spinoff

On the day the Queen Mother died, Dave Lee Travis memorably said ‘It feels like history is slipping through our fingers’. So what are we children of the Channel 4 generation supposed to feel on the death of Richard Whiteley?

A man who was a charisma vacuum, one of the most unlikely of television icons, Whiteley’s death got top billing, above that of the rapid collapse of Zimbabwe, the slow disintegration of the European Union’s ideals for unification – the death of a man who hosted a quiz show, for God’s sake, is the most important thing happening in Britain.

And it’s not as if he was very good – because, frankly, he wasn’t. Uncomfortable in front of the camera, Whiteley’s presentation was gauche in the extreme; his Peter Snow-like use of ‘exciting’ ties and jumpers painstakingly knitted for him by aged widows in the East Midlands seeming more like a desperate attempt by his agent to introduce some sense of excitement than a real expression of personality; Whiteley had nothing that naturally leads to celebrity.

And this, of course, is where his success really lay. He was so bad at it that he became excellent; so gauche he possessed finesse in its purest form. Richard Whiteley knew he was crap – and played on it to be crapissime, the crappest of the crap and hence sublimely watchable, so superbly blank that he became content rich.

So, for the first time for ages, the death of a C-list celebrity actually comes as a real blow. The first person to appear on Channel 4, the TV channel that, above all, has defined the social and intellectual agenda in Britain for the last 20 years, is dead. And with his death, Channel 4 passes from exciting to establishment. And Whiteley passes into legend.

In an era when celebrity is based on being more outrageous than the next person, Whiteley survived and thrived by being the most boring. And by being so, showed us what celebrity actually is – not standing up and shouting, but doing the job, day in day out, as well as you can.

He wasn’t particularly good, he wasn’t charismatic, and his sense of humour could have been bettered by an I-speak-your-weight machine. But he was a true celebrity, and with his death a little more history slips through our fingers.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

What started out as a film promo tour is rapidly turning into a buffet of pottyness. Tom Cruise has been on US television screens supposedly promoting his latest film The War of the Worlds. Unfortunately though, his behaviour is overshadowing all else.

Not content with hopping up and down on Oprah’s sofa like a six year-old baboon full of E numbers, he has now started sounding off about his historical prowess.

“You don’t know about the history of psychiatry – I do,” was the comment that got chins wagging most recently. Cruise was responding to a question about Brooke Shields’ use of anti-depressants during a TV interview.

Cruise is anti-psychiatry because he is a Scientologist. He may claim to know the history of psychiatry, but does he know the history of Scientology? The most telling facts concerning Scientology, are these -

- The Church of Scientology only ever applied to become officially recognised as a "church" as a tax dodge,

- its founder L Ron Hubbard was an egomaniacal failed academic who, having had his theories roundly rejected by every respected academic institution in the world, bought himself a boat, filled it with his followers and sailed all over the place, throwing people overboard if he got bored of them.

Scientology teaches that aliens are all over the place, that inter-stellar travel is common, that individuals have lived previous lives in alien civilisations, that if you join the Church then you have to sign a statement promising that you will never sue, that you may not see your family unless told you are allowed to, and that – and this is the very important bit – that you can become a better person so long as you keep giving money to the church. Lots of it. Thomas Cruise Mapother IV has given hundreds of thousands of dollars in his time.

These people are reprehensible barkers of the highest order and what they teach is utter, laughable arse. However, the problem arises when people like Cruise appear on television and get the chance to speak about these lunatic fringe interests, in doing so implying that they're worthy of serious consideration.

Which of course they are not.

From now on, whenever Mr Cruise feels inclined to speak about this nonsense in public, he should open his mouth and insert a large potato till the urge has passed.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

Today, the London School of Economics released a report into the ID cards system proposed by the government. It is not complimentary. The report finds that “the proposals currently being considered by Parliament are neither safe nor appropriate.”

Ah. Really? And why is that?

“The proposals are too complex, technically unsafe, overly prescriptive and [there is] a lack of foundation of public trust and confidence,” replies the report.

Oh. But it’s quite an interesting idea isn’t it? I mean – all the computers and stuff. 'Biometrics' sound quite fun too, surely?

“The technology envisioned for this scheme is, to a large extent, untested and unreliable. No scheme on this scale has been tested anywhere in the world. Smaller and less ambitious systems have encountered substantial technological and operational problems that are likely to be amplified in a large-scale national system.”

Oh.

In summary, the report goes on to say that the card: will not help police, probably wont work, will provide a one stop shop for fraudsters, will violate the data protection act, is of uncertain purpose, will violate European law, poses threats to the privacy of UK citizens, will require constant and laborious updating and will cost anywhere up to 19 billion quid.

