A tale of two careers….
“Comment is free, but facts are sacred …. Fundamentally it implies honesty, cleanness, courage, fairness, a sense of duty to the reader and the community.”
Guardian editor CP Scott writing in 1921
This week’s Reflection, while not political, is of politics or at least political figures.
I’ve read the Guardian for almost fifty years and since 1978 bought a copy of the ‘Bedside Guardian’ every year. For those that may not know, the BG is the annual anthology of some of the best pieces the paper carried in that year.
In my younger days, I looked to read the BG as quickly as possible after buying it. Then I decided to let each copy rest on my ‘to be read’ shelf for a while. A chance to let the pieces within ‘mature’ and to allow me a longer-term perspective of them. To slow the news if you like.
It was for this reason that last week I began reading the edition from 2014. As ever, I enjoyed the varied and consistently well-written articles it held. One written by Patrick Wintour caught my attention. Its title, “A tale of two careers: Gove and Ian Duncan Smith”.
The article posed why Grove had just been ‘demoted’ from being an ‘effective’ Education Secretary to Chief Whip. While in contrast, IDS remained as Secretary for Work & Pensions. A role in which he had no outstanding achievement. Wintour used the analogy of omelette making. Grove: “Multiple eggs had been broken, but there was a recognisable omelette”. Whereas for IDS: “[the eggs} have largely been scraped from the Kitchen floor”.
The piece brought home the vagaries of politics and how ‘vague’ are ministers to many of us. I follow politics, yet it had completely slipped my memory that Gove had been Secretary of State for Education for four years. It was on his watch the Academies came into being. But as Wintour points out, to most people, “politicians are a grey blur of identikit-suited men.”
The other thing that caught my eye in the article was the mention of Dominic Cummings. At that time, he was an advisor to Michael Gove. The then PM, David Cameron, describing Cummings as a “career psychopath”. And Cummings himself shared, “There is institutional power that needs to be destroyed. A lot of our job is walking along a cliff edge and stamping their fingers off”. I guess our current PM regrets not talking to David Cameron and reading some of Cummings’ words. If he had, he might not now be the focus of Cummings’ unflattering utterings on their time working together.
I should add before closing that the BG is a much broader read than politics. Articles in the 2014 edition cover a full range of topics. Art, music, fashion, TV, food, adventure, phone hacking and many more. There’s even an article on ‘Let it Go’ from the film Frozen. The song described as not so much a Disney hit as an adolescent aperitif.
There’s something in the BG for all and you don’t have to share the Guardian’s political view to enjoy its `bedside’ anthology.
So, to the music. I nearly went for ‘Let it Go’ but instead opted for the record that topped the UK charts for the most extended period (6 weeks) in 2014.
