Occupying the Moral High Ground

vimothy

vimothy

yurp
How do they do it, eh?

This is an absolutely hilarious interview with the editor of al Guardian, Alan Rushbridger. Piers Morgan goes on about the tabloid/broadsheet thing too much (obviously got a chip on his shoulder), but the real gold is when he gets on to executive pay. Just watch Rushbridger squirm...

PM: What's your current salary?

AR: It's, er, about £350,000.

PM: What bonus did you receive last year?

AR: About £170,000, which was a way of addressing my pension.

PM: That means that you earned £520,000 last year alone. That's more than the editor of The Sun by a long way.

AR: I'll talk to you off the record about this, but not on the record.

PM: Why? In The Guardian, you never stop banging on about fat cats. Do you think that your readers would be pleased to hear that you earned £520,000 last year? Are you worth it?

AR: That's for others to say.

PM: Wouldn't it be more Guardian-like, more socialist, to take a bit less and spread the pot around a bit? We have this quaint idea that you guys are into that "all men are equal" nonsense, but you're not really, are you? You seem a lot more "equal" than others on your paper.

AR: Er... [silence].

PM: Do you ever get awkward moments when your bonus gets published? Do you wince and think, "Oh dear, Polly Toynbee's not going to like this one."

AR: Er... [silence].

PM: Or is Polly raking in so much herself that she wouldn't mind?

AR: Er... [silence].

PM: Are you embarrassed by it?

AR: No. I didn't ask for the money. And I do declare it, too.

PM: But if you earned £520,000 last year, then that must make you a multimillionaire.

AR: You say I'm a millionaire?

PM: You must be - unless you're giving it all away to charity...

AR: Er...

PM: What's your house worth?

AR: I don't want to talk about these aspects of my life.

PM: You think it's all private?

AR: I do really, yes.

PM: Did you think that about Peter Mandelson's house? I mean, you broke that story.

AR: I, er... it was a story about an elected politician.

PM: And you're not as accountable. You just reserve the right to expose his private life.

AR: We all make distinctions about this kind of thing. The line between private and public is a fine one, and you've taken up most of the interview with it.

PM: Well, only because you seem so embarrassed and confused about it.

AR: I'm not embarrassed about it. But nor do I feel I have to talk about it.

PM: Do you like money?

AR: I remember JK Galbraith saying to me once: "I've been rich and I've been poor, and rich is better." You can have an easier life if you have money.

PM: I heard you bought a grand piano for £50,000.

AR: £30,000 - the most extravagant thing I've ever bought.

PM: Are you any good at it?

AR: I can play quite well, I suppose. I rarely inflict it on anyone else, though.

PM: Is it true you play naked?

AR: No. I usually play fully clothed in the mornings.

PM: What about your cars? Are you still driving that ridiculous G-Wiz thing around?

AR: Yes, and I love it.

PM: But I also read that you use taxis to ferry your stuff to and from work, which sort of negates the green effort, doesn't it?

AR: That story was a bit confused. I used to cycle to work sometimes, and if I was too tired at the end of the day then I would fold up the bike and get a cab home, yes. But about a year ago I was nearly killed in a nasty accident on my bike so I gave up cycling and bought the G-Wiz.

PM: Any other cars?

AR: A company Volvo estate.

PM: A big gas-guzzler.

AR: Yes.

PM: Bit of a culture clash with your G-Wiz, then?

AR: Let me think about that. The problem is that I also have a big dog, and it doesn't fit into the G-Wiz.

PM: I'm sure the environment will understand. Any others?

AR: My wife has a Corsa.

PM: Quite an expansive...

AR: Fleet...

PM: Yes, fleet.

AR: But I've got children as well.

PM: They're privately educated?

AR: Er... [pause].

PM: Is that a valid question?

AR: I don't... think so... no.

PM: And you went to Cranleigh, a top public school.

AR: I did, yes.

PM: Do you feel uncomfortable answering that question?

AR: It falls into the category of something I don't feel embarrassed about, but you get on to a slippery slope about what else you talk about, don't you?

PM: It's not really about your private life though, is it? It's just a fact. And I assume by your reluctance to answer the question that they are privately educated.

AR: [Pause] Again, I am trying to make a distinction between...

PM: You often run stories about Labour politicians sending their kids to private schools, and you are quite censorious about it. Are you worried that it makes you look a hypocrite again?

AR: No. I think there are boundaries. It goes back to this question of whether editors are public figures or not.

PM: And you don't think they are?

