr M should attempt writing a crime fiction book - he has done most other creative things.

Italy invades France, times two

According to The Times, Carla Bruni, France’s First Lady, has drawn the wrath of Pyrenean farmers by taking up the cause of local brown bears, whose reintroduction has fuelled a violent feud between naturalists and sheep breeders.

I wonder if Ms Bruni is a fan of an author from her adoptive country, Fred Vargas? The plot of one of Vargas's books, Seeking Whom He May Devour, does not concern bears, but rather: the "invasion of wolves across the Alps from Italy [nationality of Ms Bruni] is a source of fascination to the wildlife service and biologists, who observe their behaviour and track their movements with almost obsessive interest. One such biologist is a Canadian, Johnstone, who identifies totally with the wolves, giving them names and ascribing a personality to each, feeding rabbits to the one that is too old and toothless to kill his own prey. Everything changes, however, when sheep are brutally killed, in what seems from the toothmarks to be an attack from a giant beast."

According to The Times's account, "President Sarkozy, who married Ms Bruni in February, has so far stayed out of the “bear wars”, which pit environmentalists against farmers and local politicians who say the bears kill sheep and threaten their livelihoods." Ms Bruni, said to be "the epitome of the Parisian left-wing upper class", apparently agreed in 2006 to be “godmother” to Hvala, one of five bears brought in from Slovenia to replenish a population that had dwindled to about 15. The anti-bear protesters, among other initiatives, carry placards stating "Go home to Italy Slovenia."

Waiter, there's poison in my soup

"Chef sorry for poison plant error" is the title of a recent piece on the BBC News website. Celebrity (their word, he means nothing to me) chef Antony Worrall Thompson is quoted in a magazine interview about watercress and other wild foods saying that the weed henbane is "great in salads".  According to the BBC: "Healthy & Organic Living magazine's website has now issued an urgent warning that "henbane is a very toxic plant and should never be eaten". The chef had meant to recommend fat hen, which is a wild herb."
Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) has sticky serrated leaves; yellow, funnel-shaped flowers; and a stale scent. It can cause hallucinations, drowsiness and disorientation in humans.
Larger quantities can cause a loss of consciousness, seizures, trembling of the limbs and, in extreme cases, death. Hawley Harvey Crippen, also known as Dr Crippen, is thought to have used seeds from the henbane plant to kill his wife in 1910. 
Fat hen, on the other hand, is safely edible. Species include Aristolochia rotunda (Smearwort); Atriplex prostrata (Spear-leaved Orache); and Chenopodium album (White Goosefoot). I also learn (from Wikipedia) that the "plump version" of the eagle on the Bundestag is sometimes called "fat hen". Strange world.
Healthy & Organic Living magazine's editor Kate Collyns has written to subscribers to apologise. Her publication's website gives this advice: "As always, check with an expert when foraging or collecting wild plants." Not celebrity chef A. W. Thompson, one assumes. Or Prince Charles, but we knew that already. (See Tomorrow's Table for a good account of why P. C. need not worry, and therefore spout, so much.)

A slice of life in translation

What is the worst thing since sliced bread? Or, to look at it another way, what is the best thing since sliced bread?

These questions are being asked in two polls being run by the Times Online and news.co.au. If you want to vote, you have to do so by tonight (UK time, 10 July); the winner(s?) will be announced tomorrow, Friday 11 July.

The catch? You can't decide for yourself what is the worst or the best thing. You have to select from a list. The "worst" list is: Neighbours, reality TV, double-yellow lines, Sudoku "in the paper" (?), soy sausages, Crocs, loud ads on TV, sliced bread, the Health and Safety Executive and "fluoro" clothing. The "best" shortlist is: Victa lawnmower, World Wide Web, Penicillin (medical use), Penicillin (discovery), Sudoku (yes, "in the paper" again), the dishwasher, the Ute, Hills Hoist clothesline and Tim Tams (a chocolate biscuit).

According to the very limited information supplied by the Times, this shortlist was drawn up by news.co.au asking readers to nominate the best and worst Australian inventions. The Times implies that there has been a similar poll for "British" invention, but does not provide a link to that, so I wonder if this accounts for the eccentric nature of the two shortlists? I don't think I'll be voting, anyway, as it isn't exactly hard to think of better or worse things than those provided in this rather superficial exercise. I have learned what annoys some people in Australia, though.