And the government’s response to this report? The government’s answer to a report penned by the top Economic and statistical people at the London School of Economics, along with help from the Financial Times, the DTI, the Inland Revenue, IBM, Royal Mail, the CBI, the Institute of Directors, British Telecom and Prudential? Do you know what it was?

“Their sums don’t stack up.”

Feel free to see a series of perfectly-stacked and completely sound sums here.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

No mincing around today. Spinoff has had our fill of George Galloway, his ego, his political posturings, and his smarm. And we don’t think we will have many dissenters, a mere month and a half down the road from the election.

At the time of the campaign, we had what are often termed ‘heated discussions’ about Galloway. There were arguments for, and there were arguments against. But eventually we did reach a consensus which is proved more and more accurate as every second passes: the man is an ass.

Not content with pushing poor Oona King, a young, clever, black, Jewish, Labour woman MP, off her patch in Bethnal Green and Bow, he is now set to conquer the world with his ‘speaking tour’.

Leaving behind all the people he promised so passionately to represent while he was viciously campaigning to get elected in east London, after a star turn at Glastonbury, it transpired he is set to head off to let the world know what he thinks.

So while the neglected constituents of Bethnal Green and Bow wonder why the long-promised sympathetic ear and honeyed Scottish burr are notable soley by their absence, and are hardly ever present in the House of Commons, Galloway gets on with what he loves best: telling people his opinion.

Tony Benn roused audiences in packed venues up and down the UK when he retired from politics to whip up the anti-war brigade, and to tell tales from his eventful life as a parliamentarian. Galloway presumes to do the same. But here the similarity ends, not least because Benn waited until he had stood down before he began this time-consuming activity.

Galloway has served a measly three terms for the Labour party, and is serving the fourth under his own, bloated, auspices. Benn was a national institution who served fifty years in Parliament, was a Cabinet minister in the Wilson and Callaghan governments, as Minister of Technology, Secretary of State for both Industry and Energy, and President of the Council of European Energy ministers in 1977

An elected member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour party from 1959 - 1994, Benn was also Chairman of the Party in 1971/2. And people listened to him when he criticised the Government because he had the experience and the gravitas to make it worthwhile.

Galloway, on the other hand, brings to mind a small, rattish dog, nipping at the heels of somebody who, to be perfectly honest, does not give a fuck. Who is going to pay for tickets to see him rant? Not this politico, that is for sure.

Well, you may say, the man is allowed to make a little extra cash, all those sharp suits do not come cheap…

But what of those constituents whom he is employed to represent? What of all the thousands of disaffected Muslims in this poor area of east London which the media scrambled to feature in May, who felt they had been ignored and voted so they would have a voice in Parliament?

What of them indeed? Well, maybe some of them were lucky enough to get Glastonbury tickets, they might catch him there.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

One half of this Spionoffite’s brain is cynical about this whole ‘UK rebate from Europe’ debacle. The other half regards it as an important issue to be addressed.

Chirac wants the UK to forego it’s £3 billion rebate from the Euro coffers. All in all, £3 billion isn’t actually that much money. But it’s the dashed principle of the thing – the French do very nicely out of the current European fiscal set-up.

Or at least, French farmers do – they get subsidised to the tune of €11.5 billion per year. A nice little booster, that. It’s all the more generous when you consider that this is the same amount received by the UK, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden combined (many thanks to Private Eye for that comparative ).

So, in those great words that have echoed down the ages, bugger the French – they’re the ones acting as a drain on the European pot, not the UK. The answer? Root and branch reform of the whole thing, and not just the UK being forced to give up its relatively small rebate either. The French will have to lose privileges too.

But then the cynical side takes over and a different situation perhaps comes into focus. Blair is pro-European, as is Chirac. But the whole tea party looked like being rained off earlier this year with the French ‘non’ in the constitution referendum. Insult was added to injury when the Dutch also rejected the constitution.

Is it just possible that this spat over finances has been cooked up as a diversionary tactic? Have the pro-European heads gone into political battle in order to obscure what is surely the real point here – that although governments are fond of the European project, the citizenry do not?

So are we in fact having our gaze shifted by two men trying to soften the PR disaster of the French referendum result by replacing it with foreground nose about rebates, the Common Agricultural Policy and the need for reform?

Because even if this is not their intention, it is exactly what is happening.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

They’re not in bad shape the Crue, despite the fact they must all be pushing at least 40. Guitarist Mick Mars has had a few health problems and doesn’t move that easily, but aside from that it’s a clean bill of health from the Crue, which considering what they’ve subjected themselves to is nothing short of miraculous (for more information read the excellent ‘Motley Crue: The Dirt’. Not read it? Buy it now.)

