AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

I was once asked to look after a toddler while her mother went upstairs for a well-deserved nap. It can't have been more than a quarter of an hour before the mother was rushing down the stairs shouting in a quite unnecessarily sharp manner, "She's halfway down the bloody street!" Language!

[Mick Harper]

The Truth about Franco: Spain's Forgotten Dictator (PBS)

Already? I suppose he mostly is but I have just finished this five hour biothlon and can recommend it thoroughly despite it being a bit left-wing tendentious. Nothing you can't handle. What struck me was the parallel with Ireland, so close as to mean lessons can be learned. Also with Portugal to some extent, and all three form the most westward bits of western Europe, though I think that's accidental. (We're next in line though!) Basically the similarities are

1. Civil War
2. Emergence of a Catholic, right wing strong man for several decades
3. Autarky at home, neutrality abroad
4. Relentless poverty
5. Take off as soon as he's gone
6. Now standard West European

More later on this compulsive subject. No, really.

[Mick Harper]

The big difference though was how they got out of poverty. Franco encouraged Spaniards to be gastarbeiters all over Europe thereby a) relieving unemployment at home b) sending back hard currency and c) returning to have large families. The Irish only went to Britain and stayed there. But the Big Shift was tourism, which Spain had aplenty and Ireland didn't.

And none of it mattered! As soon as the Old Boys had gone, both countries became mega-rich, mega-democratic and mega-stable. (Also Portugal.) It's either the wonder of the age, the wonder of capitalism or the wonder of the EU. If only we knew.

[Hatty]

[Mick Harper]

If so, that should help us to understand what's going on. But I don't see it. Neutrality in the war seems to be the only common factor. True, Ataturk was a strong man with longevity but surely the opposite of Franco and de Valera -- dragging the country forward rather than trying to evoke a golden age. Which, after all, Turkey has even more of than either Spain or Portugal. Ireland has none which didn't stop de Valera evoking it. Also, Turkey has minorities and a vulnerable strategic position that none of the other three really have. (Though Spain does its best to produce both.)

Some but not so much autarky in Turkey which developed slowly but uniformly (as far as I know) without reference to Ataturk. In terms of democracy and stability it is more like Greece than Iberia: mostly forward, sometimes back. But Turkey has always been sui generis, a relatively stable and democratic Muslim state, and therefore does not fit into any obvious model.

[Mick Harper]

You think you've seen In The Heat of the Night enough but you never have.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Speaking of which

[Mick Harper]

Thinking about it, it is all about British Steel's pension fund -- which experience shows will dwarf the value of British Steel itself. My guess is that sometime in the not very distant future the whole thing will be quietly moved on to a boutique corporate raider who in the not so distant future to that happening will announce it cannot meet the pension liabilities but being offshore nobody will be able to do anything about it. The Turkish pension fund, being a sovereign fund, cannot be held accountable either.

Hence the whole shebang will have to be quietly moved on to the books of the UK Government's pension rescue scheme. At another rough guess, all this will go back to the time that Lakshi Mittal was buying up the European steel industry to the then great relief of the European Coal and Steel Community (aka the Common Market aka the EU aka the various governments of the EU) and had to be given certain assurances.

[Mick Harper]

I know you're worried about me being bumped off by all the vested interests I uncover in the course of a normal working day but be comforted that I have adopted the Stephen Ward strategy. He had pissed off so many people that they kept bumping into one another staking out the mews where he lived. And look what happened to Stephen ... it was all Hatty's idea!

[Mick Harper]

Secrets of the Royal Train Channel 5

I was shocked to hear that the Queen, when going to Sandringham for her winter break, uses the ordinary Thameslink. Shocked by the fact, shocked I didn't know. She pays for a first class single, £45.00, because she's not returning within a month, they said, but obviously she'd know ahead of time so may get it cheaper on Trainline. She gets a carriage to herself for security reasons but gets off with everyone else and makes her way to the ticket barrier. I've taken tickets myself and I wouldn't fancy bobbing as I did (while squinting at the date). But they may have machines by now. Nice programme, commendable lack of gush. I warm more and more to Channel 5.

[Mick Harper]

Great Excuses/Put Downs

Court-appointed psychiatrist: It's important you're both here on time if I'm going to make a fair recommendation about your son.
Father: Yes, sorry, I was in California. It won't happen again.
Psychiatrist: What was so important?
Father: I was interviewing Charles Manson for a clinical study on serial killers.

Mindhunter (Netflix) Simply the best!

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

But hold up, that's a bit of a coincidence, me praising Netflix one day and getting a rate rise the next. You don't think they read the AEL and thought to themselves, "There's a sucker we can put the squeeze on", do you? Probably not but it's a great idea for a series. This team of nerds are developing an algorithm that allows multinationals to charge everyone a different price for their products when they stumble across an even greater possibility ... it practically writes itself. Hatty, assemble a list of people we can pitch it to. Deep pockets, likes commissioning off-the-wall but not off-your-rocker stuff, you know the type.

[Mick Harper]

Franco Building with Jonathan Meades BBC4

Tonite, ten o'clock. Well, Meades, this is your final warning. If style actually replaces substance, you're out. It's been going that way but it's not too late. If you pass that but I get the slightest whiff that your judgements as a cultural commentator are being informed even a little bit by your political opinions instead of triumphantly overriding them, you're also out. Of my heart I mean, the BBC will carry on commissioning you as long as they can't understand what you're saying but you're saying it wearing toreador's pants or whatever. This is personal, just you and me.

signed
El Toro