Rules of reproduction

There is quite a blogostorm (more like a tornado, as blogosphere controversies tend to be whirlingly circular) going on about the recent decision by Associated Press (AP), a major news aggregate and syndication service, to limit the amount of its material bloggers can reproduce -- in some cases to less than 40 words, which is draconian. There is an article about the AP's decision, and some reactions to it, here at the New York Times. An AP spokesman is quoted as stating that the organization is going to "challenge blog postings containing excerpts of A.P. articles “when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste." "

The New York Times provides a helpful link to Blogrunner, so you can read the (predictable) reactions from around the blogs, ranging from reasonably informed to totally uninformed, and from rational to irrational. You can also see a hotly argued comment thread at Books, Inq.: The Epilogue, which is where I first learned about this story, together with a link to Instapundit's "irony alert", pointing out AP's extensive quoting from blogs in its own coverage of the story it itself has generated.

Many bloggers seem to think they can make up their own rules about what they write. Of course, this is true so far as the law allows, and the law has a very long way to go before it catches up with the Internet, and in particular, with user-generated content on it. But it seems to me that bloggers can't have it both ways: if bloggers want to be journalists and news-breakers, and be taken as seriously as some of them take themselves, they also have to be sensible of how they came by the information they wish to broadcast. Terms and conditions apply.

Print 'blogs' given value by The Times

So The Times has had a redesign (print edition) today. Probably this is being discussed on the Internet already; I haven't looked yet. The best development in my book is that the leaders (read 'blog posts' in today's language) are upgraded to the inside front cover. That's where they belong, in my opinion, to 'lead into' the day's edition, to give it its tone of the day. A redesign of a magazine or paper usually provides an excuse for the publication to look back at its past highlights, and to look forward to the future, and The Times is no exception with this fascinating historical article 'How the Thunderer felled a government and freed a pop star' (don't be put off by the title).

"If, one day in 1812, you decided to skip the leader column, you might have missed that the Prime Minister had been assassinated. It was only in a leader that The Times reported Spencer Perceval's murder. A mere prime ministerial resignation might not make it until paragraph three of a leader, even though the news was a Times exclusive. Similarly, one of the greatest scoops in this paper's history — the news that Robert Peel had decided to repeal the Corn Laws — appeared only in a leader. Over time, however, while leaders continued to provide fresh information along with opinion, the practice of using them to break big stories ceased. The reason for this change was a revolution in the treatment of news. Today's Times can be contrasted with the paper's report on the battle of Trafalgar. The news story ambled through the facts for several columns, informing readers only right at the end that Admiral Nelson had been killed."

Plenty of other fascinating nuggets at the link. Here's a short summary of all the new aspects, with an invitation to readers to comment online.

Tribute to an old hand

A wonderful but very sad post by Dave Knadler of Dave's Fiction Warehouse blog, on his last day as an employee, looking back over his long career in the newspaper business:

"I sat down at my desk, spooled paper into my Royal typewriter and stared at it. I knew a feeling of total despair. I could not leave until the story was finished, and yet as far as my memory served, absolutely nothing had occurred.
Fortunately, I had kept meticulous notes.... I went to work, faithfully transcribing the contents of my notebook into a chronological narrative that was, if anything, more tedious than the meeting itself. I know it took longer to write.
I left the whole mess on the editor's desk and got the hell out of there. It was long past midnight. The next afternoon I was afraid to look at the paper. But there was my story, on the bottom of page one. Except it wasn't my story. The beginning was different. Also the middle, and the end. And it was very short. I reread it and it dawned on me that a long-suffering editor had...pared away the worst of the crap to arrive at something at least marginally useful.
The rest, as they say, is history. I became a copy editor and a news editor and have passed the intervening decades fixing the work of others, excising cliches like "The rest, as they say, is history." Sometimes I've helped save reporters from catastrophic mistakes; at no time, I hope, have I ever made anything worse or harder to understand."

See also Dave's previous post, The ship has sunk.

Petrona (and Theakston's) in the Guardian

Alerted by the ever-vigilant Crime Fiction Reader of It's a Crime!, I bring you the breaking news that Petrona features in today's (Saturday) Guardian newspaper (review page 23). My post about my lunch with Dr Grump (Too groovy for scholarship) features as the first item in a group of blog posts discussing overcrowding in the British Library. Fame! Readers of the newspaper edition are referred to the Guardian books blog online, but nothing is there. At 1920 in the UK, the top post is dated Friday, so perhaps entries go up a day late. There is no sign of  the piece on the newspaper part of the website either. But "tomorrow is another day".  

