Between the two Ireland’s of McCourt and McCartney, my own proud ‘Oirish’ roots

May 21, 2013May 23, 2013freshlyworded Leave a comment

There can surely be two no more disparate accounts of Ireland than Pete McCarthy’s meandering travelogue ‘McCarthy’s Bar’ and Frank McCourt’s classic memoir of a miserable childhood, ‘Angela’s Ashes’.

I read both books one after the other.

‘Angela’s Ashes’ won Frank McCourt the Pulitzer Prize while ‘McCarthy’s Bar’ won Peter McCarthy – already a successful television host of travel programs – a legion of new fans.

Both made me laugh out loud as I read them on the train into work (as well as feel cringeful, sad and nostalgic).

They made me want to undertake my own Irish adventure, a place I have visited only once.

It was in 1990, when I was just 16 and Germany had won the World Cup (I remember a hand-written sign at Heathrow as we disembarked: Germany 1 – Argentina 0) when my family went there as part of a three-week UK and Ireland holiday.

We visited my Great Aunt Bertha and her husband, my Great Uncle Jack Weingreen, the only relative I know who gets a mention on Wikipedia.

It’s a short entry, but I am proud of it nonetheless:

Professor Jacob Weingreen (c. 1907 – April 11, 1995) was a professor of Hebrew in Trinity College, Dublin – School of religion and theology between 1939 and 1979. He excavated in Samaria and maintained contact with archaeologists who donated pieces to the Weingreen museum which was named after him. Professor Weingreen was the author of the Hebrew grammar textbook that is still recognized as the standard teaching work on the subject.

His wife Bertha, doesn’t get a mention in Wikipedia, but you’ll find information about her to if you look online:

The Holocaust Education Trust of Ireland writes:

Bertha came from South Africa where she taught English and Drama at a training college for ‘coloured’ teachers. In 1945, Jack and Bertha joined the Jewish Relief Unit which cared for the remnants of European Jewry who had survived the Nazi concentration camps. Bertha was Chief Welfare Officer responsible for all Jewish DPs (Displaced Persons) in the British Zone, and was stationed at the former military barracks at Bergen-Belsen.

This is a picture of them taken presumably just after the war. (They returned to Dublin in 1947)

Reading Angela’s Ashes and McCarthy’s Bar, stirred up memories of our family visit to Ireland to see Jack and Bertha, when both were in their eighties and in the twilight years of their lives.

Ireland felt poor in 1990, but not as poor as it did for Frank McCourt.

Most of Angela’s Ashes (published 1996) is set in the poorest backwater lanes of Limerick, where the McCourt family lived in a squalid two-storey hovel in the 1940s. In winter, the ground floor would flood, so the family lived upstairs, which they called ‘Italy’ with a fireplace that kept them warm, surviving on fried bread and tea.

In ‘McCarthy’s Bar’ (published in 2000) Pete McCarthy journeys around Ireland in a beat-up blue Volvo he nicknames ‘The Tank’ observing the eighth rule of travel: ‘Never pass a bar that has your name on it’ while he ponders his identity (over a Guinness). With an Irish mother but an English father and memories of family holidays in Drimoleague, in county Cork, he tries to understand his strong sense of Irishness and whether he claim membership of the Irish race.

I also felt, growing up, that I could claim some part of Ireland for myself and recall often wearing a T-shirt with words emblazoned in emerald-green on the front: “I have Irish roots”, the letters decorated with leaves and roots and somewhere, I imagine, a four-leaf clover.

I loved telling anyone who would listen, that my Great Uncle Jack Weingreen wrote the definitive text-book on Hebrew Grammar. In fact, we had a copy of the textbook at home, should anyone question the legitimacy of my claims. Ironically, I was terrible at Hebrew at school, despite five years of conjugations and the implorings of my Israeli hebrew teachers, I can only remember a phrase or two.

In 1946, while Bertha and Jack were helping holocaust survivors rebuild their lives after the horrors of the war, Frank McCourt, aged just 16, was working as a delivery boy at Easons, delivering newspapers and magazines around Limerick. He’d survived a bout of diphtheria that almost claimed his life, an extreme case of conjunctivitis that almost took his eye sight, an alcoholic father who drank what little money they had before disappearing to England, the loss of three siblings and the shame of watching his mother beg for food to keep her children from starving. A few years later he would set sail for America and begin a new life, before writing his memoirs many years later.

When we visited Jack and Bertha at their home in Dublin, they were old, but charming and kind. Jack I remember as an older version of the army photo: a stooped, small, man with a moustache and glasses, always in a tie and tweed jacket who made us soup with kneidelach (dumplings). He smoked a pipe and snorted a lot, which made all of us laugh uncontrollably.

My memories of Bertha are less clear, though I remember large kind eyes.

We slept on the floor of their cluttered house, filled with the things they had accumulated from lives lived to the full. They had a long, rambling garden, grown wild and unruly. It had once, according to my grandmother Nella (Bertha’s sister) been a stunning, colourful garden that had won prizes and been featured in magazines.

We visited Trinity college with Uncle Jack, who proudly showed us round his alma mater and I remember eating a distinctly awful and drap lunch in a gloomy cafeteria.

In 1990 Ireland felt poor. The emergence of the “Celtic” tiger economy of Pete McCarthy’s travelogue (where Singapore noodles cost more than “in a Chinese shop off Leicester Square”) was five years away. I remember we visiting a friend of my mother’s, who lived in a very rundown house with bicycles and other things scattered in an overgrown backyard.

There are, it turns out, a lot of bars in Ireland called ‘McCarthy’s Bar’ and Pete McCarthy duly spends much of the book in pubs all across Ireland drinking Guinness and whiskey with the locals (some of whom are German and English expats) often accompanied by a toasted ham and cheese sandwich, reading excerpts from a 19th century travel journal – Irish Sketches – by William Makepeace Thackeray and pondering his identity with long-lost friends and relatives, drunks, bar tenders and tourists.

