I'm starting to think that the Left might actually be right

 Charles Moore in The Telegraph on 23/7/2011

It has taken me more than 30 years as a journalist to ask myself this question, but this week I find that I must: is the Left right after all? You see, one of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls “the free market” is actually a set-up.

The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.

In the 1970s and 1980s, it was easy to refute this line of reasoning because it was obvious, particularly in Britain, that it was the trade unions that were holding people back. Bad jobs were protected and good ones could not be created. “Industrial action” did not mean producing goods and services that people wanted to buy, it meant going on strike. The most visible form of worker oppression was picketing. The most important thing about Arthur Scargill’s disastrous miners’ strike was that he always refused to hold a ballot on it.

A key symptom of popular disillusionment with the Left was the moment, in the late 1970s, when the circulation of Rupert Murdoch’s Thatcher-supporting Sun overtook that of the ever-Labour Daily Mirror. Working people wanted to throw off the chains that Karl Marx had claimed were shackling them – and join the bourgeoisie which he hated. Their analysis of their situation was essentially correct. The increasing prosperity and freedom of the ensuing 20 years proved them right.

But as we have surveyed the Murdoch scandal of the past fortnight, few could deny that it has revealed how an international company has bullied and bought its way to control of party leaderships, police forces and regulatory processes. David Cameron, escaping skilfully from the tight corner into which he had got himself, admitted as much. Mr Murdoch himself, like a tired old Godfather, told the House of Commons media committee on Tuesday that he was so often courted by prime ministers that he wished they would leave him alone.

The Left was right that the power of Rupert Murdoch had become an anti-social force. The Right (in which, for these purposes, one must include the New Labour of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown) was too slow to see this, partly because it confused populism and democracy. One of Mr Murdoch’s biggest arguments for getting what he wanted in the expansion of his multi-media empire was the backing of “our readers”. But the News of the World and the Sun went out of the way in recent years to give their readers far too little information to form political judgments. His papers were tools for his power, not for that of his readers. When they learnt at last the methods by which the News of the World operated, they withdrew their support.

It has surprised me to read fellow defenders of the free press saying how sad they are that the News of the World closed. In its stupidity, narrowness and cruelty, and in its methods, the paper was a disgrace to the free press. No one should ever have banned it, of course, but nor should anyone mourn its passing. It is rather as if supporters of parliamentary democracy were to lament the collapse of the BNP. It was a great day for newspapers when, 25 years ago, Mr Murdoch beat the print unions at Wapping, but much of what he chose to print on those presses has been a great disappointment to those of us who believe in free markets because they emancipate people. The Right has done itself harm by covering up for so much brutality.

The credit crunch has exposed a similar process of how emancipation can be hijacked. The greater freedom to borrow which began in the 1980s was good for most people. A society in which credit is very restricted is one in which new people cannot rise. How many small businesses could start or first homes be bought without a loan? But when loans become the means by which millions finance mere consumption, that is different.

And when the banks that look after our money take it away, lose it and then, because of government guarantee, are not punished themselves, something much worse happens. It turns out – as the Left always claims – that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few. The global banking system is an adventure playground for the participants, complete with spongy, health-and-safety approved flooring so that they bounce when they fall off. The role of the rest of us is simply to pay.
This column’s mantra about the credit crunch is that Everything Is Different Now. One thing that is different is that people in general have lost faith in the free-market, Western, democratic order. They have not yet, thank God, transferred their faith, as they did in the 1930s, to totalitarianism. They merely feel gloomy and suspicious. But they ask the simple question, “What's in it for me?”, and they do not hear a good answer.
Last week, I happened to be in America, mainly in the company of intelligent conservatives. Their critique of President Obama’s astonishing spending and record-breaking deficits seemed right. But I was struck by how the optimistic message of the Reagan era has now become a shrill one. On Fox News (another Murdoch property, and one which, while I was there, did not breathe a word of his difficulties), Republicans lined up for hours to threaten to wreck the President’s attempt to raise the debt ceiling. They seemed to take for granted the underlying robustness of their country’s economic and political arrangements. This is a mistake. The greatest capitalist country in history is now dependent on other people’s capital to survive. In such circumstances, Western democracy starts to feel like a threatened luxury. We can wave banners about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, but they tend to say, in smaller print, “Made in China”.

As for the plight of the eurozone, this could have been designed by a Left-wing propagandist as a satire of how money-power works. A single currency is created. A single bank controls it. No democratic institution with any authority watches over it, and when the zone’s borrowings run into trouble, elected governments must submit to almost any indignity rather than let bankers get hurt. What about the workers? They must lose their jobs in Porto and Piraeus and Punchestown and Poggibonsi so that bankers in Frankfurt and bureaucrats in Brussels may sleep easily in their beds.

When we look at the Arab Spring, we tend complacently to tell ourselves that the people on the streets all want the freedom we have got. Well, our situation is certainly better than theirs. But I doubt if Western leadership looks to a protester in Tahrir Square as it did to someone knocking down the Berlin Wall in 1989. We are bust – both actually and morally.

One must always pray that conservatism will be saved, as has so often been the case in the past, by the stupidity of the Left. The Left’s blind faith in the state makes its remedies worse than useless. But the first step is to realise how much ground we have lost, and that there may not be much time left to make it up.

