From Harry Secombe's autobiography 'Arias and Raspberries'
Mike was always good company, so when one Sunday, early on in our acquaintance, he invited me to spend the day with him at the house of a recently-acquired girlfriend, I accepted readily.
She lived with her family in the outer suburbs of London, and as neither of us had a car, we took the train. It was a lovely summer afternoon, and the house was quite grand. The company consisted of the girl's mother and father and an aunt, who were all dazzled by the brilliance of Mike's conversation.
Throughout a beautifully cooked meal he regaled us with stories of his days in repertory with Robert Atkins, and when it came to playing a spot of croquet on the lawn he beat everybody, performing wonders with his mallet. At tea, which was sumptuous and extremely filling - especially after our huge lunch he enthralled us with tales of his adventures in the Air Force. By the end of our visit everyone, including myself, was captivated by Mike's wit and eloquence.
Farewells were said, and then the three ladies decided to walk us to the station, leaving the father behind. Mike enlivened the short walk with descriptions of ballets he had seen,and as we walked on to the gravel leading to the station platform, he decided to show us Nijinsky's famous leap as performed in The Spectre Of The Rose.
He took a little run and leapt into the air. Unfortunately, the amount of food Mike had consumed throughout the day - the roast beef and apple tart at lunch and the pastries and the boiled ham at tea - proved too much and as he took off he gave vent to a blast from his nether regions. It was gargantuan, and had it been properly harnessed it would have propelled him over the roof of the railway station. It seemed to me that the shock of it actually delayed his return to earth, exactly like Nijinsky's celebrated leap.
I immediately collapsed in hysterics against the wall of the station, and the three ladies, who were standing watching arm in arm, abruptly turned round and began to walk off without a backward glance. Mike followed them for a few steps, making little raspberry sounds with his mouth in a vain attempt to convince them that he had made the sound from that end. But their retreating backs offered no forgiveness. He turned to where I lay, kicking my heels in the gravel in helpless, uncontrolled laughter, and, seeing the funny side of the incident himself, he joined in the hysteria.
To be Welsh and in show business is to belong to a rather exclusive club. We all know each other - indeed we seek each other out - and when we get together we become even more Welsh than ever. Our veneer of sophistication is only finger-nail deep in most cases and we flaunt our working-class backgounds like battle flags.
Stanley Baker and I were great mates and another good friend was Donald Houston, with whom I first worked in a radio play called This Vale Of Tears by Cliff Gordon. Geraint Evans and I performed together several times and the harpist Ossian Ellis was a frequent member of the Goon Show orchestra.
It just so happened that one year the five of us were recording a Christmas television show from the ABC studios at Elstree and, in between takes, we got chatting about Richard Burton and his affair with Elizabeth Taylor. What incensed us was the cavalier way that Richard was treating his wife, Sybil, a Welsh girl we all knew. It was the time when the affair was at its height, and Stanley knew that Richard and Elizabeth were filming at the MGM studios in nearby Borehamwood.
The recording took quite some time and in the intervals we availed ourselves of the generous hospitality of the ABC management. As the hours went by, we got more and more 'tanked up' and our determination to tell Richard exactly what we thought of him for what he was doing to Sybil grew to such an extent that Stanley made a phone call to the MGM studios. He discovered that Richard and Elizabeth would be in the pub next door and that the media were not around.
It was decided that we would drive there as soon as our recording was finished and have it out with our recalcitrant fellow Welshman. Recording over, we piled out to the car park. I had a Thunderbird in those days which only took two passengers, but somehow five of us managed to fit in.
Together we stood uncertainly outside the pub and then we burst in. There was no one in the bar except, at the end of the room, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, who was drinking a pint of beer.
'This is it,' said Stanley, who was the bravest of us, and began to move forward.
Richard watched him coming and suddenly burst into song with the opening lines, in Welsh, of 'Counting the Goats.'
We all stopped in our tracks and joined in with him. Two hours later, after we had sung ourselves hoarse and Burton had silenced Elizabeth's attempt to join in with 'Sing your own bloody songs,' the party broke up amid back slappings and mutual expressions of good will.
Outside again, I turned to Stanley and said, 'We never did mention Sybil, boyo.'
'We didn't, did we? Bloody shame,' said Stanley. And that was that.
I give below the text of my latest post on The Conservative Woman, titled there 'Fact-checkers should check their fact-check bias.' There may be (often are) some useful nuggets in their comment thread.
ON November 7, 2020, the Sunday Express published an article by Patrick Basham, an American conservative, entitled: ‘Stalin said it’s not important who votes, but how they are counted.’