He travels through Ireland describing mountains of “biblical ruggedness” where bearded men “play harps”, remote islands reached by rickety cable cars, fields of green divided by stone walls where farm animals graze. He visits ancient standing stones and ruined medieval churches and abbeys, uncovers the tourist trappings in overpriced Killarney bed and breakfasts, shares a pint with Jimi Hendrix’s semi-retired bass guitarist Noel Redding, but doesn’t run into U2 guitarist ‘The Edge in Cong.

Finally he finds himself after countless adventures and misadventures in Lough Dergh in County Donegal, where he undertakes the 1,000 year old Christian pilgrimage, a three-day marathon of praying, walking, fasting and circling.

My own family Irish adventure culminated in an “Oirish” castle, where we stayed for a few days courtesy of a ‘Timeshare’ swap and which would have amused Pete McCarthy. It had an indoor swimming pool and the towers and crenallations of a castle, but that is all I remember.

It is the kind of holiday Frank McCourt could only have dreamed of. For the McCourt’s Christmas meant Frank going out with his brother Malachy in their threadbare clothes in the freezing Irish winter to hunt for coal discarded on the road so they could have enough fuel to start a fire and enjoy a Christmas dinner of boiled pig’s head and floury potatoes and tea.

My Great Uncle Jack and Aunt Bertha played an active role in Irish academic life and Dublin’s small jewish community for almost fifty years. Jack died in 1995 and Berth in 1999.

Our family holiday is my only memories of them.

Frank McCourt and Pete McCarthy have also both departed, both sadly from cancer. Peter McCarthy died in 2004, aged just 53 and Frank McCourt at 78 in 2008.

Their paths crossed briefly in 1998, while Frank McCourt was touring the world to promote Angela’s Ashes and while Pete McCarthy was travelling around Ireland in his blue Volvo on his own personal pilgrimage of identity.

It was a chance meeting.

McCarthy gave a ride to a Canadian hitch-hiker who said she was going to Castlebar in County Mayo to a “library to listen to a writer”. It turned out to be Frank McCourt.

McCarthy describes Frank McCourt as wearing s a blue jacket, red shirt and looking much younger than his sixty-nine years. He plucks up the courage to ask McCourt a question.

“Where do you feel you belong?” McCarthy asks.

“New York” Frank McCourt replies.

But before McCarthy can ask him if its possible to “truly belong in a land where you’ve never actually live” the talk is over.

Later, while Peter McCarthy is eating a very good and cheap meal of Singaporean noodles (the bill comes to a reasonable £12), Frank McCourt walks past the window.

The kindness of strangers

May 12, 2013freshlyworded 2 Comments

They say the retailing environment is tough at the moment.

The online world with its free shipping, discounts and gimmicks is really biting into “bricks and mortar” shops selling books, CDs, DVD and just about anything else you don’t have to eat or drink.

Even clothes.

Who would have thought that so many Australian consumers – men and women- would be buying entire wardrobes online?

But they are. Companies like UK-based fashion house ASOS are selling so much merchandise to Australians they’re having to fly in two jumbo jets a week just to fit everything in.

Anyway, I digress.

This week, amid this tough retailing environment, a complete stranger did me a favour.

I was in an ‘All Books 4 Less’, one of those discount stores that sells books for $5 and $10.

I picked out a book for my wife as a present. It was a nice book on crafts.

It cost $1o.

I walked up to the register and nice young woman scanned the book and told me it was $10.

I took out my wallet and handed her my debit card.

She pointed to the sign behind her and shook her head:

“Minimum EFTPOS transaction is $15” it read.

I shook my head and scrounged around in my wallet for a $5 note. Then I emptied out my front pockets and my back pockets and came up with a few dollars more.

She stared at me, smiling awkwardly, as I scrounged around in my bag for coins.

I laid everything out on the table and counted.

It came to $9.95.

Surely she would not begrudge me 5 cents?

“Oh I am sorry” she told me. “It is $10.”

“But surely…”

“No, sorry.”

I glared back at her. Indignant. Then I searched again in my bag and then in all the pockets of my jeans and then in my wallet.

Nothing.

“You’re being ridiculous,” I told her, the anger rising.

“I am sorry, the manager will see there is money missing.”

“But it’s five cents”

“I am sorry”

“You’re being ridiculous”

“I am sorry”

She suggested I walk to the nearest bank.

I searched through my bag, my pockets, my wallet again, refusing to move.

She watched me.

“Perhaps you can buy another book so you spend $15?” she suggested.

“I don’t want another book,” I replied.

Then a woman came up behind me to pay for some books.

I told her why I was standing at the counter with the contents of my bag spread out before me.

She frowned.

‘You wouldn’t have 5 cents would you?” I asked her.

She smiled, opened her purse and took out a 5 cent piece and gave it to me.

I thanked her.

I gave it to the woman behind the counter.

I left with my book.

I calmed down.

Reflecting back now on this, I have to ask: Has the retailing world gone mad?

Is this how you treat customers when you’re competitors are selling the same products at half the price?

But it seems it has.

There’s the story about the health food store in Brisbane charging customers $5 “to browse” because the owner was apparently unhappy with giving customers advice, without the guarantee they would buy anything.

This is not an isolated innocent. In Newcastle (NSW), a shoe shop is charging customers $10 to try on shoes.

In both cases, the money is deducted if the customer makes a purchase, but who would bother putting up with this kind of attitude? Half the fun of shopping is the ability to browse.

And is this the best solution these two businesses can come up with to arrest revenue lost to online stores or cheaper competitors? Smacks of desperation. These businesses won’t last very long.

Such contempt for customers is happening at the top of the retail food chain as well. Recently Myer managing director Bernie Brooks, suggested it would not be a good idea for taxpayers to fund the national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) because it would cut into the money people may spend in his department stores.

The social media backlash was brutal.

And let’s not forget another grumpy old retailer, Gerry Harvey, founder of Harvey Norman, worth close to a billion dollars, who loves to complain about online retailers stealing his business, Then he launched his own own online store. Of course he is still loves running those “23 month no interest, no deposit, no repayment” dodgy offers that cost unwary customers hundreds of dollars in extra fees and other costs.