How many inquiries do we need?

By Andrew Gilligan in The Telegraph

8:50PM BST 21 Jul 2011

After the past three extraordinary weeks, do you know how many inquiries have now been spawned by the hacking scandal? The answer – unless I have missed some – is 13. As well as the Leveson inquiry, in two separate parts, there are: two criminal inquiries, Elveden and Weeting; two parliamentary inquiries, one now concluded, by the home affairs and media select committees; inquiries by the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Inspectorate of Constabulary; a probe by the former parliamentary watchdog Elizabeth Filkin into relationships between the police and the media; an inquiry by the Met’s directorate of professional standards; a News International internal inquiry; a Press Complaints Commission review; and, finally, my own personal favourite: an inquiry into how the Commons security authorities can best interdict future supplies of shaving foam. All British scandals tumble eventually into farce. What a tribute to the information age that this one is toying with it already.

On top of all this, there is talk of further action by the Metropolitan Police Authority, the London Assembly, the Serious Fraud Office and HM Revenue and Customs. And that is without the inquiries likely to begin in America. Soon, I predict, there will be more people investigating the News of the World than actually worked for it, and the only official bodies not scrutinising the despicable crimes of the rogue Murdoch regime will be the Drinking Water Inspectorate and the Care Council for Wales.

Yet as the scandal begins to cede the top slot on the news, I sense that more and more people are asking: has
this gone too far? Four days ago, as John Yates, the Met’s assistant commissioner, was forced to resign, even the crime correspondent of the Guardian, the paper whose admirable journalism and persistence opened the Augean stable doors, called the affair a “mad witch-hunt of a story” which had claimed “another decent copper”.

The danger of this extraordinary brood of inquiries is twofold. First, they crash against each other like dodgems in a rink. Witnesses are already refusing to answer questions because it might prejudice their case before other inquiries. Second, they will leave nobody in power or in the police with time to do their actual jobs – jobs that concern more important matters than phone hacking. John Yates ran Britain’s counter-terrorism effort, which has now been decapitated. Let us cross our fingers that no terror attack occurs while his successor is still learning the ropes.

Mr Yates, by his own admission, didn’t look carefully enough at the Guardian’s new allegations of hacking. But he did have the country to protect from al-Qaeda at the time. And as I watched him being attacked by that well-known pillar of virtue, Keith Vaz MP, as an “unconvincing” witness to Mr Vaz’s home affairs committee, I thought: I would rather have 50 John Yateses than one Keith Vaz.

Older readers may remember that while John Yates has been found guilty of nothing, Mr Vaz is the man who received one of the longest Commons suspensions on record – for actively obstructing, not just neglecting, an official investigation. On the day that Sir Paul Stephenson, Yates’s boss, resigned as Met commissioner after taking free stays at the Champneys health spa from a friend, Stephen Purdew, Mr Vaz appeared on television to praise Sir Paul for “accepting responsibility”. Mr Vaz neglected to mention that he, too, is a personal friend of Mr Purdew’s, attended his wedding, endorsed one of his other spas and has himself stayed at Champneys.

Throughout the crisis, too, a certain Alastair Campbell has been touring the television studios in his exciting new role as an apostle of truth and enemy of Rupert Murdoch. Mr Campbell has provided much amusement for politicians and journalists – but has the poor man not even an atom of self-awareness?

Last week, almost entirely unnoticed amid the Dresden-like firestorm, there emerged perhaps the most significant evidence yet about an earlier phase of Mr Campbell’s career. The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war published the testimony of a senior MI6 officer that “there were from the outset concerns” in the intelligence service about “the extent to which the intelligence could support some of the judgments that were being made” in Tony Blair’s famous WMD dossier. Note those words: from the outset.

What that shows us is not just that our worst fears over the dossier were correct. It also shows just how misplaced may be our hopes in the current slew of hacking inquiries. Over Iraq, there were a mere five inquiries – none, interestingly, operating under oath, though the hacking inquiry will. Clearly, the lies and misjudgments that caused the deaths of 150,000 people are not quite as serious a matter as journalists intercepting voicemails.

But the striking fact is that despite all those inquiries, last week’s potentially conclusive piece of evidence has only just come out – nine years after the dossier was published. We hoped that earlier inquiries would yield the truth about Iraq and punish those responsible. Broadly, they did not. They did reveal a great deal of valuable information but in their own findings, the inquiries glossed over that evidence, and held back from the conclusions it warranted.

Nor is that in any way unusual. Of course, some much-anticipated judicial inquiries do achieve what is widely accepted as justice. But many others have been, by consensus unsatisfactory – Lord Devlin’s 1950s inquiry into British massacres of the Mau Mau; Lord Denning on Profumo; Widgery into Bloody Sunday; Scott on arms-to-Iraq; and Hutton.

Still others, while less controversial at the time, have proved damaging: the last big inquiry into the police, Lord Macpherson’s into the death of Stephen Lawrence, wielded too broad a brush, painting the entire Met as institutionally racist. The destabilising effect of Macpherson’s judgment on force morale, and therefore on crime, was considerable. And inquiries can cost enormous amounts of money. The second inquiry into Bloody Sunday, by Lord Saville, lasted 12½ years and cost almost £200 million.

