Private life, public life

Alice Miles is a breezy columnist for the Times and one of a number who are fortunate in being able to turn their private life into copy, like Liz Jones in the Daily Mail (Jones' Mail on Sunday diary pieces are sadly irresistible).

Miles' opinion of the NHS, she wrote in 2006, was that some doctors are "arrogant and stroppy," an observation sharply resented by some in the profession. Perhaps this judgment was coloured by her personal experience during pregnancy, for she returned to this theme a year later in a piece titled "Natural birth! Hello? This is the 21st century": "... I remember when I told my very nice and until then helpful midwife that I was going to have a Caesarean (I, fortunately, had a choice). I might as well have said that after careful thought I had decided I would feed my baby heroin. When she had recovered sufficiently from the shock, Maureen, a large, broad-hipped woman and mother of about eight, suggested I might have been swayed by Posh Spice: “A lot of women want to follow their favourite celebrity.” Then she asked whether I was doing it at my husband’s request to keep myself perfect for him “down there”. " And then last year, she had a nice holiday in Madeira (pictured with her daughter in the article), which if it wasn't paid for by her paper, at least gave her the material to earn her salary. More, we don't know, unless and until she announces it.

You see, the Fourth Estate want to earn money talking about themselves at some times, yet preserve their privacy when it suits them. To dare to hoist them with their own interrogatory petard is treated almost as a sort of lèse majesté. When did journalists become, I don't know, not just celebrities, but a kind of minor royalty? Is it because the Left has been consistently undermining the Royal Family, so that a replacement has to be found?

At any rate, journalists can become quite chevalier in the exercise of their prerogatives. Last year, the former editor of Private Eye, Richard Ingrams, commented on Andrew Marr's use of a court injunction to suppress not only certain information about his private life, but also the very fact of his having obtained a court injunction to that effect (the magazine successfully defied the second part of that attempt).

The battle for press freedom continues: in this week's print edition of PE, the lead article is reduced to muttering, "Last month a certain institution obtained a high court injunction to prevent a certain newspaper from publishing a certain document. More than that we cannot say; to do so is fraught with danger." The article goes on to remind us of the debt we owe to the 18th century rake, wit and publisher John Wilkes, and reflects that "prior restraint" is rolling back the tide of Liberty.

I don't think this is a minor matter: I fear that we are witnessing the seemingly unstoppable reconstruction of aristocracy in all its worst aspects, on both sides of the Atlantic. And even their flappers are dressing themselves in the livery and rights of the Imperial Court.

Ironically, Marr himself recently interviewed the new owner of the London Evening Standard, Alexandre Lebedev, who in response to suggestions that the latter might have problems with Putin said, "I think the only right I'm defending is the freedom of speech and of course I am using to a certain extent my limited resources in actually supporting the freedom of information and freedom of press." Exactly one year earlier, Marr was also questioning Russians Gary Kasparov and Dmitry Peskov about press freedom in Russia. Following Marr's interview with Gordon Brown, in which he controversially asked the Prime Minster not only about his blindness but about rumours of drug treatment, he defended his right to ask such questions.

In August last year, Mazher Mahmood told Emily Maitlis on Marr's own show, "... what's happening is that a privacy law is creeping into Britain through the back door. Investigative journalism is slowly being strangled. The Max Mosley case is testament to that if it were needed."

Back in 1997, in his fine tribute to the late Ruth Picardie, Marr wrote, "She asked awkward, embarrassing questions, including about herself, and didn't flinch from nasty answers. And embarrassing questions are good, the lifeblood of journalism. Without them, we are duller, stupider bipeds.

These Ruth Picardie qualities are the opposite of what our accountancy- dominated culture, and indeed some politicians, seem to want journalists to be - obedient, emotionally-controlled and humble little information- processors with no life outside the profession, reliably mincing factoids into munchable, pain-free, sesame-coated pieces. And Hell, where's the pleasure in that? You might as well write a novel."

When powerful people - and, backed by the judges that at other times they may criticise, journalists are powerful - are allowed to determine the limits to liberty, it is unreasonable for us to expect it to retain its character. These quasi-liberal censors are like Douglas Adams' stupid philosophers Broomfondle and Magicthighs, who "demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" Understandably seeking to prevent their own social embarrassment, they set the precedent for other, potentially wicked and dictatorial people to exploit for worse ends.

And it's not slow in coming. Alastair Campbell, himself a former journalist for the Daily Mirror and Today, earned a reputation as a fearsome handler of the Press when he became Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman. As a poacher-turned-gamekeeper, he knows the tricks of the journalists' trade, but his communication sources also yield him plenty of ammunition to keep the scribblers' heads down when he wants to; and the threat to Marr, via Campbell's blog, came swiftly:

"It was sad to see Marr, perhaps with an eye to a few Monday morning cuttings, feel that he had to raise blogosphere rumours about Gordon going blind, or being on heavy medication of some sort. I know it will give him the passing satisfaction of pats on the back from journos … But it was low stuff. I'm sure Andrew would agree that everyone has certain areas of their life that they'd prefer not to be asked about live on TV."

That's how it works, and that's why people in Mr Marr's position need to tell the truth and shame the devil, for otherwise the devil will know how to build on the weakness.

Eden, Noah, speculation and Bible truth

Without believing every detail in the Genesis account, I think the Noah story plausible. Rather than undermining it, I would say that the Epic of Gilgamesh corroborates it.