While on the topic of book blogs, Karen at Euro Crime has highlighted the Theakston's Old Peculier "crime novel of the year" long list, with links to reviews of the books concerned at Euro Crime. Karen points out that of the 20 books, only four are by women. Shocking! Most of the books that I have read on the list are good, but certainly recent works by Ruth Rendell, Kitty Sewell, Diane Setterfield, Anne Cleeves, Jessica Mann, Tana French, Mo Hayder, Nicci French, Laura Stratton and Catherine Sampson are the peers of those on the list I've read, and I gather so are Catherine O'Flynn, Aliya Whiteley, Deanna Raybourn and I am sure others. The Guardian (again) is sniffy about the prize in any event, because the readers don't really get to choose the winner, even though it is a "readers' " competition. In the comments to the Guardian piece, Maxim Jarubowski points out that small, independent publishers are unfairly omitted in favour of "all the usual suspects with marketing budgets behind them". He doesn't give examples, however. I've read great fiction this past year in books published by independents such as Bitter Lemon Press, Arcadia and others, but they've all been translations, which I think are not eligible.

No fool like an April fool

I read the Times somewhat more attentively than usual on the train this morning to try to spot an April Fool, but was unsuccessful.

The story "Pressure grows on Mosley to stand down" was unfortunately not an April Fool. I write "unfortunately" not because of whether or not Max (son of Oswald) Mosley should resign from Formula One for indulging in Nazi-themed sex with prostitutes, but because Bernie Ecclestone, head of Formula One, is quoted as saying "If Max was in bed with two hookers, they'd say "good for you" or something like that." Er, no, Mr Ecclestone, "they" would not. (Maybe in his world they would, but not anyone else's world.)

Thankfully, the self-evident story "Diana death 'conspiracy' thrown out by coroner" was not an April Fool. (Diana coroner blasts lies and gold-digging by Paul Burrell, Diana's butler.)

The fact that every person in the UK will receive free health checks once they reach the age of 40 is apparently not an April Fool either, although it is a non-story as anyone can go to their GP and get a "free health check" by asking for one.

A whole page on the scruffiness despite recent haircut of Boris Johnson, Conservative party candidate for Mayor of London, was sadly not an April Fool, though shows one the depths to which the Times has sunk.

Kevin Spacey's justified comments about the BBC giving endless free advertising to Andrew Lloyd Webber's west end shows was not an April Fool. (I'd do anything for my theatre to get a plug like this from the BBC.) Good on you, Kevin. And good on you, Times theatre critic Benedict Nightingale, for your opinion on the matter, particularly re Graham Norton.

Other non-April Fools appear to be "Woman who invented an evil stalker is spared jail" and "Six dishes that rule mealtimes" (about "an insatiable appetite for TV cookery shows").

My money is on "mobile phone sniffer sees through fibs", especially as it does not seem to be in the online edition of the paper, but honestly, almost any of the stories could be a joke, rendering the point of even having a joke superfluous. The paper features a rather weedy historical round-up of April Fools here. Tomorrow, I'll be back to the quick scan and the jump to the back page (puzzles).

If you'd be interested in a much better round-up of April Fools with a scientific theme, I refer you to the Great Beyond . My favourite is the top ten creationist discoveries, but the new deep-sea communities from whale poo runs it close.

Seeing the light, in print

Even though it is seven pages long, I recommend reading this article: The News Business: Out of Print: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker.
(A printable version of the whole thing can be downloaded here.)

"Since 1990, a quarter of all American newspaper jobs have disappeared. The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death, that the newspaper companies’ solution to their problem was to make “our product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.” That may help explain why the dwindling number of Americans who buy and read a daily paper are spending less time with it; the average is down to less than fifteen hours a month. Only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim even to look at a daily newspaper. The average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising."

Yet: "we need to consider what will become of those people, both at home and abroad, who depend on such journalistic enterprises to keep them safe from various forms of torture, oppression, and injustice. “People do awful things to each other,” the veteran war photographer George Guthrie says in “Night and Day,” Tom Stoppard’s 1978 play about foreign correspondents. “But it’s worse in places where everybody is kept in the dark.” "

Crime fiction beats powerful blogs

Lots of excuses to get annoyed, should you so wish, either at The Observer for their list of the 50 "most powerful" blogs, featuring no book discussion; or at The Telegraph (the other week) for their much-pulled-apart list of 50 crime writers to read before you die.