Inquiries do, of course, go down paths that can be deeply uncomfortable for everyone, government included. But broadly, each of these inquiries found more or less what the governments who set them up wanted them to find – that no one was wrongly killed on Bloody Sunday, that the Iraq intelligence had not been misrepresented, that the Met was insufficiently progressive and needed a kicking.

The various Iraq inquiries were additionally used by the Blair government, and its supporters, as ways of attacking its enemies. As a witness in them myself, and watching the grilling of my source, David Kelly, I developed a particularly low opinion of the partisan hectoring of the foreign affairs committee, under its Labour loyalist chairman Donald Anderson (a worthy predecessor of Keith Vaz).

It is quite clear what the Government wants this inquiry to find. Though press, police and politicians are almost equally at fault, Lord Leveson’s remit is simply to “inquire into the culture, practices, and ethics of the press”. Leveson has also been asked to investigate the “relationships between national newspapers and politicians”. But several anti-hacking campaigners and the lawyer for Milly Dowler’s family protest that there is no mention of officials and special advisers such as Andy Coulson and Alastair Campbell.

Leveson’s first task is to “make recommendations for a new, more effective policy and regulatory regime” on the press: in other words, how they should be forced to behave. As far as the police and politicians are concerned, however, he will only make recommendations for their “future conduct” – how they should merely be asked to behave.

Yet hacking was not a failure of press regulation. There already is a rather strong regulation against hacking people’s telephones – the law. And no future press regulator, however strong, could possibly have the power to kick down doors at newspapers, seize emails and question journalists under caution. Those are police powers – powers which the police had, but refused to exercise.

Over virtually every issue that judges have inquired into, it was the media that got more of the facts, more quickly, than any Lord Justice. Now, however, with regulation coming and the likes of Keith Vaz in the driving seat, getting the facts will be harder. Not for nothing is the phrase “judge-led inquiry” one of the scariest in the language.

So you thought Britain wasn't corrupt?

Mary Dejevsky:

Two of the most deep-rooted maladies of British society are freebies among friends and jobs for the boys

Friday, 22 July 2011 The Independent

Anyone who had expected to drowse through the Home Secretary's Commons statement on the Metropolitan Police might have awoken with a start when she began with "allegations about police corruption". It was the flat, almost casual, way in which Theresa May appeared to accept at least the possibility, that surprised and the use of the actual words "police corruption". She went on to announce a review of "instances of undue influence, inappropriate contractual arrangements and other abuses of power in police relationships..."

The reason this bald catalogue shocks is that Britain has long projected an image of itself as a paragon of good governance and the rule of law, to the point where experts on such matters earn a good living advising other countries how to emulate our standards. It also happens to be an image that the vast majority of its citizens share. We regard ourselves as mercifully free of the sort of corruption that blights the lives of, say, Nigerians, Egyptians or Russians, and a cut above most southern Europeans.

That may be how we see ourselves, but it is not quite how others see us. Transparency International, an independent organisation which monitors this sort of thing, places the UK 20th in its latest (2010) corruption perception index. Overall, this may not look so bad – 178 countries are listed. Look closer, though, and you will see that the UK comes well below all the Nordic countries, below Luxembourg, Ireland and Germany, and just below the small Gulf state of Qatar. It is only marginally ahead of the United States, France and Spain. Is this where Britain should be – in 20th place, and falling?

Corruption, of course, takes many forms. In some countries, bribery is so prevalent as to be tantamount to a tax. Indeed, a theory has recently been advanced that this is how it should be regarded and that it is perhaps not so reprehensible after all. In others, an unofficial tariff – ranging from a box of chocolates to a luxury holiday – dictates access to the best educational establishments, the best hospitals, the best flats. In yet other countries which would not generally be regarded as particularly corrupt, contributions to political parties constitute a perennially murky area in which even otherwise distinguished politicians have come to grief, such as the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl. You might argue that the US system of lobbying is a form of legalised corruption.

Generally, these are not ills that afflict the UK. If you live here, you can probably be fairly confident that you will not have to offer teachers a backhander for admitting your child or ensuring a decent grade. (Although I have heard tell of quite lavish gifts offered.) You will not have to pay a doctor for decent NHS treatment or a fast track up the transplant waiting list. (Although, again, there is apocrypha that hints at exceptions, and it was once intimated to me that a consideration might keep my husband classified as a UK resident when we were living abroad, so that he would still qualify for expensive drugs on the NHS.)

And you probably won't find a speed cop or parking warden suggesting that a small transaction "between us" would "fix it" before he writes out the ticket, or a frontline immigration officer nodding through someone with some crisp banknotes, but no visa, in his passport. Or election officers stuffing ballot-boxes after the polls have closed.

But you will find ways in which Britain falls very far short of Scandinavian-level probity; areas where complacency has meant a blind eye is turned to abuses, and grey zones where transactions take place that are not actually illegal, but which would – and should – embarrass one or both parties if they became public.
Several such instances emerged earlier this week when the Commons Home Affairs Committee questioned the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, and the Assistant Commissioner, John Yates – both of whom had just resigned – as well as the head of public affairs, Dick Fedorcio. The most blatant was Sir Paul's acceptance of hospitality from Champney's health farm.

