A snippet on the Radio 3 news this morning (which is not yet up on the BBC News website), about coastal erosion. Apparently this is happening and, according to “environmentalists”, the government should do something about it. Quite what we weren’t told. If they still taught history properly in schools we would be spared this sort of story!
A matter of definition
For someone who normally appears very careful in his choice of words, Gordon Brown’s answer on News at Ten last night that Peter Hain’s current travail was the result of “an incompetency” seemed strange. The Shorter OED defines incompetency as ‘(1) inadaquacy; and (2) the fact or condition of being incompetent; want of the requisite ability, power or qualification; incapacity’. It was not the word incompetent, but the indefinite article in front of it. It begged the question whose incompetency (although there should be no prizes for guessing whose: and the BBC on its Radio 3 news summary at 8.30 this morning left listeners in no doubt, as Brown was reported as having “accused Hain of incompetence”. It is a sorry tale, and compounded by Brown playing the “He’s said he’s sorry” card. The story is not going away, and Brown now finds himself caught between a Rock (more later) and a Hain place.
Let others decide
As a son of the manse, Gordon Brown will know all about Pontius Pilate. His behaviour over Peter Hain has just the teeniest-weeniest bit of the Pilate in it, as he has quite clearly washed his hands of this matter. In Coffee House this morning Matthew d’Ancona says that Peter Hain is “toast”. Will Gordon ride to the rescue? Will he heck!
Not quite Posh ‘n Becks Mk.2 (A further thought)
My youngest pointed out, on hearing that Tony and Cherie were Posh ‘n Becks Mk.2, that this implied an improvement. In his view this is most certainly not the case.
Giving
A fascinating Point of View on BBC Radio 4 this morning: David Cannadine talking about the changing art of giving. As Cannadine reminded listeners, “the practice of giving money away has been around for as long as there have been people possessed of more wealth than they required for their own immediate needs”, and his talk ranged in its all too brief 10 minutes from Sir Thomas Bodley to Warren Buffett, via Tate, Carnegie, Rockefeller, the Sainsburies and Bill and Melinda Gates. Cannadine identified a number of reasons why the rich are prepared to give their money away, including “the imperatives of religion, the desire for social recognition and acceptance, the need to assuage feelings of guilt, the craving for immortality, the pleasure of handing out large sums of money, and the genuine passion to try to do good, and make the world a better place.” To which I would add, at least as regards the great art collections assembled by the North American robber barons, the desire to prevent anyone else getting their hands on them. Walking around the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Frick Collection last year, I had the overwhelming feeling that whatever the reasons that drove them to collect, the last thing they were going to allow to happen was for their collections to be acquired by one of their rivals.
Enough said: George Wilkinson's blog 