The unimaginative, even lazy, Observer list is the usual mix of gossip, technology and eccentric blogs-- Huffington Post at number one, Boing Boing number two, PerzHilton, Techcrunch, Dooce and quite a few I haven't heard of but won't be checking out. Like the Telegraph piece, the Observer list is multi-authored, but unlike the Telegraph article, is simply a one-paragraph summary of each featured blog. For me, a more interesting "list" in a mainstream newspaper would have involved a little bit of actual journalism, and rather than being a list of these very well known and/or currently trendy blogs, would have focused on finding niche, "hidden jewel" blogs. It wouldn't take long, as there are plenty of them about.

The Telegraph article (published on 23 Feb) has stimulated a predictably stormy reaction among the universe's crime-fiction bloggers. Uriah Robinson posts on Crime Scraps about "Controversy from the Telegraph", with plenty of opinions in the comment thread. The Rap Sheet is drawing up a must-read list of its own, asking readers to nominate suggestions. CrimeFicReader of It's a Crime! identifies some significant omissions; Declan Burke calls the list "crimes against crime fiction" at his blog Crime Always Pays; "enough to drive you mad", writes Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise; Peter Rozovsky of Detectives Beyond Borders asks "who belongs, who doesn't"?; and as late as today, Sarah Weinman's Idiosyncratic Mind ruminated on one omitted author on the Guardian book blog.

Many of these posts have comment threads expressing opinions and suggesting authors: indeed, the Telegraph itself asked readers what they thought of the list, and currently has more than 300 responses (five times as many as those who wanted to quiz Jeffrey Archer, three times as many as those concerned about the rise of China, not quite as many as those concerned about ID cards, and quite a lot fewer than those offering an opinion about whether Prince Harry should be "fighting on the front line"). Although Crime Scraps and its commenters identified that the authors of the Telegraph article weren't as well qualified as one might have hoped to write on this topic, I'm pleased to see so much response, and potentially, when I have time to visit all these links I've just collected up here, to find some good new authors to read. I think the Telegraph article, whatever its original quality, has stimulated a much more interesting discussion than the boring Observer list of "powerful" blogs is likely to do. 

No bed for Lolita

As I experience a frisson of rage each time I am in the school stationery area of WHS or other similar store and observe the prominently displayed "Playboy" range, I empathised with a story in the Times this morning describing how Woolworths has withdrawn bedroom furniture aimed at 6-year-old girls because it has the brand name "Lolita". (As in a bed called "the Lolita Midsleeper Combi".) Mothers at the raisingkids.com website protested and the furniture has been withdrawn. As well as empathising, I laughed out loud to read this:

" Whereas many mothers were familiar with Vladimir Nabokov and his famous novel, it seems that the Woolworths staff were not. At first they were baffled by the fuss. A spokesman for the company told The Times: “What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now.” "

According to the article, Tesco was made to remove a pole-dancing kit from the toys and games section of its website in 2006. Maybe there is yet hope that the ghastly Playboy range of school stationery, which has been selling for several years, will suffer the same fate.

Reading John Malkovich

From an interview with John Malkovich, 54, in today's (29 December) Times magazine (not online):

"The community in which I grew up was not the most obviously cultivated or stimulating, but what my father and mother instilled in me was the belief that people are interesting no matter where you find yourself, and in Benton, Illinois, no less so than anywhere else. My parents shared a great curiosity about the world around them and were avid readers. That love of books is something else that was passed on to me and, in childhood, I spent much of my time in the local library, learning about places and things that lay beyond our city limits. A degree of intellectual restlessness established in me by them all those years ago continues to motivate me to this day."

The Times points to a website with "details of John Malkovich's online script project as well as other content reflecting Malkovich's life and interests."

A list of lists for the holidays

The Internet is full of people who love categorising items into groups, and also provides easy ways to achieve that goal. List mania is at its highest before holiday seasons: summer and winter. I find so much on the Internet in the usual run of things and bookmark them all away for the aforementioned upcoming holidays when I might have time to read them. So the lists, for me, are gilding the lily. Enough said, here's a bit of meta-listing (a post of links to lists) just in case you have the odd spare moment in the next week or two:

Easing in gently, here's a short list: Susan Hill's two best books of the year (one fiction, one non-fiction).

Here's a collaborative list: favourite TV shows of the year (previous year's lists are linked) at the Organ Grinder (Guardian).

January Magazine's editors have chosen their favourites from thousands of books: fiction, non-fiction, crime fiction, children's books and "art & culture". Congratulations to Linda Richards for a magnificent, and no doubt exhausting, achievement in putting all this together.

After that lot, you will be relieved to see a list of one: Uriah Robinson's non-fiction book of the year. Looks like a good one to me.