The piece alleged ‘widespread ballot fraud’ in the US Presidential election. The Express’s link to the piece now returns a 404 message – page missing – but a copy is still available on Basham’s own Democracy Institute think-tank website.
Two days later, a fact-checking organisation called Full Fact published a debunk of Basham’s claims. Under the heading: ‘Express opinion piece wrong to allege evidence of widespread voter fraud in US elections,’ staff writer Pippa Allen-Kinross claimed to have established that there was no evidence of widespread fraudulent ballots, widespread invalid votes, or widespread ballot fraud.
Two days after that, Allen-Kinross updated her piece to say: ‘The Express has now deleted the comment piece from its website.’ A triumph!
As confidence in news organisations declines and excited rumour and misinformation spread across the internet, fact-checking outfits have sprung up like daisies.
It is very tempting to use their findings as shortcuts to the truth, so that it seems hardly worth turning on the television or opening a newspaper – why not go straight to a trustworthy, unbiased and authoritative source such as Full Fact?
Except, if my experience is anything to go by, these oracles are reluctant to accept any correction to their own claims.
On Sunday last, I used Full Fact’s online contact form to challenge two aspects of Allen-Kinross’s post: Her use of the term ‘President-elect’ in relation to Joe Biden, and her judgment that there was ‘no evidence’ of ballot fraud.
Firstly I pointed out that though the media were quick to call Biden ‘President-elect’ to date he has not been officially confirmed as such. In a letter dated November 13, a member of Congress’s Sub-Committee on Government Operations (SGO) instructed the General Services Administration (GSA) not to use the term and quoted both law and the precedent of the 2000 Presidential election (in which Al Gore delayed conceding victory to George W Bush until December 13.)
This is not a dry academic point: Constant repetition of the term in the media could be seen as pushing a narrative designed to use popular emotion and ignorance of the Constitution to override the legal-electoral challenges still ongoing from Mr Trump’s team.
I supplied Full Fact with the link above, plus a Word document transcript of the body of the letter. A team editor replied (Monday a.m.):
‘The letter you cite is now irrelevant following the GSA’s decision on 24 November to start the Biden transition: Regardless, the term “President-elect” has no constitutional definition and so the GSA does not have authority over how that term is used. The GSA does have a legal role in determining the winner of the election, but that doesn’t mean we are wrong to use the term “President-elect” with justification.’
I responded: ‘Preparation for handover is “just in case”; there has been no concession of victory. My point is therefore not irrelevant and to date, still stands.’
In fact the General Services Administrator made her reasoning quite clear in her letter to Biden why she had decided ‘to make certain post-election resources and services available to assist in the event of a presidential transition’. She also stated that she strongly believes ‘that the statute requires that the GSA Administrator ascertain, not impose, the apparent president-elect . . . GSA does not dictate the outcome of legal disputes and recounts, nor does it determine whether such proceedings are reasonable or justified. These are issues that the Constitution, federal laws, and state laws leave to the election certification process and decisions by courts of competent jurisdiction’.
These legal challenges continue, the incumbent has not conceded and the Electoral College has not yet met to determine the issue.
It seems that Full Fact does not understand the difference between an heir presumptive and an heir apparent; and I see nothing in the team editor’s reply to convince me that he had actually read either the SGO or the GSA letter.
Secondly I pointed out on the contact form that Ms Allen-Kinross states ‘He (Basham) also repeatedly speaks of ballot fraud, which there is no evidence of.’ (My emphasis). A fact-checker, I wrote, should know the difference between ‘evidence’ – and I understand there are over 200 sworn statements – and ‘conclusive proof’.
The editor replied:
‘On your second point, I think again you’re claiming that certain words have undeniable definitions, which I don’t accept. In my eyes, unsubstantiated claims do not deserve the label of ‘evidence’, irrespective of whether they are sworn to be true or not.’
To which I responded: ‘Everyone understands that evidence is what is presented to put a case whether in court or elsewhere, and is not the same thing as proof. Mr Trump made ‘claims’ but that is not what I am referring to – there is lots of ‘evidence (whether reliable or not).’ A review of some of that evidence can be found here.
This is where it gets Lewis Carroll-ish: ‘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.’
On the question of evidence, there are at the very least grounds for suspicion. Notwithstanding the Sunday Express’s (cowardly, in my view) takedown of his November 7 piece, Patrick Basham returned to his theme in the American edition of The Spectator (‘Reasons why the 2020 presidential election is deeply puzzling’ – a subscription site, but a copy of the piece is also available on Zero Hedge).
One could quibble about the word ‘widespread’, used perhaps incautiously by Basham himself in his first piece and repeated in the triple debunk by Allen-Kinross; but remove it from each of her findings and they begin to look shaky:
1. ‘… There is no evidence of widespread fraudulent ballots in the US election’.
