PUBLIC transport has been a battleground for politicians since Boadicea drove a cart and horses through the Romans.
Berwick’s MP, Sir Alan Beith, is currently pursuing Northumberland’s transport department to find out why our local taxpayer-subsidised bus company increased fares and cut timetables a month ago without any local consultation or even notification (we only became aware of the changes when buses failed to appear!).
Down south, ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone has launched a campaign to regain the mayoralty of London from Boris ‘The Blonde Bombshell’ Johnson, citing bus fares as The Big Issue (up thirty per cent since Boris took the wheel, though still a damn sight cheaper than Northumberland’s).
Both should be wary, though: climbing on the bus bandwagon has stalled many a promising political career.
Legend has it that Thatcher Cabinet Minister Nicholas Ridley’s attempts to get matey during a visit to a Newcastle bus garage ended in failure when he asked the drivers if they took their buses home at the end of a shift.
Similarly, in 1923 the Conservative Party had to choose between Lord Curzon and Stanley Baldwin and a colleague advised the noble lord to “get closer to the people by taking a ride on a London omnibus“. The intrepid Curzon, former viceroy of India, fluffed the mission.
When asked by the conductor, "Where to, guv?", he replied: "42 Berkeley Square, please".
WHO’D be a journalist? You’re damned if you do and dumb if you don’t.
Last week, to spare a child’s grief by reporting the death by drowning of her pet hamster, I carefully changed the names of all involved - hamster, child and her mother - just in case the little girl was upset to discover her furry friend had met its end by falling into the toilet bowl.
The Press Complaints Commission might be impressed by my gentlemanly journalism, but I need not have bothered. Wee Emily, our egg collector, saw through the subterfuge straight away and is now touring Tillside asking how anyone can trust anything a journalist writes when he can’t even get a hamster’s name right!
THE henhoose is all a-flutter, like High Noon when the midday train is due to arrive. And cowering in his coop is Rocky the Cowardly Rooster.
Rocky has been a poor replacement for our agri-business’s original team leader: where the late Jock the Cock bossed and bullied hen and human alike -- he never gave up an egg to Wee Emily without a fight -- Rocky was henpecked from Day One. And now that word is round the hen run that a cockerel thief is stalking the village he’s barely visible.
Two fighting cocks have already fallen victim to the menace that haunts Ford village: John at the Lodge and Roy the Gardener have both seen their ‘hen-forcers’ snatched in moonlit raids, never again to call the faithful to their nest boxes with a cacophony of dawn choruses.
It’s unlikely to be a fox. After all, why take on the fighting cock when not a single hen has been harmed?
So Rocky is quaking in his corn bin at the thought that he might be the Cockerel Catcher‘s next victim. Watch this space . . .
MY toughest assignment since being boss at the Daily Mirror? The job I’m doing this month, editing BOG News, a quarterly magazine distributed to members of Borders Organic Gardeners.
I’m guesting in the hot seat while the newsletter’s esteemed editor, Robert Latham, is away and it‘s a hard row to hoe: planting parsnips replaces Page Three girls, tips on composting instead of kiss-and-tell tales . . . I am out of my depth.
One old tabloid habit dies hard, however: the pun. An article on potato growing across the Channel is introduced under the headline ‘Jacques Tattie’s French Collection’!
I don’t think BOG will ask me back . . .
Berwick’s MP, Sir Alan Beith, is currently pursuing Northumberland’s transport department to find out why our local taxpayer-subsidised bus company increased fares and cut timetables a month ago without any local consultation or even notification (we only became aware of the changes when buses failed to appear!).
Down south, ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone has launched a campaign to regain the mayoralty of London from Boris ‘The Blonde Bombshell’ Johnson, citing bus fares as The Big Issue (up thirty per cent since Boris took the wheel, though still a damn sight cheaper than Northumberland’s).
Both should be wary, though: climbing on the bus bandwagon has stalled many a promising political career.
Legend has it that Thatcher Cabinet Minister Nicholas Ridley’s attempts to get matey during a visit to a Newcastle bus garage ended in failure when he asked the drivers if they took their buses home at the end of a shift.
Similarly, in 1923 the Conservative Party had to choose between Lord Curzon and Stanley Baldwin and a colleague advised the noble lord to “get closer to the people by taking a ride on a London omnibus“. The intrepid Curzon, former viceroy of India, fluffed the mission.
When asked by the conductor, "Where to, guv?", he replied: "42 Berkeley Square, please".
WHO’D be a journalist? You’re damned if you do and dumb if you don’t.
Last week, to spare a child’s grief by reporting the death by drowning of her pet hamster, I carefully changed the names of all involved - hamster, child and her mother - just in case the little girl was upset to discover her furry friend had met its end by falling into the toilet bowl.
The Press Complaints Commission might be impressed by my gentlemanly journalism, but I need not have bothered. Wee Emily, our egg collector, saw through the subterfuge straight away and is now touring Tillside asking how anyone can trust anything a journalist writes when he can’t even get a hamster’s name right!
THE henhoose is all a-flutter, like High Noon when the midday train is due to arrive. And cowering in his coop is Rocky the Cowardly Rooster.
Rocky has been a poor replacement for our agri-business’s original team leader: where the late Jock the Cock bossed and bullied hen and human alike -- he never gave up an egg to Wee Emily without a fight -- Rocky was henpecked from Day One. And now that word is round the hen run that a cockerel thief is stalking the village he’s barely visible.
Two fighting cocks have already fallen victim to the menace that haunts Ford village: John at the Lodge and Roy the Gardener have both seen their ‘hen-forcers’ snatched in moonlit raids, never again to call the faithful to their nest boxes with a cacophony of dawn choruses.
It’s unlikely to be a fox. After all, why take on the fighting cock when not a single hen has been harmed?
So Rocky is quaking in his corn bin at the thought that he might be the Cockerel Catcher‘s next victim. Watch this space . . .
MY toughest assignment since being boss at the Daily Mirror? The job I’m doing this month, editing BOG News, a quarterly magazine distributed to members of Borders Organic Gardeners.
I’m guesting in the hot seat while the newsletter’s esteemed editor, Robert Latham, is away and it‘s a hard row to hoe: planting parsnips replaces Page Three girls, tips on composting instead of kiss-and-tell tales . . . I am out of my depth.
One old tabloid habit dies hard, however: the pun. An article on potato growing across the Channel is introduced under the headline ‘Jacques Tattie’s French Collection’!
I don’t think BOG will ask me back . . .
First published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne, June 4 2009
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