Back to the Guardian, this one is top 10 DVDs to give this Christmas. I daren't even look at it as I still haven't watched any of the sets I impulsively bought after a blog discussion on the topic about a year ago.

David Montgomery of Crime Fiction Dossier is asking a range of authors and others to nominate three favourite books. The recommendations are collected at this link -- all I can write is "help"!

Books with a Christmas theme are being featured currently on Euro Crime blog in the series "It's Christmas Crime", aggregated here so you can see the list of short reviews and Yule-themed covers. 

Last but most definitely not least is CrimeFic Reader's excellent "books for Christmas 2007" series that has been running on It's a Crime! for a month or so. Here is the aggregate link from which you can see the whole set of recommendations (so far) by an impressive range of authors, nominating some tantalising books.

Adults in need

I shan't be online for the rest of the evening because the adults in the house are fleeing, while the non-adults watch "Children in Need" which, apparently, lasts all evening. One of the many items I have seen in the past week or two but not got around to blogging about is a rather nice graphic in this article: BBC NEWS | Special Reports | 629 | 629 | Our first 10 years. The graph shows the striking growth of visits to the BBC News website in the past decade, with pictures of what was happening at the "spikes".

Enjoy! Back tomorrow.

What did you watch?

I can't resist this, sorry. From The Guardian blog: "Robin, Bruce, Betty, Henry and Noel - it was a big weekend for TV. The autumn TV schedules kicked in at the weekend. What did you watch?"

NOTHING! I read a good book instead.

However, certain others at Petrona towers can attest to enjoying Robin Hood, the Tudors and Ugly Betty, and a certain other can attest to enjoying the rugby ;-)

Was Beckham murdered?

All I can say is, thank you Bryan Appleyard for this post: Thought Experiments : The Blog: Was Beckham Murdered?. I feel as if I am not alone. The current lunatic rash of newspaper headlines about a Certain Character epitomises why she is far best left in peace (by the media, by rich old megalomaniacs, and everyone). It might even be worse, if anything could be, than the appalling coverage of the M.... McC... disappearance, in which tastelessness is piled on tastelessness daily. So thank you again, Bryan, for your brief but blessed volley of buckshot, which starts: "I intend to call for an inquest into the death of David Beckham. I know he's not dead but he will die eventually.." Read on at the link.

Future of newspapers, part 94

Scott Adams on the future of newspapers:

"What I’d like to see is a newspaper that is a hybrid of social voting, such as you see on web sites like www.reddit.com and www.digg.com, but further filtered by human editors who weed out the redundant, the juvenile, and the stuff unsubstantiated by facts. And I’d like to see counterpoints to everything. This way you’d get the stories and opinions considered most worthy by the public, with some editorial quality control.

I also imagine the business model for bloggers changing. Now bloggers run ads and make money based on the traffic to their sites. In the future, I can imagine bloggers opting in for a system where they allow newspapers to grab their content any time the newspapers want, move it into the newspaper’s own content model on any given day, surround it with their own ads, and pay the blogger a percentage of ad revenue. In other words, every blogger (and cartoonist) would be self-syndicated, but newspapers wouldn’t print the same bloggers every day. They’d grab only the best writings of the day based on social voting and the newspaper’s own editorial opinions."

Makes sense to me. Of course, as a rule bloggers are stronger on opinion, review (whether an event or a product like a book) and analysis than they are on breaking news (journalism): you need publishing resources for that, last time I looked. 

A map by any other name

Via Going Underground blog (whose title is Tu be or not Tu be, pretty good, eh?) you can see, and indeed buy, various products based on this latest in a venerable line of London non-underground maps at the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) website.

Here is a link to the RSC press release explaining the rationale for the map. "The lines include: lovers (red), mothers (pink), fathers and daughters (green), villains (light blue), heroes (dark blue), strong and difficult women (turquoise), warriors (black) and fools (orange). Interesting intersections include Henry V who meets on the warrior and hero line, and Lady Macbeth on the strong and difficult women and warrior line."

Agatha Christie comic strip

My friend James Long sent me this link: BBC NEWS | In Pictures | In pictures: Agatha Christie Comic Strip. As the BBC says, "Agatha Christie's crime novels, already immortalised on television, on film, on stage and in audio books, have been adapted as comic strip editions." The idea is to make the books appeal to "new and younger" readers.