2. ‘… There is no evidence of widespread invalid votes’.
3. ‘… There is no evidence of widespread ballot fraud’.
‘Widespread’ is an ambiguous term – does it mean distributed over a wide geographical area, or on a scale large enough to affect the outcome of the electoral returns? This post by a Sharyl Attkisson lists enough to suggest both.
Dilbert comic strip creator Scott Adams, a Trump supporter and expert in persuasion techniques, issues a daily podcast and has been arguing that since the Democrats have spent the last four years characterising the President as little better than a Nazi dictator, why wouldn’t they attempt – even, feel morally obliged to try – to remove him by any means possible?
A Californian blogger says: ‘An absentee ballot is a certificate that you receive and can be sold to a third party. This new concept of absentee voting allows people to abuse the system. Your ballot can be turned into cash. $200 to $1,000 I have heard.’
So English 18th century, eh! At least you could get a jolly good drink out of your MP in those days.
These interesting issues aside, the main question for me here is, amid the fog of lies, can we trust the fact-checkers to be impartial and accurate? I ended my riposte to the Full Fact’s team editor by saying:
‘The news media have already failed to be accurate and impartial. If your organisation is to fulfil the role of independent fact-checker, your claims and language need to be particularly scrupulous; unless you are simply a referee who has joined one team to play against the other.’
No further reply, so far; so other questions arise in my mind: who funds these outfits? How are the staff and writers recruited? What formal or informal links do they have with political parties and factions?
I’m reminded of an apocryphal tale about when the England cricket team played a friendly against a rural Australian side. A local was appointed umpire and the home team opened the batting.
When the ball thumped a shin pad, the fielders’ appeal was turned down; the same happened when a slip caught the ball off a thick edge.
The fast bowler snorted, took a long run up and delivered a meteor that blasted the middle stump into the sight screen and the bails into orbit. ‘Owizzee?’ was the cry. ‘Noddout,’ drawled the umpire again, adding in conciliatory tone: ‘Bloody close, though.’
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Update (htp: 'JD') -
As I say elsewhere, my main point in this article is about fact-checkers' questionable independence and accuracy, BUT readers still wondering about possible ballot fraud may be interested by this presentation:
In the video, Dr Ayyadurai says that voting machines in some states including Arizona have within their programming architecture something called a 'weighted race feature' which can increase or reduce the value of a cast vote (which is not stored as a single digit but a variable digital fraction.) His modelling of the Arizona returns suggests to him that the results as reported are 'extremely implausible' on the basis of one person, one vote. His computer having tried thousands of ways to re-create the overall voting curve, the closest match suggests that either third party voters voted very heavily for Biden, or that the machines multiplied Biden votes by 1.3 and reduced Trump votes accordingly; or, of course, some degree of both.
He says that this weighting feature has been known about since 2002. The way to check whether it has been employed in practice is to examine the ballot-paper images stored on the system, but when he ran for office in Massachusetts access to the images was denied to him and the images were deleted.
On the face of it, there seems to be a way to fudge election results without having to postulate truckloads of fake ballot papers, large-scale 'dead people voting' etc; and unless the software and data are opened to inspection, they offer a great way to hide or destroy the evidence. If Dominion (for example) dig their heels in, they may be able to block audits on the ground that their software is copyright: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/03/2020-election-recount-ballot-machine-technology-law-433871
BBC economic journalist Robert Peston recently professed himself "nauseous" on reading of the paltry £9 million per head earned by the hapless Rover Four; yet when I read his book "Who Runs Britain?" this year, I failed to see him confess a similar gut reaction to Sir Philip Green's £1.2 billion dividend raid on Arcadia Group. (Actually, the money went to his wife, who is domiciled for tax purposes in Monaco, but that hardly improves the flavour.)
At the time, this monster cash extraction (done with freshly borrowed money) was more than three times Arcadia's operating profits, but I'm sure the banks that (expensively) approved the loans didn't care. And it was legal.
However, if, in the economic downturn, turnover and profits are savaged, and tangible assets decline sharply in value, and Arcadia becomes very weak, or even goes bust, what will Peston say then? Arcadia Group employs 27,000 people; was it really OK, other than in a strictly legal sense, to put such a heavy yoke around its neck? Had the dividend not been paid - and especially, not been funded by humungous bank loans - what more might the group have achieved? The consolidated balance sheet for 31 August 2008 is here; what will the 2009 one look like?
What are the implications for our so-called democracy when captains of industry become so gigantic, and the rest of us become relatively as insignificant as crablice?
