What makes Britain mediocre?

So, the dust has settled and the expectancy over the Olympics ceremony opening is over. After seven years, we’ve all seen what Danny Boyle and co came up with, and I have to say I was underwhelmed. While there was much to admire – I liked the nod to Close of Encounters of the Third Kind with the Olympic rings – on the whole, the event was too fractured, too piecemeal. It’s no wonder people around the world were left baffled. What was missing was a unifying principle or theme.

The event didn’t really come alive until the musical episode – but this came too late and felt rushed. Would that the whole event had revolved around Britain’s rich musical heritage. After all, this is a nation that had produced some of the best songwriters and musicians in the world. Given the number of nations that are in turmoil around the world, it may have been an idea to organise at least part of the ceremony around protest songs, taking in the abolitionist and Suffragette movements, as well as the Miners’ Strike. Perhaps this would have been too political – even for Danny Boyle. But I would have liked to have seen the Gay Mens’ Chorus in there!

Overall, this was a backward-looking piece, flying the flag for Britain’s past glories. There seemed to be little to celebrate about this nation’s future – unless it’s about text messaging and raving. By far my favourite part of the ceremony was watching all the athletes filling the stadium near the end. Their joy and delight at being there. You can forget all the flag waving -  that to me is the true meaning of the Olympics.

As I write, Britain is fourth is the medals table. I’m still waiting for a sports journalist to write a piece about how athletes are chosen to represent the country. Now, that’s a story on a par with the MPs expenses scandal...

Why can't America say the "a" word?

Why does America have such as problem with abortion? In the film, What To Expect When You’re Expecting, five women become mothers at roughly the same time. One of the women, who works on a food truck, gets pregnant after a drunken one-night stand with a man she hasn’t seen since high school. And not once does she consider having an abortion. Really. But, not to worry, the woman miscarries, an experience which leaves her devastated. Of course.

Like the film Knocked Up in which a beautiful successful woman finds herself impregnated by a fat schleb with poor social skills, the word abortion is never even mentioned. The closest it gets is when one of the characters suggests the heroine should have a procedure that rhymes with “shmashmortion.”

Why is it that in Hollywood movies women confronted with an unplanned pregnancy almost always choose to keep the baby? One theory is that film producers, anxious to maximise box office receipts, don’t want to alienate the vocal and socially conservative Christian right. I find this odd as the big studios are happy to churn out films that depict harrowing scenes of violence for mainstream audiences. So it’s okay to show, for example, a guy getting shot in the eye in gruesome detail, but it’s not okay to show a scene where a woman chooses to have an abortion - even if the procedure itself isn‘t shown.

Earlier this year Rush Limbaugh caused a media storm when he called a Georgetown University law school student a “slut” and a “prostitute” for daring to speak in favour of the new rule requiring employers to offer health insurance plans that cover birth control. Thereafter we had a number of men weighing in on a subject that doesn’t affect them and they could not possible have any experience of. And Limbaugh only apologised to the student after his sponsors started deserting him. More recently we have seen several US states amending their abortion laws, making it that much more difficult for women to seek terminations. 

Given that American women have made so many strides in so many areas, just why is a woman’s right to choose such a hot button topic in the US? Nowhere else in the developed world is the subject of free birth control for women an issue. In any civilised society, it is taken as a given. Perhaps it is precisely because American women lead the way that the establishment is seeking to claw back some of its position. It’s difficult not to see the furore surrounding the debate as a backlash against women in general.

And until we see more women in positions of power in Hollywood, a woman’s right to choose will never be intelligently featured on the big screen. 

What network TV bosses aren't saying

The television upfronts in New York are just days away. This is when the major US networks gather together hundreds of advertisers to announce their autumn primetime schedules and screen splashy presentations of their new shows selected from the handfuls of pilots they made months earlier. Some $10bn of business is expected to be done. For creatives, who sometimes only learn that their show is being picked up hours before, the suspense can be excruciating.

I’m going to be the one to say the tough stuff. Here goes: the system doesn’t work anymore. It’s outmoded and the networks need to find a different way of doing things. For one thing, it’s incredibly wasteful. According to insiders, the one-in-ten princicple applies - one in ten TV scripts are bought, eventually made into pilots, then go to air. It’s a wonder the shareholders aren’t up in arms. Perhaps the gift bags really are that good.