AR: Well, again, I've tried to draw a distinction between making my journalism accountable, but I have never tried to go around talking about my private life and therefore making myself into a public figure.​
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2411713.ece
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
So nothing. I don't like Morgan. In fact I think he's a pretty reprehensible twat and ditto Rushbridger. I thought it was revealing and funny is all.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
It's interesting because there is a lot of snobbery from liberals about the amount of money earnt by footballers and chief execs, but clearly a lot of liberals feel guilty about how much money they earn and so don't talk about it very much.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
There's nothing wrong with being left wing and earning stacks of money. But there's a huge amount wrong with editing a left wing newspaper with declining circulation that's about to reverse its longstanding policy of no compulsory redundancies AND taking a whopping pay rise (sorry, bonus) for yourself.

Rumour also has it Morgan and Rusbridger share a similar taste in married Guardian journalists...(sorry to lower the tone).
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
crackerjack said:
There's nothing wrong with being left wing and earning stacks of money. But there's a huge amount wrong with editing a left wing newspaper with declining circulation that's about to reverse its longstanding policy of no compulsory redundancies AND taking a whopping pay rise (sorry, bonus) for yourself.

Rumour also has it Morgan and Rusbridger share a similar taste in married Guardian journalists...(sorry to lower the tone).
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Well, it does seem slightly hypocritical given the Guardian's politics. Of course, I don't think there's anyting wrong with earning a lot of money for demanding executive posts, but I thought the paper took a rather different view. Rushbridger's salary increased by 30% since 2005, and his bonus increased by 16%. This is despite not really increasing circulation at all and an expensive redesign. Apparently, the typical staff raise was 3%. If Rushbridger was thte head of BT (or whatever) then I think we can be sure that Polly Townbee really would be railing against it in one of her op-eds.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
"So nothing. I don't like Morgan. In fact I think he's a pretty reprehensible twat and ditto Rushbridger. I thought it was revealing and funny is all."
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Oh it was definitely funny. I guess what I'm saying is that even if the Guardian is a hypocrite when it points out (say) Cameron's bike/taxi hypocrisy it doesn't mean that Cameron's hypocrisy is any more acceptable.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Just had a chance to read the whole thing. This bit is a bit weird.

"PM: And what were you selling before the Berliner redesign?

AR: We were down in the 360s, 370s. The one mistake we made was to take out 10,000 bulks, which made the figures look worse than they were.

PM: But you did that to make the relaunch look better than it was.

AR: No, we did that at the time of the relaunch.

PM: I thought you did it a couple of months before the relaunch.

AR: Er, well, we took them out a few months before and didn't put them back for the relaunch.

PM: So I was right. You did it deliberately. It's an old trick.

AR: We did. But we didn't shove them back in; that's the point.

PM: It's not my point.

AR: We were too honest.

PM: Hmmm..."
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I don't see what's wrong with that. If they took the bulk sales out before and put them back in afterwards it would have been dishonest but as they didn't do that what's the problem? Why is Moron saying it's an "old trick" and why is Al so cagey about it?

This is my favourite bit though

"PM: How much is a pint of milk?

AR: About 30p. Is that right?

PM: No idea. Loaf of bread?"
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vimothy

vimothy

yurp
hucks said:
al Guardian? Wha?
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Al Guardian - covered pretty extensively here: http://markhumphrys.com/guardian.html

The UK newspaper The Guardian is perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the dilemma of the left in the current war.

For many years The Guardian has been pro-gay, pro-atheist, pro-feminist, anti-neo-nazi, anti-authoritarian, pro-sexual revolution, anti-censorship, but also anti-American. Now, however, America is at war with religious maniacs who hate gays, atheists, women, Jews, liberal democracy, sex and free speech. So The Guardian is in a dilemma. Can it put its anti-Americanism temporarily aside to unite against a common enemy?

Sadly, no. Tragically, it has made the error of siding with America's enemies, even if they are fascists, no matter what the contradiction to its previous beliefs. So much so that it even publishes these religious maniacs. It is now the best paper if you want to read right-wing religious conservatism. How far it has fallen.
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C

crackerjack

Well-known member
vimothy said:
Al Guardian - covered pretty extensively here: http://markhumphrys.com/guardian.html
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This is a whopping exagggeration. It still runs regular attacks on fundamentalism and its best known columnist, Polly Toynbee, was nominated for Islamophobe of the Year a while back for suggesting that schtick about wives walking ten paces behind their husbands was a little, well, backward.