The fact is there are plenty of traditional retailers making good money because they know how to sell their products, sell the right kind of products and because they treat the customer as king.

This is just as true in the de-personalised online world, where for example the Book Depository charges no shipping fees at all even for international purchases.

So here’s a suggestion for the people at All Books 4 Less and every other retailer grumbling and looking to gouge their customers, even for a measly 5 cents.

Don’t argue with us. Don’t try and wrestle our money from us.

Treat us like old friends. Make us smile and we’ll keep coming back.

And remember that old saying: the customer is always right.

Even when he’s wrong.

The cabinet of horrors in every convenience store

May 9, 2013May 9, 2013freshlyworded 2 Comments

It’s been six months since the government hit big tobacco companies where it really hurt them – their brands.

So here’s a little weekend tale, if anyone needed reminding:

A little while ago, needing a few groceries, I drove up to the local store, parked the car, dashed in from the rain, grabbed a few items from the shelves and headed for the counter to find myself staring inside a veritable cabinet of horrors.

It was the kind of scene that would, were it broadcast on the news, come with a warning: “The following graphic imagery may disturb sensitive viewers. Viewer discretion advised”.

But what choice did I have other than to look?

Behind the head of the little Asian man serving me were images of diseased and blackened limbs, a cancerous, dissected lung, an eye socket prized open like a scene from the movie ‘A Clockwork Orange’, and an emaciated man dying in a bed.

All of these images were on the covers of cigarette packs stacked up in what looked like a white medicine cabinet, the doors flung open.

Instead of medicine though, it’s death that’s up for sale.

These graphic, nausea-inducing images are to be found everywhere on billboards, in bus shelters, in print and online advertising,on the government’s department of health and ageing website, and in discarded cigarette packs on suburban streets.

As I paid for my eggs, milk and bread, I was thinking, “Do I have to see all of this?”

All of this is courtesy of the government’s much trumpeted ‘plain packaging’ requirements for all tobacco products, introduced on December 1 last year, which state that:

“All tobacco products sold, offered for sale or otherwise supplied in Australia must be in plain packaging and be labelled with the new and expanded health warnings”.

Just why the government has called its legislation “plain packaging” when it’s quite the opposite is probably the reason I’m a journalist and not a politician.

The idea behind plain packaging is to prevent the misleading advertising of tobacco products with images and words aimed at discouraging new smokers from taking up the habit and convincing those who currently smoke to quit.

According to the government, an estimated 15,000 Australians die every year from smoking-related disease, costing the Australian economy and society approximately $31.5 billion a year.

It’s the government’s key strategy in a very bitter battle against the tobacco industry alongside a raft of other measures that include a 25% tobacco excise increase in April 2010, more than $85 million spent on anti-smoking social marketing campaigns and legislation to restrict internet advertising of tobacco products.

That’s fair enough and commendable.

But what about those of us who don’t smoke?

What about our rights to enjoy a pleasant afternoon in the convenience store without being visually assaulted by images of a blackened, gangrenous foot or a spliced open, diseased pair of lungs?

Has the government gone too far?

More importantly are these graphic images really necessary and do they actually work?

The government says “branding and packaging designs on tobacco products can mislead consumers” (who can forget the Marlboro Man?) but is there any evidence that these images are discouraging anyone from giving up or starting to smoke?

That answer won’t be known for a number of years since Australia is the first country to implement this policy, though according to anti-smoking campaigner Anne Jones, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, there are “130 published research studies showing that young people perceive tobacco in plain packs to be less appealing, less palatable and of lower quality”.

And what about the advertising of two other major social ills: alcohol and gambling? Why have they gotten off so easily?

Clearly there is a difference between alcohol and gambling…and smoking.

Smoking is bad, period, but having a flutter on the horses or a glass or two of vino is not going to do any major damage.

But when either drinking or gambling are done excessively, the effects are just as damaging as smoking; indeed while smoking is usually a gradual decent into ill-health, a night of heavy drinking or one spent in front of a pokie machine can ruin a life in a very short time.

And while the proportion of people who drink excessively has hardly fallen in recent year – around one in five according to the most Australian Bureau of Statistics figures – smoking rates are going in the opposite direction, before plain packaging rules were enforced.

An article in The Age published in November last year reported that about 16.3% of adults smoked daily in 2011-12, well down from 2001 rates of 22.4%.

Indeed, smoking rates have fallen been for decades, with figures from Quit Australia showing that the smoking rate was 72% in males in 1945, 40% in 1980 and 25% in 2001.

And yet what do we get: a grotesque anti-tobacco campaign on the one hand, but on the other, ad after ad on the television, radio, print and online promoting beer, wine and spirits, while the pubs and clubs are stacked full with pokie machines and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on new 24 hour casinos.

There’s even giant ads courtesy of TAB extolling the virtues of winning at gambling (the one below in Southern Cross train station) and a smug Tom Waterhouse in his suits saying its cool to have bet after bet after bet.

“The joy of gambling” – one of three giant TAB ads at Southern Cross station

In contrast, cigarette advertising has been banned on Australian television since 1974 and in sports since 1992 (with a stay of execution granted to Formula One racing until 2006).

The government trumps its victory over big tobacco, but alcoholic beverage makers and the casino operators and bookies get a virtual free ride.

Perhaps they’re funding election campaigns, who knows?

But non-smokers like me, the vast majority of the population, not only have to put up with beer gardens and outdoor cafes packed with smokers, but the graphic images that assault the senses.

And let me ask you this question: have you ever actually heard of anyone quitting smoking because of the images and warnings on the packs?

All I see is smokers happily taking cigarettes from their “plain” packs, lighting up and puffing away while I get to ‘enjoy’ the image of a foot gone black with gangrene while I do my shopping.

But perhaps, I’ve got it all wrong.

Maybe, the real reason behind plain packaging campaign is not about smoking at all, but aimed at tackling another chronic issue in Australia: obesity.

In that regard, it will probably work a treat!

The Guardian Australia: you won’t find it @ www.theguardian.com.au

May 2, 2013freshlyworded 6 Comments

For the four-and-a-half years I lived in London, The Guardian was the newspaper to read for quality investigative journalism as well as for its famous spelling mistake howlers.