There's a longer article about the project here. It seems to be a combination of cosiness and period detail that is the appeal to the publisher to use the comic book format in this case. "We like harmony and shape, and that's what a good crime novel gives you - a lovely story arc with a beginning, middle and end - and a morally acceptable outcome, which a lot of post-modern literature will not give you. It can also give you humour, absolute horror, romance, a puzzle. Crime fiction is only going to get bigger."

Economist screensaver and blogs

No doubt on the "don't be first, be best" philosophy, The Economist Screensaver is a treasure trove of fascinating data on 66 of the world's major economies. Drawing on the 2007 edition of the bestselling “Pocket World in Figures”, it presents facts and figures on population, demographics, the economy, society, health and education around the world. The screensaver also features a ticker displaying the headlines of new articles published on Economist.com, as well as some of the witty one-liners used in The Economist's renowned advertising campaigns. You can read technical details and download the screensaver via this link.

And even more revolutionary (?), The Economist now offers four (or, as it puts it, three) "lightly moderated" blogs for opinions, observations and to share your views with other readers and journalists from The Economist, Economist.com and the Economist Intelligence Unit. You can choose some or all of: Free Exchange (a general debate on economic issues), Certain ideas of Europe (the project, the people, and the gap in between them), Democracy in America (a potluck discussion on society, politics and culture) and The inbox (letters to the Editor).

Late breaking news: they now have an audio edition as well.

Auntie knows best

From the FT.com: The BBC’s technophile executives see the BBC as the only European organisation able to rival Google as a new media brand but the British public seems more comfortable with its more familiar incarnation as “Auntie”.

A survey of 4,500 licence fee payers, commissioned by the BBC Trust, found that viewers rate “innovation” highly but are more interested in new programming than new technology.

The same research showed audiences’ priority was that the BBC should “help children learn”, but Sir Michael stood by the trust’s decision to suspend BBC Jam, its online education service. “It was done with regret to its impact on users,” he said.

On not looking into Chapman's

Bryan Appleyard has outed himself as the author of this essay on Homer Simpson in the Sunday Times: There’s nobody like him... except you, me, everyone - Times Online. The only thing I know about Homer Simpson is that George Bush Jr thinks that families should be less like his and more like Mr Walton's (whoever he is, and please don't tell me, I would rather remain in blissful ignorance), an anecdote that is repeated in Bryan's essay. I found the article very useful, because for many years the Simpsons is on at 6 pm, the witching hour when Working Parent on Duty for that day comes in from work and makes the tea before starting on the night shift. Hence I have seen many hundreds of 30-second glimpses of the Simpsons while carrying in and out trays of food or glasses of drink. Sometimes I even see the same 30 seconds that I saw 10 months ago. Now, thanks to Bryan, I can join up the dots. Although it is a readable and stimulating piece (as it would be if Bryan wrote about paint drying), I remain unable to "get" popular culture.

Not believing the papers

Great post here in London Underground Tube Diary - Going Underground's Blog about yesterday's Central Line "accident", which was being repeatedly announced in doom-laden tomes as I made my way home yesterday evening.

In a post entitled "regular reader on derailed tube", one of Annie Mole's readers wrote:  "Hi Annie. I was on the train that derailed at 40mph between Mile End and Bethnal Green yesterday morning - only one person had a sprained ankle to show for it on the whole train apparently and no one was scared although a bit shaken up (Dunkirk spirit and all that)."

And the newspaper headline? "Commuters thought it was another 7/7" (72 pt, natch).

From the comments to Annie's post:

---BBC report that "Safety checks are under way on the Tube's storage facilities after a dislodged roll of tarpaulin landed on the tracks, causing the derailment."

--It really winds me up when newspapers (i.e., people) do this - invoke 7/7 at the drop of a hat. Scary though it must have been for the passengers, this was NOTHING like 7/7, where the train literally was blown apart.

Big Brother is full of juice

Somewhat old news that I haven't found time to report, but I just have to do so: French government officials have been ordered not to use handheld Blackberry devices amid fears that foreigners could spy on them. According to a report in Le Monde (via the BBC, link above), France's SGDN security service is worried because Blackberries use US- and UK-based servers.

But some officials are flouting the ban and using them in secret. "They tried to offer us something else to replace our Blackberries but it doesn't work," one unnamed official told Le Monde.

Here's the Le Monde article, if you read French and have a subscription.

If you really want to know more about Blackberries, you can go here.

Let them eat cake (egg-free of course)

I suppose everyone has heard that the attempt to re-run the advertisements with the slogan "go to work on an egg" has been "scotched" (boiled or scrambled, even) by the UK's broadcast advertising clearance centre? The slogan was invented 50 years ago (hence the failed plan to have an anniversary campaign) and from 1965 to 1991 was used in a long series of TV advertisements, featuring Tony Hancock among others, exhorting us to have a healthy breakfast.

