Killjoys

I opened my Daily Telegraph this morning to a breathtaking picture of a canoeist sliding 300ft down the spillway at Llyn Brianne reservoir in Carmarthenshire, Wales.

The best bit about it was that there was none of the usual "it shouldn't be allowed" condemnation from some petty official. Not that I thought for one moment it would be condoned by the water authority.

And no, it wasn't. By the time a clip appeared here on the BBC website there was a spokesman for Welsh Water saying: "Reservoirs can be dangerous for various reasons and those involved in water sports in inappropriate locations, such as at Llyn Brianne, put themselves and others at unnecessary risk."

No they don't. They put themselves at risk. No-one else need be involved. Reservoirs can be dangerous. Rivers can be dangerous; life can be dangerous thank goodness. That's what makes it worth living.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if just once someone in authority spoke out and said: "This is a wonderful facility for canoeists and thrill seekers. As long as they understand the obvious risks involved we welcome their use of our reservoir in this way."

So what will happen now? Expect warning signs, barbed wire, barriers, CCTV, prosecutions, legal threats and everything else that revels in making life dull and tawdry. The way our society approaches those with a sense of adventure is simply pathetic.

Underground, overground, Wombling free

It didn't take long for Boris Johnson to get stuck in to his new job, firing the two most senior staffers in the mayor's office and making a commitment to ban the drinking of alcohol on the Underground.

Why stop at alcohol? Why not ban the eating of burgers while we're at it. There are few more obnoxious sights than watching - even worse, smelling - someone tucking in to a Big Mac on the tube.

A news item in yesterday's Daily Telegraph said he had been meeting with an old friend, Lord Brocket who has a "few ideas" of his own for running London.

Brocket, you may recall, is an ex-con who was incarcerated for a spell at Her Majesty's pleasure after he buried some of his classic car collection on the country estate while fraudulently claiming on his insurance policies. My guess is that this honorary Womble has a grand plan for London's traffic. He wants to bury it.

Kids' stuff

What a beautiful day - for all of 30 minutes - before I opened the letters' page of yesterday's Daily Telegraph. The newspaper had sneaked itself in to the car so I hadn't read it on the day of issue. That must have been why I felt on top form yesterday. There was none of the miserable, small-minded niggling of Telegraph readers to sap the spirit.

Enjoying the freedom of their letters' page, they were chewing over language usage, a favourite topic in the Home Counties whose residents think they own the English language when we all know that it belongs to the Queen.

While I agreed with some of the points I found myself taking issue with the views of Harold Carter of Pocklington, North Yorkshire (part of the rich farming belt from Harrogate across to the Yorkshire Wolds that I think of as the "Surrey of the North").

Mr Carter revealed that "the word that always grates on my ear is kids. It was used by Tony Blair and is commonly used on the radio.

Billy goat

"I am of the opinion that a kid is the product of a nanny and a billy goat. Its usage in my youth for "child" conjured up a picture a complete urchin.

"When was the term first used to describe a child?" A letter in today's paper says that Rudyard Kipling was using the term a hundred years ago. That's far too recent for Telegraph readers who think would feel more comfortable with Chaucer.

I had used the word in my FT column on creativity only this week, when referring to my own kids. I looked at it once or twice, thought of using "children" instead, but settled on kids because I think this best describes them.

The thing is they are no longer little children. Of the two discussed in the piece, George is 16 next month and Robert, for goodness sake, is 21, a young adult. Yet they are both kids really and some of what I was discussing - see the previous blog - was kids' stuff, except that, as I explained in the column, much of it wasn't.

Viral marketing

Note the way that the letter had to drag in Tony Blair for good measure. I wonder what Mr Carter would make of mash-ups, play lists and viral marketing? My kids understand this stuff, even though they are kids.

I use language that I consider most appropriate, that readers will easily understand and, yes, I do weigh the possibility that something might grate with a reader against the attraction of colloquial usage.

Use of language is a sensitive subject. All writers must respect that. But you can never please everyone. The most important point is this: did readers get the message? Possibly not in Pocklington.

Meanwhile the boys (kids? Young men?) are enjoying the success they're having with their video. It has been interesting to watch the increase in viewing numbers - (Sunday - 80, Monday - 280, Tuesday - 1,000+, Wednesday 2,000 to 4,000 in the day, and this morning(Thursday) the figure was over 6,000. There was a big viewing boost when Rugbydump.com, one of Rob's favourite sites, chose to feature it (at Rob's urging) in its "midweek madness" section on the front page. It's been a great lesson for them - for me too.

