Diary 3/11/10
November 3, 2010
My reply to John Leech MP on the Murdoch issue : -
Dear Mr Leech,
Many thanks for your response.
I share your concerns around Mr Murdoch’s continuing efforts to dominate the British media. I am glad that this issue is referred to in the Coalition Agreement, but am only too aware that your Conservative partners are far less worried than we are. I read with interest a Financial Times article, which stated that almost all the senior Tory cabinet ministers were present at Mr Murdoch’s recent Lady Thatcher lecture in London.
In that address, Mr Murdoch (an Australian) clearly sets out his vision for Britain – a neo-Thatcherite vision of small government with low public spending and certainly not a government that would seek to get in his way. Clearly, a newspaper proprietor is entitled to direct his titles as he sees fit, but when his Conservative ‘fan club’ are then responsible for freezing the BBC’s licence fee for six years – a measure that can only benefit Mr Murdoch’s Sky TV and certainly not the British public – shouldn’t questions be asked?
Mr Murdoch did not quite get what he wanted from the British public at the last election, but he will continue to use his media to work towards this goal – a Conservative government – in the future. I hope that you and your Liberal Democrat colleagues will continue to promote your ideals of plurality and diversity by protecting the public from those like Mr Murdoch who would seek to dominate and distort the media with biased coverage, whatever their political leaning.
Yours sincerely,
Oliver Wright
If Mr Leech is your MP in Manchester Withington, you can email him yourself at LEECHJ@parliament.uk.
We watched an interesting documentary called Twitchers on BBC Four the other night. Principally because I’ve been known to go out birdwatching, I was fascinated to watch the men (and they are all men) who go out not just birdwatching, but actively ‘twitching’ around the UK and Ireland – attempting to build as big a list of ‘ticks’ as possible. These are men who would drop anything to drive, fly or sail anywhere they had to go to spot a rarity, knowing that if they don’t go, they may never see that bird again.
It’s a hobby which, if taken to such extremes, demands total commitment – financial as well as in terms of time. I felt sad for Brett, the veteran twitcher on the verge of retirement, who had returned to birding after giving up drinking and has one of the longest ‘life lists’ in Britain. Brett was trying to come to terms with the fact that once he retired, he wouldn’t have enough money to properly pursue his passion any more.
Another man, Garry, had a 7-year old daughter at home, but thought nothing of leaving her with his wife at the drop of a hat, whenever his pager bleeped with details of a fresh rarity, no matter how far-flung.
The strangest of the twitchers is undoubtedly Lee Evans, the self-proclaimed ‘George Michael of birding’. “I live my life in a similar way; like him, I’m controversial”, he says, without a hint of irony. Evans’ birding obsession has become his career and he is also the self-appointed ‘judge, jury and executioner’ of other British birders’ claims to have seen a rarity. His motivation? He hates cheats. Plus, he likes to win the annual ‘yearlist’ competition that he runs – and he usually does win, by seeing more species of birds in Britain than anone else.
I love birds and I would love to see rare birds, but I also like to think that I would not become as obsessive as these gentlemen. I gues I can live without seeing the first ever Yellow-Browed Warbler to appear on these shores and would rather not drive fifteen hours on the off-chance of spotting a vagrant gull in the middle of a crowd of 2,000 of its commoner cousins – on a rubbish tip.