The commissioner may have been recovering from very serious illness (as he was), he may have declared the gift in the register as required (which he said he did on his return to work), and the owner of Champney's may have been a family friend (though it is unclear how close). But the value of this gift – around half the average Briton's annual pre-tax salary – and Sir Paul's apparent inability to understand that accepting it sat uneasily with his position as the country's most senior police officer on a salary of more than £250,000, suggests a blind spot. It left the impression that there was one law, and one set of subsidised living standards, for the well connected, and another for everyone else.

Something similar applied when it came to the hiring of Neil Wallis, former deputy editor of the News of the World, as a media consultant. Despite some close questioning – notably from two sparky new female Tory MPs, Nicola Blackwood and Louise Mensch – there was precious little clarity about how Wallis actually got the job. Between the lines, however, it could be deduced that there was no open advertisement, no standard recruitment procedure, no formal interview and no public disclosure of the appointment. This was a public-sector, tax-payer funded position, yet contacts and networks appear to have been all.

What we have here are two of the most deep-rooted maladies of British society: freebies among friends and jobs for the boys. And there will be many who shrug and say that this is just how the country works. Yet these ingrained ways of doing things are part of the reason why the UK comes below Finland, Australia and Canada in TI's corruption perception index. They are also a reason, along with our segregated schools, why social mobility in Britain is so relatively poor. Advantage compounds advantage.

At root, much of the disparities come down to information and the way so much is still kept from "prying" eyes. The UK-based American journalist Heather Brooke, who has made opening up what she calls Britain's "information cartel" something of a personal crusade and whose work led to the publication of MPs' expenses, notes that records available to US journalists as a matter of course are "off-limits" here, where access to information "depends on one's wealth, power or privilege". She is right – yet the responses, when she argues this, are not all approving. Some accept that it was ever thus; others accuse her of poking her nose into places it does not belong.

Nor has the Freedom of Information Act so far brought the transformation it should have done. Quite basic information still has to be applied for. This government's efforts to open up details of department and local council spending are laudable, but there has hardly been a rush to comply. Until our patronage system is tackled, British boasts of incorruptibility will remain boasts – discredited by our 20th place on the global corruption index and our continuing fall, as those below us move to clean up their act.
m.dejevsky@independent.co.uk

On Test Cricket

Ave Test cricket

Many premature reports of its death later, the five-day game still stands, a byword for excellence in an era that encourages, and even worships, mass mediocrity

Gideon Haigh

June 21, 2011

Say what? You start about 11am and go till around 6pm, right? Why? Oh, never mind…

You break for lunch? And for afternoon tea? You play in the open air, so that rain and darkness can ruin everything? And you play for five days and still might not get a result?

Look, no offence, fella, but it will never catch on. You have to understand: we're too time poor, we're too attention-challenged, there aren't enough sixes, there isn't enough colour, you can't squeeze it into a tweet. I think you have to face it: sports marketing isn't for you. Have you considered a career weaving baskets?

The Test match, eh? Not even Lalit Modi could sell it. Fortunately he doesn't have to. Here we stand on the brink of the 2000th, and frankly the prospect could hardly be more mouth-watering. Tendulkar at Lord's? No dancing girls required here; no cricketainment necessary.

Cricket spaced 803 Tests over its first century, meaning that 1197 have been shoehorned into the 34 years since, despite more than 3100 one-day internationals having been wedged in over the same period. But there don't seem too many Tests; arguably there are too few, even if this is probably better than a surfeit.

Not everything is rosy in the garden, of course. During their recent series in the Caribbean, West Indies and Pakistan looked like schoolboys trying to solve differential equations by counting on their fingers, so technically and temperamentally ill-suited were they to the rigours of five-day cricket. But the essence of a Test is that some must fail. Identifying inadequacy helps us recognise excellence.

In an age in which it has been deemed obsolete countless times, the Test match somehow sails on, not so much a mighty ship of state any more as a reconditioned windjammer - not the fastest thing around, but somehow the lovelier for that. Administrators busily infatuated with cricketainment have rather neglected it of late - no bad thing, really, given the damage administrators do without trying.

Players, praise be, still value it. You could feel the joy in England's cricket this last Australian summer. You could see a couple of weeks ago how much runs at Lord's mattered to Tillakaratne Dilshan. And some days just sweep you away, like the last in Cardiff, where four days of slumber preluded a fifth of nightmares. Test matches do loudquietloud better than the Pixies.

Test matches survived a nasty brush with malpractice last year, better than seemed possible at the time; India's No. 1 status has been a boon for interest and relevance; Australia's decline probably has, too, in addition to representing a stern cautionary tale, a punishment for hubris. For what a falling-off is here. England might have invented cricket, but it was Australia that more or less invented the Test match, as a literal "test" of its prowess, as an expression of rivalry and fealty. 