That said, they do certainly indulge theocratic Muslims and have way too many columns wuch as this one
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2105483,00.html
claiming Israel/US/UK is to blame for everything.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Hardly a whopping exaggeration - though I they have featured some good critical writers (Ed Hussein was interviewed last weekend; Nick Cohens columns and Martin Amis' feature in the Observer). To be honest I feel a bit betrayed by the Guardian and its stupid bloody moral absenteeism. That's life I suppose.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
In my experience the Grauniad does sometimes host guest writers with dodgy everything-is-America's-fault-Islam-is-blameless type views, but most of its regular columnists spend as much time criticising Islamic fundamentalism and militancy as they do criticising America and Israel (and Blair's relationship to them).
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
crackerjack said:
There's nothing wrong with being left wing and earning stacks of money.
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Hence my dislike of the expression "champagne socialist" - carrying, as it does, the implication that if one espouses left-wing views, then one is morally obliged to be dirt poor. Of course, it's a bit difficult to be a socialist if you've made money by exploiting people or dodging tax, but what about people (for instance) who've made money by writing or making films or music? Are John Pilger, Michael Moore and Joe Strummer 'traiters to the cause' just because they've been successful in their respective fields?

Of course, if you're wealthy and have strong political views, you may well decide to donate some of your money to organisations that are politically or ideologically aligned with you - but simply giving to charity is not, in itself, particularly socialistic.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
Mr. Tea said:
In my experience the Grauniad does sometimes host guest writers with dodgy everything-is-America's-fault-Islam-is-blameless type views, but most of its regular columnists spend as much time criticising Islamic fundamentalism and militancy as they do criticising America and Israel (and Blair's relationship to them).
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Yup, Timothy Garton-Ash, Jonathan Freedland, Martin Kettle (ish) and the blessed Toynbee are all pretty sound. On the other side Gary Younge's a Trot headbanger, Madeleine Bunting is the epitome of mushy moral equivalence and Jonathan Steele is a public school Stalinist.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
Mr. Tea said:
Hence my dislike of the expression "champagne socialist" - carrying, as it does, the implication that if one espouses left-wing views, then one is morally obliged to be dirt poor. Of course, it's a bit difficult to be a socialist if you've made money by exploiting people or dodging tax, but what about people (for instance) who've made money by writing or making films or music? Are John Pilger, Michael Moore and Joe Strummer 'traiters to the cause' just because they've been successful in their respective fields?

Of course, if you're wealthy and have strong political views, you may well decide to donate some of your money to organisations that are politically or ideologically aligned with you - but simply giving to charity is not, in itself, particularly socialistic.
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I agree with you about charity.

I think there is an issue with very rich people espousing socialist views, and that is the fundamental idea that socialism is supposed to be a movement dominated by the working class, grounded in its every day experience and culminating in that class abolishing itself and class society as a whole.

Millionaires might have sympathy with that, but it is worth raising an eyebrow when the vast majority of political parties in this country (including much of those on the "revolutionary left" and indeed the BNP) are run by people from very rich backgrounds who went to public school and Oxbridge. Ditto many of those who express "socialist" ideas in the media.

But there isn't any point in having a go at "champagne socialists" about this.
 
B

bassnation

the abyss
crackerjack said:
Yup, Timothy Garton-Ash, Jonathan Freedland, Martin Kettle (ish) and the blessed Toynbee are all pretty sound. On the other side Gary Younge's a Trot headbanger, Madeleine Bunting is the epitome of mushy moral equivalence and Jonathan Steele is a public school Stalinist.
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toynbee is a centrist blairite, writes condescending articles about what she considers to be council estate scum and is no friend of the working class (see her pieces on the paedophile demonstrations in portsmouth). younge, on the other hand, cannot be faulted.

what you come to realise after a while is that left and right are stocked with wealthy middle class public school bods. they are both two sides of the same coin, the same old idiot distraction. down with the lot of them. when the revolution comes, the bloody swp will be up against the same wall as city investment bankers (alright, taking it sliiightly too far now)
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Fair enough, JE, but you seem to be confusing 'wealthy' with 'posh'. What about the Beckhams? They're as working class as you can get (despite Victoria's rather laughable former stage name), yet they're multi-millionaires. Of course, they don't tend to express much in the way of political opinion - but what about people who do? Are we obliged to ignore Tony Benn just because he's from an upper-class family?

Also, a general question: what distinguishes a 'Trot', as opposed to a socialist/Marxist/generic Lefty?
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
I rate Younge, I find Toynbee quite boring and depressing but that's not the point. The Guardian has loads of contributors with various viewpoints, simply listing all of the ones who have written pieces that are pro "Islamic fascism" is not a proof that it always has some kind of pro-Islam bias. I agree that some of those contributors mentioned by Humphry are very dodgy indeed and their pieces should have had no place in The Guardian (or anywhere) but on the other hand if they are being called Al Guardian by the American right and vilified as having a nominee for Islamaphobe of the year by muslims in this country they are probably doing something right.
I don't have any particular desire to defend the Guardian which I find annoying for various reasons but I simply don't recognise this Al Guardian caricature.
 
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john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
The question is whether or not it is in the Beckham's interests to abolish class society.

I don't think they are working class in the economic sense of the word. The cultural aspects of class like football, pop music, flat caps and whippets are a complete distraction in this instance.
 
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