11 years later, we can ask whether Arcadia would have been more resilient (1), and in due course Mr Green and hs wife much richer (2), if instead of financial extraction there had been reinvestment, expansion and diversification.
1. Ms Allen-Kinross says 'We do know that many polls that predicted a landslide for President elect Joe Biden were out in their predictions.' Mr Biden is NOT yet 'President-elect' and should not be described as such; a Congressional committee woman wrote on 13 November to the General Services Administration to correct this error and explain why the claim is factually incorrect; text reproduced in this article: https://www.politicalite.com/usa/exclusive-us-congress-officially-tells-biden-campaign-hes-not-president-elect/ and transcribed as attached:
2. Ms Allen-Kinross says 'He also repeatedly speaks of “ballot fraud”, which there is no evidence of.' A fact-checker should know the difference between 'evidence' - and I understand there are over 200 sworn statements - and 'conclusive proof.'
This is sloppy work echoing the radio news reports e.g. from Global News (Classic fm etc) that immediately qualified Trump's claims as 'without foundation.' I can't imagine that Full Fact would wish to be written off as partisan activists.
Please amend - I would appreciate the courtesy of your advising me when you have done so.
Let's see how whether these independents are. Quis custodiet etc.
Regardless, the term "president-elect" has no constitutional definition and so the GSA does not have authority over how that term is used. The GSA does have a legal role in determining the winner of the election, but that doesn't mean we are wrong to use the term "president-elect" with justification.
On your second point, I think again you're claiming that certain words have undeniable definitions which I don't accept. In my eyes, unsubstantiated claims do not deserve the label of "evidence", irrespective of whether they are sworn to be true or not.
To which I reply:
Dear Xxxxx
1. Preparation for handover is 'just in case'; there has been no concession of victory. My point is therefore not irrelevant and to date, still stands.
2. Everyone (I would have said) understands that evidence is what is presented to put a case whether in court or elsewhere, and is not the same thing as proof. Mr Trump made 'claims', but that is not what I am referring to - there is lots of 'evidence' (whether reliable or not).
Your ripostes therefore fail.
The news media have already failed to be accurate and impartial.
If your organisation is to fulfil the role of independent fact-checker, your claims and language need to be particularly scrupulous; unless you are simply a referee who has joined one team to play against the other.
So I still say that your writer's piece needs a degree of amendment, or a statement of correction.
At this juncture I have to stress that I don't know what to think about the claims, but surely there is enough 'evidence' to raise the issue. Why, among other things, does there seem to have been a coordinated suspension of vote-counting in several swing constituencies? Has this happened in previous Presidential elections?
Returning to Full Fact's reply to me from the team editor I would further comment:
1. When he says 'The letter you cite is now irrelevant' I see no evidence that he has read it, for if he had he would see that to use the term 'President-elect' implies either a formal concession by the opponent, which has not yet happened, or a decision by the Electoral College, not due until next month. Further, the 'it's too late' argument could be read as an admission by 'Ed.' that at the time Allen-Kinross originally published her piece, she was in fact using the term inappropriately, or in other words, the implication of her usage was in fact untrue.
2, In a manner reminiscent of Humpty Dumpty*, the team editor wishes the English language to mean what he wants it to mean, but however shaky, there is indeed evidence for the claims about ballot fraud - see Basham's 27 November article linked above - and the courts have not finished their consideration. So I think I could be justified in saying that on this point the piece was misleading, if not positively untrue.
Now both those two assertions have been echoed in many places across the media; the reason for my criticism is that when public feeling is so febrile, we should be able to depend on fact-checking organisations like Full Fact to deliver cool, accurate, objective and politically unbiased assessments. Otherwise, they risk becoming 'media influencers' themselves, both by
(a) the targets they select (do they do this more to the 'right-wing' than to the 'left-wing', and if so, are 'right-wing' articles - in mainstream news such as the Express, we are not talking about social media here - more frequently wrong or inaccurate?)
(b) the sloppy and tendentious way that they attack those targets.
'Untrue'... 'misleading'... Just the things that fact-checkers are there to find and correct. Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?
Who funds fact-checkers? Who recruits their staff, and how? Are they members of political parties or organisations that have links with political factions?
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* '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.'
The Presidential election debates seemed careful to avoid letting Trump talk about foreign relations.
It's left to anti-neocon dissident Paul Joseph Watson to explain what America has let itself in for.
In a way, it's understandable. It's not just the concerted complicity of the MSM, but the fact that America is so vast that it's difficult for the people to look up from domestic issues to realise what the US is doing in the rest of the world. Less than half the population even has a passport.
And now - it seems likely - Bomber Biden is in. 'A turkey is for four years, not just for Thanksgiving.'