The origins of Test cricket lie in the primordial ooze that was early Anglo-Australian competition. There was then no structure, no schedule, no over-arching organising body - just an interest in settling who was better, and let it be said, making a few quid. The Marylebone Cricket Club would not come along with its ideas of fostering the bonds of empire until early in the 20th century; likewise there was no notion of providing for the rest of the game out of the profits on Test matches until the advent of the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket in 1905. The first 30 years of Test cricket are in the main the work of private entrepreneurs, jobbing professionals and local officials, all busily making up the rules as they went along.

The edge in competition mattered to the English, but to Australians it always mattered that little bit more. So it is that cricket owes an unacknowledged debt to the Adelaide sports journalist Clarence Moody, who wrote under the pseudonym "Point" in the South Australian Register. As a kind of five-finger exercise, Moody set out in a section of his book South Australian Cricket (1898) a list of what he regarded as the "Test matches" played to that time. Moody was hard to impress. He must have been tempted, out of national pride, to instate Australia's 1878 defeat of MCC at Lord's, honouring Spofforth's 10 wickets for 20, but on Australia's inaugural tour of England he decided that no Tests had been played; nor would he recognise the games played against "Combined XIs" by the rival English touring teams of 1887-88. Perhaps because he was so discriminate, and also in the absence of anything better, the list became canonical.

The other aid in the propagation of the Test match was, strange to say in an era that regards it as staid and unchanging, its pliability. Draw what inferences you will about the national characteristics they reflect, but the English preferred their Test matches to last three days, in order to minimise interference with the County Championship, while Australians insisted on a result, and cared not how long it took to obtain. All cricket down under was timeless, in fact: the first Test of the 1886-87 series, for example, actually began at 1.45pm after the completion earlier that day of the Victoria-New South Wales intercolonial match. When Sydney's gift to Somerset, Sammy Woods, originated his oft-quoted mot about draw(er)s being useful only for bathing, he was expressing a national, not just a personal, partiality.

The Test match resisted standardisation, furthermore, well into its evolution. Only after more than a century was the five-day format made entirely uniform; only in the last quarter-century have 90 overs in a day been the enforced minimum. And while ICC playing conditions make certain stipulations about arena dimensions, cricket in general has unconsciously preserved a pre-modern variety in the specifications of its grounds - a reminder of cricket's bucolic origins that Test cricket in its unregulated early development helped preserve.

Well established after half a century - no, nothing about this game happens in a hurry - Test cricket then took its other seminal step. Two Imperial Cricket Conferences at Lord's in 1926 agreed to England's exchange of visits with West Indies, New Zealand and India - a remarkable, seemingly unconscious expansion of the game on the stroke of a pen and a handshake or two. Had the step been contemplated twice, it may not have happened; as it was, cricket began an imperceptibly slow tilt from its Anglo-Australian axis. 

What is sometimes ignored in the modern relativist custom of embracing cricket's "three forms", in fact, is that cricket owes the Test match everything. The one-day international was born into the global estate Test cricket created, like an heir with all the advantages; Twenty20 has come along in the last five years like the proverbial third-generation thickhead with a silver spoon sense of entitlement, good for nothing but money. Its future, moreover, will depend on the degree to which cricket can be preserved as something other than a scam for sharkskin-suited spivs and third-rate politicians.

One of the several ways in which cricket has been turned topsy-turvy in recent times is that after a hundred and more years as a bastion of conservatism, the sanctum sanctorum of the establishment, the Test match is the rebel game: uncompromising, unpredictable, ineffably appealing, immutably long, difficult to understand, resistant to commodification, and apparently unfriendly to the young, or at least to the condescending conception of the young as too dumb for anything but the bleeding obvious.

Here it stands, plumb in the way of the marketers and money men who see their role as sucking up to people who don't like cricket, and quite probably never will. Here it stands, relentless in its demands on players for excellence in an era that encourages, and even worships, mass mediocrity. Here it stands, kept alive by a love of the game that can't be bought, or feigned, or mimicked, or manufactured. Want to be the man? Want to fight the power? Celebrate Test cricket.

Gideon Haigh is a cricket historian and writer

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Test cricket - a primal contest

The primal contest

The game's essential match-up, of batsman against bowler, finds its best expression in Test cricket

Peter Roebuck

Cricket is a contest between bat and ball, a struggle that reaches its highest form in the Test arena. In most games the players are attempting the same skills and the result depends on the quality of the execution. Boxers and tennis players land the same sorts of blows, play the same type of shots. In cricket, as in baseball, the teams have the same aim but the process involves a primeval battle between batsman and bowler.

It is a confrontation between prey and predator, collector and hunter, reason and fury. Both sides strive with every power at their disposal to emerge triumphant. At first the bowler presses for a quick kill, for he knows his opponent is at his most vulnerable before he has settled. If the batsman survives his period of reconnoitering, his opponent might change his strategy, play a waiting game, set a trap, seek an opening, probe for weakness, mental or technical, or else invite his rival to reach too far. Victory alone matters and it can be attained by means slow or swift, fair or foul.

For his part the batsman strives to calm his nerves and become accustomed to light and pitch and ball. He tries to take his time and to give no hint of shakiness, even as the elephants dance in his belly. Most likely he will endeavour to play a tried and trusted game honed over the years. Every innings is different, though, and no bowler is quite the same, so the willow wielder needs to have his wits about him.