A blast of noise, fireworks, lots of swearing, headbands, booming drums, and the boys were on stage. The sound is pure, unashamed poodle rock, and they rip through a set made up of old classics.

‘Girls Girls Girls’ – a monster pornographic stomp – raises the roof. But this is a Motley Crue concert, and overstatement is the only way they know… and so strippers are lowered from the ceiling on metal hoops. They gyrate above the stage as others prowl among the band and throw their clothes into the audience. By the end of the song there is dry ice, beer and underwear all over the place.

No sooner has it finished then we are into ‘Dr Feelgood’ though this time with a special synth introduction played by Nikki Sixx. One of the strippers comes back onto the stage. She bends over in front of the furiously head-banging Sixx, and starts shooting flames at him. Out of her arse. Sixx bangs his head even more and as he does so the synth starts bending backwards and forwards on its stand, at which point two massive jets of flame shoot up behind him, covering him in a shower of sparks.

The crowd goes wild.

And then two more jets of flame go off though this time from the front. The synth stand is bending all over the place, flames everywhere not least from the lady’s posterior, the crowd is going bananas and then finally WOOMPH! there is an enormous explosion and we are into the main body of the song.

At this point, your humble Spinoffite shed a tear – a tear of pure joy.

At the end of the song, a dwarf runs onto the stage dressed as the lead singer Vince Neil. He makes a bee line for the lady (whose fire by this time has been thankfully extinguished) and started humping her leg. From somewhere she produces a whip and chases the little scamp off stage, while wildly thrashing him on the backside.

Next it’s the turn of drummer Tommy Lee to take centre stage. “I just wanna take a moment you guys,” he says to the crowd. “No shhh please. Shhh.” The crowd is hushed. He kneels at the front of the stage.

“Oh God. I just would like to thank you for letting me be here to play fucking rock and roll to all these motherfuckers in London. Oh yeah. Amen.” At this Nikki Sixx pipes up, “hey dude – you can’t say ‘fuck’ in a prayer dude - what are you thinking?” there is a confused pause. And how does the Crue solve this moment of ecumenical difficulty? Why – by launching into a belting version of 'Anarchy in the UK', of course.

And then we have the ‘Titty-Cam’ (the function of which the readers can work out for themselves I’m sure) stilt walkers, the twenty foot-high evil head with glowing red eyes, more strippers, guitar smashing, fireworks synchronised to Tommy’s kick drum, an appearance by Nikki’s son, the announcement that the Crue are to record a new album, and the revelation that all of Nikki’s favourite bands are from London (“yeah dude: Elton John, Slade – all my favourite fucking bands man.” Oh well…)

The singing was getting to Vince by the end and he was huffing a bit, but the tracks still held together well – Nikki looked cool, Tommy hammered the hell out of his poor drums and Mick can still play at dizzying speeds. The sound is still there, and anyway the ‘punky glam metal with screaming over the top’ will always be a blast.

The point about Motley Crue and the thing that made seeing them so enjoyable was that they were completely and unashamedly un self-conscious. They seemed in a way, to be free. Whereas most modern bands seem to be locked in a struggle to sound as much like someone else as possible, the Crue are just boldly and, at times, stupidly, themselves.

In short, Motley Crude are a band with character. Lots of character. Seeing them live was a sharp reminder that this is exactly what most modern rock bands are missing.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

The government has a new Religious Hatred Bill - new because it didn’t make it through the last Parliament but was resurrected after the Easter break. It is designed ‘to prevent hatred being stirred up against people targeted because of their religious beliefs, or lack of religious beliefs, as well as people targeted because of their race’.

The government claims it is a useful tool for curbing extremism while opponents of the legislation say, variously: that it is a cynical ploy to recapture the Muslim vote, a piece of redundant legislation, a dangerous infringement on our right to freedom of speech.

David Lammy, the recently-appointed culture minister, is a keen advocate of this new law. He was seen last week on Question Time nodding vigorously when someone in the audience suggested that this law would be a way of combating the ugly ideology of the BNP.

The ideology of the BNP is abhorrent, but it exists, it is a part of our culture, and driving it underground won’t make it go away.

Dr Phill Edwards, the BNP’s press officer, when interviewed by this correspondent about his views, had this to say: ‘A scientific racist is a person qualified in psychology or medicine or biology or anthropology who accepts that there is ample scientific evidence to show that different racial groups have different average capabilities. I would put myself in that category, although I would use the word scientific racialist, or a race realist.’