I’ve had a look at all the new network drama pilots and I think I can safely predict a large number of early cancellations. And I doubt very much if there will be any break-out hits. Why? Because all the networks have played it safe. All I can see is a string of clichés, lazy stereotypes and unimaginative casting. Network TV is a landscape where all the women are beautiful with “rocking bods” and the men are heroic.

Make no mistake, these are difficult times. Never before have we had so many different forms of entertainment to choose from. However, television remains the most popular medium and people are watching more TV than ever before. A recent Nielsen report revealed that we watch an average of four hours and 39 minutes of TV a day.

This year, the networks have been disappointingly risk-averse. I have to ask, where is television’s answer to Steve Jobs? The person willing to shake things up? Now is the time for visionaries, not cronies.

The landscape on network TV for drama is growing increasingly difficult. Let’s take a look at some of last year’s casualties. The Playboy Club was one of the first to go. Then came Prime Suspect starring Maria Bello, NBC’s Southland, and let’s not forget Steven Spielberg’s Terra Nova, the most expensive TV show ever made.

“It’s a bad system,” says Steve Levitan the co-creator of Modern Family. Because of the timing, casting directors are all chasing actors from a relatively small talent pool at the same time.  “It’s a giant game of musical chairs. You’re forced to make a decision before you’re ready because if you don’t, you’ll lose them,” Levitan adds.

All the networks are in the doldrums; all have lost audience share. As the studios struggle to develop new business, it feels very much as though we are in a creative vacuum. It doesn’t feel as though anyone is trying to find compelling original content.

I’m keeping my eye on Netflix. The movies-on-demand service is remaking British show House of Cards with Kevin Spacey and has also bought cult favourite, Arrested Development. They could well create a new model for content delivery. Network bosses take note.

Note to CBS: about your new Sherlock Holmes pilot, Elementary. If you want a hit series, replace Jonny Lee Miller with another British actor, Christopher McKay, (of Me & Orson Welles fame). Quite frankly, I am astounded that no one has snapped up this phenomenal actor for a pilot already. McKay makes Hugh Laurie look like a table leg.

Why I won't be going to the Olympics

I wish Paris had won the bid to host the Olympics. I don’t believe London deserved to win. Too many athletes in this country struggle to get the recognition and backing they deserve. Thus you have Olympiads sponsored by their local butcher. That is an unacceptable situation. And I’ve yet to see any journalist take a serious look at how those selected on the Olympic team are coping financially.

But what really disgusts me - yes, disgusts - is coverage of women’s sports in England. The coverage of last year’s Wimbledon was a case in point. Reporters seemed to concentrate almost exclusively on what they were wearing and the noises they made on court. That there was an eventual winner was almost an aside.

In England, there is a peculiar attitude to female athletes - especially if they don’t fit a particular image. Unless they are preferably white, middle-class and married with children, the press are ready to stick the knives in. For example, Venus and Serena Williams are among the finest athletes of their generation and yet journalists seldom credit the pair with their phenomenal success. Instead we get catty asides about how they look - that they are not “properly feminine”. Hello? They are professional athletes.

I’m a former athlete and I won’t be applying for tickets or watching the Games on TV. In fact, I’m planning on getting out of London entirely for the duration of the Olympics.

The English seem to prefer pathetic losers like Eddie the Eagle, the skijumper who crashed and burned in 1987. There is little understanding or appreciation in this country of what it takes to reach the top in athletes.

Be the best? The English apparently prefer mediocrity.

What the British press isn't saying

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the day former News of the World editor Andy Coulson and Conservative director of communications takes the stand at the Leveson Inquiry, the government chooses to release information about the Ministry of Defence’s decision to renege on an aircraft carrier deal, losing nearly £100 million in the process. How do you bury bad news? By releasing even worse news, of course!

Once, we had the best press in the world. Now British journalists appear to be asleep at the wheel. Coulson is currently on bail for his involvement in the phone hacking scandal. I want to know who is paying his legal fees and when was the last time he spoke to his former employer? Coulson failed to declare that he owned £40,000-worth of News Corp shares, a clear  conflict of interest, but claims this was merely an oversight as he was “busy“. Really? What questions was Coulson asked before he took up his position as director of communications?

During the inquiry, Coulson dismissed any idea that there was any deal to ensure the Murdochs the whole of BSkyB in return for the newspapers supporting the Conservatives. In his statement, he described Cameron as “a thoroughly decent, moral man”. How lovely.

This story has been so underreported in this country, it is truly staggering. I am certain that it will take an American journalist to reveal the true extent of the corruption - yes, corruption - involved.