Writing for Accountancy Age magazine in Soho, I’d read the business sections of The Guardian, alongside the other broadsheets (the Financial Times, The Independent and Daily Telegraph) for possible story ideas in the morning and then, like everyone else, would seek out The Sun and The Mirror in the afternoon for the salacious gossip, page 3 girls and Premier League football stories.

Lately there has been extensive coverage of the launch of a digital Australian edition of The Guardian (announced in January) with news of top Fairfax journalists like David Marr and Lenore Taylor jumping on board with the site to be edited by The Guardian’s deputy editor Katharine Viner.

A colleague of mine at Private Media, Oliver Milman, will be joining the Guardian Australia as a Melbourne-based environment reporter alongside other new signings of journalistic talent announced this week.

They’ve already leased offices for journalists and other staff in Surry Hills, Sydney, so it’s clearly a serious venture for a publication, which is the fourth biggest newspaper website in the world with a monthly audience of 30.8 million users behind Mail Online (45.3m monthly readers), the NY Times‘s (44.8m) and USA Today (34.6m) according to National Readership Surveys September 2012 figures.

So, eager to find out more, I searched for ‘The Guardian Australia‘ on Google.

The first result was this page (below), with picture of a koala bear and a billabong and a host of stories, videos and commentary about Australian issues:

This, I know, is not the new Guardian Australia edition, but the long-running Australia page of The Guardian UK with the giveaway being The Guardian store offers in pounds while the Guardian jobs section are all British roles:

So I clicked on the third link on my Google search – www.theguardian.com.au which sounded like the most likely address for the new digital Guardian Australia edition.

And bingo, I came across a newspaper website full of Australian stories with a masthead in similar font to that used by The Guardian.

So was this The Guardian Australia edition?

Clearly not, since it says its owned by Fairfax.

When I clicked on the “About Us” page, the confusion abated. It reads: “The Guardian provides the latest news from the Swan Hill region, northern Victoria and NSW Riverina.”

This is another Guardian Australia – a regional newspaper dating back to 1888.

Perhaps its only coincidence the fonts are so similar, but it surely must have caught the attention of those in corridors of power at Fairfax, and not just because they’ve got the URL, but also the Facebook address: www.facebook.com/GuardianAU.

As luck would have it, Twitter suggested I follow Lenore Taylor, the recently appointed political editor of The Guardian Australia edition and so I did and duly asked her what form the new publication would take:

“Frontage” – is a new term I’d never heard before, but I assumed it meant something on The Guardian‘s front page, so that’s where I went.

After a little bit of a look around, I came across this button at the top of the website, which allows you to choose between the UK and Guardian US version:

So presumably, at some point when it all goes live, there will be an extra item added to this menu bar with the word “Australia” and when you click on it there will be an Australian version, similar in format to the current American edition:

Website address issues aside, it’s going to be interesting to see how The Guardian performs in Australia.

As someone pointed out to me, it’s going to go from being a UK publication writing about Australia for British readers to one written by Australians for Australian readers, with a UK editor.

This it has done somewhat successfully with its US edition, which now has around 8 million viewers a month.

But it’s been a bumpy ride for The Guardian US, which first launched in 2007 as GuardianAmerica.com, then folded back into the UK edition in 2009, with staff laid off, before launching its US edition (or ‘frontage’ to use Lenore Taylor’s term) in September last year, also accessible via the URL: http://www.guardiannews.com.

While no doubt the journalism produced by The Guardian Australia will be of the highest calibre, it will face challenges from a host of established left-wing publications like Crikey.com.au, The Global Mail (founded no less than by BRW Rich Lister Graeme Wood, the primary investor in The Guardian Australia), the ABC’s online presence and Fairfax’s own stable of publications, to name just a few.

Which means making money from The Guardian Australia will be an even bigger challenge.

The Guardian Media group has been the exact opposite of a cash cow of late reporting huge losses in recent years (£75 million loss in the 12 months to August 2012) as it tries to transition its business model to one that taps into its huge online audience, a difficult task that neither Fairfax nor News Limited nor any media organisation have yet fully realised.

And it has another challenge.

As Crikey writer Guy Rundle pointed out, The Guardian has a reputation for being the worst of the UK newspapers when it comes to writing stores with an anti-Australia slant.

It’s reporting on the Ashes and British Lions tours later this year will be fascinating to say the least – if you can find the website!

Naming Rolf Harris and Sunil Tripathi: mainstream media’s troubled relationship with social media

April 28, 2013April 28, 2013freshlyworded 5 Comments

Last weekend, The Saturday Age splashed this Facebook photo of Sunil Tripathi (below) a missing university student incorrectly identified by bloggers as a possible suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings across its front cover.

The story has been removed from The Age website, but can be read here in its online archives.

The photo of a smiling Tripathi was splashed on the front page of The Saturday Age below a now notorious grainy photo of the two suspects at the marathon just before the bombs went off:

The caption below Tripathi’s photo read: “Sunil Tripathi was reported missing by his family. He is pictured in a Facebook page set up to find the Brown University student. Sunil is reported to have been named on a police scanner as one of the suspects.”

At the very top of the same page, above the masthead, was another headline in large font and in bold:

“Rolf Harris linked to UK sex abuse inquiry“

The Australian entertainer’s arrest over sex crime allegations was a poorly guarded secret since November last year, with his name revealed by many bloggers.

The story that mentioned Sunil Tripathi, written by respected journalist Paul McGeough, a former editor of the Sydney Morning Herald now based in Washington D.C., detailed the events leading up to the capture and death of one of the suspects, while the other was still at large at the time.

McGeough wrote: “Police did not confirm the names being ascribed to the two men in the blogosphere – Suspect One as Mike Mulugeta and Suspect Two as Sunil Tripathi.” – contradicting what was said in the photo caption.

Tripathi had been named as a suspect on blogging aggregator news website, Reddit, after users said they thought they recognised him as the suspect wearing a white baseball cap.