Quite aside from insisting on the title of ‘Dr’ despite a lack of any medical qualifications, not to mention the bizarre double ‘l’ spelling of his name, Edwards is clearly an idiot.

The government can’t, unfortunately, legislate against idiocy, but to take the step of actually drafting new laws purely as a reaction to Edwards and those of his ilk seems like an overreaction.

The real problem lies in the BNP’s strongholds, where it preys off a potent mixture of high unemployment, poverty, lack of education, and a consequent dearth of any aspiration. If we are looking for a long-term solution to the BNP, it will come from addressing these areas.

Another topical example is that of Abu Qatada: accused of issuing fatwas to order for Bin Laden, and of urging young Muslims to take up arms against Islam’s oppressors. The government interned him without a trial and then put him under a ‘control order’, disallowing him from preaching, imposing a curfew on him, and generally restricting his freedom of speech and movement.

As with the BNP, one has to question whether changing the law is the best way to deal with Qatada’s views and his influence on the hundreds of young British Muslims who went to train for armed jihad in Afghanistan with his blessing.

While talking to a group friendly with one of the men arrested with Qatada, this correspondent was asked for a view on Madonna’s song, ‘Like A Virgin’. Listening to the song played backwards, they claimed, you could quite clearly hear the words, ‘Yeah Satan’. This, they thought, was blasphemous. Madonna, they believed, was quite clearly part of a Jewish conspiracy against Islam.

This level of detachment would be laughable if it were not so worrying. These men were not extremists, but as devout Muslims were living a life within the UK quite apart from the culture and norms of the country.

The new law offers nothing more than a cosmetic solution. It can’t, thankfully, just reach inside your head and readjust any ‘bad’ thoughts. Rather than looking to extend legislation in this area, perhaps we should be looking at the underlying reasons that people are attracted to those who preach hatred.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

What is the point of a retail bank? Before the deregulation of the financial services industry, the answer was relatively simple: it provided mortgages, loans and somewhere safer than the mattress to keep your cash.

But banks are profit making enterprises with your cash. The FT Global 500, published this week, notes that banking is the largest sector in the survey, with a business value of around $3,000 billion. Barclays recently announced pre-tax profits of £4.6 billion, HBOS of £4.5 billion and the Royal Bank of Scotland of £6.9 billion.

They’re making an awful lot of money from our money, aren’t they?

Mortgages are cheaper with specialist mortgage brokers, and your home is just as much at risk. Loans are cheaper and easier at the supermarket now than they are down your local branch. And, increasingly, your bank manager – the person you trust with your money – is hidden behind a wall of ‘press 1 for enquiries’ telephone lines, or is based in a centre miles away from where you live. And what are you to him (or her)? A line on a spreadsheet he sees every day, and an opportunity to sell more financial services ‘products’.

Pensions mis-selling scandals in the eighties and nineties led to an enormous change in the regulation of the life businesses – life insurance, pensions, and medium to long term savings. It is now illegal to oversell you financial products you do not need, or to sell you products simply in order to get commission – indeed, many places now do not give their sales people commission at all.

All well and good for the life businesses. But banks are a little bit different. What they do is take your money, and make more money from it, and, if your account is in credit, and earns interest, give a tiny proportion of the money they make on the overnight markets back to you.

And what if you get in trouble with your bank? Well, then they get the chance to make even more money out of you, charging you unauthorised overdraft fees, bouncing cheques and direct debits, and charging you through the nose for doing so. The philosophy underlying bouncing a £5 direct debit, and then charging you £35 for doing so, defeats me entirely, unless it is simply a money making scam – since you’re probably being charged interest at an unauthorised borrowing rate for money that the bank has taken from your account. And, for some reason, you’re classified as a ‘non-performing loan’ and the bank feels it can tell you how to run your life – which is now £35 worse off than before. Through their actions.

And as customer loyalty bonuses, or cash back, or Nectar points, or whatever, become increasingly rare (or, as the advert has it, for ‘brand new customers only’), what is the point of a retail bank at all? A faceless entity makes money from your money, by playing the markets with it, by charging you when you are in trouble and selling you more products when you are not, by billing you for each transaction you make through them; and then it takes the bank itself away from your high street and tries to push you to use an automated telephone banking service or talk to an individual in either East Kilbride or Bangalore.

It’s starting to sound like a bit of a bad deal, isn’t it?

Even if you swallow the British Banking Association line that one third of profits go in corporation tax, and that makes it possible to build schools and hospitals, profits in the billions imply that someone, somewhere, is being fleeced.