The attack might include a tearaway, a crafty veteran, an innocent-looking swinger, a mean fingerspinner, and a wristy one, capable of giving both ball and bottle a fearful rip. By and large all of them will fulfill their caricature. At the lower levels the aged chap is the one to watch. Bowlers learn a thing or two as they go along. Hence the saying, "Never underestimate a grey-haired bowler."

Not that a fellow ever learns that lesson. One of the delights of cricket is that even experienced and supposedly intelligent players keep making the same mistakes and keep berating themselves with the same curses. Pitted against a touring Australian side not so long ago, I managed to survive the opening onslaught and then licked my lips as the ball was thrown to a creaking purveyor of slow curlers. Too late I realised that the accursed pensioner was not as guileless as he seemed, and that his deliveries were not so much easy meat as poisoned chalice. By then the trudge back to that place of eternal wisdom and endless regret, the dressing room, was well underway.

Ordinarily the batsman will begin to widen his range of shots once established at the crease. It is not always a conscious decision. As often as not, the change of tempo happens of its own accord. Confidence, a tiring attack and frustration can combine to hasten the flow of runs. Unless the field is pushed back, innings advance in fits and starts. Placement, too, is less common than supposed. Batsmen might manoeuvre the ball into a gap or loft into empty spaces, but piercing the field with a full-blooded shot usually depends as much on luck as skill. 

Of course batsmen and bowlers sometimes switch sides. Then the batsman becomes the predator, attacking from the outset and so changing the course of the contest. Even opening batsmen have become audacious. Previously the movement of the ball and a wider insecurity caused by Depressions and wars dampened ardour. Charlie Macartney, an incorrigible Australian (that might be repetitive), was an exception. By his reckoning an opener ought to dispatch a drive back at the bowler's head at the first opportunity, thereby informing him that he was in for a proper scrap. Nowadays the spread of briefer formats, the dryness of the pitches and the mood of the era encourage early attempts to seize the initiative.

Test cricket provides the opportunity for every player to express his talents to the utmost. Whereas the one-day game, to some degree, dictates terms to those taking part, limiting their overs, reducing their time at the crease, influencing field placements and bowling changes, a five-day match is as liberating as it is daunting.

Unsurprisingly the most compelling exchanges between bat and ball take place in the Test arena. Here the greatest players of the era are given the chance to try their luck against their equivalents, and the freedom to score 200 or a duck, take 10 wickets or concede a stack of runs without reward.

Bowlers, especially, relish the opportunity to prove their worth. At last they can set their own fields anyhow - so long as they don't copy Douglas Jardine - and bowl as many overs as captain and body allow. Inevitably the leading practitioners have produced their best work in this environment, constructing dazzling, tormenting spells that linger as long in the memory as the brilliant innings played by their temporary foes. Along the way they have reminded observers that bowling can be as rewarding as batting, and a lot more destructive.

Every cricket enthusiast will recall occasions when bowlers surpassed themselves. Michael Holding's stint at The Oval in 1976 was unforgettable. At once he was graceful and mesmerising, not so much running to the crease as gliding to it. Head upright, shoulders swaying slightly, toes barely touching the grass, he gathered himself at delivery and without apparent effort sent down thunderbolts that contained the charm of the antelope and the wrath of a vengeful god. Stumps kept toppling over like skittles and shaken batsmen came and went, knowing they had been undone by an irresistible force.

Richard Hadlee's performance in Brisbane was more surgical than stunning. Operating off a seasoned run, summoning formidable expertise, cutting the ball around off a track that helped him a little and others not at all, he worked his way through the local order. Even by his precise standards it was a tour de force. Like so many of the best spells, too, the wicket-taking deliveries were defined not so much by their deadliness as by the company they kept. Superb batsmen were harried and humiliated into error. The Kiwi did not bruise a single body but he damaged many egos.

Wasim Akram's virtuoso display at the MCG stands out because he had the ball upon a string, made it bend both ways at a scintillating pace and left accomplished batsmen gasping and groping. It's hard enough countering a bowler sending them down at 90mph and swinging it in one direction. When they start moving it both ways, it's downright unfair. Wasim streamed to the crease and with a gleam more mischievous than menacing, produced an astonishing spell. 

Malcolm Marshall's most remarkable contribution came on a slow pitch at the SCG. West Indies had already won the series, and some suspected that the track had been prepared for the home spinners. Certainly West Indies were below their best. Amongst the flingers only Marshall rose to the challenge. Shortening his run, adjusting his length, he transformed himself from fearsome fast bowler to relentless, precise, probing swinger. And he kept at it for two days, even as the Australians piled on the runs. It was a thrilling, stunning piece of controlled, resourceful, pace bowling.

Among the modern masters, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne stand apart. McGrath looked like a hillbilly and bowled like a scientist. He was consistent and accurate, controlled and masterful, nagging away, securing extra bounce and movement, relying on skill alone to remove batsmen. He worked his way through an order as a rodent does a hunk of cheese, constantly nibbling, taking it piece by piece. If Lord's, with its inviting slope and disconcerting ridge witnessed his deadliest spells, it was because it suited him better than any other surface. But McGrath's greatness was most clearly revealed in his hat-trick taken in Perth against West Indies. His dismissals of Sherwin Campbell, Brian Lara and Jimmy Adams were notable for the precision of his analysis, the coldness of the execution, and the degree of craft required and revealed in the space of three balls. McGrath's combination included a perfectly pitched outswinger to an opening batsman inclined to hang back, a cutter landing on the sticks that drew a worried response from a gifted left-hander, and a bumper that rose at the shoulder of a tormented captain. Every delivery was inch perfect.

