Times for discrimination

Perhaps there should be a small graffito on the News International pay-wall: Mac-users not welcome.

The story so far:

Malcolm finds it convenient to pay for one of the Times subscription schemes: it saves a bit of money.

As part of that subscription, Malcolm finds he is entitled to be a "member" of the Times+ scheme. Over a period of many months, he has found that beneficial just the once: getting a discount to the British Library exhibition on Henry VIII.

The present:

It was inevitable, perhaps as an initial "come-on" later to be chargeable, that subscribers should be invited to access the on-line resources of the Times and Sunday Times (soon to disappear behind the pay-wall).

That led to Malcolm reconsidering the "benefits" of this involvement.

Why! here's one! An invitation to download an audiobook:

This month, you can download Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, the huge bestseller that evocatively imagines the story of the girl behind one of Vermeer’s best loved paintings.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is set in seventeenth century Holland and follows the spirited Griet, a girl sent to work in the house of masterful painter Vermeer, inspiring him to produce one of his most magnificent works.

Times+ members can download their free audiobook of Girl with a Peal [sic] Earring, worth £10.99, by clicking on the download links on the right.

Except a large part of the potential invitees are excluded from that offer.

Go two stages further and find this:

WARNING: You are trying to download content for Microsoft Windows Media Player that requires a license. You must use Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7 or 8 and make sure ActiveX is enable [sic] in order to download this file.

Now:

• Malcolm, as frequently rehearsed here, is proudly and loudly a Mac-user.

But:

• Microsoft suspended development of Internet Explorer back in mid-2003, with version 5.2.3.

So:

• There is, therefore, no obvious way Malcolm (and other Mac-users) can access this download.

Go to the fountain-head!

Malcolm therefore e-mailed customerservices@timesplus.co.uk.

So far, the only response is an automated one:

Thank you for your email. This has been passed onto the relevant department for their attention. Should your enquiry require an answer you will be contacted within three working days.

Yes, it bloody-well does require an answer.

Added:

Response received:

Unfortunately, the audiobooks in the Culture+ Harper Audio promotion are available exclusively on Windows platforms and devices at the moment.

Despite our best endeavours, we have been unable to secure an alternative solution that will provide the quality and value that we would wish to offer. However, we will continue in our endeavours to find an alternative solution that will support more platforms and will if, and when, we secure this we will heavily advert the fact on the site.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

That makes News International involvement with iPad look iffy.

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A matter of words

Iain Martin in the Wall Street Journal (i.e. the Murdoch Empire in a lounge suit):

... nobody watching can really be clear on what the Tories are trying to say. What is the difference between a pledge, or a guarantee, or a hope or an aspiration? If they know, they certainly haven’t found a way of communicating it yet.

Lewis Carroll, Alice through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6:

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master -- that's all.'

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. `They've a temper, some of them -- particularly verbs: they're the proudest -- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs -- however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'

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A news-worthy détente?

Mary Fitzgerald, last Thursday, put up a neat piece in the Irish Times:

Eurosceptic line of Irish editions of UK papers more muted this time around

That must be a harbinger of numerous academic studies. Fitzgerald looked back:

In the postmortems that followed last year’s No vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum, the Government and several Yes campaigners were quick to seize on what they considered to be the nefarious role played by Irish editions of British newspapers noted for their Eurosceptic editorial slant.

According to some, it was not only the Sun “wot won” it for the No side, but its sister titles in Rupert Murdoch’s News International stable. These included the Sunday Times and News of the World, with a little help from the Irish edition of the Daily Mail.

Certainly the hysteria this time round has been moderated, even though the essential postures have not changed. Witness Gerald Scarfe for last week's Sunday Times, Irish edition (above, left)

The rest of Fitzgerald's piece identifies Declan Ganley's gross misrepresentation of the position of the Financial Times and, to a lesser extent, of the implicit stance of Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. Cool and clear, the article is well worth the trip, and rightly is an Editor's Choice for the week.

What the journos had spotted was strident English-based Europhobia was not going to work this iteration. The electorate were in a chastened, more receptive mood. Opposition parties (excepting Sinn Féin) were actively, even aggressively on board, while last outing they had been prepared to leave the running to a labouring Fianna Fáil (and didn't Bertie and Co. gripe about that). The "No" campaign, and not just Ganley, went stratospheric: when some jokester used Photoshop to parody Cóir's efforts (see right), many could hardly tell the difference.

Trust Nigel Farage and his UKIPpers to make matters worse. Using funds (intended to support political parties) provided by the European Parliament to produce and distribute leaflets to every Irish home was definitely not a good idea. Nor was it diplomatic to deploy an image of a turkey (left): the memory of Dustin's Eurovision performance still rankles. UKIP MEPs were lucky to be called nothing worse than "racists".