After "lengthy debate", the standards authority decided that the campaign failed to comply with its code: “Eating eggs every day goes against what is now the generally accepted advice of a varied diet. We therefore could not approve the ads for broadcast.” The egg information service offered to add a line to the adverts saying that eggs should be eaten as part of a varied diet, but the compromise was rejected.

The novelist Fay Weldon, who helped to create the campaign, is quoted as saying “I think the ruling is absurd. “We seem to have been tainted by all the health and safety laws. If they are going to ban egg adverts then I think they should ban all car adverts, because cars really are dangerous, and bad for the environment. It’s like banning any films that had actresses smoking cigarettes. Somehow I don’t think eggs are quite in the same category as cigarettes and other dangerous substances.”

You can see the adverts, and find out why eating eggs is good for you (as part of a varied diet, I add hastily), at the "Go to work on an egg" anniversary website. You can also sign an online petition to support the re-runs. The cynical side of me wonders how much of all this is a publicity stunt and how much of it is genuinely a result of a cracked, or even addled, decision.

Assignment Zero

Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, has been working on ways to involve the public in journalism creation for more than a decade. Now his Assignment Zero has captured attention - and the interest of journalism companies. Assignment Zero is the first project of Rosen's newassignment.net initiative. Basically, it's a 'crowdsourcing' experiment which involves knowledgeable and curious members of the public in the reporting, editing and writing of stories.

From the site's "about" page:

New Assignment.Net is a non-profit site that tries to spark innovation in journalism by showing that open collaboration over the Internet among reporters, editors and large groups of users can produce high-quality work that serves the public interest, holds up under scrutiny, and builds trust.

A second aim is to figure out how to fund this work through a combination of online donations, micro-payments, traditional fundraising, syndication rights, sponsorships, advertising and any other method that does not compromise the site’s independence or reputation.At New Assignment, pros and amateurs cooperate to produce work that neither could manage alone. The site uses open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion. It pays professional journalists to carry the project home and set high standards; they work closely with users who have something to contribute. The betting is that (some) people will donate to stories they can see are going to be great because the open methods allow for that glimpse ahead.

Lots more information at the site, including video interview, podcast, a five-part series about the plans, and how to get involved yourself if you're interested. I'm glad the first project was a bit delayed from the target launch date of 1 April 2007, never an auspicious day/month combination to start anything.

Where next for newspapers?

From the WSJ (23 April):
"Even with all the grim news the newspaper industry has faced in recent years, publishers have consoled themselves that they have a lifeline. If they could switch content away from print and onto the Internet -- bringing advertisers with them -- they could save their businesses. Last week, that lifeline began looking frayed. New York Times Co. warned Thursday that online advertising growth this year won't be as strong as the 30% it had projected. On the same day, Tribune Co. reported that the growth rate for first-quarter interactive revenue was sharply lower than a year earlier. "

Although the Washington Post and others have yet to report for the first quarter, there seems to be general agreement among analysts that there is a trend, exacerbated by recent acquisitions and figures from Google and Yahoo. " Underlining this pressure is a shift under way within Internet advertising. The ad formats that have so far proved strongest for newspapers -- banner ads, pop-ups and listings -- are losing ground to formats such as search marketing. Ad buyers say automotive, entertainment, financial-services and travel companies -- all major newspaper advertisers in print and online -- are aggressively shifting dollars into search marketing." 

But Google and Yahoo may clean up here also, as they gain contracts to provide search on publishers' websites.

 

Fashion values

From The Week:

The point of celebrities -- why it is pointless to complain that modern celebrities are only famous for being famous. " In fact, they're famous because they represent things that are at the very heart of modern consumer capitalism: social mobility, fashion, the body, sex and the need for affirmation. It was Susan Sontag, who said that being a dandy was a way of being an individual in an age of mass culture. The problem today is being an individual in an age of mass individualism., when the usual means of status --- clothes, cars, consumer goods -- are within the grasp of the majority. The answer is: celebrity." (Via Cosmo Landesman in The Guardian -- at time of writing, there are 70 comments to his article.)

Richard Branson, the "publicity-mad boss of Virgin Atlantic", had a brief cameo in Casino Royale, the latest Bond film. But passengers on British Airways don't see it, as the scene has been cut. "All films are screened", explained a BA spokesman. "We want to ensure that they contain no material that might upset our customers."