Warne's stature was revealed in his first and final contributions to Ashes series in England. His genius was shown by that very first delivery, to Mike Gatting, even as his character was confirmed by the fact that he dared to try his hardest-spun and least reliable offering. Twelve years later he was back in the old dart and trying to win an Ashes series off his own back. His performance in claiming 40 scalps in that ill-fated campaign stands alongside any contribution from any spinner in the history of the game. Although his powers were in decline, Warne's mind remained sharp, his determination was unwavering and his stamina superb. It was an unyielding, magnificent performance from a sportsman blessed with artistry, audacity, grit and bluff.

Of course many other great bowlers and bowling feats could be mentioned. The sight of Jeff Thomson unleashing another thunderbolt, Bishan Bedi lulling opponents to their doom, Murali spinning the ball at right angles in his early years, Waqar changing games with his sudden sandshoe crushers, Mike Procter in full flight, Derek Underwood landing it on a threepenny, and so many others pass easily into the mists of time.

That bowling has a beauty of its own is proven by these expert practitioners. They were as big a draw card as any batsman. The buzz that went around grounds as Warne marked out his run, the hush as the fast bowler stood at the top of his run, reinforces the point. Test cricket brings out the best in batsmen and bowlers alike, allows the game to reach its highest point. Confrontations between the giants - Lillee and Richards, Marshall and Gavaskar, Warne and Tendulkar - can be as exhilarating and satisfying. Then spectators and players remember what it was that that drew them to the game in the first place, and why they remain somewhat under its spell.

Peter Roebuck is a former captain of Somerset and the author, most recently, of In It to Win It

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Tips in PR management during a crisis

By John McTernan in The Telegraph

8:11PM BST 20 Jul 2011

Halfway through my time as his political secretary, Tony Blair offered me some excellent advice: “You only have to break one of their legs, John.” In vain did I protest that I had never broken a single leg, let alone both. The point Blair was making was that political operatives need to be either feared or respected.

The truth, exposed horrendously over the past fortnight, is that David Cameron’s current operation in Downing Street is neither.

The issue here is not that Ed Miliband has made the political weather – though he has. It is that the Government’s response has been supine. In a crisis, what is required from the centre is “grip”: a tightly controlled and clearly visible strategy that reframes the problem and creates the political space for you to move on. None of that has been apparent.

What should Downing Street have done? Well, the first rule of crisis management is that you need to understand the full dimensions of the problem. That means assembling all the facts: getting everyone together, collecting all the data, making sure that you know exactly what happened and when. Above all, it requires you to ask all the questions that you know will be put to you, especially the ones that you fear the most. This has clearly not been done.

Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, the Prime Minister could not say whether Neil Wallis, the former News of the World executive who apparently acted as an informal adviser to Andy Coulson before the election, had been into Downing Street to see Coulson after it.