Ireland is a mature nation, and tolerates a great deal of outside "advice". Ireland is also less than three human generations of age, so 1922 and all that is still a sore topic. Anglo-Irish relations are going to be long troubled (at least from the Irish point-of-view) by the "previous", all the way back to 1169. A Thatcher-admiring ex- City broker, turned MEP for South-East England, was bound to incense (Farage was lucky nobody spotted that Strongbow was also a Kentish Man). Farage was so successful that the dung fell alike on Declan Ganley. Ganley (who was a late-comer this time) found himself summarily discounted, unfairly, as another "English" interloper.

Now that the argy-bargy ought to be over, those same UK papers will be turning their "minds" to the Conservative Conference. It will be interesting to see what their Irish editions say about Cameron's predicament, now the Referendum result has dished his previous position. Sphere: Related Content

A great day at the Oval ... but woo-hoo

Malcolm writes the following in recognition that a cousin was a "professional" on two MCC tours of Australia, and even has the odd street named there in his honour.

We've had several weeks of Sky TV and roadside posters telling us how significant the England-Australia cricket tournament was. Can' t think what the Murdoch interest amounted to here, beyond exclusive rights.

That said, and the inevitable Victory bus-top tour around London taken for granted, we have a classist problem.

Britain (i.e. the English authorities) populated Australia from prisons and felons. Most of the transportees (including, doubtfully, Malcolm's distant x-times uncle -- a second offender for poaching) got there on a one-way ticket.

On that basis it becomes something more than a national competition.

It becomes retribution, class-warfare, revenge.

Yet, this was a good game:

• A moderate score on the first innings:
• a curious collapse thereafter;
• a decent performance in response for the third innings;
• an honourable fourth innings against an impossible target.

Enough to fill seats for four days, though never likely to feature among the greatest games of all-time.

All that remains to be answered is whether a good leftie should be cheering for home or away. Sphere: Related Content

Problems of identity

Why has no one yet managed to draw a decent caricature of the president? Cartoonists are struggling to sketch anything that is even recognisable as Obama, let alone funny.
Compare this failure to their cousins across the pond, who have represented Gordon Brown as a walking corpse and his chief rival David Cameron as Little Lord Fauntleroy.

That's a posting on Slate, last May.

Well, the "Little Lord Fauntleroy" is originally © Dennis Skinner, from way back; but it has been deliciously refined by Martin Rowson for his Guardian cartoons (above).

Meanwhile, the world has been waiting for the sunrise of Steve Bell's definitive nailing. His latest version is quite promising:
It looks as if this one has legs.

The cartoonist's dilemma

The essential problem is that Cameron has been assiduous in being all-things-to-all-men, masking any convincing identity, which is why Steve Bell may have the clincher.

Two hard-right commentators today are posing the consequences and questions implicit in that. First we have the Torygraph's Simon Heffer on disillusion among Tory MPs over Cameron's "cronyism":

It is now widely felt that mates of Dave had preferential treatment, not just from the party committee that investigated them, but from the party machine itself. Spin doctors and parliamentary colleagues were sent out to prop up certain key mates who had done unethical things with the public's money. People who were not key mates were hung out to dry. In an atmosphere already fraught with self-pity, over-emotionalism and blame-shifting, the perception of Dave as having been partisan in the recent conduct of the affairs of his party is now festering nicely.

Heffer has never bought the full Cameroonie, so this is no hot friend cooling.

Then there is Peter Oborne up front with the crux of the matter:

Amoral spiv or true traditional Tory? Will the REAL Cameron please stand up

Since this is the Daily Wail, there has to be a conventional gesture to Cameroon groupies and gropies:

the traditional, God-fearing Tory with a social conscience ... a brave and patriotic individual who is driven by a sense of public duty and responsible social obligation ... a strong sense of history and high integrity.

Yawn, well ... sort of. Then the knife goes in, quite deliciously:

there is also the other David Cameron who - and I'm afraid there's no way of putting it politely - is a bit of a spiv.

This is someone who is at ease with the more louche elements of London's media world and who, before entering Parliament, worked in corporate affairs for the controversial media mogul Michael Green.

Green, it should be recalled, rose through some curious dealings (and a back-stairs operation to Thatcher's Cabinet) to build a TV empire, which then crashed disastrously. The analogy with Cameron is unmissable: up like the rocket, and down like the stick.

The dichotomy between Hefferlump and Oborne is that man-of-the-hour, Andy Coulson. Heffer thinks he will survive, another beneficiary of Cameron's patronage (and thereby fuelling further mutterings): Oborne reckons he should and will be defenestrated.

The end-game cometh

There is a tectonic shift happening. The last few days are revealing that all is not well in the House of Dave. Coulson has become the story (and it is a cliché widely-employed among the chattering classes that this is the end of a media-manipulator's usefulness); but it is a symptom, not a cause of the general malaise.

The Tories will hang together, until the election. Osborne will impose that discipline (and earn himself no boy scout badges therein). There will be many aggrieved back-benchers whose loyalty will have to be bought by future employment or cheap, shoddy titles. There will be Constituency Association officials who will resent dictation from above. As we move deeper and deeper into election year, the wagons will pull into a tighter, more defensive circle: that will cause distress among the journos who are convinced they have a right to be inside the laager.