Meanwhile, Cameron must be breathing a sigh of relief.

Terra Nova cancelled? I can't say I'm surprised

So Steven Spielberg’s expensive sci-fi drama Terra Nova has been cancelled after just one disappointing season. Just minutes into the first episode, I knew the series could not last. I was amazed that anyone connected with Lost could have had any creative input in this show. To describe Terra Nova as “white bread” would be doing a disservice to baked goods. The casting on the series was completely uninspired and unimaginative. Jason O’Mara seems to be Spielberg’s go-to guy, I’m not exactly sure why. As a supporting actor, O’Mara is fine. But as a leading man, I have no interest in him whatsoever.

Terra Nova presented an opportunity to go in a different direction. What a shame that Spielberg and his team didn’t take it. I mean, would it really have been such a stretch to have a woman paying the role of Commander Nathaniel Taylor, the camp boss? Would it? Actresses such as Juliet Stevenson, the Oscar-nominated Janet McNeer or Josette Simon would have all been far more compelling to watch than Stephen Lang. And what a trip it would have been to have an actress of Marion Cottilard’s caliber playing the lead!

I have not seen such a bland group of characters in a TV show for longer than I care to remember. There was not a single character you cared about - a fatal flaw in any new series. And I took real exception to the female characters. For me, watching Terra Nova was like going through a time warp back to 1954. Even the women in Mad Men are more progressive than this lot.

I can’t understand that a man with Spielberg’s experience doesn’t seem to understand that we’re tired of seeing such cookie-cutter characters - the lantern-jawed hero, the pin-up teen. The series felt like a cynical ploy to appeal to the lucrative “family quadrant” - tweens, teens, mums and dads. It really wouldn’t surprise me if the idea had been floated before a focus group before a script was written.

I just can’t understand that with such huge resources, a man like Spielberg could have got a series so very, very wrong. And I find it interesting that after some forty years in the business, Diablo Cody is the only female writer Spielberg has collaborated with (on The United States of Tara). I don’t think the two are entirely unconnected.

Awake: NBC's new show and another male fantasy

I watched the pilot episode of NBC’s new drama, Awake, created by Lone Star writer Kyle Killen. In the show, Jason Isaacs plays Michael Britten, a police detective who is in a serious car accident and then wakes up to two different realities - one in which his wife dies, and another where his son is killed. Now, Isaacs is a fine actor, but I am sorry to say I will not be watching that show again and here’s why.

The first time we see Laura Allen, who plays Isaacs’s wife, Hannah, she is wielding a paintbrush. Is she an artist? No, she’s doing a spot of home decorating. Later, we see her wearing a suit but we have no idea what work she does. When Hannah turns up for a dinner date wearing a red dress, I got it. “Okay, so we’re living in fantasy world here,” I thought.

Killen has created a world in which a white man gets to maintain a relationship with two attractive women, while very much playing the hero. Talk about having your cake and eating it. And it’s a world in which people of colour are relegated safely to the sidelines. I didn’t really see the point of either Steve Harris’ or Wilmer Valderrama characters - except to make the lead look good.

And I’d like to ask Killen a question: is he aware that there are a number of women on the police force throughout the US?

What’s interesting - and more than a little disconcerting - to notice is that just as women and people of colour make greater strides in the workplace and other spheres, there seems to be a growing backlash. Thus we have Rush Limbaugh calling a Georgetown student a “slut” and a “prostitute” for daring to request that health insurance cover birth control - and not backing down until advertisers pulled their sponsorship. Then there are the Obama critics who repeatedly describe him as “Kenyan”.

That Hollywood is the preserve of white, middle-class males has been the industry’s dirty little secret for decades. But here’s the thing: the world is changing. Television and film are now global concerns. When you consider that 98 per cent of the world’s population is not white and the TV audiences are predominantly female, for industry bosses to continue to offer up such a white, phallocentric world view simply doesn’t make any sense.

No wonder audience numbers are down.

The future for British newspapers

As the Leveson inquiry continues and the fees Rupert Murdoch has paid out to lawyers run into the hundreds of millions, I wonder if it has occurred to him that the money would have been better spent establishing a crack team of investigative reporters working across all the News International titles - an A-Team of journalists if you like.