That man turned out to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, now an alleged Chechen terrorist, who along with brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, killed in a police gun fight after the bombing, are believed to be the sole perpetrators of the attack.

Sunil Tripahti and “Mike Mulugeta” (even less has been reported of him) had nothing to do with the Boston bombings.

Tragically, the body of Sunil Tripathi, missing since last month, was found in the Providence River on Friday (April 20), much to the anguish of his grief-stricken family.

A day after the Saturday Age story appeared, the following day’s Sunday Age ran with the correct story about the Tsarnaev brothers as the Boston bombers.

There was no mention at all of the misidentification of Sunil Tripathi.

At first I thought I’d mis-read the Saturday Age story, but pulling out the paper from the recycling bin, proved that I wasn’t going crazy.

So I emailed The Age‘s editor Andrew Holden to ask him if he could clear up the confusion.

I received a response from Steve Foley, The Age‘s news director, who confirmed that the newspaper did publish the two names (Tripathi and Mulugeta) “that were circulating on Friday evening (Saturday morning Australian time) in our first edition”.

“As we went to press the story was still unfolding at rapid speed. The updated story for our second edition of the Saturday paper did not mention them. By then it was being reported that two Chechens were the Boston bombing suspects,” said Foley

“On Saturday morning, by which time our coverage was all online, we acknowledged our error – stating that we had published incorrect information on Friday night.

“We aim to get it right, every time, and despite all precautions, lapses do occur,” he added.

As I mentioned earlier, the Fairfax print archives only references the first, erroneous story about Tripathi being a suspect.

Online, there is no mention of Tripathi being incorrectly identified by the newspaper.

However, The Age and other Fairfax websites have since published two follow-up stories about Tripathi: one under the headline “Student wrongly named as Boston bomber found dead” and another is about Reddit apologising for the grief it caused the Tripathi family for naming their son as a suspect” “Reddit apologises for Boston online witch hunts”.

(This is the official Reddit apology)

Incredibly, neither of these stories acknowledge the fact that The Saturday Age, which has a readership of 227,000, splashed Tripathi’s name and photo across its front page in error, nor has an apology been issued either publicly or privately to the family of Sunil Tripathi for suggesting their son might be a terrorist.

Is this just arrogance on the part of Fairfax or does the media giant really believe it’s entirely the fault of Reddit users for suggesting Tripathi may have been Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?

I should point out that Fairfax was not the only mainstream media organisation to get this wrong.

According to The Australian‘s media writer Nick Leys, both Channel Nine and Channel Seven named Tripathi in their 6pm news bulletins, relying on the “blogosphere” as a reliable source.

“Journalists here and in the US threw the rule books out the window on Friday night choosing to use social media as a reliable source…journalists were blindly repeating those names with no reliable source….” wrote Leys in his Media Diary wrap last week.

This of course brings me back to the other heading on the front page of that ill-fated Saturday Age edition.

The story about Rolf Harris.

Why is that The Saturday Age found it acceptable to print Sunil Tripathi’s name and photograph based on entirely unverified accusations almost the moment they became known but waited six months to print Rolf Harris’s name, when it had been splashed across countless blogs?

Steve Foley did not respond to my questions about this issue so all I can do is speculate.

Was it to give Rolf Harris the benefit of the doubt because he’s one of Australia’s most famous and much-loved entertainers? Was it because they feared a costly and embarrassing lawsuit if the arrest proved untrue?

Possibly both explanation are true.

So why wasn’t a young US student afforded the same duty of care?

And why has The Age not deemed it necessary to apologise to his family?

A dream within a dream: a return to an appreciation of poetry

April 25, 2013April 26, 2013freshlyworded Leave a comment

I’ve rediscovered the pleasure of poetry.

So this is how it happened.

A couple of nights ago, I was in bed. My wife was perusing a book on child rearing and I was lying back with my head on my pillow.

There’s a stack of books on my side of the bed – from a shipment I had in storage in South Africa and only recently unpacked.

I picked up a handful of books from the floor and rummaged through them.

I came across: “The Penguin Book of American Verse” edited by Geoffrey Moore, a book from my days studying English literature at the University of the Witwatersrand (or ‘Wits’ as it more commonly known back home).

And I found myself skimming through, reading a few lines from poems here and there.

Some I remembered from my uni poetry courses: the wonderfully cynical “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost and the inventive and disturbing poem about war “My sweet old etcetera” by E.E. Cummings.

And then I come across a poem by Edgar Allen Poe ( who is best known for his short stories of horror and the macabre) called “A Dream within a Dream” and I found myself reading it and re-reading it and later reading it to my wife aloud.

In my mind, the poem is about the loss of memory as we grow old so that we question what is real and what is not, what we actually experienced and what perhaps we only imagined or dreamed so that our past may feel very much like “a dream within a dream”.

It made me think about those things we forgot as time passes and our faculties decline – people, places, things that happened to us in childhood or adolescence.

It also made me think of those moments when a memory, buried deep in our subconsciousness awakens, triggered by some random present day event and we find ourselves saying things like:

“I complete forgot about him or her. What happened to them?”

Given that this poem was published in the year of Poe’s death (1849) when he may have been contemplating the days forgotten from his past, it has for me added poignancy.

Enjoy this haunting 24 line poem – it’s short, so give it a try.

(I have reproduced without the kind permission of the long-deceased Mr Poe. I hope he does not mind.)

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 to 1849)

“Innocent Blood” by P.D. James: a perfectly-told tale of revenge and redemption

April 18, 2013freshlyworded Leave a comment

“Innocent Blood” is a London crime novel by the grand dame of British detective fiction Phyllis Dorothy James, or as she is better known, P.D. James.

The words on the back cover of my paperback edition (picked up in a second-hand bookshop in Alexandra, New Zealand) says it could be read “as a mainstream novel and a considerable one”.

“As a crime novel it is a peak of the art,” the back cover goes on to say, a little awkwardly.

This is high praise, but it is richly deserved, because this is a fine book, demonstrating P.D. James’s complete command of the English language and why she has rightly been called the ‘Charles Dickens’ of crime fiction.