Search engine for research videos

As regular readers will know, video and audio aren't usually my media -- I'm a 'words on the page' kind of person. However, today I discovered an "academic" video search engine: at the link below you can find links to "top tens" of history channel, biography, Harvard computer science, NOVA, NASA and A&E TV videos, and loads of others. You can search by other categories, such as music, sports, comedy and so on, but the "research video" search engine is kind of appealing. Apparently there will shortly be an education channel.

Link: Research Videos, MTV, Yahoo Research, Mp3, Download Research - Search Video, Downloads, Windows Media, Quicktime, YouTube, MySpace, Google Video PureVideo Video and Multimedia Search Engine.

Guardian goes west, 24/7

Via an industry newsletter and from reading a few blogs, I learn that the UK's Guardian newspaper intends to launch an American version of its Commentisfree editorial and user opinion site "in an effort to bring liberal opinion to the United States". The Guardian already has more overseas online readers than UK newspaper buyers.

In a separate announcement, the Guardian has predicted that its web service will become a 24-hour news operation within the next 18 months, which could lead to job cuts.

Here's an article providing m0re details of the intended assault.

And here's an article on the proposed 24/7 plans.

New denarius, and iron, for old, or scrap

From Friday's (2 March) Times, with the heading "A Rolling Stone gathers a very early silver denarius", complete with picture (of coin, not author):

Sir - Since leaving the Rolling Stones I have developed a keen interest in metal detecting, and have been fortunate enough to have built up a large and diverse collection of ancient coins, jewellery and artefacts, many of which are featured in my book "Bill Wyman's Treasure Islands".

Your article "Coin arrived before Romans" (Feb 26) featured a photo of a Roman silver denarius. Fourteen years ago I found a very similar Roman coin, right, which was recorded and identified at my local museum in Bury St Edumnds, Suffolk. It almost exactly matches the date of the one featured in the article.

BILL WYMAN, London SW3.

(In the online version, one commenter has asked: "Were you around to see it mined?")

The same day's paper features a story "Is this a work of art or just any old iron?" about how the writer, broadcaster, doctor and polymath Sir Jonathan Miller asked a passing scrap metal merchant to remove a rusting bath from his front garden -- only to find his three metal sculptures had also been over-enthusiastically taken.  An unnamed newspaper is quoted as reporting "Only a philistine [sic] would take these rusting lumps of metal for discard[ed?] car parts abandoned by some sociopath and phone the council." But Sir Jonathan was philosophical: "It would be nice to have them back or if anyone wanted to buy them I would be happy to sell them. They were made from junk and now I suppose they are returning to junk."

Office chair set on fire

A story in the Westmoreland Gazette, a Cumbrian local paper, has become a hot favourite on the Internet:

“An office chair was destroyed after it was set on fire on the grassy area off Maude Street, Kendal, this afternoon. Fire crews from Kendal attended along with police. A spokesman for the fire and rescue service said: ‘A delinquent set fire to an office chair in the middle of a grassy area and it was extinguished using one hose jet’.”

That was the extent of the story. But in the strange snowballing way of the online medium, it first attracted comments of pity, followed by flights of fancy by readers, ending up as a global running joke.  " 'This is not the most crime-ridden or busiest of areas, and it’s difficult to get much material from calls to the police and fire brigade,' Mike Glover, the editor and publisher, said. 'We took the the attitude that local news sells local newspapers. People will have wondered what the fire brigade were doing.' "

Source: The Times.

Westmoreland Gazette: Chair destroyed. (original story, with many comments)

Westmoreland Gazette: Destroyed chair story continues to draw comments.

It's a mad world, my masters

From the Saturday (10 February) Times news briefs, page 36:

Unforeseen glitch

The Psychic Museum in York has shut because it failed to attract enough visitors. It was opened in 2003 by the astrologer Jonathan Cainer [who he, ed?], who intends to reopen it. He said: "if you  are asking me when it will open up again, it is hard to say. I don't believe you can make predictions about things you are close to."

Mistaken identity

Mohammed Ali, 11, had to miss school to appear before Bradford magistrates on charges of driving without a licence, test or insurance certificates and failing to produce documents after police wrongly logged him as the driver when his father's car was hit by another driver. The case was dismissed.

(The above is verbatim, so address any comments about the grammar direct to the Times.)

I am tempted to muse about the Bradford police perhaps being better suited to running a psychic museum and the astrologer being better suited to run a police force, but I'll just draw a veil here.