Graham Hancock has spent a long time developing his theory that the Flood is a mythicised memory of the melting of the northern European ice sheets some 10,000 years ago. I recall reading somewhere that some Australian aboriginal tales may be as old as their first arrival to the continent, 40 or 60 thousand years ago. Why not? If a story can be passed down from one generation to another, why should the transmission cease, unless the tribe is destroyed by invaders?

I think - I speculate - that there may have been many Noahs. The ice sheets can't have melted in a single season, so quite possibly there was an annual flooding in warmer weather every year for very many years, and this could have stimulated men to learn to build larger and more robust ships, to keep their families and livestock safe, rather than canoes suitable for shoreline fishing. Perhaps this led to the colonisation of central America by oceangoing tribes, since I've read the hunters that came down the ice-free corridor through Canada didn't get that far.

Years ago, I bought my mother the Times Atlas of History, in which it stated that agriculture was invented in Anatolia, northern Turkey, which happens to be the area where the Tigris and the Euphrates rise (two of the rivers that flowed out of Eden). Agriculture and fishing, around the Pontian shore, a shore that would rise every year. And hasn't there been some evidence that there are indeed remains of man-made structures in the oxygen-starved mud in that sea-shelf?

Just because an old, old story doesn't agree in every point with current scientific theory, that doesn't mean it isn't essentially true; the Ark may or may not have been 300 cubits in length, yet it may still have been very big. And many people have noted how the account of Creation itself also comes close to accepted cosmological opinion.

It's like Schliemann and his discovery of the remains of Troy: we're so used to dismissing traditional stories that we may fail to be guided by them.

Violence, illusion and reality

Nice extract here on what violence is really like. Interests me because indirectly, it reveals how much our world-view is skewed by fictional artefacts.

Sucking out the poison - or injecting it?

Padders has directed me to the latest financial craze, the re-remic. And, no doubt, in all the detail will hide another toxic djinn, while bankers, ratings agencies and quants run far, far away with their salaries, fees and bonuses.

Sit up and take notice!

From time to time, you get a piece of longer-term thinking that initially seems interesting, is then forgotten in the pell-mell of daily life, and finally haunts you with its truth years or decades later. For example, I remember one TV discussion back in the 70s where terrorism was flagged as the theme for the future; and another, criticising commercial advertising, where one ad honcho said the worrying thing was the increasing importance of the government as an advertising client.

This post by Edward Harrison seems to me one of those keep-it-by-your-desk pieces. He says too many things for me to summarise easily, but it has "secular bear market" written all over it, and Harrison goes further (into the territory recently explored by Michael Panzer in "When Giants Fall"):

... Needless to say, this kind of volatility will induce a wave of populist sentiment, leading to an unpredictable and violent geopolitical climate and the likelihood of more muscular forms of government.

Principles of investing

Bob Farrell’s Ten Market Rules to Remember

1) Markets tend to return to the mean over time. This is especially noteworthy now, for the housing market is returning to its mean by plunging, as are equity market, the dollar, the Yen, et al.

2) Excesses in one direction will lead to an opposite excess in the other direction. They always do, and the excesses of the housing bubble and excessive, lenient bank lending, are giving way to the housing collapse and inordinately tight lending practices.

3) There are no new eras — excesses are never permanent. And how strongly does that speak to us now, for the supposed era of unending housing price increases and of globalisation has given way to weak housing and growing protectionism.

4) Exponential rapidly rising or falling markets usually go further than you think, but they do not correct by going sideways. Markets correct by going in the opposite direction, falling sharply after sustained, broad rallies, and rallying after sustained broad weakness. The world ebbs and the world flows; it has always been thus, and shall always be thus.

5) The public buys the most at the top and the least at the bottom. Of course they do; they always have and they always shall. The public buys when euphoria reigns, and it sells when depression does years later.

6) Fear and greed are stronger than long-term resolve. We are human beings dealing with rational and irrational markets; to believe that "fear" and "greed" can ever be lost is naive for they are the most fundamental of human traits.

7) Markets are strongest when they are broad and weakest when they narrow to a handful of blue chip names. Just as volume must follow the trend, so too must good markets have broad support and weak markets have broad weakness... and at the moment, the market is very, very broadly weak.

8) Bear markets have three stages — sharp down — reflexive rebound —a drawn-out fundamental downtrend. This really is how this bear market shall end; not with a hoped for "V" bottom, but with a great washing-out... a capitulation... and then months, or even years, of base building.

9) When all the experts and forecasts agree – something else is going to happen.... or as we like to say, "When they are yellin', you should be sellin,' and when they are cryin,' you should be buyin.' "

10) Bull markets are more fun than bear markets.... or as a friend of ours from Raleigh, N. Carolina used to say many years ago, "Bears don't eat; bulls party!"

Haw, haw!

The above is a photo of Clive Sinclair (later Sir Clive) with one of his inventions, the miniature TV (1966). Life magazine dubs it one of "30 Dumb Inventions" (slide 18 in the sequence).

Oh, yes? iPhone, anyone? (and see slide 26, to boot).

The difference between mockery and admiration is often a matter of timing (think of da Vinci's helicopter, or Noah's Ark). It's Sinclair's misfortune that, like many a genius, he led the market by too great a distance. But without people like this, we wouldn't have got here.