The plot of “Innocent Blood” is quite simple, yet unconventional for a crime novel since both the murderer and the ‘murderer-to-be’ are known to the reader early on and instead of being mysteries that must be solved, are devices to explore the lives and motivations of the two key characters.

And yet there are still some very surprising twists and an unexpected ending.

The rape and murder of a child 10 years ago brings the two lead characters together.

First there is Philippa Palfry, adopted at a young age by upper class academic Maurice Palfry, who finds out, after she turns 18, who her real mother is – a child murderer called Mary Ducton

Mary Ducton is soon to be released from prison after serving a 10 year sentence for the murder.

Philippa is an intelligent, somewhat cunning and striking looking young woman with golden hair and high cheek bones, who has aspirations to be a writer.

She is determined to know her real mother – her only true family – even after she finds out the truth of her awful past.

Rather than have a holiday in Europe before beginning her studies at Cambridge, as had been her original plan, she finds a short-let flat in London to live with her mother for a few months so they can get acquainted.

Then there is the story of Norman Scase, father of the child murdered by Mary Ducton. He is a plain, small. methodical man, who has lived an unremarkable life as a bookkeeper. He quits his job once he knows that Mary Ducton is to be released from prison in order to fulfil a promise made to his dying wife that he will kill the woman who murdered their daughter.

The novel explores Philippa’s relationship with her mother as well as her ties to her adopted father and his unhappy second wife. It follows Norman Scase as he carefully and with a steely resolve, plans the murder of Mary Ducton, while also delving into his unhappy childhood as an “ugly” child in Brighton.

The action takes place over about two months in London in the summer.

P.D. James is an unusual crime writer in the sense that while the plot-lines are very strong, she takes detours in the storytelling to focus on small details such as a minor character’s motivation and past history and rich descriptions of buildings and places: the London underground clogged with people, a bad meal eaten by Philippa in a restaurant on Edgeware Road.

In this way she creates a living, breathing world that the reader can disappear into.

The writing is meticulous, beautifully crafted and rich in detail.

A short extract demonstrates P.D. James ability to describe a scene and unsettle the reader.

One day, by accident, before Norman Scase has exacted his revenge on Mary Ducton, he comes across Philippa and her mother, “the murderess” while taking a blind woman he has met to the park:

“It was then that Philippa saw the man. He had come up the sloping path from the lake, a small, spectacled, grey-haired man… His glance fell on her, their eyes met and instinctively, and out of the lazy pleasure of the moment, she smiled at him. The result was extraordinary. He stood transfixed, eyes widened, in what seemed a second of incredulous terror. Then he turned abruptly away…Philippa laughed aloud. He was a plain, ordinary man, not repulsive and surely not so plain that no woman before had ever spontaneously smiled at him.

The novel is awash with these beautifully observed moments. Journeys on the London Underground. The tourist crowds at Oxford Circus. The stalls at a London market opening in the morning.

I have read a number of interviews with P.D. James, and in them she emphasises the importance of a good plot and story. Often, she says, working out the plot of her novels will take longer than writing them. She also says that she always writes with the reader in mind and so does not wish to disappoint.

And she certainly does not with “Innocent Blood”.

The book, published in 1980 was a huge commercial success and made her a wealthy woman.

She later received a peerage in the House of Lords and became known by the imposing title of the Baroness James of Holland Park.

She has won over a dozen literary awards for her crime fiction, most of which is in the traditional style of the detective novel (her protagonist is an unorthodox detective called Adam Dagleish) and many of her books have been adapted for television – though not Innocent Blood – it would make an exceptional movie.

Despite the success, wealth and title she has obtained, P.D. James reveal herself to be a delightfully down-to-earth women who in one newspaper interview professed her love of discovering things and learning new facts.

She once told a journalist she re-read a book of hers before a lecture (she does not normally re-read her books) only to discover, to her amusement, the murderer wasn’t whom she thought it would be.

If you are looking for an unconventional, exceptionally good crime novel, then “Innocent Blood” should be top of your pile.

The Biggest Loser tips the scales when it comes to bad taste

April 9, 2013May 4, 2013freshlyworded Leave a comment

I confess. I watched the last two seasons of MasterChef religiously.

And yes I found all the plugs for Coles and cooking products and restaurants and celebrity chefs annoying but at its heart MasterChef was a show about people showing or developing a skill and demonstrating so under the immense pressure of knowing you are being watched, over boiling pot and sizzling pan, by a nation of eager foodies.

I don’t like Australian Idol or The Voice or The Block or even the Amazing Race, but at least contestants on these shows demonstrated some kind of ability or skill or talent, even if it’s just being able to read a map or choose colours to paint a bedroom.

On the other hand, the Biggest Loser is nothing more than exploitation for commercial profit without any redeeming qualities.

I happened to catch part of an episode the other night.

In between ads for Coles $3 pizza (Could you advertise a more inappropriate product?), I watched every contestant humiliated to the point of sobbing after being chided in video messages for being fat by family or friends.

I could only stomach (excuse the pun) a few minutes and at risk of hurling the remote control at the television, I changed channels.

The bald facts are that the Biggest Loser is a contrived freak show around which advertising is sold to make Channel Ten a lot of money.

And it all appears during prime time television, when the entire family can gather round to watch the “fattest people in Australia” run until they think they are going to have a heart attack or until they are literally throwing up in a bucket.

The show is based around three things: exploitation, humiliation and money.

The contestants are exploited because of their size and inability to do something about it.

They are humiliated by tortuous training regimes and verbal abuse if they don’t try hard enough (not to mention those half-naked weigh-ins).

And money is the incentive to get them on the show and for Channel Ten to air it.

As a prime time show, the Biggest Loser needs an audience, a feat it accomplishes with ease because Australians are obsessed with obesity, one of the biggest health issues facing the nation.

But The Biggest Loser is not about confronting this issue, despite Channel Ten’s ridiculous claim that it is not a game show but a “social movement that aims to break the vicious cycle of generational obesity”.

If you’re wondering what sort of impact the Biggest Loser has had on changing eating behaviour or encouraging people to lose weight since it first aired in 2006, the answer is zero.