As I’ve said before, all the newspapers increased their circulations during the MPs expenses scandal. Clearly, there is a demand for proper stories - something most editors seem to have overlooked.  For example, the story about Virgin paying the police overtime to investigate fraud seems to have escaped major attention. Does this indicate Government plans to privatise parts of the police force? Twenty per cent of the Royal Bank of Scotland is still in private hands. Who owns the remaining shares? Were journalists monitoring Stock Market activity after the announcement was made about Hester’s bonus? And as the National Health Service is dismantled by stealth, how many of David Cameron’s cronies stand to benefit?

There’s a reason why newspaper circulation is falling and it doesn’t have anything to do with the internet. Newspaper proprietors should never have viewed the internet as a threat, but as an opportunity to focus on what newspapers do best - investigative stories.

When it comes to judging the public mood, editors in England have failed spectacularly. And newspaper managers have failed to ensure that they employ people who have their fingers on the nation’s pulse.

The British public deserves better.

The myth of the angry black woman

The Guardian newspaper recently published  a series of comments from black female writers responding to the criticism levelled at Michelle Obama. What's curious is that in England no woman is allowed to be angry, regardless of colour. Don't forget, this is a country where Cheryl Cole is described as being the "nation's sweetheart" - a woman whose only discernible talent is being able to afford good hair and make-up stylists and PR. There is something pernicious going on in England right now. It's been written about elsewhere but you cannot help but notice the absence of women in political life, in current affairs - even on television and at the cinema. Where are the female social commentators, the scientists and economists? The scriptwriters and directors?
England prefers to elevate women such as Kate Middleton and Samantha Cameron - empty-headed helpmates who conform to a particular stereotype. All the Guardian's commentators overlooked one important aspect of the "angry black woman" tag - it's a charge levelled at women of colour that's meant to imply that somehow we're not quite "feminine" enough. After all, "anger" is seen as a male preserve. Women are supposed to keep our pretty little mouths firmly shut.

The Black and White Media Show

Right now, it’s hard to be a person of colour in England, especially one who reads newspapers or listens to the news.

In the past few days, I’ve had to watch the John Terry show and the news that the England captain is to be charged with a public order offence in the new year for racially abusing a black player.

Terry called QPR defender Anton Ferdinand a f***** black c***. There’s no “allegedly” about it - Terry’s racist rant was posted on Youtube for all to see. The Chelsea captain made a statement that he intends to fight the charges “tooth and nail”. Really? Has no one shown him the footage? As a black journalist, I waited patiently for a news outlet to feature comments from a black football player about their experience on the pitch. I waited and waited, then I waited some more.

The way this story has been covered is curious to say the least. The implication is that Ferdinand should have put up and shut up, that to accuse an England captain of being a racist is “political correctness gone mad”.

Unlike Mel Gibson, Terry cannot claim that he was drunk. In fact, he has no defence. He made racist remarks and was filmed doing so. The extraordinary fact is that virtually no one in this country owns up to being a racist. No one even likes to be open and honest and admit they have witnessed racist behaviour. Truth be told, this is a racist society. Everyday I go out, I can expect to experience racism in some form or another - from being closely tailed by security guards in stores, to not being served in cafes and restaurants. I have worked for a national newspaper where a journalist thought it would be a jolly wheeze to make monkey noises whenever I came in the room. On a woman’s magazine, an editor seemed unable to bring herself to talk to me, preferring instead to write notes on pieces of paper and throw them at me.

And racist discrimination starts early. I was recently invited up to the BBC new offices in Salford where I watched a segment for a new children’s show, The 4 O’clock Club. The show features two black brothers who are both rappers. My heart sank when I saw the clip. Yes, I understand that lots of young people listen to hip hop, but given that this is the only programme featuring two black male leads, can we not have them do something else? Is it really that much of a stretch?

White Britons have no idea what it’s like to be discriminated against in this way. They just don’t get it.

Women in the British Press

A few days ago The Guardian’s Kira Cochrane wrote about the lack of women in the national press. Over the summer, she compared the number of bylines between male and female journalists. According to her research, out of all the newspapers, the Daily Mail managed to publish the highest number articles by women.

This brings me to the Leveson inquiry. With all the acres of coverage the inquiry has generated, not one journalist has questioned the editorial reasoning behind the phone hacking scandal. The whole sorry affair serves to illustrate the paucity of thinking at the most senior level of the British media.

If I was going to hack someone’s phone, why on earth would I bother with Elle Macpherson and Vanessa Feltz, for goodness sake? No, I’d hack the phones of pharmaceutical company bosses, politicians, hedge fund managers and city financiers. Look how many extra copies of newspapers were sold during the MPs expenses scandal. Does any newspaper editor really believe that any story involving Vanessa Feltz is going to generate that much interest? It certainly doesn’t justify the tens of thousands of pounds spent on private detectives and lawyers.