One can read all that, and more, into William Hague's plea for party discipline this last week. He was addressing the Westminster and City of London Tories:

Part of his challenge was to convince the audience that the next General Election was not in the bag. That is a problem he would have been pleased to have to cope with when he was leader.
"We need to gain 116 constituencies in one go in order to win," he said. "That will be a Herculean effort. It is not something we take for granted."

Almost poetically, changing only the boilerplate metaphor, that repeats what Hague said in 1997, on winning the leadership potty:

We have a mountain to climb, a hard battle to win. But together, united and reformed, we can and we will prevail.

The subtext here is almost one of pathos. In the hands of a tragedian, we would sense impending nemesis.

For, the central problem remains. Above all, as long as the flashy, trashy wishful-thinkings and rivial, cliché-ridden spoutings persist, at the expense of any credible, cohesive policy, the images of the velveteen dude and the jellyfish will grow in relevance. As with every fallen, former media darling:

No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred;
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard.
A favourite has no friend!

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The Sky's the limit?

Yesterday, Sunday, Malcolm was net-less, tv-less and (for a briefer period) 'phone-less. That was because the Virgin Megabrand, which now supplies his cable connection, let him down. For several hours. In mid-blog.

Now Malcolm's recent experience of Virgin's broadband provision has been at least acceptable. Nor is he a great consumer of tv pap (BBC News 24 and documentaries apart). So the great BSkyB/Virgin spat passed him by as the idle wind. Except for all the bumpf that the wind, the postal services and the billboards carry. Naturally, though, in his bereft state Malcolm considered his options.

And that prompted a small question in his enquiring mind: how much?

The answer came courtesy of MarketingWeek:

BSkyB spent £734m on marketing in the year to June 30, a £112m - or 18% - rise on the previous 12 months...

Sky, which is embroiled in a public battle against cable rival Virgin Media, also upped its above-the-line spend to £96m, a 28% increase on £75m a year earlier...

Figures released by Nielsen Media Research in July show Sky spent about £70m in the first six months of the year, 40% more than a year earlier and about double the £37m spent by Virgin Media.

Sky is gouging an average of £412 per year out of its customers, with a total profit of £958M.

And one further statistic: BSkyB loses about 15% of its customers each year. In other words, it (like Big Tobacco) has a need to hook that number, or more, of new or returning consumers even to stand still.

Yikes.

So, is all well in the great Murdoch Empire in the Sky?

Well, since Sky makes so much of its sports coverage, Malcolm starts there.

First up is the forthcoming David-Goliath slugfest between Sky and Setanta. As Malcolm understands it, Setanta has snaffled 46 Premier games per season for £392m. Sky, having enjoyed a virtual monopoly since 1992, keeps 92 games a season and first pick for £1.3bn. It only needs a less-fancied team to have a good run for the Setanta bet to pay off well.

And then there's the growing muscle of broadband services. Unless one is a committed "live" sports fan, the offerings from (for example) BTVision begin to look increasingly attractive.

Beyond the touchline, there's the rise-and-rise of Freeview, which is about to overtake Sky subscription as a gross number.

Decline, if not fall?

The last decade has been the fat years for BSkyB. From now on, the going gets tougher, the competition fitter and more numerous.

Greg Dyke, back in 2003, signalled that the BBC would not forever be happy as a dependency of the Sky Astra satellites. That move may have been premature, but it must indicate a state-of-mind in the Beeb. Earlier this year, the BBC and ITV got the go-ahead for an unencrypted high-definition satellite service.

Moreover, the BBC's engineers are implementing ways around the bandwidth limits of Freeview. One avenue is adapting the multiplexing techniques used by mobile phone downloads speeds and for 802.11n Wi-Fi.

James Murdoch has sniffed the wind, too, and is trying to break out of his particular niche, as shown by the acquisition of Amstrad:

Amstrad no longer manufactures set-top boxes. The company designs the kit in conjunction with Sky before outsourcing the manufacture of the products. It is the second leftfield move made by Mr Murdoch since he took over at Sky after the company's acquisition of the business broadband supplier easynet last year. The satellite TV company has since launched broadband and telephony services to try to diversify its business.

Ah, yes, Sky's Achilles heel: upload speed.

Above all there is the savvy consumer, eyeing up Skype as a way of getting out from under telecomms bills. That same wiseacre was shrugging shoulders at the recent anti-Virgin campaign to keep in touch with serials and mini-features by switching to Sky. Such a consumer will already be ahead of the watercooler moment by downloading from Torrents or the Usenet or one of the P2P networks all those US serials the day after they air in Pocatello. When More4 were pushing Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip Malcolm was made aware that more than one young person had already viewed the entire series, without leaving London, by such judicious pirating.

Meslier (not Diderot) revisited

We cannot hope soon to see the last Murdoch throttled by the obsolete RJ45 cable of the last Branson, but the monopolies are under assault. The death-rattle is implicit whenever News International gets sniffy about the BBC licence fee (£135.50 per annum: just a third of the average Sky subscription). Sphere: Related Content