According to the most recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 63.4% of Australians were overweight as of 2011-12 with 70.3% of men obese or overweight and 56.2% of women obese or overweight.

In 2008 the rates of obesity and being overweight were 62.8% for males and 47.6% for females.

And in 2005, one year before the Biggest Loser first aired, obesity rates were 61.6% for men and 44.6% for women.

So since the show started airing obesity rates have risen, not fallen.

There was recently an excellent article written by News Limited journalist Petra Starke for the Adelaide Advertiser where she neatly summarised the real point of the show:

“It’s for people like you and me to plant our ample buttocks on our cushy sofas and watch other people being humiliated while we eat whatever fast food they’re selling us in the ad breaks.”

“The Biggest Loser is like one big schoolyard bullying session, and we’re all complicit in it,” Starke goes on to say.

I also like this summation from Fairfax’s Ben Pobjie:

“The Biggest Loser, the show for everyone who believes being overweight makes a person worthless, and that anyone who refuses to lose weight deserves loneliness, derision and an early death. And that anyone can get into shape, as long as they have a personal trainer working on them full-time and cameras on them 24/7 to prevent them ever straying from their prescribed diet. But I’m sure most people can manage that.”

Starke and Bopjie are not the only ones shaming Channel 10 for airing this disgraceful show.

The complaints and accusations are flying from all corners.

Eating disorders advocacy group Fed Up NSW Health is demanding the show be pulled from the airways, with one of its chief concerns being that for the first time it features contestants as young as 15.

One woman, Ella Graham who is involved with Fed Up NSW and has battled eating disorders for 11 years, recently told The Age newspaper that personal trainer Michelle Bridges shouting at contestants makes her “shudder”.

Graham has written to the producers of the show, Shine, warning that it is negligent because research shows that the biggest risk factor for developing an eating disorder is a restrictive diet and excessive exercise (the basic premise of The Biggest Loser).

Nutritionist Rosemary Stanton calls the show “totally unrealistic” and “done for entertainment”.

Child and adolescent psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg says there can be fewer shows more toxic than The Biggest Loser warning that “young viewers may be negatively influenced, setting them up for a lifetime of body-image issues and an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise”.

Another advocacy group, Eating Disorders Victoria has condemned the show.

The list goes on and on.

Australia is getting fatter and the Biggest Loser is just entertainment, though of the most exploitative and unredeeming kind.

One hundred years ago they used to have freak shows at the circus where you could see the world’s fattest man or the world’s hairiest woman – in the modern age of reality television, you can tune in between 7.30 pm and 8.30 pm Sunday, Monday and Tuesday on Channel 10 to get your fill, can of coke in one hand, pizzas slice with extra toppings in the other.

And sure someone will win and make a lot of money and go on chat shows and the radio and maybe perhaps host a show of their own. And perhaps they’ll even keep the weight down, for appearance sake of course, (otherwise they can kiss those lucrative media contracts good-bye).

But as for the rest, it will be back to doing it for themselves; but with the added bonus of knowing what their families really think, having already humiliated themselves on camera for the nation.

A few weeks ago I turned on the television to a promotion for an upcoming television show.

A very large woman sits down and opens a two litre tub of vanilla ice-cream.

She takes a bottle of chocolate sauce and spreads it liberally over the top of the ice cream.

She starts to eat from the two litre tub of ice-cream.

There is a time-lapse.

The tub is empty.

Then come the words: “The Biggest Loser: The next generation starts this week.”

Australian arrested: the mainstream media is right not to name him for now

April 4, 2013April 14, 2013freshlyworded 2 Comments

In August 2000 The Guardian reported the story of Dr Yvette Cloete, a specialist registrar in paediatric medicine at the Royal Gwent hospital in Newport, forced to flee her home after “self-styled vigilantes” daubed it with graffiti in the middle of the night.

The vandals wrote the “paedo” across the house she shared with her brother in South Wales, after apparently confusing her professional title of “paediatrician” with that of “paedophile”.

This, I sense, is the type of confused logic and misappropriation of information that has driven some bloggers to howl at the mainstream media for not naming the 83-year-old Australian arrested last week as part of the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Yewtree, set up following the Sir Jimmy Savile scandal.

Newspapers – even the usually forthright ‘name and shame them’ tabloids – have not named this person.

The UK tabloid press usually behave like a bunch of sharks – one sniff of blood in the water and they go into a feeding frenzy, competing for the most attention-grabbing sensationalist headlines, the bigger the font, the better.

But not this time.

Britain’s biggest selling newspaper, The Sun merely published the press statement issued by the police while it’s rival The Daily Mirror went one step further by publishing an interview with the entertainer’s wife – she said it was “easy making historic allegations against showbiz names”- but the paper did not provide clues as to who he may be.

Australian media have gone one step further by calling him “Australian”.

But the only mainstream media outlet (if you can call him that) to explicitly name the person in question is Derryn Hinch, the “human headline”, who has done so on several occasions via Twitter, and seems to have appointed himself judge, jury and executioner even before a charge has been laid.

As have many in that diverse, unchartered universe, the blogosphere.

Bloggers, some with large followings and a significant profiles, have demanded that the main stream press name this individual; that they have in fact a duty to do so.

Their principle source of corroboration appears to be Mark Williams-Thomas, a former UK detective specialising in major sex crimes, who has since become a media personality and television criminology expert.

So what exactly has Williams-Thomas said in relation to this latest arrest?

According to his Twitter account (Williams-Thomas is a prodigious tweeter) absolutely nothing.

He did tweet this in November last year:

Breaking : XX XX currently being interviewed under caution at police station as part of #Savile other #sexual offences

This tweet – four months old – appears to be the primary source of corroboration used by bloggers for naming the suspect charged by last week, after the Metropolitan Police tweeted this:

An 82-yr-old man from Berkshire [‘Yewtree 5’] was arrested today 28/3 on suspicion of sexual offences. He’s been bailed to a date in May.