There are only two female editors of national newspapers in this country.  Yet there are any number of studies that show that women buy newspapers and magazines more often than men, and tend to be bigger consumers.  Would it really be too much of a stretch for media executives to make an effort to employ more women at senior levels in newspapers? Perhaps they might be more in tune with the readership and help increase circulation.

Nothing New Under the Sun (Or On UK TV)

As the channels publish their Christmas schedules, it looks like 2011 is going to be yet another disappointing year for TV. There is a reason why US television is so much better than British TV and it as nothing to do with the significantly larger budgets. Even if we had £750,000 per episode to spend on a drama, we still couldn't make a 24, a Lost or even a series like The Wire. Why? Because the kinds of people capable of writing these shows are not the writers who get hired in England.

If there's one thing I've noticed in the years I've spent travelling between the US and the UK, is how much more egalitarian the American TV industry appears to be. Writers, producers, directors come from all walks of life - they are housewives and dentists, former marines and actors. Yes, there are still too few women working in the industry - but at 25%, that's still twice the number working in the UK TV industry. In the US, Prime Suspect, the series created by Lynda La Plante, has been cancelled - but that doesn't detract from the fact that in 25 years, La Plante is still the most successful woman British TV has seen. We do not have a female Russell T Davies or Paul Abbott and I can't see that changing any time soon.

Meanwhile, Charlie Brooker's three-part satirical series Black Mirror starts on Channel 4. Despite a full-page write-up in the Radio Times and a number of plugs in The Guardian, I can safely predict that viewing figures for this will be small. Brooker appears to have been commissioned off the back of his notoriety, not the concept or execution. I'm sure the Channel 4 executive who gave him the gig would have enjoyed his "pitch" meeting immensely. But given the channel's original remit, is this a good use of its limited resources? I would have to say no.

As someone who has studied screenwriting in the US and the UK, I have observed that British writers simply do not take the business of screenwriting seriously. I've heard British writers of long-running series brag about "knocking up" scripts in the pub the night before filming. You simply wouldn't find an American writer making such a boast.

It's interesting to note that Brooker wrote the first two parts of Black Mirror but the final part is written by Jesse Armstrong of Peep Show fame. Did Mr Brooker run out of steam? And that's another uniquely British phenomenom - we are good at coming up with concepts (The Office, Fawlty Towers, Lost In Austen), but we lack the stamina to maintain any show beyond its first series. There were only six episodes of Fawlty Towers and Lost In Austen pretty much ran out of ideas after the first episode.

I cannot see this situation changing - unless all the channels make a concerted effort to ensure their workforces are as diverse as possible. Diversity fosters creativity; it really is that simple.
When everyone is white, male and middle-class and from Gloucester, you are just not going to get the best ideas. 

The British Media in the Dock

As the Levenson Inquiry into press standards rumbles pointlessly on, I’m going to add my ten cents’ worth. First, it has to be said that David Cameron’s press officers must be dancing a jig right now. It’s the perfect time to bury any (more) bad news, as there’s nothing the British press likes better than gazing at its own navel. In England, we have the highest number of people under 25 unemployed in twenty years, and we are about to see changes to the state pension which will leave tens of thousands of women destitute in their old age. But never mind, we can listen to Sienna Miller talking about being made to feel that she was living in a video game.

The solution to the subject of press intrusion is really very simple. At present any fool who can afford a camera can call himself (and it’s always a him) a paparazzo.  If regulation is required, then that’s a good place to start. It’s clear also that the inquiry is talking to the wrong people. Picture editors should be in on the discussions. If editors can agree on set prices, then you wouldn’t get photographers risking their own necks as well as others to get the picture that will literally set them up for life. When newspapers and magazines pay £100,000 and more for the right celebrity shot, then clearly something has to be done. If there was an agreed ceiling on prices, this would go somewhere towards preventing paps from jumping out of bushes and bashing on car windows, as the McCanns described during the inquiry. And if editors can agree not to employ unlicensed photographers, that would be a step in the right direction. After all, we don’t allow just anyone to drive a black cab. Drivers have to pass a rigorous test.