We’ll write more about this in later articles: about how the banks are having to make provision against the bad debts that they themselves encouraged, and about how retail banking seems to be increasingly focussed on the bank and not the customer. If you are a banker, we’d love to hear from you. And don’t get us started on investment banks…

But in the meantime, take a good look at your mattress when you next get in to bed. It might not pay you interest, but at least you won’t be contributing to someone else making annual profits of £6.9 billion with your money. And you might just sleep better at night knowing your capital is being looked after by someone who really has your interests in mind. Even if it is you yourself.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

Football, at root, is not a business. Of course it is a business, but the primary reason for the existence of football clubs is not to make money. Greedy fatsos that forget this tend to come down with a rather nasty bump (for the most recent example, see the disastrous securitisation of gate receipts at Leeds United).

Businesses, in order to expand, take on debt and spend the money on growth. But there are simply too many imponderables at work to start landing football clubs with hundreds of millions of pounds worth of debt.

Yet this is exactly what Glazer has done to Man U. And if you do hammer a club with vast amounts of debt, it is very important that you do not infuriate fans by jacking up ticket prices, changing the name of the ground and sticking your sons on the board... oh.
There is no batter way of destroying your club’s core support than this. Destroying your core support is the first step towards falling attendances, and eventually destroying your club.

Manchester United has made a fateful leap. The banks will now be breathing down their necks and wondering when they’re going to get their three hundred million back. And so in this situation, what becomes more important; entertaining the people of Manchester with a Saturday afternoon kick about, or keeping up with the interest instalments on your loan (‘I gave the manager 5.6% for the full 90 day period boss’)?

Why on earth would any club – especially one as successful as Man U – want to put itself under that sort of pressure? Still, it’s taken the leap, and the profit motive now rules at Old Trafford. But obviously at the end of the day what ought to rule Clive, is football.

If Man U has a couple of bad seasons, it’ll go bust.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein are being dealt with by two very different courts.

Slobodan’s trial is taking place in the Hague and is taking bloody years. During this time the prosecution has built up reams of evidence against him, and in the meantime his deputies are being tried so they can inform against the former boss to make their own penalties less severe.

Meanwhile Slobodan is kept in his little room, muttering crazily to himself, displaying increasingly erratic behaviour and all the time protesting his innocence. (Who knows? Maybe he’s going for reduced responsibility?)

Contrast this with Saddam’s impending trial. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s government wants a quick solution because of the elections on December 5 – the last thing the government needs or wants is for that trial to get in the way of democracy.

So while Saddam mutters to himself in his little room, the prosecutors are cooking up a fine little hanging.

The breakneck – as it were – pace at which his trial is being conducted seems fitting for a region where blood has typically repayed blood. The Americans have got about 500 charges to throw at Saddam, but sod that – the Iraqis want quick justice. Forget 500 counts and a comedy Jacko-style circus. Convict him and then top him.

Saddam will most likely be tried in a court with judges but no jury, for 12 ‘fully documented cases,’ including the destruction and massacre at Dujail.

But who’s counting the bodies? Who cares? Get convicted of killing one man in Iraq, and so long as he is important enough it’s the hangman for you anyway. And why? Because the death penalty is one of the first things the new Iraqi government installed.

There are currently three men on Iraqi ‘death row’ for the April murder of Gen. Abdulmihsin Ali Abdulsada of the Interior Ministry. Their defence solicitor has never met the accused, and all three maintain that they were tortured into confessing, not least by being raped with a metal rod. The case was closed and guilt confirmed in a matter of minutes. This is regime change in full swing.

Slobodan, on the other hand, faces a much more ‘civilised’ lifetime in jail (if he doesn’t die of courtroom-induced boredom first). So Slobbo will rot first in court and then jail, whereas Saddam will go to the gallows.

Which makes this Spinoffian question the death penalty afresh.

One of the most compelling arguments against the death penalty is the impossibility of ever achieving 100% confirmation of guilt. But with Saddam it is simply not an issue. Let him swing. (Yay.)

The case for the defence of Slobodan is, similarly, hardly one of the most gratifying jobs on the planet; it is a matter of running through the horror. The question of guilt is, again, not an issue. But then this is Europe, where things are done by the book. The very very long, boring book. Result? The man will be punished in some, probably quite pleasant, prison. (Boo.)

But what about the ones who are unquestionably monsters, like Saddam? What about Timothy McVeigh? What about a man who drunkenly beats his wife to death?

Can you draw a line between re-habitable cases and people who should just fry/swing/fall asleep never to wake? Well, no I’m not sure, morally, you can. So I have to hang all of them, or none.

In which case, as daft as it may seem, I must weep when Saddam swings. Having finished, I then turn to applaud the Hague for its plodding thoroughness and its rejection of death – the thing that, after all, marks out men like Slobodan and Saddam from the rest of us.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.