Williams-Thomas may be right, but it strikes me as strange that he’s not said a word following the Metropolitan Police’s March 29 tweet and press statement about the arrest.

He hasn’t even bothered to retweet it – this being someone who uses their Twitter feed as a channel to name and shames anyone accused or convicted of sex offences.

So it seems bloggers have very little prima facie evidence for naming this person and certainly less, you’d think, than the major newspapers and television networks, who remain defiantly silent.

As to why the mainstream press is keeping quiet for now, there is one very obvious one:

Fresh in the minds of most journalists will be two recent examples of wrongful accusations made against prominent people in relation to child-sex offences.

Last year, the venerated BBC current affairs program Newsnight got it horribly wrong when it mistakenly named Lord Alistair McAlpine, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher and Conservative Party treasurer, as being linked to child abuse claims in North Wales.

The claims were repeated on Twitter and on other social media platforms.

Lord McAlpine received £185,000 pounds in damages from the BBC plus costs, its director general resigned while those on Twitter who defamed him, have been pursued, including the writer George Monbiot, who had tweeted on the case to his 55,000 followers and who agreed to carry out £25,000 of work on behalf of three charities of his choice for defaming Lord McAlpine.

(I note that one UK blogger, who has outed the Australian personality continues to call Lord McAlpine a “paedo”.)

In another case, just over a week ago, former BBC producer Wilfred De’ath arrested by police last November was freed without charge after claims he molested a 14 year old woman were withdrawn.

And there are others who have been accused of sex offences and later not charged – 11 people have been arrested so far.

Bloggers currently screaming for tabloid headlines to be splashed across newspapers should not be so sure that their relatively small pockets and size protect them from civil or criminal charges should their contentions prove false.

But even more importantly, they should take greater care when a person’s life and reputation hang by a thread.

“Chin, chin Monty”: remembering “Withnail and I” star Richard Griffiths

March 31, 2013April 1, 2013freshlyworded 4 Comments

“My boys” – Richard Griffiths (left) as “Uncle Monty” with “Withnail” (Richard E. Grant) and “I” (Paul McGann) in “Withnail and I”

“Monty you terrible c-nt. what are you doing prowling round in the middle of the f-cking night?”

So says “Withnail” (Richard E. Grant) upon discovering his rotund, gay, impeccably posh “Uncle Monty” (Richard Griffiths) is the prowler he and “I” (Paul McGann) are so terrified of as they huddle in a room in their freezing cottage in the English countryside.

For me and I imagine for many of his fans, Richard Griffiths, the English actor who so sadly passed away this weekend will always be remembered as “Uncle Monty” in the cult 1986 comedy “Withnail and I” directed by Bruce Robinson.

For others, he will be remembered as uncle Vernon Dursley in the Harry Potter films or as the eccentric, but groping and doomed school teacher in the Alan Bennett play, The History Boys.

Living in London at the time, I was fortunate to score free tickets to see the very first performance of The History Boys in 2004 and Richard Griffiths in the lead role.

He was wonderful, and there certainly was an Uncle Monty-like dimension to his character, that of a gay man who can’t hold back his proclivities – (though Uncle Monty preferred tweed and tailored suits and would never have been seen in Hector’s riding-gear leathers.)

The obituaries have been generous and glowing.

Apart from having a short temper, Griffiths is described as lovable, generous, warm and down to earth and someone , who, with out the assistance of good looks or privilege (he grew up in a coal mining town in North Yorkshire and both his parents were deaf) forged a highly successful career as an English character actor who in the words of Guardian writer Lyn Gardner brought “sheer delicacy”to his roles.

All pay tribute to his greatest comic creation, that of Uncle Monty, and so they should.

Upon learning of his death, I pulled out my copy of “With Nails” the film diaries of his “Withnail and I” co-star Richard E. Grant and read what he wrote upon meeting Richard Griffiths for the first time.

Not surprisingly, Griffiths sounds a lot like Uncle Monty; perhaps he was getting into character:

Grant writes:

“Richard Griffiths arrives in the evening, roasted and in agony from too much sun in Tuscany, which doesn’t stop him enjoying five courses, cigs, vino and tales of Thespia. His larger than life avuncularity comes as a great relief for we have been so wound up rehearsing that it was beginning to feel as if we were the only characters in this lark.”

While it would be unfair to say Griffiths had all the best lines in the movie, he certainly got some of the most memorable ones and fans of the movie will no doubt be able to recite many of them verbatim:

Lines like (while discussing the growing of vegetables):

“I happen to think the cauliflower more beautiful than the rose”

…which then turns into a hilarious phallic joke when Monty professes his love of a certain root vegetable:

“There is you’ll agree a certain je ne ses quoi oh so very special about a firm young carrot.”

My favourite line is probably, this tender-hearted utterance, when explaining why he can never touch uncooked meat:

“As a youth, I used to weep in butcher shops.”

Griffiths played Uncle Monty with sheer brilliance, portraying him as an eccentric, lonesome gay man with Thespian aspirations to “tread the boards” and fond of delivering soliloquys about his boyhood “friend” Wrigglesworth,with whom he would ride off into the countryside and when night fell,”find some old barn and fall asleep with the sweet perfume of hay on our lips” and “the sounds of nature sighing by our side”.

While “Withnail and I” is a comedy, it is very much a melancholic comedy, with Griffiths as the love-sore, randy and lonesome Uncle Monty, who will “never play the Dane (Hamlet)”.

For those who have not seen it, it’s the story about two out of work actors – “Withnail” (Richard E. Grant) and “I” (Paul McGann) living in London at the end of the 1960s who go on holiday “by mistake” courtesy of Uncle Monty’s cottage in the countryside to escape the misery and cold of their Camden Town flat.

The holiday quickly unravels, filled with misadventure, randy bulls, English tea rooms, copious amounts of alcohol, and a procession of bizarre characters (some even more eccentric than Uncle Monty).

Neither “Withnail” nor “I” expect Uncle Monty to pay them a visit and pursue the horror-filled “I” with a buggery-induced belligerence that culminates in those hilarious, lines delivered by Griffiths (and quoted in almost every obituary I have read of him):