Kick-starting the day the Telegraph way

I'm one of those people who finds it hard to start the day without coming across something that raises my blood-pressure. It is why I read the Daily Telegraph. The FT has plenty of informative articles but it doesn't stir the blood anything like the Telegraph.

Most newspapers are designed to feed the prejudices of their readers. The Telegraph, long known as the Torygraph, concentrates its news coverage on items that will stir the interest of its middle class home counties bedrock. I am middle class and live in the home counties. Yet I must confess that much of the newspaper's coverage makes me heartily sick. It's not the anti-government, anti-Labour stories that get me going , it's the right-wing spin that's applied to every one of them.

Perhaps it has something to do with my northern working class roots, but I have tried hard all my life to adhere to a socialist, liberal ideal (so why are most of my friends Tories? One of life's oddities, I guess). It explains why I objected to a reader's letter yesterday, praising a news story that referred to "firemen" rather than the politically correct (always used in a disparaging sense in Telegraph stories) "firefighters."

I would like to see that reader arguing his point one day as he is hauled out of his burning house by a fire fighting woman who has undergone the same training and passed the same rigorous physical tests as a man. For sure, there are not many of them, but they do exist and for that reason alone, the collective term, firemen, can no longer apply if it is used assumptively.

I understand the reader and I know dozens of people who would nod their heads in agreement with his letter. But that does not mean that they are right.

In today's newspaper I noticed that the story about the nine-year-old girl, Shannon Matthews, missing from her home in Dewsbury, the town I come from, was down to a paragraph on an inside page.

Contrast this with the acres of news coverage on Madeleine McCann. The difference is that the chattering classes who write the columns (all home counties, middle class) in our broadsheets cannot begin to relate to Shannon's council estate upbringing in Dewsbury. Whereas every one of them will have a view on whether it is right to leave sleeping children alone on the kind of holiday that is probably beyond Shannon's dreams.

So why don't I drop the Telegraph and get the Guardian? You must be joking. I don't want a newspaper that treats anglers and shooters like war criminals. The Independent? Too sterile. The Times? I don't like Rupert Murdoch (although he does fish, mostly big game).

The Daily Mail? Apart from the Keith Waterhouse column I wouldn't give it house room. The Daily Express? No redeeming features. The Sun? The Daily Mirror? They serve their readerships but I can't agree with the way they go about finding - or "creating" - news. The Daily Star? Does it still exist?

I am a fan of the Metro because it's free and my children read it. I would always buy an Evening Standard over a handout because it just lasts the journey home from London.

But please don't ask me to change my Telegraph. I hate it and love it in the same breath. I appreciate the way it stands up to big government whatever its hue (although I wish the UK had signed up to the Euro). I love Boris Johnson's deliciously prejudiced and wonderfully written drivel, much of which I support although he would never get my vote. Its sports coverage is superb, although a bit overdone and its quirky blend of eccentricity and Englishness defines the breed for me. I suppose that's it. The Telegraph represents John Major's unchanging England of "warm beer and cricket" and there's something I like about that.

If you find any of this difficult to understand let me invite you to examine your attitudes to the BBC. The Telegraph readers love and loathe the BBC, but from a right-wing perspective. They love the institution and the quality of its output, but they loathe trendy liberals (are there untrendy liberals? Can I be one?) who, as the aforementioned reader stated, would insist on referring to a fireman as a firefighter. We all have our differences. It's what makes the world go round.

Common sense - the ultimate oxymoron

The letters page of the Daily Telegraph earlier this week carried several contributions from people sending examples of oxymorons – terms that contain an inherent contradiction.

Among those offered by readers were: mankind, friendly fire, open prison, care home, public servant, pleasant flight and Australian culture. None of them, surprisingly, offered “common sense.” Yet this must be the ultimate oxymoron.

Indeed good sense is so uncommon that the government should create a Ministry of Common Sense to oversee ideas and proposals from all other ministries. The proposal to create super casinos, for example, could have been saved from ever seeing the light of day.

This is the problem with a Ministry of Common Sense, however. Much of its work would be to strangle at birth some of the sillier proposals of government. This would make it extremely unpopular with the media that relies on daft ideas for much of its coverage.

There is another problem with such a ministry. Who could be found to run it? Common sense suggests that there is a dearth of suitable candidates within the existing administration or among the aspirants. Sadly there will never be a ministry for common sense. For that we must blame another oxymoron: good government.