Well, someone in the Garden Room – the home of the elite administrators who keep the Government ticking over – could have checked the diary.
More basically, everyone who comes into No 10 has an entry on a database that the police check at the gate. A simple search would have sufficed to provide the PM with an answer. And that was just one small fact. What was needed was a far more searching process that pulled together every angle, and every possible line of attack.
This was not because full, frank and fearless disclosure was required, but because a choice had to be made. Just as you get only one chance to make a first impression, in a scandal you get only one chance to make a clean breast of things.
The key, though, is to realise that you don’t need to tell the whole truth – just nothing but the truth. Don’t lie. Don’t equivocate. But set out a defensible truth: one that you will not have to expand, modify or resile from.
In all crises, there is a similar pattern. Some information will initially be suppressed, but it will dribble out, or be dragged out. In any event, it won’t be kept secret, and when it emerges, you will end up looking shifty or malevolent. Full disclosure is important, but – speaking cynically – only of what will eventually come out.
Be economical if you are sure some sources are utterly secure. Just be honest about what will become public, and don’t try to conceal it. In any scandal, there are some things it is impossible to evade; your only chance of survival will be to endure them.
To date, there have been no signs that anyone in No 10 has grasped these laws. Paradoxically, the last Cameron staffer who got this, who could have predicted and anticipated the trajectory that the story would take, was Andy Coulson.
With Coulson gone, there has been no trace of the feral in the No 10 DNA – indeed, the new Downing Street prides itself on being a less political place than under Labour, and on operating with fewer special advisers.
What this fails to take into account is that politics is a contact sport. It’s not about “sofa government”: it’s about effective government. No one would have called Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s consigliere, “feral”, but he always had someone who could do the business as part of his team: tough, respected operators such as Alastair Campbell, Sally Morgan, Pat McFadden or Darren Murphy.
Who fits the bill in the current set-up? Search me. Indeed, search the house, and the surrounding buildings. No one can do the necessary low politics. For example, Ed Llewellyn, the current chief of staff, is as decent a man as I have dealt with in politics.
He understands that his role is, in part, to shield the Prime Minister from trouble. But in apparently failing to pass on warnings about Andy Coulson, he neglected his duty to put the difficult questions to the boss, even if they were rejected.
The entire civil service machine is paid to say yes to the PM, but his staff – particularly the most senior – are paid to say no. It is fine for him to press ahead with his chosen strategy, but he should have the alternatives, and the costs and benefits, laid out.
The greatest asset of the Cameron operation is the Prime Minister himself. His performance in the Commons yesterday, for example, was typically polished. No one can match his sweeping mastery of the Chamber, or his contemptuous dismissal of objectionable questions. It was a classic of its kind: hours on his feet, answering endless questions, super-cool, witty, calm.
And yet the flaws were revealing. First, it was all his own work. We were back to Cameron in his pomp, the greatest single explicator of the Government’s policies, actions and strategies.
It’s a huge gift, and the Coalition would sink without it. But it emphasised once more that this is what he is – the only one who can make that compelling case. And second, it was a Commons performance on an issue that has broken through to the streets.
Earlier this week, my partner realised that the two women walking behind her on a suburban street were discussing the quality and veracity of News International’s evidence to the select committee. This has become an issue where the public know (and care) enough to become expert.
This is where the flaws in No 10’s strategy – or lack of it – will rebound on the PM. At certain key moments yesterday, he showed a fatal lack of detail, or recall. Why was there no ready response to Tom Watson’s question about his letter to Cameron, which contained warnings about Coulson that went ignored? The PM and his team can’t have imagined that Watson would be absent, or that the Speaker would overlook him.
And why so evasive on the private firm that “vetted” Coulson – is the name really going to stay secret? After all, it would have received government money, and elsewhere ministers boast of total transparency in costs and supply of services.
All governments need head-kickers: in their Cabinets, on their backbenches, and in their offices. It has been a stunning miscalculation not to have a proper political operation in No 10 – and arguably, yet another way that the Coalition has deeply damaged the Tory party. Worse, it has deprived Cameron of a key instrument of government: effective enforcement.
For want of a strategy, Cameron is now tied to Coulson: if the latter is shown to have lied – indeed, if he is convicted of perjury – it is unlikely that a prime ministerial apology to the Commons will be sufficient penance. Sir John Junor used to ask, in his own inimitable way: “Who is in charge of the clattering train?” Well, who is?

After 37 years, post-mortem proves Allende killed himself

Report on Allende's death was part of inquiry into hundreds of murders committed by Pinochet regime in Chile

By Guy Adams
Thursday, 21 July 2011

Salvador Allende, the Chilean president who was widely considered to be the world's first democratically elected Marxist, committed suicide 37 years ago, and was not murdered by right-wing revolutionaries, according to the results of a post-mortem unveiled yesterday.
A forensic team in Santiago, which has been examining Allende's exhumed body for the past two months, concluded that he died from injuries consistent with having turned an AK47 assault rifle on himself. They found no evidence to support theories that a third party was involved.
The detailed report was welcomed by Allende's family, who have always maintained that the 65-year-old politician took his own life as troops stormed La Mondea, the country's Presidential Palace, during a US-backed coup on 11 September 1973.
"The conclusions are consistent with what we already believed," his daughter, Senator Isabel Allende, told reporters. "When faced with extreme circumstances, he made the decision of taking his own life, instead of being humiliated or having to go through with some other situation."
On the day of the coup, Allende, who had voiced hostility to the US and formed diplomatic alliances with Cuba and Russia, is reported to have promised supporters that he would not be taken alive, even as La Mondea was bombed by fighter jets and filled with smoke and tear gas.
Yet for years, left-wing conspiracy theorists, including Allende's old friend and comrade Fidel Castro, have maintained that he was murdered by bloodthirsty revolutionaries. They claimed his corpse, which was never shown to his family, was riddled with bullets, and argued that an "official" autopsy carried out on the night of the coup was rigged.
Adding to the sense of mystery about the death was the fact that neither the weapon (which had been a gift to Allende from Castro) nor one of the two fatal bullets, were ever recovered. The incoming administration never carried out a criminal investigation, and for years the Allende family had refused to sanction another autopsy.
In May, however, a team of coroners and forensic experts were finally authorised by Isabel to examine the former president's corpse. They were unable to uncover any evidence to support murder allegations, and said his injuries were consistent with a self-inflicted wound from a rifle held between his legs.
"There were two bullets fired at the scene; two shells were recovered, but only one bullet," said David Pryor, a former Scotland Yard expert in forensic ballistics who worked as a consultant on the case. "The gun, an AKA rifle, was on automatic. There was one wound in his skull, caused by two bullets."
The 20-page report on Allende's death was commissioned by a judge investigating hundreds of murders and other human rights abuses committed by the regime of General Augusto Pinochet, whose right-wing military dictatorship presided over the country for almost two decades after the 1973 coup.
Pinochet, who seized power with the tacit support of the US, and held onto it with the backing of Lady Thatcher's Conservative administration, is accused of being responsible for the murder or "disappearance" of more than three thousand political opponents.