Then there’s the subject of training. Many newspapers used to have apprenticeship schemes. These have largely been done away with, especially as local papers have been hit by the double whammy of the recession and the rise of the internet. The traditional route of starting off as a cub reporter on your local doesn’t really exist anymore. And believe me, it makes a difference. I’ve been a freelance journalist now for ten years and I keep coming across people who have little if any understanding of media law. In a situation like this, only the lawyers can win.

Colegate: the saga continues...

Doesn’t Ashley Cole have any real friends? Someone might want to tell him that the very worst thing he could have done was to marry Cheryl Tweedy. Ashley may be one of the finest footballers of his generation but his ability on the pitch is constantly overshadowed by his relationship with the former Girls Aloud singer. Mr Cole could open an orphanage, set up an animal sanctuary and rescue a burning building full of old age pensioners, but he would still be known as the man who cheated on Ms Tweedy.

It was interesting to see how little media attention Ashley Cole’s business venture with Jay Z merited. The pair plan to set up a restaurant along the lines of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, which trains unemployed youngsters. Perhaps Mr Cole has finally began to realise that no footballer can play forever, no matter how talented they are. Cole should look to David Beckham, who serves as a poster boy for all professional footballers as to how to extend your shelf life away from the pitch. Beckham has successfully lent his name to a host of product ranges and activities generating millions of pounds of income. He could quit playing for Galaxy tomorrow and not worry.

Ashley Cole is without doubt an attractive man but which clothing brand or designer would sign up the left-back now to be its frontman now, after his disastrous marriage? Meanwhile, the relentless PR machine behind Chezza the "Biffa" continues its onslaught...

Nothing New Under the Sun

I've just come back from Los Angeles, where I made a point of catching up with all the news shows. I can't help but be a little disappointed at this season's premiers. There's really very little to get excited about. Playboy and Charlie's Angels quickly bit the dust and it's not difficult to see why. Both could easily have been successful but lacked the courage of their convictions. (Hey, ABC and NBC, there are female showrunners now. Really.)

It's interesting to note that the most successful shows are all based on classic books or stories. Pan Am is William Thackeray's Vanity Fair in the air. Revenge is simply Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo with a sex change and set in the Hamptons. While Grimm and Once Upon a Time both use classic fairy tales from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to Little Red Riding Hood.

Showrunners take note: if you want a show to stay on the air, mine the world's canon of literature for stories to adapt. So come on down! Let's play Fantasy TV shows! With the success of The Help, what about revisiting Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird? Let's see, Scout and Jem are now adults. While Scout has followed her father Atticus' footsteps into the law, Jem has just returned after serving two tours in Iraq. He is haunted by his experiences - and his unrequited affair with Calpurnia's  mixed-race son (yes, Calpurnia and Atticus had a secret love child, so that makes him Scout and Jem's half-brother).

Here's another one: what about Charles Dickens' Great Expectations meets Training Day? A rookie New York cop falls in love with the daughter of a Supreme Court judge, only to be cruelly rebuffed...
Or what about Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as Mad Men meets The Kennedys? When a Senator is murdered all his sons fall under suspicion, including his eldest son who harbours political ambitions of his own...

See how much fun this is?

The Standard in the dock

It disgusts me that London, one of the greatest cities in the world, has only one newspaper and that is the Evening Standard. The paper used to be a good one. When it was a paid-for title, I remember a series of well-written, well-researched articles, including one of the best articles I've ever read by Kate Hilpern about people who go missing in the city. Now I see the magazine piled up outside rail stations and hardly ever see anyone pick up a copy. Perhaps because it seems to be filled with stories of chinless socialites and the daughters of Russian billionaires who have nothing to say for themselves and are not in the least bit interesting.

Now the paper is little more than a mouthpiece for London Mayor Boris Johnson. How I wish we had the equivalent of the New York Times in London!

Afro Spring: Now They See Us...

Since the riots started, it's been open season for every not-so-closeted racist and Charles Murray apologist to make their feelings known in the national media. Cameron's decision to allow police to use plastic bullets and water cannons will only inflame the situation. And the language he has used is nothing short of abominable. He spoke of "phony human rights", the subtext being that people of colour don't have any rights because we're less than human. Wasn't that the argument used to support slavery?

It's interesting to compare Cameron's knee-jerk reaction to the calm, measured response of the Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg after the Oslo bombing and the shootings on Utoeya island. It's clear that Cameron is at sea over the riots. Britain needs a steadier, surer hand at the helm than his.

Cameron should really stand down over the riots but unless the rioters make it to Downing Street, I can't see that happening.