Elf and safety

I thought that Boris Johnson and Ed Balls were yesterday's blogs until I saw the carping column written by Johnson in today's Daily Telegraph complaining that Balls was shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted on playground safety.

Balls was only acting, said Johnson, "after 10 years of elf and safety lunacy". That's not quite true. The "pirates" game I mentioned here was banned many years ago, banned, possibly before Boris was fitted for his first tailcoat at Eton. Whether it was banned under a Tory or Labour administration, I cannot remember.

The point I'm making is that health and safety concerns have been a creeping trend in schools, playgrounds, workplaces, public places, you name it, for more than a quarter of a century. And it shouldn't all be blamed at the government.

Ask yourself this Boris: Why are you told to put on a safety belt when you climb in to a plane, even when you go for a snooze, when the same doesn't happen on a train? On every flight there's the same routine about emergency exits, life jacket, whistle, drop-down oxygen masks, when we know that our chances of surviving an air crash are pretty slim.

On trains, where crash-survival chances are much better, there is no-one to tell you about the hammer for smashing the windows - you need to work that one out for yourself - and there are no seat belts. Why?

The answer, I believe, has something to do with human irrationality. People are more afraid of flying than they are of train travel and the safety routine has a soothing effect. Air safety has been much better managed with lessons learned from previous disasters. Train safety has improved also, but it has never extended to cocooning individual passengers.

There's a good book called Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales, that outlines a theory suggesting that some of the things we do for protection, such as roping up when descending mountains, can be a bad thing because we become overdependent on the safety measure when we should take more care as individuals. It's worth reading.

Where I did agree with Johnson in his column was his point about degree status expected for nursery-school carers. Why should everyone be expected to have a degree today? I don't have one and I've brought up a family of three kids. Mind you, that might explain a few things.

Fashion fascism

There's something about reading the Daily Telegraph on a morning that makes me want to go out and strangle the nearest squirrel. Since the squirrels in my neighbourhood are far too sensible to come within catapult range of my front door the only catharsis available is the blog.

The first thing that had me choking on my cereal today was a review of Trevor Nunn's Royal Shakespeare Company production of King Lear. Deprived of his leading lady at the start of the run, Nunn chose not to invite newspaper reviewers before her recovery. So they whinged. The Telegraph's reviewer, Charles Spencer, was still whinging this morning.

"Only yesterday did Trev graciously condescend to let the press in to review it," wrote Spencer. Hang on a minute Mr Spencer. You and every other journalist could have seen the play at any time had you done what every other theatre goer would do and bought a ticket.

Had you done so you could have provided the service to your readers that they deserve . But you didn't do that because, along with the rest of the press, you think you have a God given right to a free ticket when, in fact, the review invitation is a privilege not a right. The arrogance of journalists.

But Spencer was only raising the temperature of my blood. What brought it to boiling point was an article by Celia Walden who wrote the cattiest piece about middle aged men who wear jeans.

"At 45, it goes without saying that all jeans must be surrendered to a charity of your choice," she wrote.

My charity of choice is devoted to ending any further wastage of precious wood pulp on drivel like this. Sadly this charity does not yet exist so I will spend as much of my savings as I choose on whatever clothes that I choose and that includes jeans.

We all have a right to choose. Ms Walden, daughter of the former Tory MP, George Walden, has revealed something about her own taste in dating the bungling former editor of the Daily Mirror, Piers Morgan, whose own good judgement extended to buying shares in a company ahead of a Mirror story that tipped those self-same shares as a good buy. It looks a great match. They can wallow together in their mutual prejudices.

Is £20m enough for you?

John Charman, an insurance underwriter, has paid his estranged wife, Beverley, £20m in a divorce settlement. The High Court has ordered him to pay her £48m. Now he is appealing the decision, arguing that £20m should be enough for any ex-wife.

There's nothing like a big court battle over personal dosh to stimulate salivary glands all across the home counties and all those other belts of middle-class conservatism up and down the UK. This is why page 3 of the Daily Telegraph (it's very own titillation page) today features the Charman divorce alongside a "taster" for a much bigger one to come - Mills v McCartney.

Mr Charman says he is battling for justice, "not just for me but for all decent, law-abiding, successful business people facing divorce." Call me an old cynic but, if you ever sought a definition for the word "minority", there you have it. It's not often that you read the words "decent", "successful", "law abiding", and "business people" in the same sentence.

Of course Appeal Court Judges are incapable of being swayed one way or the other by a newspaper article sympathetic to a wealthy 54-year-old man who can have nothing whatsoever in common with middle-aged bewigged and relatively impecunious lawyers.

