Friday Forecasts!
Okeydoke roll up roll up.
Nick in the Observer: He didn't get anything like a fair crack in the Newsnight debate so I suspect that he will be boiling over with things to write about Tessa Jowell. Basically a retread of this one from the last time something like this happened and no worse for that.
Dave in the Times: I guess "Dave plugs his blog", incorporating "the internet is an unreliable place, you can't trust everything you read there". It would take balls of steel to do this after the Neil Berry fiasco, but I reckon Dave's got the stones.
Nick in the Standard: Bendy buses.
Nick in the Observer: He didn't get anything like a fair crack in the Newsnight debate so I suspect that he will be boiling over with things to write about Tessa Jowell. Basically a retread of this one from the last time something like this happened and no worse for that.
Dave in the Times: I guess "Dave plugs his blog", incorporating "the internet is an unreliable place, you can't trust everything you read there". It would take balls of steel to do this after the Neil Berry fiasco, but I reckon Dave's got the stones.
Nick in the Standard: Bendy buses.
posted by The Rioja Kid at 3/03/2006 02:10:00 PM
11 Comments:
I can see NC following up on Jowell, if only for the 'conflict of interest' line that he took: he said that if his wife (who apparently works for John Lewis) worked for the BBC, then he wouldn't write about the BBC.
(Pause)
Can someone give Mrs Cohen a job on Dick and Dom In Da Bungalow now, please?
Meanwhile...DA to do (over) the Lib Dems or the Education Bill
Nick's a racing cert to do Jowell, the only thing stopping him might be the risk of her resigning or something on Sat night.
It's boring to have the same forecast, so I think Nick will do Clare Short's HuT thing in Parliament, probably a straight Harry's Place lift. Though does that now have a risk-premium? I think Nick's still game. The funny piece will be the Oscars.
Aaro will do something about Ministerial salaries being not large enough to buy a house in Hampstead, and pay the school fees, thus you get corruption.
Cohen in the standard - Bendy Buses/Keira Knightley/being overweight.
I think Aaro may go for a Linda Smith tribute. (I think Nick might think about it, seeing as she was president of the Humanist lot, but it'll be hard to stay true to his "I hate all media luvvies" if he admits liking a "Radio 4 regular". He might have, as you say, the stones, of course.)
For Nick, I've used the lazy method: checked H'sP. Right now, the top post is on Nick favourite Hizb ut-Tahrir. It's perfect for him. There's even a goodish joke, "Imran Waheed dressed in a sharp suit with an open collar and proceeded to give a well-rehearsed autobiographical outline of his life that made Richard Curtis seem like a working-class rebel." Just about everything Nick hates: poncey middle class radicals, religion, sexism, homophobia, *and* a credulous anti-war MP.
Jowell is a possibility, but as Tim on Bloggerheads has noted, there was a grauniad Martin Rowson cartoon which depicted Jowell as a victim because she's a mate of Alan Rusbridger (sp?). Nick's been censored by the Observer before, remember.
Can I roll over my NC anti-Clooney Oscars prediction then?
I can't see how Nick can get out of doing Jowell. But my guess is that he'll also take the opportunity to hail the victory of Ming the Geriatric over BMW-man.
Cap, my point is that he may *want* to write (or, more accurately, go to press) about Jowell, but tehgrauniad group's record on the Jowell story has been to suppress it. And it seems they've cut Nick's articles before.
I agreed with everything he said on Newsnight. Jowell's PPS gave a very strange reaction to Nick's point, IMO. Nick said (in effect; I summarise): "I'm an honest bloke, and I recognise conflict of interest when I see it, and I don't go there. It would be unprofessional." The defence of that was something about how outrageous it is to ask a Minister to restrict herself. It's not outrageous; it's fair-dealing and common sense.
I doubt Nick reads this blog, but if he does, I want him to know that he can use his blog more creatively than he does at present. He doesn't need to merely create an archive of his print pieces. He can also (as Aaro does) throw out ideas which are too insubstantial (or, less politely, half-baked) for print publication. And he can publish articles his editors spiked.
Of course, 99 times out of 100, vanity publishing and blogging are the signs of a nutter. But Nick could get some credibility as "the man the Observer tried to gag."
Nick did use the blog to deny that he was spiked, I think it should be pointed out, and the Guardian has covered the story.
Apparently they've split up now, which might stop Nick getting too stuck in.
He's doing the hypocrisy of Anglicanism this week, which I think counts as an Oliver Kamm lift.
The hypocrisy of Hollywood will be next week, after Clooney has won best supporting actor and Paradise Now! wins best foreign film.
Thanks Simon. He's not on the Observer site (yet) and his blog is still on the gaiety thing. I'm not going to buy the bloody paper.
I was beginning to suspect that he'd been, you know, spiked.
You must have missed it, he's been up since about 12 (I sit pressing 'refresh' all night)
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/
comment/story/0,,1723762,00.html
The third piece is the most remarkable. Dogs can be trained to smell ink, which puts Emperor Vespasian in his place. Never let it be said Nick is going for the easy targets.
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