Poor lady

But we are. I wonder how many people saw the picture of Mrs Charman stepping out of her BMW "4x4 alongside a picture of her grand home in Sevenoaks, then read about her £500,000 a year income after tax, and thought: "Oh that poor, poor lady, she should take him for all he has"? Did you?

There are a few details about Mr Charman that I admire. He is a self-made man who came up the hard way in a business that, when he joined, as he points out, could hardly be described as a meritocracy.

Now he lives in a tax haven, at the helm of an almost £3bn market cap company that he founded. I can excuse him all that, but does he have to wear a chunky gold ring on his left little pinkie? I hate overstated male jewellery. It's not even metrosexual.

Boring Bermuda

For the rest, well, he has to live with it. Have you been to Bermuda? It's the most boring island on the planet. The fishing isn't great either. Why David Bowie should choose to have a house there, God only knows. What kind of place fixes its male business attire as suit jacket and tie with shorts, brogues and knee-length socks?

The Charmans must enjoy this sort of thing - the court battle, that is. I suppose it brings both of them the 15-minutes of fame that so many crave these days. They can dine out for years on all this stuff. It certainly keeps the Telegraph readers entertained.

Whatever the outcome for Mrs Charman, she should stay well clear of Bermuda. On the harbour wall there is a working model of a ducking stool that the island once used to deal with difficult wives. I bet there are one or two Bermudian men who wish they still used it today.

You are watching Big Brother

If you look closely at your television set you will find that somewhere, usually down in the bottom right hand corner, is a button marked "off". If you push this button it will deactivate your TV set. Alternatively, if a TV programme is not to your taste, you can switch to another channel.

But, for reasons I can understand (as a Daily Telegraph reader who hates its "little Englander" image while drawing some guilty nourishment from its understated voyeurism), thousands of people who perhaps should know better, do not press the "off" button when watching "Big Brother".

I do not watch the programme but I have hovered there a minute or so occasionally when flicking between channels. That's all you need - that and the acres of newspaper coverage it receives - to know what is going on.

There is no doubting that this kind of television stirs opinions. Even David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, has something to say about it.

British diplomats need to have an opinion too because rioters in India are burning effigies of Big Brother producers. Thousands of people who did not press the "off" button want the programme banned. Why? Because they regard aggressive comments made by some of the people in the house as offensive and racist.

I regard them as offensive too. But this is reality TV. It is not an episode of Eastenders or the Archers, the kind of dramas that present the acceptable face of multicultural Britain. Big Brother presents another reality: the dark underbelly of society.

Jade Goody, the protagonist in this latest row, displays the kind of brutal demeanour that can emerge from social deprivation in childhood. Her confrontational behaviour is typical of that portrayed every day on the Trisha or Jeremy Kyle daytime TV shows.

In America Goody would probably be dismissed as "trailer trash". In the UK , for no other reason than she has appeared on TV, she has acquired celebrity status, a source of abiding irritation for the Telegraph readers of Tunbridge Wells.

Goody is the reason that the middle classes send their children to private schools. There are thousands like her. Most of us, however, can feel smugly secure in our superior intellects and standards. This is a woman who thought the Mona Lisa was painted by someone called Pistachio. On the ABC social auditing scale, she would probably slip off the register.

But Jade Goody is not only part of reality TV, she is reality. Moreover, her xenophobia - and this is the big ugly secret that most of us would rather not share - is not confined to a single lower class. It exists at all levels.

Remember Alan Clark and his suggestion that immigrants should be sent back to "Bongo Bongo land" and the Duke of Edinburgh's comments about the "slitty eyes" of the Chinese?

You don't hear such comments in trendy London bars where people of all ethnic backgrounds mix freely in a spirit of intellectual liberalism. But racist language, and the attitudes that inform it, remain as a persistent stain on our national character.

There are those who will highlight racial differences in most societies. For those who support multiculturalism, who have struggled to close the racial divide, who try to understand, even celebrate, cultural and ethnic differences, to be reminded of such undercurrents is painful, hence the thousands of complaints against Big Brother.

But how can you complain against reality? If Big Brother does one good thing, it is to reveal the grubbier side of life that we prefer to sweep under the carpet. It strips away pretension to expose the squalor of ignorance that no amount of celebrity can conceal. The bad thing about Big Brother is that it invites us to wallow in its social meddling in the name of entertainment.

So what is Big Brother? Social window or trash TV? Both, I would say. In the meantime Big Brother exists and will continue to do so just as long as we continue to watch.

See a judge's opinion.